Forbidden Link

23. Kaira's Reflection

Alex had arrived in front of Bianca's class. At that time Alex felt that his journey was much faster than before. Traveling to a foreign place always feels longer than it should. He didn't know what the laws of physics were at work in the relativity of time, but Alex has experienced it many times so he's pretty sure that feeling of "faster" was indeed influenced by psychological conditions, not just because of his accelerated footsteps.

"Are you ok, Bian?" asked Alex when he saw Bianca standing at the classroom door with puffy eyes. Bianca's presence at the door also made it easy for Alex to find the class where Bianca spawns among all the exact same classes. It seemed Bianca was already at her position for a while.

“Yeah… I'm just still a little scared. But better than the first one,” said Bianca, trying to smile.

If Bianca, who looks sad like this was better than before, Alex immediately wonders how Bianca's condition was before. Another question that arises was how long Bianca waited in the classroom before meeting Alex and Marvin before. Alex wondered because Bianca seemed fine when they first met. If Bianca could hide her fearfulness like nothing happened, she would have already waited for a long time.

Instead of asking about her previous condition, Alex just patted Bianca on the shoulder while telling her to go back to class with a chin move. "Let's go inside. You have to calm down first.”

Bianca came back into the classroom with dragging pantoffels. Her head was kept lowered and her long, straight hair covered part of his face. Unlike her bright pink hair she has, Bianca's mood wasn't that bright.

After sitting in the front seat of the class, Bianca still couldn't look at Alex. The girl gasped for breath. Her forehead wrinkled and sometimes she closed her eyes to hold back tears.

Meanwhile Alex sat right next to Bianca not saying a word. After waiting a while and no conversation initiation from Bianca, Alex chose to look at the front of the class. Alex let Bianca to let her emotions down. He assumed that Bianca needed time to cool off so there wouldn't be any conversation anytime soon. Leaning back and putting his hands in his trouser pockets, Alex looked at the seat where he spawned when he first entered the forbidden link world.

Kaira had sat on that seat. Every time Alex had picked up Kaira to his class after school, Kaira would be seen sitting on that seat beside the window. Alone. Because all her classmates had gone home earlier. Kaira had looked at the window and was about to turn around when she heard footsteps approaching her. Seeing that her brother had arrived, Kaira immediately stood up at that moment with a smile welcoming Alex's arrival.

Alex always had found Kaira's smile was very sweet. In fact, Alex was proud because he was the only one who had Kaira's smile while at school. During junior high school, Alex never knew exactly how Kaira's life was at school, so Alex had been quite excited when he found out that Kaira went to the same school as him in senior high school. Dropping off every morning and picking up Kaira every afternoon had made Alex happy because he could be a responsible and reliable older brother.

At first Alex didn't know that his daily coming to Kaira's class would bring trouble. Of course, apart from the problem that Kaira didn't want to talk even though there were teachers who ask questions in class. At first Alex felt that Kaira was strong enough to be ignorant to her friends at school. But not everyone could think as practical as Alex. In fact, the teacher who taught Kaira had called Alex to talk about Kaira and it had been the beginning of Kaira's revealing condition.

“Alexandre… could you tell your sister not to leave class during class?”

When the teacher had said that Kaira left the class, Alex had only imagined that Kaira wanted to be alone at that time. But he did not expect that Kaira had not been in his class when he had picked Kaira up in the afternoon. Things like that had been repeated over and over again until finally Alex had found the cause, namely when Alex was picking up Kaira after school and saw an incident that he couldn't forget.

That afternoon Alex not only had found Kaira alone in the classroom. There were about ten students who had gathered at the front of the class. They had shouted at Kaira many times and had laughed at Kaira's silence. They had questioned the condition of Kaira who could not respond to anything from their words. Kaira had been silent and looked down. Seeing his sister's helplessness, Alex had shouted from outside the classroom and made all the students who were shouting at Kaira had fallen silent. Not only screaming, Alex also had challenged all male students to fight with him.

Instead of solving the problem, Alex's arrival had made Kaira faint in the end. Then the incident of a twelfth grader yelling at tenth graders had become a conversation among the students of one school. Kaira's condition had not been seriously ill from other's point of view, but Kaira didn't go to school for a week because she didn't want to leave her room at all. This incident had forced Kaira's parents to intervene so that all the children who shouted at Kaira, according to Alex's testimony, had been called by the principal and their parents had to meet Kaira's father, Charles Donati, one of the most influential people at the school. Because of that incident, Kaira never wanted to be looked after by Alex again when they met at school.

It had turned out that Kaira was shouted at by her friends not just once. There had been a teacher who once had gotten information from one of the students that Kaira had been constantly being bullied by her classmates and Kaira didn't fight back at all. All this time Kaira had always acted normal in front of Alex not because nothing had happened, but because she had been trying to hide the cases. And Alex's involvement in the incident had made Kaira unable to pretend anymore.

Alex closed his eyes after he finished remembering that what happened to Kaira turned out to be a part of this forbidden link world. And Alex realized that he saw the shadow of Kaira when Bianca was cornered by the NPCs. Not wanting to repeat the same mistake, Alex couldn't do much at that time. He had time to let go of Bianca's hand because he was afraid that Kaira's figure in Bianca would avoid him if he tried to fight the NPCs one by one.

"What is she trying to convey by showing what happened in her past?" muttered Alex to himself as he looked up at the classroom ceiling.

"Al..."

A voice from beside him made Alex straighten her body up and ready to respond to Bianca who seemed to be able to talk. Bianca looked confused to see Alex. Even though her eyes were still puffy, the expressive Bianca was back. She no longer appeared as a sad and lifeless girl.

"Ah yes.. Am I talking to myself again?" Still with a confused face, Bianca nodded at Alex's question. "Are you alright right now?" asked Alex again to just make sure Bianca was ready.

“Yeah… after all I have to face reality and continue this journey, right?”

Alex smiled then confirmed something else, “So did you come back to that place again? Are you sure it won't happen again?"

"Yes. I'm sure this time. Actually what really scares me isn't them. Yes, they are scary. But I was more afraid if you left me then. And it turns out that you came back here too for my sake.”

Bianca's confession made Alex pause for a moment. A trivial fear could actually make someone do things out of the ordinary like lose her purpose of life. If Bianca didn't tell her the real reason, Alex would always assume that Bianca had a phobia of screaming. Little by little Alex saw the positive side of Bianca, which was being able to understand for sure what she was feeling. Something that was very difficult for Alex to do.

Bianca's smile made Alex see Kaira's reflection again. Kaira who was still pretending to smile just to make her brother not worry.

“What do you feel when you force a smile like that, Kaira?”

Alex tried so hard not to make a sound as he asked in his mind so he pursed his lips. Still in a position to look at Bianca, Alex smiled back at Bianca. At the same time Alex felt grateful to get something valuable from a girl who was ten years younger than him.

Not everything you see is reality.