When I woke up from my deep slumber, it was already around 3:00 pm. Thinking of what happened yesterday I got up and slowly walked to the bathroom to wash up.
"Oh, hey.." Elena was there on the toilet wiping but stopped due to my sudden intrusion. Her eyes were strained and had dark circles under her eyes, probably due to staying up til five or six am last night
Glaring at me, she continued wiping, stood up and washed her hands, all while keeping eye contact with me mind you.. kinda freaky. "Next time.. maybe knock you dingus."
She stormed off while I had the bathroom to myself. These incidents were pretty common as we were roommates and we didn't really care after a while. The lack of privacy probably made us carefree. Why not lock the bathroom doors you might ask? Well a certain incident made us agree to never lock the bathroom doors again.
It was when I started puberty as well as Elena and she had her first.. "incident". During that time she quickly locked the doors and used the toilet but when she began to wipe.. there was so much blood that she began crying and screaming. And since she was crying and screaming I tried to barge through the bathroom door but the door was locked. And Elena who was sitting on the toilet refused to stand up as she was scared of peeing on the floor.
This eventually led to Ms. Clare rushing towards our room to unlock the bathroom doors while Elena was there with a pale look on her face. Eventually it was all settled and me and Elena wordlessly agreed to not lock the bathroom doors under normal circumstances, such as using the bathroom or refreshing yourself.
As if it was a trauma, whenever I brought up this incident she was quick to shut up down with a glare that could make even the god of death go quiet. Didn't stop me from teasing her though, ugh I still flinch at the thought of her forming a wind spear and shooting at me.
As I finished relieving myself I went to go freshen up. Washing my hands first I stared in the mirror. There, there was a teenage boy with black hair that had green tips at the end as well as green eyes. There was also facial hair growing on his chin but it was so subtle it might not as well exist. 'I'm pretty handsome, eh?'
After refreshing myself, I walked back into my room to change my clothes where Elena was there sitting on floor, staring at the old tome which was on the small table in front of her; that she collected from last night.
Changing my upper wear and wearing a new pair of shorts, I quickly walked towards the table and sat across Elena, her eyes still on the tome.
"Have you read it yet?" I asked, my voice oozing with curiosity.
Elena, finally taking her eyes off the tome, made eye contact with me. Smirking, she stood up and sat where we were besides each other. "Nope, I wanna read it with you."
"Aww how sweet.. my precious angel is so nice.." I teased her while caressing her hair. This devil is obviously being unnaturally nice. She obviously didn't take this very well as she glared at me before returning her eyes to the tome.
Scoffing, she opened the tome to the first page. "No, you would've just complained about me reading it first anyways, and I would rather act like your sweetheart than to hear your annoying voice bothering me."
Ugh.. this girl.. isn't she too harsh?
"Huh? Why is it empty?" She said in a panicked tone as she continued to flip page after page.
"What are you talking about? It's completely filled with words, are you sure you got enough rest?" I asked in a slight worried tone but also in a confused tone. There were obviously words there and a lot too, I even saw some painted photos on some of the pages and weird looking circles that look like they were used in rituals.
"What?! That doesn't make any sense it's completely empty for me.." She exasperated in a sad tone.
Seeing this, I quickly thought to comfort her.. luckily I knew better so I teased her. "Seems like you're simply not chosen while I, the prodigy of the universe am chosen."
Looking at me with another glare; geez if this continues I'll seriously have a immunity to it. She quickly retorted back. "Or maybe you're so talentless that the book itself pitied you. It probably knew I'm so talented that I wouldn't need it. You on the another hand.."
There were many occasions where you couldn't see something due to not being chosen or something. So we didn't really take it to heart. Artifacts were pretty common now and most of them were made like this, to hide something or to be used as something.
"Just give me the book already you hag." I snapped back, the last part coming out.. accidentally as I knew I blundered.
Looking at me up and down, her eyes glowed slightly and I knew that this meant trouble. At this rate she'll really kill me!
"W-Wait let's talk about this, I didn't mean that. Haha it was just a joke.. hey Elena? Are you there? Please spare me. O Great One please have mercy on me!" I begged to her,
kowtowing as I did and closing my eyes, knowing this is the only way to escape with my life.
Luckily it seemed to work as I wasn't impaled yet. I opened my eyes just to see that I was staring at her.. crotch while she was looking at me with a glare and flushed cheeks.
'Oh.. at least I got to look at greatness before I died.'
Suddenly the door to our room slamed open and in the doorway was Ms. Clare, with her stern look like always. Quickly realizing God hasn't forsaken me yet, I quickly ran towards her and hid behind her, leaving Elane on the floor sitting.
'Ms. Clare, thank you for saving me!' I inwardly exclaimed, promising to give her a back massage later.
Elena glared at me as I hid behind Ms. Clare, with my head peaking out over her shoulders. She then moved her gaze towards out caretaker. Ugh.. wtf why is she looking at Ms. Clare like she's her long lost family? Why does she only look at me like I'm her worst nightmare..
Ms. Clare who was silently staring at Elena and then me, finally spoke. "You two, meet me in my office."
As she said those words she quickly walked away towards the direction of her office while I stood there frozen, from fear and in a literal sense. It seems like when I was distracted by Ms. Clare, Elena didn't miss this chance to freeze me to the floor all the way to my calf. I was completely stuck.
I looked back towards Elena who was slowly getting up from her sitting position. In my mind her figure turned from the once cute and pretty girl to the image of a grim reaper, ready to take my life.
"U-Um Elena, let's talk about this later okay? We don't want to keep Ms. Clare waiting.." I quickly said in hopes of easing her anger.
It looked like it worked as the ice around my legs were slowly dissipating and turning back into mana. Elena who was still glaring at me walked up to me until our noses almost touched. She stared into my eyes, and probably into my soul as well.
Stoping her glare, she put both of her hands on my shoulders and her stoic face became a smirk. "Grey.. oh Grey, we have so much.. talking to do.. right?"
'M-Ms. Clare.. save me..'
***
Ms. Clare
As I sat down behind my desk I couldn't help but think about what just happened. Grey the troublemaker and Elena the sweatheart.. to think they're doing such things as soon as they woke up.
'I'll definitely get answers from them!'
As soon as I thought of this, there was a knock at the door and Elena and Grey who followed her sheepishly walked into my office. They quickly sat down on the two chairs in front of my desk and stared at me, waiting for me to say something.
Looking them up and down, trying to find more.. details to satiate my curiosity I noticed some bruises on Grey's arms and collarbone.
'A-Are they really into that kind of.. play??' I screamed inwardly as a flustered look somehow got past my stoic act. This seemed to confuse Elena and Grey so I quickly composed myself.
"A-Ahem, you two. Explain what happened last night." I quickly let out as if it was a burden I was carrying.
Grey who was staring at me now looked towards Elena who also moved her gaze from me to him. They seemed to reach a conclusion about something even though all they did was make eye contact for a few seconds.
Elena spoke up first. "Ms. Clare, last night me and Grey were exploring the city as usual and ran into trouble,"
Grey then added on, "we ran into a gang and they tried robbing us. We were chased for hours and eventually we got them off our tails so we came back home tired."
This.. isn't this excuse too weak? There's no way a gang would appear in this kind of neighborhood. It seems like I'll have to inquire more.
"Are you sure this is the truth?" I asked sternly with the meanest gaze I could muster. It looked like it worked as they both got nervous. Surprisingly though, it was Elena who spoke, not Grey.
"Ms. Clare! S-Shouldn't you give us kids some privacy instead of using us to satiate your curiosity!"
Elena.. you've grown so much. It was obvious from the way she averted her eyes and how flustered she looked. Adding onto that, Grey also had his eyes on the floor and had a.. weird expression to say the least.
It was exactly what I thought it was.. they're fucking each other. But it is true that an adult like me shouldn't privy onto the personal life of the kids I cared for. It seems like I've gone too far this time.
I let out a sigh before saying, "Fine, go on now I won't bother you two anymore. Just stay out of trouble okay? Especially you, Grey, keep Elena out of your conflicts. I know you get into fights a lot."
As I said that they both looked up to me with dazed expressions. Grey had a look of 'wasn't that too easy?' while Elena had a guilty look. They both quickly excused themselves and left while I still had more paperwork to do.
These paperworks.. they were troublesome afterall, who would've thought that teenage orphans would be forced to go to school?
***
Grey
"Pfft," I let out a laugh while smirking. Truly only I, a genius at manipulation can tread past and trick Ms. Clare without losing my life. The plan went flawlessly.
Before me and Elena became criminals, we both discussed the most troublesome part of, well, robbing the dead. Which was Ms. Clare.
That was when I had the genius idea to act trick Ms. Clare into thinking me and Elena were secretly.. dating. Of course Elena at first immediately resorted to violence and started throwing hard objects at me while I ran around the room and tried to convince her. Eventually she gave up and agreed. Afterall it was just acting not the real deal.
Well adding to that, the reason why I wanted to rob the dead was.. to become wealthy. The allowance me and Elena get per month was only a couple hundreds of dollars, that's like only a couple of meals in this day and age! There's nothing to do with that kind of money except to mindlessly walk around. So I decided to rob the dead nobles, surely they'd have some valuables that they buried with them.. right? Too bad that all we got was some old tome that was concealed by a spell. Which is weird since I'm able to see it but Elena can't.
The plan of me and Elena putting on an act for Ms. Clare to think we were out doing unholy things was too simple though. There's no way she, who raised us, wouldn't see through us. So I came up with a safeguard. We would hide the fact that we were.. "dating" under a badly made excuse. Under normal circumstances Ms. Clare would've seen through both ruses but what if the original ruse was extreme, like.. secretly sneaking out to do unholy things?
We hoped that Ms. Clare would think that due to the stress of being caught we spat out some lame excuse under the pretense of being nervous, it was a gamble, but the gamble worked in our favor.
As we both walked back to our rooms, Elena was still glaring at me with rosy cheeks, which was either from the passionate acting earlier, which even surprised me, or from the previous incident where I was already punished for. Ugh, my arms are sore.
"You, you better tell me everything you see in that old book. I swear if all of my efforts are for some nonsense.. I'll kill you."