Just as a disclaimer, I'm a romantic and I hate soap operas. None of this...failed relationship screw it stuff. Just so you know.
Chapter 7
We obtained permission from the all bones and business housing president to set up cameras and the like in the room where Joe was murdered. His roommate, who had been out visiting family, was more than happy to accept a new room when he returned. In the mean time, we signed an agreement that none of his belongings would be touched, though the forensics team looked as though they had already done plenty of peeking.
Naru and I didn't speak to each other. There wasn't really any need to. We knew our jobs and we did them. Lin had never been much of a talker, and Yasu was more than busy asking questions of all the residents, which, being boys, were more fascinated than shaken that someone had been murdered in their midst. If only I could adopt such levity.
Before I knew it, however, it was almost one in the morning, Yasu had turned in with the rest of the residents, and I was left with a groggy Lin and Naru in a monitor lit room. Feeling cold and numb, and since most of the dorm was unconscious, I figured I'd take my chance to take a long shower to thaw myself for bed. I didn't bother telling Naru where I was going. And why should I? I had done my job, and I was an adult, after all. I didn't need a supervisor.
The boy's bathroom facilities had shower stalls, thank God. I had this horrible vision of a tree of life sort of shower, but the stalls had thick, plastic blue curtains. I flung my towel and pajamas over the curtain rod and stepped in before stripping. The bland white lights reflecting off of all the white tile hurt my eyes. The water came out fast and too hot. I hissed. Stepped in. Then melted onto my haunches with a sigh, hugging my shampoo bottle to my breasts. It had been a while since I'd felt this weary.
Closing my eyes against the white, I allowed myself to settle into the hurt. Naru and I…was it even a good idea for us to get married? We fought so often, and if I was going to be this overly sensitive, how would he handle it? Wouldn't I just end up annoying him till he fell out of love with me completely? On that thought, why did he even like me?
I sniffed and snapped open my shampoo. As I did so, the solitaire diamond in my engagement ring glittered in the light. I turned my hand, watching it dance, before turning back to my shampoo. Foam and bubbles slapped onto the tiles and down the drain.
How many times would we have to say sorry to each other? How many times until we fell out of love?
Aching, I hummed a soothing tune to myself, one that I hadn't sung in a long while, as I hadn't needed to. It was a lullaby my mother sang, one which I hummed incessantly after she died in order to not lose myself in the darkness before sleep. I couldn't say I was much of a singer, but I could hold a tune as well as the next person, and it was just me and the suds to hear.
It worked. I was soothed. And drain.
I yawned as I shaved, scrubbed, brushed my teeth, and finished up. I kept up the hum of mother as I turned off the shower, dried off, and slipped on my oversized T-shirt and pajama pants that I had finally managed to get Naru to buy for me.
On opening the curtain, I found that I wasn't alone in the bathroom.
Swii's pale face smiled in a wan, empty glass sort of way. "Sorry. I couldn't help but listen. I swear I'm not a creep." And as though to verify this, he lifted up his toothbrush and toothpaste.
I shrugged and rubbed my eyes. To be honest, I didn't much care if he had been a creep. I was too tired. Too morose.
"I'm so sorry. About your friend," I said. "We're doing everything we can to help in the investigation."
He echoed my shrug and his empty smile fell away. "That's why I couldn't help but listen. Something tells me this sort of thing isn't new to you. Death, that is."
I just nodded. Father. Mother. Now working with a paranormal investigator.
Gene.
The name panged into me like a bell. My throat tightened with emotion. It had been so long…so long since I'd dreamed of him. He would've understood. He would have explained this to me. He would have pointed me forward with a warm hand. His soul had always been so warm.
I tried to not let it show as I told Swii good night and moved towards the door, but he stopped me with a plaintive 'wait.'
"Could you…" he hesitated, his face twisting my heart as it scrunched up in misery. "Tell me I'm not damned for this. For making fun of him."
"You didn't know. Besides, I'm not God."
"No, but…but you're…comforting. Could you stay with me? For just a little bit. Hum that song, maybe drop by my room—"
Just then, the door open, and Swii clammed up like an oyster. He snapped his attention to the mirror as though caught doing something he shouldn't.
I blinked blearily at the dark figure of Naru against the white blazing world of the men's bathroom.
"There you are," he said. "You could have told me where you were going and saved me the worry."
I sighed. "Sorry."
He frowned at me. Then he looked to Swii and his frown deepened.
"If you need comfort so badly, go to a psychologist, not to other men's fiancé's."
That woke me up. "Naru—"
He grabbed my free hand and pulled me through the door. I clenched my towel-wrapped bathing supplies beneath my arm with a sudden, renewed indignation.
"His friend was just murdered."
"And he was trying to play on your sympathies so you'd go to bed with him."
"And you thought I would?!"
"No." But he hesitated before he said that. There had been a whole pause in which I could have breathed in.
The raw ache in my chest yawned open and I yanked my hand from his. My eyes burned worse than ever, and my throat had clenched up to the point I didn't even dare to say a word.
"Mai—Mai wait."
I had given him my back and was heading to base at a quick stride. Just so I could avoid him calling me an immature child again, I flung my bath supplies inside by the door before continuing on towards the exit.
"Mai, stop!"
I couldn't not say anything. "I'm eighteen years old, Oliver, I can make my own choices. Just leave me alone. I promise I won't go fall in bed with anyone or die."
And that must have worked, for he didn't stop me. I was out and into the night like a burst of wind, and the slap of musky night air gave me breath enough to choke on an unwanted sob. I kept walking as fast as I could, wiping furiously at my face. I was pathetic. I really was pathetic, getting offended and upset over something like that. If he saw me crying like this it would just make things worse. I'd take a walk around the building and be back before he worried. It wasn't like I'd get kidnapped or raped or anything, and if I did, good riddance.
Why would he think I'd open my legs so easily? Was it because he had always been the one who insisted we waited until we were married? Hadn't I agreed with him? I had morals too, and if he hadn't brought it up, I would have. He had just beat me to the punch, that's all! But honestly, did he think me that desperate? That loose? That…that…
I hadn't realized where my feet were taking me till I lose my footing at a sudden staircase. Lucky for me it was only three or four steps tall, but it hurt all the same to catch myself at the bottom. I caught my breath against the pavement before I pushed myself up to rub at my eyes like a baby. Only once I had cleared them did I take in my surroundings.
Campus was empty. Orange artificial lights lit up the world in circles here and there, and just ahead of me, framed with trees and a lawn, was the university library, the only light the emergency lights behind the glass front doors.
Sniffling, I gathered my legs to myself. Crickets creaked song in the night.
It was the perfect opportunity for something creepy to happen. For a ghost to pop up or for a vision to come to me.
As though I knew it was coming, I closed my eyes and looked back into the darkness. A strange, but familiar feeling came over me like a wave, unbidden, but not unwanted. I felt myself disconnect and go adrift. The pale fake man-made lights died to give way to the gentle glow of distant fox fires. The world expanded, faded, and outlined with white lines and the blurr of colors as my perception filled in my surroundings.
The library stood before me, sleepy and bland. I stepped about it, crossing the broad distance in a few steps to go around back. There, a girl waited with short hair and willowy features, but she didn't seem particularly threatening, nor did she seem particularly good. She stood beneath the oak, watching as I approached, as though knowing I sought her out.
"Are you her?" I asked. "The girl who committed suicide?"
She nodded, but didn't say anything more. Just watched me.
"Did you kill that boy?"
She shook her head. And as though she had spoke, I understood the impressions of her that flowed through me.
"Of course you wouldn't," I said. "You didn't want to take anyone with you."
She nodded and opened her mouth, but the words it framed didn't come out. She frowned at the lack of noise, seemed to sigh, then shook her head and pointed up towards the library. Where her finger led me was to the window facing the deformed, grown over branch that was cut off before it could grow through the library wall.
A thrill of prickles, like electricity, ran through me, painful in the intensity. The girl had reached out to touch my soul, and the touch of her own hurt. At the same time, I could feel she didn't want to hurt me, only communicate.
Because somewhere in all that discomforting tingling and aching, there was love.
I opened my eyes, losing my grip on the dream or vision. The summer night fell back in, real, solid, and musty with the smell of traffic not too far away and still beneath the glow of the high-rise towers.
I stood up and wobbled on feet that had fallen asleep. I had never voluntarily entered a vision like that. Usually it came to me while I slept, and even then it was a gamble of whether or not it made sense. Maybe I was getting better.
Naru was waiting for me outside dorm 2-B's doors when I came back. Before he could say anything—I didn't really want to hear what he had to say—I told him about my vision, about how the girl behind the library hadn't killed anyone. If anything, she was just aching and…waiting. Whether that was to pass on or for something else, though, I didn't know.
"I'm sorry for running off," I said. "I just needed some quiet. I'll be more mature from now on."
I moved to walk past him, but, of course, he stopped me.
"What's going on, Mai? Why—why is everything so hard between us all a sudden? Please, if—if you could just tell me what to do. I—I know I'm an—an idiot with these sorts of things, I…Mai, I'm sorry, I do love you."
Since I was wondering the same thing, and also because it was probably two in the morning now, I just gave him a hug and went on inside without answering. He didn't have much chance to press me afterwards either, for the moment I hit my cot, I was out.
