The neon lights on both sides of the street help Rayleigh to navigate his way back home. As soon as the word "home" crosses his mind, it awakens an enormous amount of void which engulfs his heart like a quilt.
"Home, huh? Do I even have that?" A bitter smile forms on his lips as his eyes shimmer with disappointment.
Home is where family resides, home is where you feel safe, it is a permanent place for you to happily live but in Rayleigh's life, that place doesn't have any entity. That place was broken, taken away from his life hundreds of years ago.
As for now, he has to keep moving from this place to that in order to keep his secret hidden. For that very reason, living in a town for more than three years isn't possible for him. Sometimes he feels his life is nothing but a radar-less ship, which is just aimlessly roaming all over the world.
Rayleigh neither has parents nor any friends, in his never-ending life he just has himself to hold on to. Though at the beginning, he was foolish enough to make friends, love someone but now he knows better that these mortal emotions are not for him.
Thus, with time Rayleigh's life got harder to survive. After being taught the lesson of not indulging himself with mortals he had wondered for some time what if there were others like him in this world? What if the special creatures had a separate place for themselves, where they would not have to hide anymore? At the beginning Rayleigh had hopes but with time, his hopes faded away as reality hit him hard. With time, he discovered himself as the only unlucky eternal creature lurking around with endless time. But now, he finally has hope, which pulled him here, in the town of "Went-Mont".
The place he would be living for the next three years is in twenty minutes walking distance from where he is now. Obviously, Rayleigh can be there in a few minutes, but he isn't feeling like using his inhuman speed to reach there.
What's the hurry, anyway? It's not like someone's waiting to welcome him, or someone is worried about him for being out at late night. To Rayleigh this silent night walk seems more intriguing than returning to a stinky apartment with zero soul. At least walking alone helps him to clear his mind a bit.
While walking in lazy little steps, Rayleigh's mind ponders over several thoughts.
However, with each step, the earlier emptiness in his heart slowly vanishes as the memory of his happy childhood grasps his mind. Those were his only treasures now...
Rayleigh doesn't even realize when he has covered walking the twenty minutes path until his eyes catch the glimpse of a red-bricked building, making him halt instantly. He sighs as he climbs the stairs to the second floor, within a blink of an eye he is standing before his apartment.
This place is going to be his so-called "home" for the next three years and from tomorrow he'll be repeating junior year at high school. The thought of repeating the same year at high school over and over again through decades, is kind of boring but what else does Rayleigh have to do in his incessant time? At least attending high school is a good way of passing his time.
Rayleigh's wounded hand reaches inside his pocket in search of the key while he stands in front of the wooden door. He searches all three of his pockets and curses under his breath with an irritated expression," Damn it!"
He must've dropped it somewhere. How much more ill-fated can he be?
Rayleigh closes his eyes and takes a deep breath concentrating on growing nails, once ensured about the change in his hand he opens his eyes wide.
He moves his right hand and sinks one of his talons inside the tiny gap in between the door frame and the door, just above the metal lock. A sticky but watery, colorless substance emits from his claw and covers the metal lock.
Within ten seconds the lock on the door disintegrates and Rayleigh steps inside pushing the door wide open. The apartment stinks just like before, the strong dusty, rotten smell almost makes Rayleigh's stomach sick again. A few hours ago, when he had come to drop off his luggage, he had to run away after opening the windows. Sometimes, the powers he possesses works to his disadvantage, just like now. Rayleigh, turns the lights on as his ocean blue eyes scan the messy, dust-filled room with some old furniture scattered here and there.
He glances at his wrist watch, and a smirk appears on his face.
"Perfect! It's 4:30 AM now. By the time, I finish cleaning this mess and take a shower, I won't have to worry about what to do to kill time anymore." A sheepish smile plasters across his face as he thinks through a plan like, from where he would start.
Within a minute, Rayleigh is back into "Cleaning mood", he plays the cleaning playlist on his phone and puts it away. Grabbing the broomstick, he moves like a pro while swaying his body with the beat of "Lazaretto". Rayleigh completes dusting the whole apartment as soon as the song ends, then "Contradiction" starts playing, and he turns into his monster form.
Within seconds Rayleigh's well-built, teenage body is replaced by a 243 centimeters tall, grey furred body. Two tails swing behind him in different directions. His handsome face converts into fluffy light gray fur covered jaws paired with rows of sharp teeth, a pair of pointed ears hang on both sides of his head while a golden tattoo like mark covers around his right eye.
The only resemblance between the human Rayleigh and this Rayleigh is a pair of ocean blue eyes. This time Rayleigh moves faster than before as he gathers all the broken furniture in one corner and places the proper ones in respective places. He does it so fast that it feels like magic. Within two minutes the two roomed apartment is all set up, Rayleigh grins as he looks around the tidy apartment. Because of his appearance, even his grin feels sinister.
For the next hour, Rayleigh stays in his monstrous form as he starts crafting the broken furniture turning each of them into something amazing and useful. This is a skill, he had picked up throughout the centuries. Though he had learned it from a carpenter and that time he used tools but now Rayleigh is doing it, with the help of his powers. He uses his sharp tail as a saw. On the other hand, his strong nails as a replacement of chisel. If his appearance wasn't so intimidating, it would've been an interesting, enjoyable scene to watch.
By 5:45 Rayleigh is done with all of his carpenter job and fixing the door locking, he shifts back to human form, eyes gleaming proudly as he scans them on his creations.
After dumping the leftover into a trash bin downstairs, Rayleigh heads straight for a shower. Cold water runs over his skin while he stands under the shower, eyes closed. Rayleigh can almost feel each drop of water touching his skin, separately. It's one of the amazing feeling of having these powerful senses. After enjoying a half an hour-long shower, Rayleigh gets out of the bathroom and gets dressed for school.
He looks in a mirror and mumbles the words with a poker face,"Here's to the 50th junior year of my life."
Grabbing his bag and sunglasses, he locks the apartment and climbs down the stairs.
After a few minutes, a silver Porsche leaves the building's garage astonishing the passersby with its sleek, glittering body.
On the way to school, Rayleigh grabs his regular breakfast from a café near the crossroads which is named as "Druid Square". Bacon and scrambled eggs with a cup of piping hot black coffee, that's his regular breakfast these days. He pulls over the car and finishes his breakfast then again starts driving while sipping the coffee now and then, with an expression of an elderly person.
It's already 7:40 A.M. The campus of Went-Mont High is already bristling with students.
Rayleigh's sleek silver 718 Cayman, slowly enters the parking lot capturing all the attention of the crowd. He lazily searches for an empty spot while nabbing more attention of the students mostly girls, like a predator playing with its prey.
Rayleigh parks his car and gets out, putting a pair of black shades on. He heads straight towards the Administration office while putting two of his hands inside his leather jacket's pocket.
Pale skin, fairly built lean body and wavy brown hairs scattered around his forehead, Rayleigh looks like a perfect package to the spectators.
He effortlessly ignores both the people gawking at him like hawks and the comments they pass on. Rayleigh walks amidst them totally untroubled by everything around him with a smug expression attached on his handsome face. But obviously even the distant gasps don't go unheard by him.
After fulfilling the formalities at the administration office, he heads straight for his first class again omitting everything around him like he is the only person walking alive.
The first three periods pass by as usual, Rayleigh mostly tries to concentrate on the teacher's lecture rather than the bickering about him.
On the way to his fourth class, a group of boys stops Rayleigh at the hallway. Rayleigh scoffs, knowing what is about to come clearly.
"Hey, Max. Look who we've got here. If it isn't the new predator of Went-Mont High," one of the boys laugh mockingly.
Rayleigh balls his fist as the word 'predator' brews rage in him.
A blonde haired boy walks from behind them and scans Rayleigh from head to toe. All on a sudden, he bursts out laughing.
Rayleigh stands there with an irritated expression, as the boy whose name is probably Max keeps laughing. Judging by Max's behavior so far, Rayleigh already has figured that he is a complete 'jerk and a--hole'.
He decides to stride away before his anger reaches its limit. But as Rayleigh steps forward, Max puts a hand on his chest and pushes him behind.
"Did I ask you to leave? Why the fuck are you are leaving then, you punk?" Max yells at Rayleigh who clenches his jaws.
"Oh my, did we anger the new predator of Went-Mont?huh?huh?hu--…" before Max can finish his sentence, he is punched and lands directly on the ground. While Max's minions check up on the unconscious Max, Rayleigh storms off to the washroom.
He looks into the mirror, eyes blood-shot red, panting hard as anger builds inside him. Rayleigh splashes water on his face time to time, trying his best to control his anger.
After a good ten minutes, when he has almost cooled off he hears the sound of weeping for the first time. Rayleigh turns the faucet off as he concentrates on the source of it. It's coming from one of the toilets. Rayleigh sees a lock hanging on the door. He frowns with curiosity, as he knocks on the door,"Hello?"
Instantly, the weeping turns off and the whole place lingers in silence.
Rayleigh knocks again," Hello? Is anybody there?"
After a while just when he thinks it was his omission and prepares to leave, a voice speaks up.
"Can…can (sob) you... op…(sob) open the door, plea...please? "
Rayleigh halts, startled by the girly voice.
"What's a girl doing here?" he finds himself frowning.
"He…hey…are…are…you there?" the girl speaks in between her sobs breaking Rayleigh's daze.
"Yeah, I'm here…mm…you should stand away from the door, I will try and push open as someone has put a lock on it." Rayleigh speaks in a gentle manner while scanning the lock.
"Okay," the girl speaks in a soft tone.
Without wasting another second Rayleigh uses his strength to break the door open. As soon as the door flies open a tiny figure lunges directly at him and starts sobbing while hugging him.