Since when… since when did I always lose? Klaire blinked, her tears mysteriously gone.
Did they retreat?
Was that even plausible?
She didn't believe so… yet there was no evidence of her tears on her sleeves or on the table. It had disappeared, not because of her wish, demand, or plea, but because of a grunt that shocked her thoughts back into place.
How can someone forgive being stabbed? She wished for an answer, searching through Metelda's stone-cold exterior, desperate to find a hint of… something. Anything. Yet all she could see was what Metelda showed her: a small flicker in her iris pointed at the folded glass in Klaire's hand, and as she let go, the bent tumbler reflected two scenes unraveling behind her.
On the first half of the tumbler, Tammy's proud grin reassured her claim on Klaire, while the other half showed Jessy's dissolving suspicion; Klaire ignored both of them and focused on the indifferent person in front of her.
How could someone be so…
Metelda scooped the last of her gravy and dumped it onto Klaire's plate, stunning her yet again into silence.
"How could you forgive. Forget."
"I don't need a grunt to answer that!" Junior snorted. "Takes too much energy." He unknowingly answers Klaire's biggest doubt before bursting into laughter and spraying Klaire with gravy.
Instead of getting angry, she burst into laughter as well. Her worries slid off, along with the weight that held her heart in a vice.
Junior wanted to hold onto this moment. Or at least keep her away from hers. So he forced a topic he hated the most.
"Kudo," he said with a grimace, almost as if someone had stabbed him and twisted the knife.
"Yes!" Klaire sniffed triumphantly. "While everyone suspected Trisha, Kudo completely excluded her." She said with a gleam in her eyes.
"Isn't a saint excluded by default?" Junior frowned. "No wonder they praise Kudo so highly. If everyone around him is 'that' dumb, basic compassion must look like god-tier deduction for them."
"Oh, no!" Klaire jumped to Kudo's defense on pure reflex. "Even 'I' would've been suspicious." She leaned closer, lowering her voice. "Now take a load of this."
She casually fed him a spoonful of gravy, partly to look inconspicuous, but mostly to redistribute her portion. "She was on the roof. Beside Tammy Junior. Before the leap." She whispered and leaned away.
Junior froze, spoon halfway to nowhere.
"Breathe," Metelda said flatly.
Junior inhaled like a man resurfacing from the deep. "Perfume—yours," he croaked before Klaire could get suspicious. "Might be allergic."
Klaire panicked and shoved her chair farther away from him, which made everyone nearby misunderstand the situation in entirely new and creative ways, while Metelda responded with nothing but a sharp click of her tongue.
Junior stood and bowed solemnly. "No need. I'll dig my own grave," he said to Metelda and turned to leave.
He headed for the farthest exit, but stopped, sensing a lingering shadow behind him. His fear sense flared. 'That one's for me,' he realized, immediately changing course toward the next exit where Mark stood.
That's why I chose the farthest exit, Junior congratulated himself, patting his chest.
With all of his escape routes blocked by cheerleaders, fate, and poor life choices, he retreated to his table, settling beside Metelda in stiff, awkward silence.
Metelda barely moved. Still, her invisible comment hit Junior like thunder on a clear day, resuming their banter with Junior again performing both sides of the conversation.
The words blurred into playful background noise, and for once, Klaire didn't feel like an outsider peering in through glass. The weight she always carried; the quiet certainty of being unwanted, of being different, of being alone… grew lighter. Almost gone.
Somehow, between Metelda's aggressive boundaries and unspoken taunts, and Junior's exaggerated dramatics, she had found something unfamiliar. Something real. Perhaps, a second chance to bond with someone normal. Though the word 'normal' can never be applied to the Terrors.
It had crept up on her the same way Triple–S had, slowly and without warning, until it was no longer just a school but had become a reason to stay.
She adjusted the chain holding her skirt in place, the cool metal grounding her fingertips. Maybe it was all right to want this. Perhaps it was all right to belong somewhere finally.
Metelda ignored Junior and turned her vacant gaze onto Klaire. The look barely lingered, but it was enough hope, quietly offered without any strings. Hope that everything had been forgiven. That the memory no longer held power. For it had been forgotten.
Metelda's brief attention, the mean girls plotting behind her back, the hot boys stealing glances, the cheerleaders' palpable scorn, together they wrapped around Klaire until she felt like the story itself revolved around her.
When was the last time—oh. Right.
Klaire's beaming smile softened. "Good…!" she said, deliberately avoiding Metelda's second sweeping gaze. "I'm good—"
She stopped mid-sentence, her need to escape catching onto a stranger who stood by the exit. He didn't wear the staff's uniform, nor did he have the parental air, yet he entered unchallenged, never once bothering enough to change his gait.
"I'll be back." Her legs moved before others could object, carrying her toward the stranger, drawn by something she couldn't name.
Klaire could already look through their bubbled perspective and imagine why they would ignore a random person. After all, he was unassuming at first glance, dressed in practical, dark clothing. Of course, you also have to ignore the Butcher's knife fused to his hand through old, blood-stained bandages that never dried.
Metelda ignoring such a brute made sense. But everyone?
Even the short-tempered security guard whom the Butcher bumped into apologized for standing in the wrong place. He went as far as to hand over his security pass, allowing the Butcher to access more restricted areas.
'Don't apologize to a potential murderer.' Klaire wanted to yell, yet she kept her calm, glaring past the baffled security guard. "You have one job. Just the one." She scolded him and kept following the stranger without a plan.
'This is dumb,' she told herself. 'Stop following a murderer… or potential murderer,' she urged her legs. Yet her curiosity drew them ever closer to the stranger, who, on closer inspection, seemed to use the knife as a metal detector. 'What the actual fu—'
The blade's pointy end glided toward her location, and she instinctively ducked.
'Aren't you made up of metal?' she scolded herself, forcing herself upright.
The blade seemed to move against the stranger's control, pointing at a mini garden near the cafeteria. The Butcher swung the blade in wide arcs, dicing off the plants without mercy.
"Damn life," she read the Butcher's lips curse out.
Definitely someone had to notice that, she thought, yet her voice never echoed into the hallway.
Just as Klaire cursed her inability to yell, 'potential murderer on the loose,' a stranger walked past the Butcher without hesitation.
"Okay, now that's definitely strange."
Klaire suppressed her urge to protect and found that every other sense followed her instructions.
"Getting weirder." She ignored all others and concentrated on the primal urge to stay hidden—a backdrop for the shadows to reveal themselves on.
The knife in the Butcher's hand searched for something hidden within these plotted plants, and once the target's shine rose from the darkness within, it stabbed forward, retrieving a chain.
The Butcher examined the chain closely, making sure he didn't touch it or get too close to the blade's sharp edge, groaned, and flicked the blade, discarding the golden chain into a bin. He disregarded the holy cross it held and the value of gold the chain could fetch, moving on to a new location.
Klaire ignored the alleged murderer and dove into the dustbin. Money always came first on the streets; be it followed by death or opportunity, one had to dive in to find out.
She retrieved the chain, shoved it into her uniform pocket, and kept shadowing the stranger.
This stranger had a gift from God, like Quazy's, yet stronger. Klaire feared she might lose interest in pursuing him if she looked away for even a second, so she glued her eyes to the most noticeable part of the Butcher.
This was one of Quazy's tricks he taught Klaire to find him: a person's core can never change.
They break and shatter, but never truly change. She told herself, focusing harder on the Butcher's gloves.
Even with Quazy's ability, Kudo would never leave the broken watch behind. Similarly, Metelda would never leave her laziness, and Junior, his terror. People like Klaire might think they have no core, but Quazy said such people haven't found theirs yet, which, in itself, ranks them lower than those who aren't even looking for one.
Fragrances she had never smelled tantalized her nose away from the stranger. When that didn't work in breaking her pursuit, the gushing air threatened to pierce her eyes shut. Yet she powered through, a pair of sunglasses she pickpocketed from a guard helping her keep track.
Somehow, she hijacked the Butcher's ability. The guard tailing her had his sight rerouted onto the body of the thief's next mark. And he abandoned the three-way pursuit moments later for a hot dog offered by an even hotter vendor.
She had crossed the point of retreat. Too close for doubt. Too close for reason. The dread rising in Klaire's chest was not sorcery, nor the man's unnatural concealment; it was her own instinct, warning her of the cost of following someone the world refused to see.
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Sixty-Two. ———<>||<>———