*ELIYA KENLEY *
Age: 20
Sex: Feminine
***
"Goodnight, Eliya!"
"Goodnight, Kira!"
What now?
I lay on the couch, less scared than before. A wave of questions now filled my head.
Who was Haylen? What was he? What was Mr. Kai doing to him? Why was I targeted?
Too many questions, too few answers. I struggled to find sleep, mind too occupied to rest. It felt a little maddening, knowing I was involved in something yet not knowing what that something was.
Kira would tell me not to lose sleep over it, that it was something we'd deal with in the future, but I didn't have that same sense of nonchalance in the face of danger she had. Even from here I could hear her loud and peaceful snoring.
She was worried, I knew that for sure, but she didn't let it mess with her mind or with her sleep. I wasn't strong enough to do that.
I wanted to give up, to hide in a corner and fold in on myself. But I knew I couldn't, a strange bubbling in my heart told me this was just the beginning. Change was on the horizon and if I couldn't handle this much, I'd be screwed when things actually got bad.
Sitting up, my back pressed against the couch as a shaky sigh left my lips. My memories in regards to what happened at the library were foggy, but they were definitely there. I just had to look.
My eyes shut on their own, my spirit searching my mind and heart for anything related to the incident. I floated as if above a formless and infinite sea, mind blank to anything but my goal.
Walls of maple wood rose from all around me, each structured on top of an equally maroon floor. Bookshelves fell from the sky and crashed towards the floor, everything arranged itself in a familiar layout.
Two rows of tables spread from the door to the window in the back, to its left disposed bookshelf upon bookshelf and to its right a fixed phone and a series of couches. It was Junjujunjun Library.
I saw the scene as if through someone else's eyes, seeing both myself and Haylen in 3rd person. The things I hadn't seen or bothered to notice in the moment, the toilets, the faces around me, the other edge of the library, all looked to be blurred out with thick black fog, a seemingly hand-drawn X over them.
This was a visualization technique both Kira and James used when they forgot things, they'd reconstruct the scene in their minds to the best of their abilities and let their subconscious fill in the gaps. They described it as being the same as imagining the points or tackles you were going to make before a sports match, just applied differently.
It was all visualization, though I never expected it to be this vivid.
I followed behind the reconstruction of myself and Haylen, watching for anything I had missed in the moment. For now everything was normal. We sat as I remembered, and just as I was about to open a book, Haylen started speaking. He was asking for book recommendations.
Pause!
Looking at the stationary scene now, something felt off. Like I was missing something. I floated closer and rewinded the memory to the moment we sat down.
Again!
Having not found anything, I rewound once more.
Again!
My eyes strained with focus, not wanting to even blink. This time, the memory played slower, and for the briefest of seconds, I caught it.
Haylen's eyes had quickly darted past me before he started talking, as if he had seen something. He then immediately asked for book suggestions, something that would force us to get up and look through the shelves, bringing us away from our initial position.
That alone wasn't enough to come to any conclusion, just that he had seen something behind me that caught his eye.
The reconstructed me pulled Haylen from his seat and led him from bookshelf to bookshelf. I noticed something else as I followed.
Haylen was tense, unreasonably so. It was like he was expecting something, something that came as the scream of an old man tore through the library. Listening to it now, with my senses straining to absorb every detail, it sounded a little…fake.
I paused the memory, leaning against the bookshelf where the reconstructed Haylen and I were.
[Why does it sound like that? That's more like a groan than a scream, something almost rehearsed. Am I actually starting to lose my mind?]
Just as my lips curled into a weak smile and I prepared to resume the memory, a cold hand wrapped around my neck.
It was a familiar hand, one I had felt before. Large and rough, it was the hand of the man who had tried to kill me. I was no longer a formless body observing the memory from a viewer's perspective; I was bound.
I was Eliya.
I was the Eliya held in the arms of a force too strong for me to break away from and too cruel to care for the tears streaming down my face. A cold, calm steel pressed against my throat, so real I almost forgot this was only in my head. I tried to look up, to see my aggressor, but there was nothing there. Only a face obscured by dark black fog with an X marked over it. The X morphed, forming the shadow of a face filled with malice.
The man did not hesitate, slicing my throat and throwing me to the floor. My body tried to reel and squirm in pain, but I had no strength. I was helpless, and soon I'd be dead.
"AH!"
I was once again in the man's arms, terrified but throat intact.
[W-What's happening? I was sure… I was sure I'd died.]
His hands bound me like the tightest of ropes, a knife pressing against my throat. As he had before, he slit my throat and left me to die.
This happened many times, repeating until I felt my legs give out. I collapsed to the ground, face covered in snot and tears as a series of hiccups and cries left me.
"Get up." A masculine voice reached my ears, though it felt infinitely far.
"That's not what happened," The voice came again, this time closer, "You know what happened."
A cold wind blasted through the room, and my eyes shot up to look at the scene before me.
I saw myself, the reconstructed version, being held in a man's arms. Haylen rushed towards me, his black hair having turned a snow white.
He looked disheveled and tired, eyes bloodshot red. On his side, something I had hardly seen before, was a knife envelopped in ice. My brain had registered the knife, but never the ice.
The man who held me seemed to freeze, his body becoming almost painfully cold. The next scene was me in Haylen's arms, everything after that was blank. Haylen seemed to become less and less comprehensible the more I learned about him.
My eyes shot open and I was back in Kira's dorm, though noticeably drenched in sweat.
There was one word on my mind: Ice.
It didn't take long for my eyelids to grow heavy and for sleep to embrace me.