(Mira Oka)
I thought about what he said a few hours after our argument. It seemed that I hit a sensitive topic. Good. He should feel weak. He always has to ruin everything. I realized I was getting irritated again, so I lied on the couch and tried to sleep it off.
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Anita, Vera and I met at the couches the next morning. None of us knew how to start up a conversation, so I pulled out bags of chips, a bag of bread with a block of butter, and four cups of noodles to the table. I left the remaining three inside my bag.
“This is all I could get from that chase.” I warmed up the noodles with air from heat waves. I tried making it not too hot so that it would burn my tongue.
Anita blew into the cup of noodles before asking, “Did you know what happened?”
“According to Ace, there was a dead body in the forest.” I said a little sharper than I intended.
“Wait wh-what?” Vera stuttered. “A d-dead body! It’s over!”
“It’s fine,” I replied, before slurping an appropriate mouthful of the noodles. I swallowed. “People are too distracted by the taxi driver and the seven guards that got run over.”
Vera shivered, but I continued. “I suggest we stay here for a while. It’s safe for now.”
“This is so much.” Anita said quietly.
Vera darted his eyes all over the room. “Where’s Ace?”
“Up,” I replied flatly. “Forget him.” I’m not sure if I blame him or not. Family was sensitive to him. It’s somewhat sensitive to me too. My dad. I have his face. It terrifies me everytime I look in the mirror. I wish my mom was still here. I blinked several times, returning myself to the present. “As I said, we’re safe here. Once we use the train, we’ll stop at the mall and get disguises. We’ll discuss the details tomorrow. For now, let’s just settle here and calm ourselves.” I left them to sharpen my weapons.
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I noticed Ace walked out of the building while I was sharpening my knives. I didn’t really care. If he wanted to leave that was fine with me. It would probably be better. Stop thinking about that. You’re going to tire yourself out. I stood up and prepared for our dinner with the leftover food.
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“Take the bread or the noodles.” I told Anita and Vera when we met up at the couches again.
“Hold on,” Anita started, before opening up her hand in front of her flower. The flower opened up to reveal about five granola bars.
I raised my eyebrows. “You took that?”
“Incase we run out of things to eat,” She replied. “Dig in.”
Vera’s eyebrows furrowed. “Ace has been outside all day. It’s like he’s avoiding us.”
Anita sighed. “I know he doesn’t like us, but he attended the other dinner meetups we had. It seemed like we were starting to get along.”
I finished up my last bite of the granola bar. “Whatever.” I placed the food in my bag and went to the other side of the building where the couches were more comfortable.
I lied down on them on my side. I hope this new plan works accordingly. Even though there were problems like my chaotic ass, the dead woman, and the guards that got hit by that taxi. Now they’d definitely want me. Well, they wanted me since the beginning. I may have gone mad because things didn’t go as planned and I was looking for it for so long, so I took it out on Ace to make myself feel better. It seemed easier to blame someone else. Especially someone I hated. To be honest he deserved it. We were never going to get along. After all, he wanted me to die. He regretted his actions of saving me. Did he really mean that? Or was he taking his anger on me as I did with him? Nah, impossible. I’m starting to sound crazy, I need to calm myself a little. I shut my eyes. That’s when I heard footsteps coming my way.
“Mira.” It was Vera. I opened my eyes again and sat up to turn to him.
There was an excessive amount of worry on his face.
“What is it?” I asked. “Did we get found out?”
“No, but Ace is really shaky up there,” He explained. “He’s trembling, and vomiting, and gripping his chest.”
My eyebrows creased. What’s wrong with him? Should I care for Ace? Despite our encounter we had? “What’s with-”
Vera shrugged. “I don’t know. He refused to let me see what’s in his bag.”
He had a bag? “You take care of it. It’s not like I’m a doctor.”
“I found a small bottle of medicine in the forest,” He pointed out. “Isn’t that yours since you had a bag?”
“So what?” I asked. “It’s used up. Besides, what makes you think he’ll listen to me? It’s his problem!”
“Hey, did something happen between you two?” Vera asked. “Ever since he never attended our meetups, you seemed on edge.”
I turned away from him. “Trust me, he doesn’t want to talk to me. He has been avoiding me too, you know. He hates me. It’s pretty obvious at this point.”
“Anita can’t help either. She’s disgusted and panicking. He won’t let us help him.”
“Then he can die.”
“Mira,” He started more sternly. “This is teamwork. I’m not sure what happened between you two, but you have to help us. If not, we’re just going to have problems piling up on us. There are already enough issues, we shouldn’t make this another one. He might be harsh sometimes, but he’s pretty useful. He could help us take down the borders. So please help him.”
He had a point, I thought. We needed to get along to stop this. They’re relying on me, so I have no choice but to cooperate. “Fine.” I finally said before grabbing a bottle of water from the broken vending machine.
Anita dashed down the stairs. “I can’t do this anymore, excuse me!” I continued walking up and stopped by the bathroom, where he was in.
He was hunched over the toilet, body quivering, while gripping onto his bag.
I slowly approached him. “Hey.”
He turned and grasped onto my wrist before twisting it.
I flinched at the pain, but asked. “Is this your strategy now? To prove my point by being aggressive?”
He let go before immediately clutching his head. “Agh! Go away. I don’t need your help,” He breathed. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Your breath is quickening,” I started. “If you keep going at it like this, you’re actually going to have a problem.”
“Why do you care?” He asked, his voice raspy. “I wanted you to die.”
“Enough of that!” I shouted, before extending my hand. “Give me your bag.”
His body slumped against the toilet as his grip loosened on his bag.
I swiped it away before he could regain his grasp. I opened it. My eyes widened. There were about twelve cups of coffee and seven of them were empty. “Where did you get this?”
“Stole it during the chase.” He replied.
I see, I thought. He had too much coffee and now he’s dealing with the effects.
I handed him the bottle of water. “Here, this should stop the shaking. And perhaps the vomiting.”
He took it and gulped the water down before letting out a huge exhale. I pulled him up by the shoulders and was relieved he didn’t bother fighting back. I could feel his collarbone with my fingers. “God you’re burning. I’ll take you to the balcony for some air.” I walked him there and we sat against the wall. The sun was about to set. The gradients of blue to a bright orange-yellow seemed appealing. I turned to him. “Do you like it here?”
He nodded.
“What was with the coffee?” I had to ask. “Why did you drink so much?”
“It was the only way to keep me awake.”
“You didn’t sleep? But I thought you-”
“I prefer not to sleep,” He explained. “I can go for a few days, but exhaustion was kicking in and I couldn’t risk it, so during the escape, I took as much coffee as I could from an outdoor stand.”
“Why didn’t you sleep?”
“Obviously I can’t during this situation. I had a hideout where I felt safe and I could sleep. But now that it’s gone, I can’t. And I don’t trust you guys either, because if I did, I’d wake up somewhere else. It happened once. It will happen again.”
I somewhat understand his perspective. But this type of attitude was annoying. “Okay. How are you feeling now?”
He gave me a look. “Shit.”
“Explain.”
He sighed, looking up. “My heart’s beating pretty fast, my head hurts, and I feel really nauseous.”
“Nauseous?” I asked, bewildered. “Do you need the bathroom?”
He shook his head.
I nodded, trying to collect my thoughts. “Okay. What you need to do now is to rest. It’s going to be dark anyway.”
With a pained expression, he said, “No.” He extended his arm to reach the bag by my side.
I held onto his wrist. “No more of that. You need to rest.”
He scoffed. “Didn’t I already tell you? W’ed be in danger if I did that. You’ll probably ditch me too.”
I crossed my arms. “Then I won’t leave.”
“Are you being serious?”
I let go of his wrist. “Come on, I’m trying to make amends. Things will only get harder if we can’t trust each other. Believe me, this is hard for me too. I haven’t felt trust in a while.”
He turned away, his voice dry. “I don’t want to make amends with you.”
“Resting relaxes your breathing,” I told him. “And if we get in danger, I’ll bring you with me.”
He scoffed again.
“Really,” I tried again. “How about a deal?”
He turned to me with a raised eyebrow.
“If I end up leaving you, or at least try to, you can burn my other ankle the same way you did before. It felt like some sort of shock.”
There was a pause.
He finally sighed. “Okay. You won’t be hard to find, I guess.”
“When the public knows my face, yeah,” I replied. “We’re safe here. No one really uses this place anymore.”
He leaned his back against the wall and slowly closed his eyes.
Finally, I thought. Mission accomplished. Now I just have to sit here. I took a sip of coffee. It was room temperature, but that was okay. I began to strategize the plan for tomorrow. We can use the train to go to the mall. Sneak through, and get disguises. The clothing stores were too busy and small so the mall was the only option. From there, I could complain to the council about my own issue and they’ll let me in. As for the others…we’ll have to continue this discussion tomorrow. This plan seemed somewhat solid. It makes it more efficient now that there’s that guard run-over issue. There will be less guards to handle. I smiled. Feeling confident that this was going to work. I took another sip of coffee before placing it down. We’re so close to achieving this.
Ace let out a soft moan before his head collided into my shoulder.
I froze. My entire body tingled. What’s happening? This never happened before! What am I supposed to do!? Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move.Everything’s fine. It’s just a person sleeping on your shoulder. Relax. Don’t move. I took a deep and slow breath. My body felt hot, and my heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest. I turned my head to him, hoping he wouldn’t wake up from my inner panic. His eyes were still closed. I sighed in relief. To distract myself from my pounding chest, I focused on his face. For once, his eyebrows didn’t crease in anger. They were completely neutral. It made him look less scary. Instead, he kind of looked cute if I was being honest. Crap, what am I saying? I think this coffee is turning me insane. Yep, blame it on the coffee. I pursed my lips and turned away from him. That’s when I started to feel some sort of heat sensation on my neck. I turned to him again. His lips were parted as he was breathing against my neck. I’m going to die. What is this? I scrunch my face. You know what? This is fine. This is…relaxing. Yeah, I’ll just convince myself that it feels okay, so I’ll feel okay, so I won’t need to freak out anymore. At least he looked better than before. His breathing was starting to even out. I was glad I helped him. Even though a part of me was still mad at him, I was glad to return the favor. For the time being, I stared at the tiny stars lighting up the night sky.
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