Chapter Eleven- The taste of chilli

The dining room was empty and so was the entertainment room. Everyone had gone upstairs to their rooms to get their gear ready for another day on the slopes tomorrow. The sky was navy blue and star studded, the only light in both rooms coming from the electric lamps in the corners or suspended from brackets on the walls. I walked in carefully, alert for movement or noises that would warn me that I was not alone. Nothing moved. Nothing sounded. I continued to walk slowly.

I had two bowls in my hands, 'borrowed' expertly after dinner from the kitchens. Hiding them had been the difficult part, but I had come up with some ideas… smuggling them upstairs had also presented interesting challenges… but once again I had thought of an idea.

The bowls were full of chocolate squares, broken up evenly into bite-sized pieces. Perfect. I placed one of the bowls in the centre of the pool table and the other on a smaller table to the side, surrounded by soft, comfortable chairs. Footsteps behind me left me with nowhere to run. I stepped quickly away from the table and spun around, plastering my best innocent expression my face. My hands were clasped behind my back. I realised too late that I looked like I was up to something.

Kai walked into the room, his nose buried in a book. I was frozen. My mind was blank, the only thing that I could think was "do something!" and "act completely normal!" Both of which I failed at. He raised his head, clearly surprised to see anyone else here. One of his eyebrows rose at my suspicious behaviour. I did the only thing that I could do.

"Chocolate?" and I passed him the bowl.

….

I had never seen Kai cry before. In fact I still have not, due to the fact that my own eyes were clouded with water, and I was doubled over with side-splitting laughter. I saw him wipe the tears away though, when he had finished his chilli-induced panic dance. It turns out that Kai + Chilli = epically weird, manic dancing!

By this time he had sunk into a chair, an empty vase in one hand and a pile of scattered flowers on the floor beside him. His face was practically glowing it was so red and I have a sneaking suspicion that you could have fried an egg on one of his cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot and still leaked water steadily down his cheeks. . He looked so different to his usual cold, pale image that my knuckles were white as I gripped the pool table to stop myself from breaking into fresh laughter.

He was gasping for air as he ran his hand through his hair; his normal composure shattered into a million pieces the size of cubes of chocolate. I was leaning on the pool table by now, all the strength having left my legs. I was very tempted to sit on it, but as it was looking a little unstable after the episode with Rick a couple of days ago.

A rasping sound worked its way from the back of Kai's throat into the open air. He was well and truly exhausted and his hands visibly trembled as he went to wipe the tears from his eyes once again. All the while I was fixed with a malevolent stare that clearly said that he was not amused. But then a smile crept onto his lips, starting on the left and sliding across smoothly. His eyes crinkled with mirth, and I instantly realised that I should probably have started running a good few minutes ago.

He moved like lightning towards me and I had nowhere to go but backwards across the pool table. Lurch to the right or left and he would catch me, therefore I needed a piece of wooden furniture between us as fast as possible. I had climbed it as quickly as I could, my heart pounding. I thought for a brief moment that he would stop when he reached the table, but he didn't: he jumped up after me. But the combined weight of us both was too much for the table to take, and it collapsed beneath us.

I had been inches from a chance of freedom, when we were both sent crashing to the ground in a cascade of broken wood. I yelped in pain and surprise as Kai landed on top of me, and my hopes of escape exploded around me. There was something sharp sticking into my back, and I couldn't move; even my hands were stuck under me. Kai was not moving, and I wondered if he was unconscious.

Suddenly he began to lift himself off of me. He was still grinning and worrying me slightly because of it, even though it was now more of a confused grin than an evil one. I was shocked at how close we were, and I realised that I normally only saw him from the other side of a room. He was so much more handsome than I had ever thought, and I could not tear my eyes away from his. He reached for my face with one pale hand, surprisingly delicate, and I was frozen there, unable to think let alone react. I managed to force my eyes to focus upon his hand instead of those captivating crimson eyes. And that was when I saw it. A lump of chocolate descending towards my mouth.

I was determined not to let any of that chocolate pass my lips from the moment we had brought it in the shop. I was no less determined now, and clamped my lips together like a vice, and twisted as far to the left as I could go, but I was still trapped.

I am not sure if Kai was actually enjoying himself or whether he is just a little sadistic. I wonder this because he was smiling from ear to ear as he tried to force the chocolate into my mouth. I continued to squirm and make it difficult for him to achieve his goal of pay-back. It was an hilarious situation to be stuck in – quite literally – and I erupted into yet another fit of laughter, all be it one with my mouth firmly closed.

"Ahem!" I had one hand free now, and was attempting to push Kai off me so that I could run away. He was too strong however, and so it didn't work.

"AHEM!" Both of us jumped out of our skins and suddenly Kai was struggling to his feet. The weight lifted, I sat up instantly to meet the gaze of Mr Dickenson and Hiro, aware of the several other bladers standing behind them. I felt myself go bright red, and not because of the chilli.

Kai pulled me up onto my feet, and held onto my hand for longer than necessary, as if to apologise or to reassure me. We stood there, both of us with tears in our eyes, in the wreckage of the pool table. I had chocolate all over my face, and we were both panting softly, exhausted. My eyes grew wide a second later as a thought dropped into my mind like a ton of concrete in water. I waved my hands frantically.

"This is not what it looks like!" Mr Dickenson raised one carefully trained eyebrow, as if to say that he sincerely hoped not. Everyone behind him looked shocked, and there were a fair number of jaws dragging on the floor. I heard at least one person whisper something about knowing all along. Hiro was pulling a face too difficult to describe by a simple human being. I was officially dying of embarrassment and so I believe was Kai.

The tension made me want to squirm where I stood and I picked at the nails on my left hand as if it was all their fault. I could meet no one's eyes and just stood there. The dreadful silence dragged on and on, until Kai came to the rescue, in an ingenious move that went down in the history books.

"Chocolate?" And he passed them the bowl.

….

Chilli-induced hysteria spread through every inch of the room and spilled across into the adjoining rooms like a raging fire. A spluttering, coughing, choking explosion, that left no one untouched. People fell like human dominoes into each other, gasping and twitching. Hiro and Mr Dickenson appeared to be dancing some kind of strange, alien moves involving clutching at their throats. It was intriguing to see all of the different reactions, but by far the most amazing was Tala.

He stood there and endured; endured the pain and agony and desperate urges for anything to relieve the torture. He struggled to maintain a straight face, no sign of his internal suffering showing on his features. He was barely even breathing, or blinking, and his silence drew my attention to him, to sit and wait for the inevitable snap.

A wave of red started at the base of his neck and shot upwards at an alarming rate, until he was completely scarlet. His eyes began to fill up and leak over the edges as he stared daggers at the wall opposite. And then he broke. Snapped. Completely. Gone. Control out of the window, running away, already down the street and into the horizon.

"Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot! HOT!" he gasped and fanned his mouth with both hands so fast his wrists looked broken. Then he sprinted out of the room in the direction of the kitchen. A storm of people followed him like a herd of sheep.

Kai and I were left alone once again. I had given up trying to stand a long time ago, and just sprawled on the floor leaning on one of the walls. The shaking was almost a permanent feature now, as were the tears of laughter. Chocolate was still smeared all over my face, but all the tissues were out of my reach and I had lost all trust in my legs. Silence fell softly, broken occasionally by a fresh outburst of laughter from me, or a hiccup from Kai, which resulted in more laughter.

A couple of minutes passed and I decided to try to stand up. I failed. Kai came over and gave me a hand, which I was grateful to accept. It turned out that standing was very difficult indeed and required far more effort than originally thought. I found myself hanging on to him for dear life to keep from collapsing on the ground for yet another time. The Kai from the beginning of the holiday would have left me on the floor. But his Kai was different, nearly the complete opposite. I contemplated this, as I finally rediscovered the strength in my legs from wherever it had been hiding.

I could find no reason for his sudden change in behaviour though, and decided it would be unwise to ask, just in case he transformed back into the walking statue with an attitude that eats people alive.

"Well that was fun!"

"Hn." Too late. He made sure that I could stand up, before walking away and going to head back up to the rooms. He stopped at the doorway and looked back as if he wanted to say something. I could not read the expression in his eyes, but it may have been Kai's version of confused, which is everyone else's bored stupid. So you can understand the difficulty that I had. I memorised the face instead, so that I could decipher it at a later date.

Then he was gone and I was left alone in a room that looked like it had been bombed. I left shortly afterwards in case the owners of the hotel decided to investigate the source of the sudden collection of bright red people in the kitchen with their heads in the sink, drinking water directly from the taps.