"There was a mouse in the house and she killed it and threw it away! Do you know how wasteful that is!"
Kai scooted back in his seat, a tense smile on his face as sweat beads ran down his cheek.
"I'm actually with her on this one.."
Sunny grumbled, taking another bite of the pasta in front of him. He felt slightly bad for making Kai his "copule" therapist, but he was the only one he could vent to.
Effie was out the window for obvious reasons. Cassie.. he doesn't know why, but he has a premonition not to go do that. Perhaps he should go to Roan and Saint Tyris, more so Roan but still.
"You know I've actually never been in a relationship-"
Sunny glared at him, stabbing his fork through a piece of meat on his plate.
"It's not a relationship, and secondly I don't believe that for a second, pretty boy."
He didn't want to take his anger out on Kai, but sometimes he says things so outlandish that he has to get a little annoyed. Never been in a relationship? With that face? Yeah right.
Kai scratched his cheek, a smile on his face, with those annoying dimples, and his clear flawless skin, and his sharp jawline, and his.. he should stop.
"Actually idols aren't allowed to date! And before I became one I was always nervous around girls so never got the chance haha!"
Now he feels bad, that's actually quite sad. Actually, that gave him an idea. Kai can't give good advice because he's not in a relationship or has never been in one. But if he happened to get in one, then he could realistically be more helpful to him.
"Wait right here! I have a surprise for you!"
Sunny jumped out of his seat, causing Kai to flinch, and then he went into the bathroom before making a call.
A few moments later, as if summoned, totally not by the prospect of money, a short black haired girl walked through the doors of the restaurant.
He pointed at the table that Kai was sitting at and slipped the server some credits in order to make the experience as romantic as possible.
As Aiko walked to Kai, he walked out the restaurant doors. For some reason he felt bad, but he could brush that off.
Wait.. he feels like he's forgetting something. He turned the oven off before he left, he took out the trash.. wait, wasn't Rain supposed to meet him for training today? And at his house? The house where Morgan is staying alone?
He wasted no time entering the shadows and jumping through them. It doesn't matter if his essence runs dry, he just has to get there before Rain does!
---
It took him around twenty minutes, but he had gotten there. He rushed towards the door handle only to see that the door was unlocked.
He slowly opened it. No lights were on.
Quiet footsteps echoed throughout the room as he walked through the house. He opened bathrooms, cabinets, and bedrooms and found nothing. No Rain and no Morgan either.
He extended his shadow sense, and that's when he felt it. Something or somebody was downstairs in the training room where his sleeping pod was. He could shadow step into the room, but he was practically out of essence from coming here. Shadow sense didn't use much, which was the only reason why he could use it.
He slowly walked down the stairs, gently opening the door only to see the lights off in this room as well. He turned to his left and then...
"Boo!"
"Eeek!"
He jumped back, flipping the light switch on when he landed on the other side of the room, only to see Morgan and Rain both laughing together.
"Rain get away from her!"
He wasted no time and snatched Rain by the wrist, dragging her behind him before glaring at Morgan.
"She's just a mundane kid, I don't know what you're planning, but leave her out of it."
Morgan tensed up before sighing, the smile she just had nowhere to be seen on her face, instead replaced with a scowl.
"Do you really hate me that much? I can't think of anything I've done to warrant this mistrust.. which is why I think it's not a problem you have with me, but rather a problem you have with yourself."
What was she even talking about, these manipulation tactics won't work on him. He knows better now.
"Actually I did hear a rumor about you and that seer friend you have.. well who am I kidding. The tabs Valor keeps on Changing Star's cohort show you had frequent meetings with everyone except her. I wonder why that is?"
She strode up to him before digging her finger into his chest with her gloved hand, her anger evident on her face.
"You're always on alert around me, like I'm some sort of nightmare creature! As well as all those things you said to me previously, it's almost as if you have a defense mechanism to treat everything as a threat so you can negate being hurt.. tell me then, am I wrong?"
Rain poked her head out from behind him. She had a nervous smile on her face and was drenched in sweat as she walked over to the corner of the room like a robot. Grabbing her backpack, she began to head up the stairs, but before she did she turned around for a second and said something.
"I uh.. don't think this is a conversation I should be hearing, so let's just meet up tomorrow! Bye!"
She ran up the stairs and out the door, closing it behind her.
Morgan turned back to him, and his flaw was eating him alive from the question she asked earlier. He was trying his best to hold it back, but the pain became unbearable at a point.
"No! You're not wrong! Is that what you wanted to hear?! Stop pointing out the obvious like you can understand anything!"
She sighed once more, the expression on her face softening.
"You're right, I can't understand."
That's just how it was, there was a bridge that could never be-
Suddenly he felt a pressure on his chin as his head, which he didn't know was down, lifted up.
Holding him by his chin, she spoke to him as if he was a child, a slightly agitated look on her face.
"That's because you won't help me understand. Do you seriously expect me to be able to grasp something I have no knowledge on? So help me understand."
His stomach hurt.. it felt as if his muscles were tensing up all at once. All of his surroundings became blurry as his vision was purely focused on her. He doesn't know why, but it was as if his heart spoke for him.
"Ok.. I'll talk."
Those three simple words would lead onto a conversation that went deep into the night.
---
Growing up in the outskirts was equivalent to living day by day knowing the next will be your last. Sometimes some of the adults would tell one of the kids that they were going to help them find food, among other lies.
The adults always came back, but the kids never did, for multiple reasons. The main reason being something I don't even want to say. The outskirts drove people to act worse than nightmare creatures. Knowing they could die the next day, they let out all of their disgusting desires and urges.
Sometimes, if I managed to scrounge up extra food on a lucky occasion, someone would convince me they would protect me from the incoming scavengers that roamed at night.
In the end though, all I woke up to was a shard of glass at my throat and everything I worked for stolen.
If I had to compare it to something, it was like a stone being polished over years by the currents of the river it rested in.
Only if that polishing was the strip of trust, or perhaps even the concept of trust. Maybe something even more than that.
It stripped away the very concept of companionship of any type. Every interaction I had could easily end up as a knife in my back.
So that's how I lived. Of course, that started to change when I met them.
Changing Star and Song of the Fallen, those were my first companions in the dream realm. Together we survived abominations even saints would avoid. Slowly, that polished stone I had become started to slowly become obsolete.
We shared meals, we shared everything, we held each other's lives in each other's hands in every battle we fought.
To me, that was the first sense of trust I had in years.. though eventually, that polished stone was thrown back into that river when a knife was met in my back.
Yet despite that, despite that all.
The part I hated the most was that I understood why.
For her, there was no real reason to choose me over Nephis. In the end she simply spent more time with her, and I on multiple occasions would have abandoned her. Most of all though, at the end of the day.. our lives weighed differently on the scale.
Changing Star's life is much more valuable than the life of an outskirts rat who couldn't even keep what little sanity he had left, one that had abandoned the both of them first too.
For the other, I still don't know why she did it. Was it pity? Or was it out of companionship. Or maybe she simply thought I was weak and she was strong, which is why she should take the fall.
Maybe she was right. After all, in the end who can I say truly won? Not that it would matter in the first place.
Because at the end of the day, I'll always be stuck in that alley, my back against a wall, unable to truly move forward because if I do a knife may just meet that back.
"And with that said, it's the reason why once again I must reject your offer of marriage. We simply live in worlds that cannot coexist."
Morgan opened her eyes, which had been closed the whole time she was listening to him.
"I see, I do understand now."
"Thank yo-"
"But I'll still refuse retracting my proposal. At first I admit my interest in you stemmed from something that related to my own personal wishes, but now I must admit that interest has branched out.. which is something I can say I didn't expect."
Could she really not get it through her thick head? It wasn't about interest, but rather that he simply couldn't accept her proposal. Not that he didn't want to.. not that he did, of course.
"You said you're scared of turning your back to others, right? I'm assuming that's metaphorically and physically."
A warm and soft sensation grasped onto both sides of his face as Morgan's gloved hands turned his head to directly face her.
"So for these five months, look at me directly. It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing. At all times.. keep your eyes on me and only me."
He gulped, that feeling in his stomach coming back once more.
"Does... does that include in the bathroom?"
Suddenly the sparks of a memory started to form in her hand.