I still don't own the characters, anime, etc.
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Chapter 3
I was sprinting through the forest, looking over my shoulder to see if I was being followed. I wasn't. But just then my body started shaking, more like convulsing, uncontrollably. I fell to the snow-covered ground, still shaking and wondering what was happening to me.
My eyes snapped open from my recurring nightmare, only to find a darkened figure above me. At first I was alarmed, for the outlined person was quite noticeably smaller than Matt, and I didn't know who it was. But gradually my eyes adjusted and I saw that the person was a small boy, dressed in white from head to foot.
Near's dark eyes were wide with genuine concern, which puzzled me beyond comprehension. He naturally had a small bit of his icy hair tangled in his fingers, but his other hand was still shaking my shoulder. So, that's what was shaking me in my sleep.
I just gaped at the boy above me, not sure whether to say or do anything. Near stopped shaking me, but his hand remained on my shoulder. Neither of us said anything, but we just looked at each other for what seemed like an eternity, before he whispered, "Are you okay?"
His voice was so quiet that I wondered if I'd imagined it. It was so soft and delicate, further strengthening my earlier theory that he was fragile. I didn't respond to his question, but just looked up at him with mixed emotion in my gaze.
"Mello? Are you okay?"
I could tell he was actually worried about me, but I couldn't understand why. Why should some kid that I just met care so much if I'm okay or not? I suddenly realized that it would make sense to answer him, so I replied, "Yeah, I'm fine."
Near slowly released his petite hand from my shoulder, but didn't leave my side. I released my grip off my rosary, which I hadn't even realized I was holding. This sudden motion caught the albino boy's attention, and he looked at me questioningly. I didn't have the courtesy to answer his unspoken inquiry. I still didn't like this kid, whether he came to my aid during my nightmares or not.
I flipped over onto my side, so that I was facing the wall and not him, and closed my eyes in an attempt to go back to sleep. I knew it was incredibly rude of me, but I didn't much care at the moment. I heard Near get to his feet and walk over to his own bed, climbing under the covers. After a moment I looked over at him, and almost screamed out loud.
He was watching me. His gray eyes were so emotionless that they looked completely dead. In that instant the little boy just looked so lifeless, it was scary. It genuinely scared me, not something that usually happens. But after a second, he broke his gaze and turned away, closing his eyes and going to sleep.
I tried to do the same, but I couldn't get rid of that image of Near's lifeless eyes staring at me in the dark.
When I woke in the morning, I saw a pale child on the ground putting together what looked like a blank puzzle. Man, I thought, this kid gets weirder every time I see him. I sat up on my bed sleepily and looked around for Matt, but he was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's Matt?" I asked the other boy in the room, looking over to him only to find him already looking at me, though still putting together his puzzle without looking at it. I shuddered slightly, he was just so creepy. At least his eyes aren't lifeless anymore, I thought to myself with relief.
"He went to meet up with Linda," Near replied in his soft angel's voice. That realization hit me strangely: Near was like a little angel, at least he looked and sounded like one. A faint grin came to my features at this thought, but was abruptly shoved away as I realized what I was thinking.
Meanwhile, the albino boy's eyes got confused at my odd behavior. I internally cursed myself. Why did I always have to act so strange around him? I didn't have an answer to this question, but I did know that it was odd.
Shrugging off these baffling thoughts, I looked at my alarm clock to check the time. 8:32 in the morning, almost time for breakfast, which was served at nine. I groaned from exhaustion, but got to my feet and grabbed one of my older pairs of leather pants and my black leather vest, getting dressed slowly.
"Why do you always wear leather?"
I blinked in surprise, "What?"
"Why do you always wear leather?" Near asked again, not even a hint of impatience in his tone.
I, however, was annoyed. Why did he care? "Why do you always wear white?" I shot back at him, eyeing his plain white clothes.
The other boy shrugged lightly, saying, "I like the color white. It is soft and pure."
I gave him a disgusted look, which seemed to hurt his feelings because he asked, "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
I couldn't really answer his question; I just knew that he was bugging me. I let the matter drop, however, and just sat silently in my desk chair.
Matt came back to our room a few minutes later.
"Hey guys," he greeted us.
"Hey dude," I replied, while Near didn't say anything and didn't even acknowledge the redhead.
"You two ready to go to breakfast?" my best friend asked.
"Yeah, let's go," I said, getting up and opening the door.
"You coming, Near?" Matt asked the silent boy on the floor, much to my dislike.
The albino shook his head slightly, not bothering to look up from his puzzles. I was glad that he wouldn't be joining us.
Matt and I took our usual seats at the table in the far right-hand corner of the dining room after we'd gotten our breakfast. I was back in a good mood, due to the absence of a certain new roommate, but that was about to be shattered.
"So, what do you think of Near?"
I looked up from my food to my best friend, slight anger in my blue eyes. I didn't respond, but after a moment returned to eating my chocolate chip pancakes. I was ready to let the matter drop, for I was not at all in the mood to talk about Near or anything concerning him.
Matt, however, was persistent. "Well, what do you think?"
Once again I glared at him, but this time I actually replied, "I don't know yet. He's…strange, very strange. And he kinda creeps me out." That was as good an answer as I could give right now.
Matt nodded his head thoughtfully, "I know what you mean. I woke up at six this morning and he was already up and dressed, playing with Lego's. It totally creeped me out to wake up and find him and his toys sprawled out across the floor."
"Yeah…"
"Also," Matt continued, "he doesn't talk. That's more than a little odd, you know?"
This comment puzzled me, "What do you mean he doesn't talk?"
My confused blue eyes were met by Matt's equally baffled green ones, "…I mean, he doesn't talk. I haven't heard him say anything to anyone. I mean I guess he could just be shy or something, but still…"
"What are you talking about? He talks. Just last night he woke me up from my nightmare and asked if I was okay," I replied still confused.
"Oh. Well, I guess he talks to you. But he hasn't said a word to me. You have to admit that it's weird though. I mean, here I am trying my hardest to be really nice to the kid and he doesn't say anything. While on the other hand, you're ignoring him and being rude but he talks to you and wakes you from your bad dreams," Matt shook his head, "It's just weird."
I nodded, not knowing what else I really could do to respond to that. But I did know one thing, and that's that I would confront Near about this later. Why was I the only one he spoke to? Did he have some kind of creepy liking for me? And if he did, then why? I couldn't figure it out, though that's what I thought of all through breakfast, and I decided that I didn't want to him to like me, though I don't know why.
After breakfast Matt went back to meet up with Linda, a usual routine on Saturdays, while I on the other hand went back up to our room. It was time to get some answers from Near about his peculiar behavior.
I bashed the door open and stomped inside, seeing the pale boy on the ground again, this time playing with building blocks. He stole a quick glance up at me when I entered the room, but returned his gaze quickly back to his structure. I slammed the door shut behind me and towered over him menacingly, though I did not ask him any of the questions on my mind. Something about him stopped me in my tracks, and it really pissed me off. But before I could ponder the matter any further, he said, "If you have something to say, then please say it."
Again his angelic voice bewildered me as I fell under his trance. My expression softened and I found myself looking down at him with, what was it? Affection? Care? I felt like an older brother looking upon a younger sibling that he deeply cared for.
Near completed a tower of his castle and looked up at me, this time with some sort of faint emotion in his dark eyes.
"…Why do you look at me like that?" His question was barely a whisper, and it seemed to be more directed at himself than at me. It was still enough to snap me out of my trance, and I returned to glaring down at the little albino.
"Huh, look at you like what?" I snapped back with total ice in my voice.
My response seemed to startle him, and he flinched a little when the words left my mouth. His eyes became empty, bottomless abysses on his beautiful face as he shifted his gaze back to his toys. The silence enraged me.
"Why don't you talk to anyone but me?!" I practically yelled at the child beneath me, though I thought I sounded almost sad as I said it, instead of angry.
With a cold, lifeless mask covering his true feelings, Near replied, "I speak when I have something to say. I have not yet felt the need to say anything to anyone else, but I shall when the time comes."
This wasn't exactly the answer I was looking for.
"Oh, really? And why has 'the time come' for me then? Why did you 'have something to say' to me?"
There was dead silence. I could feel some sort of emotion hanging in the air all around us, but I couldn't make out what it was, and I couldn't tell if it was radiating off of him or me, or maybe even both. The silence dragged on for what felt like hours, before Near finally answered my questions.
"I don't know. Last night, you were mumbling in your sleep and you were…I don't know, freaking out. Something came over me and told me to go wake you up to make sure you were okay. I just wanted to see if you were okay. That's all," his voice shook and sounded slightly confused, like he didn't know why he'd woken me up either, and there was another emotion, too, but I couldn't place what it was. After another small gap of silence, he added in one of the coldest voices I'd ever heard, "If I'd known that you'd react like this, then maybe I wouldn't have bothered."
That stung. No, that downright hurt. It sounded like something that I would've said, and that's saying something. In case you haven't picked up on it, I'm not the nicest person. But besides the hurtfulness (yeah, I made up a word!) of his words, I also heard the other little emotions that Near had hidden in his message. I could tell that the confusion in his voice wasn't an act, and that he really didn't know why he'd come over to talk to me last night. This whole thing was clearly bugging him as much as it was bugging me, maybe more. I decided that I'd gotten as good of an answer as I was going to, and without another word, I left the room and went out in search of Matt and Linda.
I checked the game room first, and of course they were both in there. Linda was clinging to Matt, but he was totally oblivious as he played some fighting game. I shook my head in amusement and disbelief at the sight; Linda resting her head on my friend's shoulder, her long brown hair trailing down her back, but Matt not even noticing how much Linda really liked him. I closed the door behind me, chuckling slightly, and walked over to join them in the middle of the room, grabbing myself a beanbag.
"Hey, guys. What's up?"
"Not too much. Just Matt kicking ass like usual," Linda replied with a smile and utmost affection for the redhead in her voice. It was kind of repulsing, but I kept my comments to myself for once.
"What about you, Matt?" I asked my best friend.
"Uh-huh," he replied, totally out of it. His mind was so wrapped around the game he was playing that he didn't seem to notice what I'd asked.
"Ha, last I checked, 'what about you' wasn't a yes or no question, Matty." Sometimes I just couldn't believe how out of it he got when he was playing his games.
"Shit!" he must have died, "So, what'd you say?"
"I asked what was up."
"Oh, nothing much. Just died," he gestured towards his bloody corpse on the screen.
Matt started his game over and we all sat in almost silence, besides the music from the video games and when Matt cursed due to his player's death. I'd never seen the redhead play this game before, but he seemed to be good at it. It involved his player running around through a maze-like course and killing these weird looking zombie things. There consisted of twenty-five levels in all, and he got to the nineteenth one before he died and decided to give up for the time being.
It was late by that time, probably around 9:30, so we'd missed dinner, not that any of us really even cared. Matt and I said our good-byes to Linda and strolled back down the hall to our dorm, which I was dreading.
I'd left Near on such a bad note earlier that I had no idea how it would be like to see the little boy now. Would he bring up our conversation in front of Matt? Would he start ignoring me? Did I want him to ignore me? Or would he maybe get that emotionless look in his eyes? I shook my head a bit, but not enough for Matt to notice, at these disturbing thoughts that I could not answer properly; that I didn't want to answer.
Matt opened the door and tiptoed over to his bed, not getting into his pajamas, and immediately fell asleep. I gave him a what-are-you-smoking look, but understood his quiet behavior when I saw Near was fast asleep on his bed.
I closed the door as quietly as I could and changed into my favorite pajama pants, but had to wear a random Mountain Dew shirt of Matt's since my Hershey shirt was dirty. I turned out the lights and rolled into bed, nestling into the covers. I took a quick gander at my best friend, who was sleeping soundly, probably dreaming about beating one his most challenging games. I smiled at him, knowing how important he was to me. It was weird, but I randomly remember how much he means to me at the weirdest times, but whenever I do, I can never help but smile. I love Matt, not in some creepy homosexual way, but as a best friend, maybe even as a brother.
I then looked over at my other roommate. He was snuggled up in his pale blue comforter and cuddling with his faded bunny rabbit. His white locks were draped over his face slightly, but not in a bad way. They seemed to fall over his angelic face perfectly. His expression was so incredibly peaceful, he looked so innocent and calm. He looked…helpless. I was slightly freaked out at these thoughts, but I allowed them to continue, only because I was curious as to where they would lead me.
Near was helpless, just lying there on his bed, all pale and innocent. He looked so fragile, like if the softest feather tickled him, then he would break. I felt my face twist into near sadness. I didn't want this little child to break, in any way. I wanted to protect him from this cruel world, to keep him safe and whole. I didn't know how I'd do it, but at the moment, I decided to watch over that child until I couldn't protect him any more. I couldn't tell him what I was going to do, but I would do it; I'd be good at it, just like I am at everything else. I decided to be number one at protecting Near, and I vowed to succeed.
I grinned with compassion, rolled over, and for the first time in almost a year, I slept without any nightmares disturbing me.
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-Bloodmuffins
