Forbidden Link

10. Sleeping Beauty

After Alex pushed down door handle, the personal assistant who was escorting Alex from entering Donati’s house until in front of Kaira’s bedroom has left Alex alone. And the door was opened slowly as Alex did it with many thoughts came up in his mind.

A short hallway must be passed by Alex after entering Kaira's room. And after walking a few steps towards the deeper part of the bedroom, he could see a room measuring thirty square meters with a king size bed located next to the glass that replaced one of the walls. The white color dominates Kaira's bedroom furniture, from the bed cover, nightstand to the curtains. Beside white, there was only a touch of gray on the glass frame and black for the television that hangs across the bed. The arrival of Lakelynn who was dressed in light beige and Alex who was wearing a navy blue jacket also gave a contrasting color to Kaira's room.

Beside the bed, Alex saw a machine which could be seen in film for someone who was being comma. The machine have sensors that attached to the skin are used to detect the electrical signals produced by people's heart each time it beats. That was electrocardiograph machine or can be shorted as ECG or EKG.

A girl who was in Alex's thoughts before now was sleeping on the bed with a blanket wrapped around her body to her stomach. Lakelynn which was sitting down at the edge of bed seemed to be buttoning the pajamas worn by the sleeping girl when Alex came in. Then Lakelynn lifted the folded blanket over the sleeping girl's chest and looked at the void behind Alex. After making sure that no one was behind Alex, Lakelynn just waved her hand for Alex to come closer.

"I have to pretend I'm doing Kaira's massage to get you in here."

"Thank you, Lakelynn," Alex said without taking his eyes off his sister's face.

Lakelynn stood up so Alex could sit there and he could see his sister's face more freely. Then Alex stroked his sister's hair to the cheek slowly. Kaira's facial skin was smooth and chewy with only a few freckles on the upper cheeks. Curly eyelashes were still a strong point of Kaira's beauty even when she was sleeping. Kaira's face was no different from the face of someone who was fast asleep.

While Alex continued to stare at his sister, Lakelynn's gaze couldn't move from Alex's face. Lakelynn noticed every change in Alex's expression from a frown to a smile. Seconds turned to minutes and Lakelynn was already quite annoyed when she saw Alex's smile that never went away. Not a smile from someone who was happy. Instead, the smile that Lakelynn saw was a symbol of something negative.

"Hey.. Al..," said Lakelynn to get rid of negative thoughts from man beside her.

"Is it true that he looks more peaceful than before?" asked Alex.

“It seems so. All I know is that before he fell into a coma, your sister had severe insomnia."

“So… it's good to sleep peacefully like this, isn't it?”

"When she has nothing to do in this world. Yes. But she still has people who love her. It seems she decided too soon to press the link.”

"Why did she decide to press the link?"

"I don't know the exact reason, but I know why she didn't contact you." Hearing Lakelynn's words, Alex immediately looked at Lakelynn with a serious face. "She repeatedly blamed herself for relying too much on you."

Alex's eyes that looked straight into Lakelynn's eyes slowly dropped. "So you're saying that maybe I made Kaira press the link?"

"Maybe yes, maybe no."

Alex was frowning more after hearing replied from Lakelynn then he continue asking, "Then why didn't you stop it?"

“Kaira knows who the people who love her are. But I'm definitely not one of them."

"What do you mean?"

“What if I don't really want to be friends with him? What if I said that I approached Kaira just to be close to you?”

*****

In a small meeting room there was one person standing next to a glass wall that led to a view of Quintice city from the fifth floor. No lights were turned on and only let the sunlight in from the glass walls. The room that looks dark from the outside makes an employee accidentally enter without checking the presence of people in it from dividers made from glasses.

“My apologies, Mr Farrell. I didn't think anyone was inside this meeting room."

A female employee immediately lowered her head apologetically as she opened the meeting room door and someone looked up at her. It didn't take long, the woman immediately came out and closed the door again. Leaving Farrell alone again.

Farrell sighed then looked outside the building while occasionally looking at the cellphone in his right hand. Farrell had an uneasy feeling when he learned that Lakelynn Heliodor had returned. Especially when Alex says that Lakelynn told Alex to press a link that put people in a coma.

Even though Alex had said that he wouldn't easily follow people's words, Farrell was still worried. As a good friend who has known Alex since childhood, Farrell knows that Alex was not easily influenced. But Farrell still remembers how a girl who was only fifteen years old could make Alex forget his social life with his friends. What an enormous influence Lakelynn had on Alex at that time. As a person who used to think based on past experiences, Farrell also had the same fear as Lakelynn's appearance today.

For the second time the meeting room door opened. When Farrell turned around, this time he didn't find anyone apologizing for thinking that no one was in the room. A middle-aged man looked at Farrell while asking him to attend the next meeting in another meeting room.

"Yes. I'll be right there,” said Farrell, making the middle-aged man close the door.

Once again Farrell turned on the screen of his cellphone. No message from Alex yet. Farrell tried to calculate the assumed time Alex would take to go to Donati's house and see Kaira's condition. If he only checked Kaira's condition, Alex wouldn't take more than two hours like now. Farrell bit the corner of his lip anxiously. And in the end he could only send a message for the second time that afternoon to Alex before stepping into the meeting room that he had previously been told. Calling Alex right now was not a good solution. Farrell was thinking if Alex was still with Lakelynn, that girl would know that he looked after Alex.

The meeting room was full when Farrell entered. Although a few people glanced at the open entrance at the back of the room, they quickly turned their heads back toward the front where someone was making a presentation at the front of the room. The presenter's demeanor was fiery enough to greet Farrell who had just entered. Farrell just replied to the presenter with a smile and then sat in an empty chair at the back of the room.

“As we know, WIC company sales in the third quarter decreased by fifteen percent from last year's sales…”

Even though his body was in the meeting room, Farrell's mind was no longer there. He only needed to be present in the meeting room as a mere formality. A finance manager didn’t seem to need to be in a meeting discussing a new product to be launched. However, his name would be called at the end of the meeting as a series of events from introducing new workers from sales of one of WIC's subsidiaries. Therefore, he did not mind if he had been asked to be a witness to the incident of a person suddenly unconscious at the cafe where he had been having lunch.

The voice of the presenter became vague in Farrell's ears and turned into the voice of the employees who had been resting in the office pantry before lunch time this afternoon. Three people had discussed the same thing which was the incident that was going viral according to Mio’s information last night. Usually Farrell would let them chat for a while and reprimand them if they exceed the normal break limit set by the company, which is five minutes. But this time Farrell approached the crowd after hearing the topic they were discussing from a distance. The faces of the three employees immediately panicked when they saw Farrell approaching but relaxed again when Farrell asked about the link that was going viral to them.