I cautiously step into the room, taking in the interior. It looks quite fancy; the wooden floors are shining, and the desk looks to be a similar kind of wood. I see Elementalst sitting at her desk, her black hair put up in a bun. She's wearing a white button-up and some blue jeans. Her blue square-frame glasses are reflecting the computer screen. It looks like she's typing up a report of some sort.
"Did you need something? Or just exploring?" She asks, not even looking at me.
"No, I was going back to my room, but I accidentally hit the button for this floor, realized my mistake, but I was curious and wanted to check out this floor anyway," I explain.
"I see." She says, before following it up with, "You and Kara created a lot more work for me." Her eyebrows furrow slightly, and her tone is too controlled, as if she's making an effort not to snap at me.
"W-We did?" I stammer. Honestly, she is very intimidating. Even more so than Paragon. She is capable of terrible, terrible things. I feel my body tense up slightly as my breath quickens.
Seeing that she doesn't respond to me, and just keeps staring at me, I just look away, as if I only wanted to disappear. I feel every beat of my heart as everything else disappears a bit. All of that is interrupted when I feel a hand on my shoulder, bringing me back to reality.
"Calm down." She says, only causing me to tense up more, if that were possible. "It's just a few extra reports that I had to make about the incident. This would have happened with or without your involvement. That gang being active again is going to be more work, no matter what. All you two did was make the paperwork on the subject sooner, rather than more spaced out."
She notices that I don't react to that, and I see her mouth slightly ajar, contemplating her next words. "I apologize, I think I still have a bad habit of being short with people when things are going badly for me, even if they've done nothing wrong." She says, looking right at me, but refusing eye contact, I see her lips tremble slightly, as if this interaction brings back a memory of some kind.
She lets out a shaky sigh and walks back to her desk. She pauses for a long time, tapping her finger rhythmically on her desk, clearly contemplating something. She stops tapping and sits upright. She then finally breaks the silence, "A few years ago. I lost someone important. It was all my fault. I drove him out of our home, allowing the circumstances for what happened to happen." She tells me.
"After that happened, I started going to therapy. But, I think this shows that I haven't changed as much as I'd have liked to." She explains.
"W-Why are you telling me any of this?" I ask her, stammering.
"Because you remind me of him, Parker. You remind me of him, but you aren't him. He's dead." She explains.
"I see," I say, solemnly. A part of me does feel bad. But her being 'short' with others is quite the understatement, so I can't bring myself to entirely sympathize.
Elementalist sighs again, "I'm sorry. You're a child, I shouldn't be pushing all of this on you."
"It's fine, Ma-" I feel myself force my words to stop before continuing. I myself am not entirely sure of the reason, "Ma'am."
"Aside from that, why aren't you in training with Elaine? She is still on the clock," She asks.
What?
That doesn't make any sense. Bayani told me that Elaine takes a break around that time.
"I was under the impression she was on break right now, and she'd resume training later," I tell her.
Elementalist's eyebrows furrow, and her tone grows darker as she murmurs, "That girl and her 'breaks'… She's supposed to eat lunch with you guys as well. She gets a break two hours after that when she assigns individual training to do before she works with you next. Is she?... No. She better not be."
She stands up and walks over to exit her office, "I'm going to go look for her. Would you like to assist me?"
"Sure, as long as it doesn't take too long, I agreed to go train with Bayani later," I tell her.
She nods and exits the office. I follow her out. We get into the elevator and she says: "She's probably either in her room or on the balcony on floor 68. Either way, she's on that floor."
I nod as the elevator starts going down. The ride is short, as we're only going down two floors. When we exit the room, we're greeted by Kara. She tries to stand in the way of Elementalist, but she just walks past her. Kara then addresses me. "Well, Elaine can't be mad at me, I tried." She shrugs.
"Huh? Why is she hiding from her mother in particular?" I ask.
"She's smoking. She told me to help her hide so Elementalist doesn't find out. It's her birthday today, so she called it her 'birthday cigarette'." She says
"And you helped her… Why?" I ask her, crossing my arms.
"She said if I did, she'd reduce both of our punishments to only three days, so we'd be off the hook in two more days." She explains.
As if on cue, she and I both hear yelling, "Smoking again?! Are you fucking kidding me, Elaine?!" Elementalist shouts.
"Don't blame me! Blame that dumb brat that Dad made start living here!" Elaine shouts back.
"Do not blame a completely unrelated nine-year-old boy because you can't cope with loss! It isn't his fault he slightly resembles him!" Elementalist scolds.
"Do not talk to me about coping with loss!" She screams.
"Oh, and why's that?! Your father and I lost him as well! We know the exact feeling you have!" Elementalist retorts.
"No, you don't! Neither of you does! You try to pretend all you want that you're a better person, but you aren't. You and Dad are still human garbage that I tolerate!" Elaine shouts back at her.
I can't see anything; however, I hear Elementalist shout, "Don't push me, Elaine! Are you out of your mind?!"
"No! It's all you and Dad's fault we lost him! If it weren't for you two monsters, that evil bitch Wraith wouldn't have even had the chance to kill my Penguin!" Elaine yells, starting to sob.
Right as I turn my head around the corner to see what is happening, I see Elaine flicking her cigarette at Elementalist before storming off. As she passes Kara and me, she shoots me a death glare through her tears. A part of me feels a small bit of sympathy for her, more sympathy than I felt for Elementalist earlier.
Kara turns to me, "You know, looking at all of them every year around this time makes me wonder if things ever get better."
"Yeah?" I reply.
"Will I still feel the loss this badly many years later?" She asks, likely rhetorically. I get the feeling she knows that I can't give her an answer.
"Bayani agreed to help me train my hand-to-hand combat technique later, since Elaine clearly… isn't in the mindset to. She may act cordial, but she clearly doesn't like me very much." I explain, as a similar feeling from when I was talking to Bayani earlier emerges, swelling inside of me. I still cannot identify it.
"Yeah?" She replies in bated breath, waiting for me to continue.
"Would you like to join us?" I ask her.
Her face lightens slightly at my question. "Yeah, I'd love that." She replies, before following up with "I wanna go relax in my room, what time are you two meeting?"
"We didn't set a time, Bayani said that he was going to relax and eat lunch first. So I'd guess we'd be meeting back up at around 3:00 PM?" I explain.
Kara nods and turns around, heading to her room. She waves to me as she walks, "See ya then, Parker!"
"See ya then, Kara!" I shout back, feeling a smile creep onto my face as I begin walking toward the elevator, wanting to see what lunch is like. But before I can get to the elevator, I bump into Elizabeth, her eyes are wide open, she's tensed up, and panting as she stumbles back from running right into me.
"Parker! Have you seen Elaine?!" She says in a shrill panic.
"Yeah, she cussed your mother out about some 'incident' before storming off while glaring at me," I respond.
"Of course she did…" She says with an exasperated sigh, stilling slightly and loosening up. "I'm sorry, Parker. She has no right to treat you that way."
"Yeah. She doesn't. But that doesn't mean that you need to handle her messes every time she treats someone like that." I tell her.
"No. What happened years ago was mostly my fault. I always sat there and did nothing, being at our parents' beck and call and turning a blind eye to what they do wrong. This is just me repaying what I owe." She explains.
"Yeah, and? Aren't you just doing the exact same thing now? But this time for your sister. You spend a lot of your time excusing her actions, or at least just when we interact." I say, looking up right at her and making eye contact.
"You may be right." She says with a small laugh. Kneeling to my level and flicking her hand up, a small card flies out of her pocket and towards me. I catch the card and take a look at it. It's a coupon for the bookstore that Bayani, Kara, and I visited in the mall yesterday.
"Think of it as a token of apology. I'm going to go wait for Elaine outside her room. We can talk more later, if you'd like." She tells me as she stands back up.
"Sounds good. Thank you, Elizabeth." I say as I start to walk towards the elevator.
"You're welcome, Parker." She replies as I hear her footsteps go the other direction, likely towards Elaine's room.
I enter the elevator and press the button that says "12". As it started to go down, I began to dread any further interactions with anyone aside from Bayani and Kara. Elaine is a jerk. Elementalist and Paragon both scare me. And Elizabeth is nice, but complicit.
The elevator stops in its tracks, and I step out into the cafeteria. I see that this time, instead of a buffet style, there's a menu that you need to pick from in the different lines.
I walk over to a random line and start slowly reading the menu. My eyes land on the menu item "Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo". I don't know what "Fettuccini" or "Alfredo" is, but I do like chicken. It could be good. When I decide to try it, it is already time for me to order in line. There is a man at the counter, he is quite tall and bulky, wearing a hair net and a uniform with the words "WWSHA Food Staff" embroidered on it. "What do you want?" He asks. "Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo, please," I request.
He nods and hands me a ticket. He then ushers me away and takes the next person in line. I find myself just standing slightly away from that front counter, unsure what to do. When a hand grabs me and drags me over to a booth, knocking me out of my confused trance.
The owner of the hand that grabbed me sits down across from me. Looking at their face, I recognize them as Mr. Eun-ji. "You don't know how ordering food works?" he remarks.
"Based on what you know about me, what do you think?" I retort.
He laughs, "Of course you don't have a clue, just look at your number at the top and when they call it, get your food."
"Mr. Eun-ji… I missed you." I tell him.
"Kid, it's been less than a day." He sighs.
"Mr. Eun-ji. You don't understand, I'm living with crazy people!" I exclaim.
"Yeah, I know. I've been working with them for quite a while." He replies with a deadpan expression.
"I have a great retort for that, but I'd rather not tell you," I say, looking away with a 'hmph' noise escaping me.
"That makes no sense, Parker." He says, his eyebrows slightly raised and his head a little tilted. He is wearing a small smirk.
I hear a number called. I look at my ticket and see that it isn't my number. I sigh and slightly push it to the side. I look back up at Mr. Eun-ji.
"Ugh… I miss Miss Cl-" Before I can finish my words, Eun-ji shushes me. He leans in and whispers in a volume level that one would only be able to hear if they were using his power like I am, "Ray. Shut up. Do not say that in here, if there's even an inkling of a hint of your real identity, that you're not my apprentice Parker, but Ray, the Chameleon, the apprentice of Claire Davis, the Wraith, we are both fucked!"
He hurriedly pushes me back upright and tries to act casual, like nothing happened.
Thankfully, the awkward moment doesn't last too long, as my number is actually called, and I hop up out of the booth and run over to grab my food. It's chicken on top of this flat pasta, layered with some white sauce and parmesan cheese on top. I carefully pick up the bowl and bring it back to the booth slowly.
I first place the bowl onto the table and then slide it over to where I sit. I then slide back to the middle of the seat on the side of the booth I was sitting on.
"Alright, kid. Moving on to a different topic, your… mother requested that we discuss something," he says the moment I sit down, the word mother not rolling off of his tongue so easily.
I check my phone, and the time says "1:00". I have two hours before I want to head back to the room with the training equipment to meet Kara, and hopefully Bayani.
I take a bite of my food before speaking, "I have some time, let's talk."
Mr. Eun-ji inhales deeply, his expression growing more somber.
"Alright, let's talk."