Probably both had some serious argument on some matter and they were somewhere in the hills other than the warehouse.
"What if they are in the city somewhere? How will we find them?", Shawn asked.
"I don't think they will dare to go to the city with their body."
We took a cab to the foot of the hill and ran to the warehouse. We began to search for them in the woods surrounding the warehouse.
"Call them", Shawn said.
Was I his fucking servant? Sometimes, I think some people shouldn't help other people if the only thing it does to them is boosting their ego. But I did realise later that the girls won't really be happy to see his call, especially Lily. I wasn't even sure if he had Rose's new phone number.
"The network is bad", I answered.
After an extensive search with phone torches, we found them bickering with each other under a huge banyan tree. You get used to many strange things in life, but never to a two headed human body arguing with itself.
"Why the fuck didn't you two stay in the warehouse?", I asked.
"Ask her", Rose said.
"Shut the fuck up",Lily replied.
"Why do you keep trying to solve problems that don't exist? In turn making more problems", Rose asked," I am done with you."
"Why is this piece of shit here?", Lily asked looking at Shawn.
Shawn got a bit startled and must have been in great anger but he maintained his composure. He looked at me for an appropriate response.
"Lily! Will you stop? He paid for the train tickets."
"So what? We will repay him back. Thousand bucks, isn't it?"
"Ya, but that's not the thing. He helped us."
"Why are you supporting him suddenly?", Lily asked.
I felt like giving her a tight slap but felt that Lily and Shawn were anyways devising more heinous curses for her so I withheld myself.
"We can discuss this afterwards. For now, take this".
I gave them the Rexus switch and told them whatever Lucifer had said to us. They took it and entered the warehouse. We waited outside the warehouse until a thin stream of blood flowed underneath the door, making its way towards us. A small note came floating towards us, propelled by the black, dense liquid. 'I and ❤' was written on the note.
"An emoji?", Shawn asked.
"Does any book have an emoji?"
"I don't think so", he said. He seemed like the guy who got great grades in high school but his whole education and view of the world was limited to that.
"Could it be some romance novel?", he asked.
"If it is, then it's not in any popular romance novel", I said.
"You read them all?", he asked.
"Most", I answered that but immediately regretted it because I could sense his conscience judging me as a geek perverted romanticist.
"Those are great literature by the way", I tried to justify.
"Huh Uh", he said and nodded.
An awkward silence began to take shape till I broke it.
"Did any of your father or uncle convert into something like this?"
"Other than a pyramid, it has always been Chinese and English words"
"Let's then split up and skim through as many romance novels as possible".
"It could be in any kind of novel though".
"Okay…But did you google these word and emoji? Maybe Google Books can help", I suggested.
"I already did. No help in terms of a book or a novel", he said.
We then split up to check out as many different bookstores as possible or somehow gain the information of these two symbols being together in a page of any document. It could be in a novel where the love story is shown through various chat messages like 'I ❤ U' or some cheesy emoji message like that. It could be some clever word-emoji play in a wildly bizarre satirical or humorous novel. One thing was clear, it would be futile to check out the book which were published pre 2010. It seems quite self evident but I may find myself lost in the beautiful prose of Ernest Hemingway or in the worlds of Gullivers' Travels. More than the admiration to the art, it would be mostly reminiscing about my childhood memories of reading these classics.
Not only mere novels, I went through numerous magazines, picture books and some newspaper articles which were mostly humour columns about emojis or romance in the digital period. Shawn must have gone through a hell lotta documents but his sullen look suggested failure from his end as well.
"It seems impossible, I guess", he said.
"Can people be stuck like that? Forever?", I asked.
He stroked his faint moustache the thousandth time, lost in deep thoughts.
"Maybe I have an idea", he said.
"What?"
"The Scroid system wants us to find something printed on paper, right?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Why don't we just type and print out a paper having the word and the emoji and shove it under the door?", he suggested.
"Will it work? I mean have you ever done something like this before?"
"No. But we can try".
There was no point wondering about other solutions as the only other solution we had was the one we had failed at. So, researching was no more an option to be considered. We cycled to a xerox/print shop besides the foot of the hill to execute the idea.
"Will a single white printed paper do the job correctly?"
"I surely don't know. But I had once used a torn book for conversion. The pages were completely ripped apart and were held together barely."
It was a pure swindle on our part, but nothing really seemed wrong. After all, the Scroid system wants printed stuff and re deciphers the human stored in the form of data, back into the human body. I typed a random paragraph from a Sydney Sheldon novel and included the word and the emoji in it. It appeared neat and quite organic as if it was from a book. At least I hoped so.
We cycled back to the warehouse and slid in the paper. We stood outside the warehouse under the banana tree, my regular spot of waiting. I didn't bother to read my novel as I was already deluged with several negative thoughts.
"What do you fear the most?", Shawn asked.
I couldn't really figure the motive behind such sudden small talk. I mean we hardly talked during the whole time we were with each other. I thought of myself as someone who could easily get along with people but Shawn seemed to easily shatter that perceived side of mine.
"Why do you suddenly ask that?"
"I mean, what is worse? People dying or people disappearing?"
"To basic human beings, it's all the same".
He smirked and began twisting his faint moustache yet again.
"Maybe we are not afraid of people dying but disappearing. Both are significantly different things. Tell me do you even care about their bodies disintegrating into the soil or the bullet stuck in the stomach? You are just selfish for their presence around you, so that you feel better".