Mark regarded the brunette with burning curiosity.
Maybe she had told him about Jack being her stepfather, maybe not. But after having glimpsed into her childhood, his head was filled with more questions than answers.
How exactly did she escape? When did she move into a better place? And the mother especially- what was the story behind her encounter with the new lover?
It was not difficult to suppress this desire for knowledge, but even as he did it, there remained a burning itch to simply know.
Her story seemed like the exact opposite of his. For Mark, it was his father keeping the household together, for her, it was the mother she needed to rely on to survive.
She had a success story, he had one of ruin.
Mark wistfully gazed into the scene, his vision encompassed everything yet looked at nothing.
'What am I talking about? There is still much ahead, who says that my life will just end in misery?'
He closed his eyes.
Was it even possible for such a thing to happen anymore? The prices rise, the slums grow, the jobs dwindle- the world is rotting. His optimistic dream had no other option than to be strangled in a vacuum of desolation.
Still, it was nice to think about it.
'Right, looking toward the stars rather than the mud.'
Ah, how the brunette had rubbed off on him, or maybe he had been spending too much time outside of the slums, without a job, simply getting fed and housed like a pet...
Mark froze.
'Is this what I want to be?'
A familiar feeling resurfaced in his body.
Deep within his heart- his soul, there was a hole. Being with the brunette filled it ever-so-slightly, but hollow it remained. The emptiness gnawed at him like a gluttonous rodent.
He was lacking.
Potential hung in the air. It was so close, yet just out of reach. There was something to grab but he simply couldn't do it. This sense of idleness was poisonous- as it had been ever since his job was lost.
Yes, the most vicious gang in the city might be chasing him around, but so what? Mark felt like his mind was peeling away while he remained without a proper purpose.
He needed to do something!
"Anything wrong?"
Mark looked to the side. In his arms, the brunette's delicate face folded into an endearing frown. He realized that his face was slightly tensed, that his foot was lightly tapping, that his grip on her had at some point tightened.
He loosened up.
"Sorry- no, not really."
It was almost impressive, how fake his words sounded.
His mind was already beginning to spiral back into misery- ashamed of himself, dreading the future.
Thankfully, Jack spoke up not too long after.
"Why don't you tell us a bit about yourself."
'Hmm. Well, they already know that I'm chased by the Spheks, what more could surprise them?'
And so, Mark told them everything important he could remember.
He was wrong. They were thrown for quite the loop.
From his early, happy childhood, to the darkening years of his late adolescence, and the beginnings of his attempts at success in adulthood- he even almost mentioned his connections with the Hounds, but Mark caught himself. It would be better to keep things like that a secret.
Seeing how they were taken aback, Mark tilted his head.
"So... what has you all looking like a bombshell dropped on the table?"
Melissa shook her head, the pristine blue lake of her eyes seemed to move.
"I knew that you wouldn't have much of a good story- in fact, I was expecting something bad."
She paused.
"But, I didn't think it would be so tragic."
Jack nodded, and so did the brunette in his arms.
Mark was slightly able to understand. The idea of misfortune was reinforced by the lost happiness. He was only able to show the dark clouds of his present but never expressed the warm rays of his childhood.
Perhaps he was also stuck in those same blackened clouds, unable to truly recognize the value of his past. All he felt in his life was numbness. The only goal was to reach the next day, but he never asked himself why. Maybe he refused to, knowing that there was no good answer to his existence and that a shroud of ignorance would help him carry on.
Yes, this numbness was what protected him. Thinking back to the good old days only gave way to pain.
There was a time where he reminisced a lot. He would then look at his mother, regret how things have become, and try to do something and remedy her, only to give up in utter failure.
Ah, how enlightening it is to have someone else's perspective.
Mark nodded his head.
The homely four then talked about smaller things, like hobbies, new things they've seen across the city, anything they wanted to that wasn't serious.
It was like a brief respite from all the tension of the night.
Because it didn't take long before silence befell.
Not the awkward quiet of a dead conversation, nor the tranquil stillness of a relaxed room.
This one was special.
It was the suspenseful kind, a dreadful one, like the sudden hush in a room when a judge is about to make a verdict.
The silence became a resident of the house, it came and never left.
...
Days passed under the suffocating spell. Mark did the same thing every day: wake up, eat, relax with the brunette, then sleep.
Everything would have been peaceful if he was not so on edge.
It felt like the silence had taken time by the neck and choked it into submission.
He seemed to have blinked. Or maybe he closed his eyes for days.
Wasn't being with his beloved meant to make things slower?
Yet everything passed by in a flash, an ephemeral moment.
And then, he found himself in the dining room, facing his future.