Chapter #9; Fancy Meeting Here
1696 Words
He treaded lethargically as his feet grew heavier with each step. Was it really necessary to report to his own campus before heading home after the recontre? Everyone was saved from the drama thanks to the distracting fire, but it still left Ryeon quite jittery.
He set foot into the deserted school building where only a few students from after-school activities roamed. Everyone was scurrying around, trying to get to the comfort of their homes as soon as they could. No one said a word, an eerie silence filled The Frantic School.
He held his head down as he proceeded out of there after clearing obligations with TFSS’s combat master. The cool air blew in his face from the door as he sluggishly dragged himself to it. He had almost gotten out of there when he heard it. Her annoyingly pitchy voice.
“Hi, Rye Bread! Done playing?”
It was Iris.
Iris Yanginlar, the most annoying girl in the whole entire universe and cosmos. Something that she knows too well and uses to her full advantage.
Iris had been his classmate and neighbor since before they could remember. She was a part of the school tennis team, although she wasn’t the best or even an average player. She just found it an entertaining enough way to kill time when getting on his nerves wasn’t an option. She always stayed close by, strangely enough.
“Not it the mood, eye…”
His voice conveyed disappointment and irritability.
“Can I talk to you for a sec? In private?”
Her tone shifted dramatically. All of a sudden, he didn’t feel so safe around this embodiment of wary.
She took him outside to a secluded alley. It was well-lit for one, but eerily vacant. She mumbled something under her breath, which he couldn’t quite make out. She took a sharp turn towards him and put on an eerie, unsettling smile.
“Why are we here?”
He was unsure about this whole situation, especially her.
“So…”
She pulled herself closer to his face with a peppy yet mysterious tone and an awkward smirk. It jolted him.
“Why are you wearing that baseball cap?”
Unfortunately inquisitive.
“Excuse me?”
He was a little disgusted by that question, even in these circumstances.
“You never wore those things before you got freckles. Which you have got to tell me how you got those, you look absolutely adorable.”
A little too close for comfort, both figuratively and literally.
Ryeon started sweating profusely and took a few steps back.
“Why do you wear the cap?”
Her tone shifted to a bratty serious, the kind of tone you would typically find with entitled ‘cool’ kids.
He continued to back away faster.
“I’m asking you a question.”
She was furious now.
He turned and attempted to get a good distance away from her.
A hand firmly gripped his and stopped him in his tracks. It was fruitless.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Her voice resembled a psychopathic murderer.
A hand shot out and plucked the hat clean off of his head, exposing his roots.
After the whole blue hair situation, Ryeon started dyeing his hair to an acceptable colour. While it did what it was supposed to do, it still left his roots nice and bright, requiring him to wear the forest green baseball cap he had from an elementary school club to hide them.
Ryeon tried to pull his hand away, but Iris just twisted it till they had gotten themselves stuck in a ballroom dance position. He was the snake and she wanted to rattle.
Her hand sunk into his jean pocket and came out revealing an unusual, multi-coloured knife.
“Baggy jeans can’t hide everything…”
She started skipping away like Little Red Riding Hood before she came across the wolf in a dense forest.
He held his hands out like claws, ready to stop her.
“Oh no, you—”
A searing pain overwhelmed his spite and his vision went dark. He found himself crumpled onto the asphalt, blind and in pain, with blue-black, oozing tears.
“Huh. He was actually right.”
She was genuinely surprised.
“HOW’D YOU KNOW?”
His boiling blood overpowered his exhaustion-fuelled misery.
“Let’s just say—”
She was interrupted by a thud and saw him loosen his fists while also letting the head he kept so high at that particular moment fall. She started debating what to do with an unconscious twitch and whether or not he was even alive. She dialed an unknown number and held the phone up to her ear.
“I got the knife, and a gift. Meet me in at the back door of my house and we’ll discuss where we should be when.”
She chirped vividly.
.
.
.
“You were supposed to be in the ALLEY…”
The bratty nature wasn’t exclusively for Ryeon. Messing with him was fun, but it wasn’t a priority to that extent. Here she was mad because Aibek had promised her that he’d help her get the knife he wanted.
“There was a... situation... at the recontre he was at.”
Aibek’s abettor quietly stood there trying his best to zone out as the two had a discussion, listening to which any sane person would get goosebumps.
“Oh, I almost forgot. What should I do with him?”
“Uh... tie him up and have some fun with him.”
“Ooh...my parents got me a shotgun. Can I use it?”
“Yeah, just don’t kill him with that. Blood’s kinda hard to get off your clothes…”
She ecstatically ran to get her esteemed weapon.
.
.
.
He opened his eyes to the sight of his ooze-stained shirt and a restricting sensation. He had been tied up in a nylon orange rope that was going to leave behind bruises and b****y marks in a pale, birch-wood chair.
“Oh... you’re alive.”
She sounded a little disappointed in her statement.
“What do you want?...”
He kept his head low as he glared at her as if he was an actual danger.
“I don’t know... a movie scene?”
“What?”
He was unsure if the melancholy had worn off.
“Ooh, look what I got!”
She started playing around with a small handgun, even trying to spin it by the trigger on her finger. Unfortunately, that was something she’d have to learn how to do due to the fact that it slipped and fell onto the dusty concrete flooring. The sheer force of the fall and the weight of the g*n itself was enough to send a bullet flying without pulling on the trigger.
Some might say that she had gotten it through unauthorised and illegal means, and everyone would wholeheartedly agree.
The bullet bounced off the floor and went careening into a leg of the chair Ryeon was on, sending him careening onto the ground, still tied up but now on the ground with his cheek brushing against the rough ground.
She looked as if it was just a happy accident.
Tak, Tak, Tak
A heavy hand knocked on the door.
She looked curiously towards the direction.
“I’ll... be right back.”
Iris slammed the door shut, and he could hear her demanding that someone stand guard like an army general with a hostage, which he was.
All the while the shotgun lay on the ground like a sad, ignored middle-schooler.
...
“You can give the twitch back his dagger.”
“WHAT?”
She was disgusted by what just came out the halfwit’s beak.
“Why’d you have me fetch it then?”
“What are you, a dog?”
He indirectly insulted her and her choice of words.
“I just don’t know how to get answers from it now that I actually have it.”
“So then why return it? Keep it. Maybe someone wants it, even needs it. Keep THEM waiting…”
The abettor stood at the door, fearing for the fate of the captive. She was thinking for him now and it downright scared him. His chest grew so tight he was struggling to breathe and was grasping onto the slipping illusion of tranquility.
Tranquility from just a while ago when he knew that the most damage Aibek could do could and would be held back by lunacy.
Whoever was inside the room may not make it out alive and it would partially be HIS fault. He had to get them out.
He slowly opened the creaking door to the room. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, despite the pleasant weather. When he saw who it was however, his blood was curdling.
All of a sudden anxiety had heightened his senses.
“Who are you?”
Ryeon glared at him similarly to how he glared at Iris. The maroon-green bandanna hid the lower half of his facial features and he clothed himself differently to how he would usually appear in public.
“We don’t need to know each other, just know that I’m on your side, whatever it seems like.”
His statement simultaneously scared him and reassured him. Ryeon watched as the tan boy with the undercut tenderly opened each of the complex knots Iris tied to keep him here. He wondered what he did to deserve such luck and misery.
The abettor untied the last knot and Ryeon stood up straight. He had pins and needles in his leg from being in that position for so long. He felt like he had just stepped out of school after a long, boring day, though it was anything but that.
He turned to leave out of the big, cracked window behind him, but the abettor’s final statement, which was filled with much grief and regret, made him momentarily halt.
“I’m sorry about the dagger, and about everything.”
He turned back, only to see the friendly acquaintance already gone, as if he was never there.
- Writer
