Just when Naomi thought she'd die, being persuaded like that, someone suddenly arrived.
"What are you all being so noisy about?" Pete's cold and annoyed voice shook them and they could not ignore him.
He had been studying as well but all that noise got him so annoyed that he had to leave early. Besides, it was dinner time anyway.
Seeing Pete's extremely annoyed gaze, they immediately gave way and let go of Naomi. He saw Naomi breathing out in relief.
"You... Are you the reason they are being so noisy?" He asked but she shook her head.
"I don't think so. I, for one, did not ask for assistance from anybody." She answered but couldn't look him in the eye.
Pete looked at her for a while and then looked at her arms, there were goosebumps. The vest material was light and sleeveless so she was bound to catch a cold in this weather.
He took off his blazer and suddenly put it over her shoulder, shocking her and everyone around. He looked at the boys.
"If you were planning to 'act' as a gentleman, you should've at least done it right." He said and glared at them. "Scram." In the blink of an eye, they were gone.
Then, Pete turned to Naomi and seeing her look a bit out of it, sighed and said to her,
"I don't know how girls work but Matthew said to treat them gently and with care. So, I will be gentle." He said and Naomi blinked.
For a moment, Naomi thought to herself, that was a line you'd see in a romance novel when the male lead was about to...
Her thoughts were interrupted when Pete suddenly opened an umbrella before them and drew her close to himself.
"Hold on to me so you won't get wet." He simply instructed and without waiting for a response from her, he entered the rain.
Naomi was dumbstruck. This guy... It felt like he had put a spell on her causing her not yo refute to his words. She didn't seem to mind that he hugged her to himself and made her get into the rain with him, though there was an umbrella.
Under the umbrella with the gruesome weather threatening to give her a cold, hugging each other, Naomi felt warm in Pete's embrace. Her head was on his chest and she could hear his heartbeat. Its rhythm was smooth and steady.
Then, the thought of people seeing them like that suddenly made her cheeks burn. She just managed to spread the word that she and Travis were dating, what if this complicated things?
Just as her thoughts were bouncing around, Pete stopped and she looked up at him. They weren't at the dorms yet so why?
"What's wrong?" She asked.
"I need to check something around here and it'll take a while so, you go on ahead. I'll leave the umbrella with you." Pete said.
"What? Then what will you use? There's no way you can get into this heavy rain without catching a cold. You even lent me your blazer." She asked, alarmed.
"I won't get sick." He said, shaking his head "Besides, compared to me, you need it more since you're a girl and girls are said to be fragile."
"Says who? I'm not some weakling. I'm way stronger than I look, okay?" She subconsciously clutched onto his shirt and said, "You're doing yourself no good."
"And I'll be doing you no good either. I led you out into the rain under an umbrella. What would that make me, if I suddenly decided to take it to go where I'm going to and leave you stranded?"
This rendered Naomi, who always had a comeback for everything, speechless.
Pete took this as a consent and placed the umbrella's hand in her hand and decided to leave.
But just as he was about to enter the rain, she said,
"You... You were the one who returned my bag, weren't you?" She asked and he nodded.
"That's right." He said.
"Thank you." She said and smiled. "I'm truly grateful."
Pete nodded, ruffled her hair up a bit and dashed into the rain.
Watching his figure become smaller in the dark made Naomi realise that he truly was...
"What a strange guy."
Naomi went straight to the cafeteria, bought a few things she could take back to the dorm since she was absolutely freezing and soaked herself in a hot bath.
After that was done and she could once again feel her fingers, she went to her desk table and put her headphones on, placing all her laptops on the table and checking the footage.
One by one, Naomi watched all the footage in a fast way because she did not have all night to spend behind her desk.
She yawned.
But good to know that all her effort did not go in vain and she found that there were indeed suspicious movements within the school.
"Checkmate." She grinned and took off her headphones.
It was already 3:45 am. She yawned. A regular student might've stayed so late to either watch movies, play games or study but here she was, watching the ongoings of the students' lives.
She got to find a lot of interesting things though but she wasn't the gossip type so she let them be.
She finally got up from her chair and stretched her limbs, cracking every bone in her body.
"That's gonna show by the time I wake up."
She flopped on her bed and got a little shut eye only to be aggressively woken by her annoying alarm.
Groggily, she went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, took her bath and watched her hair.
After dressing up, she discovered her appearance was a wreck with heavy eye bags under her eyes but that was something makeup could easily handle.
But makeup could certainly not handle her sleepy state.
"Maybe I'll stop by the library later or the infirmary." She yawned. "And get a little shut eye."
Just as she was about to shut her laptops, she caught Pete in one of them. His time of returning to the dorm was 4 am and that showed that wherever he went last night, he didn't return until this morning.
It was suspicious.