In the cold silence of the school's lab, William worked in silence, his focus intent on his experiment, oblivious to the gaze that lingered nearby. The woman he trusted, or at least began to stood close, casually moving around the counters, her hands gloved and precise as she handled the equipment.
At one moment, she leaned a bit too close, her face inscrutable as she reached for the scalpel, fingers wrapped around it lightly, skillfully. She looked into his face with an avidity he'd never seen in her, a strange objectified concentration. The blade, cold against his skin, made a purposeful shallow incision down the side of his hand before he could say anything.
A sharp sting cut up his arm, and he jerked it back, his eyes going wide with confusion and a growing sense of betrayal. Blood welled up along the cut, and instinctively he cradled the hand, his gaze darting between her and the thin line of red that started to seep onto his skin.
"What…why?" he stammered, frozen in place by shock.
Her face was impassive, her eyes studying him carefully. For a moment, he thought he saw something cold, calculating flash across her expression before she blinked and her gaze softened, just slightly. "It's nothing serious," she said voice too cool, almost clinical. "Just hold still."
But he could feel the chill settling over him, a creeping reality that maybe she wasn't who he thought she was. He watched her, tension twisting inside him as the small cut on his hand felt like a door cracked open to something he wasn't ready to see.
Under the cold fluorescent lights of the lab, the shallow wound on the boy's hand began to close before the eyes of everyone as if weaving itself back together. The thin line of blood receded and the torn skin knitted seamlessly in seconds, leaving only the faintest trace of red behind. His classmates, who up until now had watched him with mild interest only seconds before, stared in stunned silence at the apparition before them with faces a mix of shock and horror.
One student gasped and leaped back, as though he had seen something unnatural; another's eyes went wide, caught somewhere between fascination and fear. Even the woman who'd made the cut stood transfixed, her usual composure slipped, replaced by something darkly intrigued, and a sense of unwillingness to accept.
He looked around, their gazes falling upon him like weights. A strange chill ran up his spine, a new wave of dread welling up as he realized they'd all seen it-that thing he could barely understand himself, now laid bare for everyone around him. The air in the room grew thick, and heavy with silent questions that nobody dared vocalize.
At this point, all he wanted was to disappear.
A feverish intensity shone in her eyes, her grasp on the scalpel tightening as she hunched down toward the boy, paying no heed to his obvious unease nor the faces that had turned horrified around them. She made another swift, purposeful slice along his forearm. The blade parted his skin as if it were paper before he could even flinch. Blood welled up, but like before, the wound started to close-sealing itself almost immediately as if erasing her actions in a defiant finality.
Her face was distorted by frustration, an incomprehensible mixture of incredulity and awe. Not believing it, she brought the scalpel down on his palm this time, deeper than before, frantic, desperate cuts. Those present recoiled with gasps, but she seemed to continue ceaselessly, as if driven by a need to match her will against the impossible. Yet every time she cut, the boy's skin would knit itself back together, leaving but a trace of blood.
The boy's breathing was short, ragged gasps, his eyes wide with fear and pain, his body instinctively flinching under her blows. He was exposed, some sort of twisted freak show-a curiosity for her relentless obsession. Every glance he shot her showed the madness, widening in her eyes, a hungry something that saw him less as a person and more as a puzzle she needed to solve.
Around him, whispers surged into frantic murmurs. His class peers were paralyzed in shock; some covered their mouths, some turned away, while she worked herself up into an even more frenzied attack. Yet every wound healed, and his skin seemed to mock her in all places as if to understand, to control, or to break whatever power lay inside him.
She ceased finally, panting, and with shaking hand stared down at the mask of grim unbelief etched upon her face. The lab was quiet but for his own small breaths and with wide-eyed combination of terror and defiance he returned her regard, knowing she saw, as all the others did now, something working within him beyond her grasp.
"I'm sorry William, there is nothing I can do for you at this point," she said with opaqueness.
"Sorry for the scene earlier," She said to the class, "I am agent Nadia Ayana of the National Defense Forces, I was here on an official mission to investigate Will-sorry The red wraith!"
"It can't be the red wraith has white hair and red eyes and I'm sure that his hair is black same as his eyes," a student obviously in disbelief shouted.
The whole room agreed with the person. "It's the freaking 21st century goddammit, how dumb can one be," she muttered to herself. "Have you all ever heard of contact lenses?" she asked almost sarcastically.
She reached out with quivering fingers, and impatience mingled, as she slowly touched his face. She was staring at his dark eyes, that part of him that really did seem impossible, unnatural. Her expression now did not hold even the slightest hint of her usual kind underlying expression, only an insatiable need to understand or unravel what lay beneath.
William stiffened, a feeling of dread curling in his chest. He knew what she wanted, what she was after. She'd been trying to get closer, testing him in ways he could barely understand, and this felt like another step toward something darker. Always, he had worn contact lenses to cover his red eyes and shield him from a world that had never embraced him. They were his silent shield, a frail gauze between him and the wondering eyes, the murmurings, the terror.
"No," he whispered, falling backward, his voice barely a quiet quiver. But she took no notice of him now, as her hands darted with swiftness and with surety, clutching at his face, her fingers cool, unyielding. The boy struggled to pull himself away, but she held him fast, the strength in the touch far too great for him to get free.
She pried his eyelid open with a near-clinical delicacy; the pressure of her fingertips against his skin sent his heart racing. Her breathing was shallow, her concentration absolute, as she reached for the edge of the contact lens. Her fingers brushed across its delicate surface, and then, in one swift motion, she pulled it free.
For a moment, time stood still. Everything around him blurred, and his now fully exposed eye shone bright with an unnatural, almost otherworldly crimson glow. The girl's eyes widened in surprise, the lens now sitting in the palm of her hand, but her face wasn't one of terror-it was one of astonishment, of something far darker, of something that she had not found and had not expected.
The boy's breath stayed in his throat, his stare stricken at her while a wave of vulnerability washed over him like a tsunami. His secret, the one thing he had kept hidden for so long now lay bare for her and everyone else to see.
Her voice was a low whisper, thick from the weight of revelation to revelation. "I really thought it wasn't you."
His red eyes seemed out of place in the room those who had a crush on him now despised him they had obviously never forgotten about the incident.