We're partners, right?
"Since you came, I forgot that someone in another class disappeared and I'm sure it must be connected to our original place?"
"What do you mean?"
Sain massaged the base of his nose, his eyes narrowed looking towards Neil who was walking over and sitting next to Sain. Neil hopes this will find a bright spot to return home.
"There was one male student who was one class with Skylar, suddenly disappearing after he went into the toilet. Some students saw him for themselves, he entered but no one saw him coming out. After checking it turned out that he wasn't there, they just saw a mirror crack there. In class, even in his house, he was not found, "explained Sain.
"Do we have to break that mirror?"
"If you try to break it empty-handed again, I'll break your head." Sain reclined on his back, he looked at the plain painted ceiling.
"I'm just asking." Neil got up, picking up his food for him to eat on the red carpet by the side of the bed. He didn't have to bother offering Sain, because Sain had already done the same.
Neil looked up to see that Sain had put a few pieces of broccoli on his plate and Neil asked, "Why?"
"You've always liked it, right? Because you're one of that herbivore."
Neil chuckled and spooned the broccoli Sain had just given him. "What are you? Carnivores? So, should I be afraid, just in case you're going to eat me?"
Sain coughed up the leftovers that he had not had time to swallow. "You don't mess around. We have to focus on our previous conversations."
Neil grimaced, as he watched Sain litter his carpet. "Wait, Riksa. You've said before if the person in the original place appears here then, the person who is here will be gone forever. But what if we go back to where we came from, do we eventually disappear as well?"
Sain seemed to think for a moment, that the spoon he was holding was about to bribe floating in the air. "I think, anyway. Don't. Because I don't think two of the same people are in the same place. So if one of them disappears there may not be a problem if we are pacing between the original world and the mirror world."
"We just can't get out of here, how to pace around," snort Neil. In his heart Neil wanted to get out of here, he missed his father so much. His father may still be looking for him and his father is alone now.
"I'm just answering your question, stupid." Sain placed an empty plate on a tray and gulped water until the mark. Neil did the same. Because the presence of Sain this time makes Neil forget to think about the bad things he experienced. He thought of his father, certainly not the same as his father who here has a cold attitude and does not seem to like it.
Almost as programmed, Neil grabbed his dining tray placed on the corner table of the room. He came to the bathroom to brush his teeth and weighed whether he would change his nightgown here or in the bathroom. Neil quickly decides to keep changing in the room, sensing Sain's gaze sweeping over him and Neil ignoring him because they are both men.
"Why are you?" asked Sain suddenly breaking his silence.
Neil taught his eyebrows. "Why?"
"You are silent."
Neil shook his head, he approached the king and lowered his head to pull the other mattress at the bottom with Sain sitting just observing him.
Neil picked up one of the pillows and said. "You're upstairs, let me be the one below."
Again Sain coughed small, Neil glanced at him to find Sain who was not wrong Neil saw he looked a little timid. Sain looked back at him defiantly.
What does that mean?
"What? I chose on top," Sain said quickly.
Neil simply shrugged his shoulders indifferently and combed his hair bangs backward. He refrained from rolling his eyes. "You're weird."
"You are the strange one. We shouldn't sleep after eating." Sain interrupted Neil's thoughts about drifting to and fro.
"Indeed. But because there's you, there's nothing else I can do, if you don't want to sleep it's your business," said Neil lightly laying his body on the bed. He looked at Sain who also saw him. The second is slowed down in the fight staring at each other, Neil believed if he turned away then Neil felt defeated. So, Neil followed the flow of the game that Sain created.
"Are you used to it?" asked Sain in his muted voice filling the room without averting his eyes. Neil felt strange when he looked at Sain like this, his throat dry with his heart that he couldn't work with, beating until Neil was afraid that Sain would later hear it. Yet he didn't want to give up, letting uncomfortable feelings hang in his mind.
Neil blinked once and replied, "Learn."
"Something else?"
"Read the book."
"Other?"
"Sleep?" he replied doubtfully, Neil himself unsure. His eyebrows shriveled with the many questions raised by Sain. He lay uncomfortably under Sain's intense gaze. But Neil still tries to be a good host, where it is up to Sain to see where. It was his own eyes.
In the end, Sain turned his head straight while lying on his back, unwittingly Neil followed him and exhaled a breath he didn't know he had held for that long.
"You don't sleep just yet, let's tell you."
Neil chuckled he turned his head again to find Sain who this time lay on his side facing him one hand hanging down, swaying slowly.
"You're not five years old, who should be told a fairy tale before bed. You forget that we're not even friends."
Neil at first glance saw the rapid change in Sain's closed expression then returned to normal quickly becoming the look on his usual face.
"We are partners. Remember?"
"Whatever you say." Neil straightened his head, he placed his right hand on his face to cover his face with his arm.
"Okay, I asked first. Do you forget your childhood?" asked Sain carefully, which inexplicably made Neil's mood worse. No one has ever brought this up, including his father and Michelia.
"Yes, my memory has stopped a long time ago since childhood. I don't know why it happened," he sighed heavily. Neil's hand crept up to become the focus behind his head. Though they are not friends, Neil does not mind sharing other bad things with Sain. After all, Sain himself has known the worst secret he has experienced Neil.
"Forgot?"
Neil remembered loudly, opening an imaginary book inside his head to see what memories he could remember and found inside his head, but there was empty. There's nothing he can remember. "Yes, forget."
Sain didn't respond to anything afterward. Neil doesn't know what Sain was thinking after he answered it and no one knows the school people about his disappearing memories other than Michelia. However, here Sain knows for sure, there is a long pause between them that allows Neil to return to normal breathing.
This time Neil asked, actually he didn't know what he wanted to ask about Sain. "Okay, now I'm the one asking. When you treated my hand earlier in the day, why did you hurt your hand as well?"
Sain coughed small, bothering Neil to look at him. Neil scanned looking for something wrong with Sain, he lay on his side to see Sain.
"That's a must-do thing. Because the tutorial is like that," Sain said casually, but Neil knew he wasn't like that.
"Tutorial? Do you mean you watch something, then follow it? Where there is such a thing."
"You fool listen to me carefully. I who was here somehow seemed to be so happy to read strange books, two months after I got here I found a shabby piece of paper in one of my bag bags. Like normal people, I read it. Just reading, but I can't just practice it. A few months later there was a fool in an alley, beating a mirror-like a madman. Then I remembered about the paper I had read, so I practiced it for him," Sain explained at length.
"You made me a guinea pig?"
Sain clucked, his black eyes glaring at Neil. "Where can I practice it to just anyone. Of course, there's you, to begin with."
"You did dark magic to me. I want to see the paper, Riksa." Neil sat down for a moment.
"I threw it away because I was out of my head."
He felt the anger that arose by knowing Sain's deeds toward him. He did cure Neil, but he used dark magic that couldn't be believed, it could even cause such bad side effects later.
"The side effects aren't that bad." Sain interrupted Neil's forked mind, he kind of understood what Neil was thinking now. "Don't think too much about it, lie down again!"
Neil sighed, resigned, and inevitably trusted Sain. Sain helped him anyway, right?
He lay down with his back to Sain. Neil's tired. Did he wonder if tomorrow on holiday, the days would be as heavy as today?
Neil felt the other side of the place where he was lying was feeling scared, he turned around only to find Sain already lying sideways by his side. "You have your place. There go!"
"It was too wide, so I moved down," he said, seemingly innocent. But to Neil, this felt cramped he even felt Sain's breath shaded in front of his face.
"You don't make sense, I'm narrow."
"I'm sure of that." Neil saw him grinning.
Neil felt uncomfortable, dealing with Sain this close. As he was about to turn around, Sain's hand floated holding his shoulder to keep Neil from turning around.
"Just sleep," whispered Sain. But he was just looking at Neil with a strange, unreadable expression. Since Neil had never seen it before, Neil observed how a reddish hue crawled up from Sain's neck to his cheeks. Neil has set the cooling temperature that is not too cold.
"Do you sometimes sleep on the same bed?" asked Neil.
Sain seemed to think for a moment, Neil shuddered slightly as Sain's feet touched his feet. Neil always had a habit of sleeping without a blanket, now he's wearing home shorts on top. Neil didn't try to get away from touch, because he had no space left.
"Yes," Sain replied almost instantly. Neil thought for a moment when he realized there was no problem because they were men.
"Okay," said Neil, noticing how Sain seemed relaxed again.
Neil closed his eyes, sensing Sain's movements getting closer to him. Sain's hand that was still on his shoulder had now descended on his waist and settled there.
Neil and he were both men, thought Neil felt a little relaxed. He finally fell asleep.
Thank you for reading.