HETAR

It was pretty . . . close. Luckily, I was able to change the video and her Aunt"s mind. If I wasn"t, my pretending Mom would surely kill me.

"Is everything done?" Aunt Wart asked when I got home.

"Yeah," I answered lazily. "The soccer field, the people"s mind, the fake suspect, everything"s in place." I sat down on the red sofa.

"And the security cameras?" Her right eyebrow raised.

And it got me. I forgot to change the security camera"s records!

I dashed back to our school again. Of course, I didn"t bring my car anymore. My mind was too clouded.

When I reached the school gate, the guard stopped me while he was laughing.

"Where are you going, Mister Lucero?" he asked as he laughed again.

It"s weird. I mean, he"s weird. What"s funny?

"Inside, Sir," I politely answered. "Can I enter now?"

"No." He cleared his throat. "Not yet. Not yet until you tell me why are you here. You"re absent because you are sick, right? You should be at your home, resting."

I frowned. "But―"

"By the way, your girlfriend also came here earlier. That kid is funny―" Then he laughed again.

Oh yeah. It"s funny. Really . . . tsk―wait, what?! My girlfriend?!

Automatically, my eyes grew wide. "I don"t have a girlfriend!" I shouted. "I"m still single!"

He stopped and looked at me, puzzled a bit, and he laughed again. "I said "girl-friend". A female friend," he explained. "Oh my, you both are funny!" And laughed.

WAIT, WHAT?! SHE"S HERE?!

I started to panicked inside.

What if she already saw the security camera"s record? What if she"s already confused and trying to know or find the truth?

Aunt Wart would surely kill me!

"She"s still inside?" I asked, a bit trembled.

"Yes."

"Exact place?"

"Soccer field. She said that she wanted to watch the game personally and congratulate her crush―"

"Sorry, Sir. I"m in a hurry!" I cut him out as I opened the gate and ran towards the field. I just shook my head in annoyance when I heard the guard laughed again.

Annoying! Ugh!

Fortunately, my body felt Scarlette"s presence immediately. In the middle of the crowd, I concentrated to hear her heartbeat. When I finally found it, I quietly ran to the highest part of the bleachers.

There, I found her while looking at the whole soccer field. For your information, her jaw was dropped and her eyes were widening.

What the . . . my partner became a tarsier! Just kidding!

Probably, she"s confused and couldn"t believe what she was looking at right now. The next thing she did was to bring out her phone from her pocket. She tapped her video player app and that"s enough for me to conclude that she already watched it. She just wanted to watch the security camera"s record again to double check.

Unlucky for her, the first video that she had watched was too far now to be compared to the second one.

I"m not bragging but hey! I was able to change the content of the video through s.p.a.ce in a split of second.

Her jaw literally dropped after watching the video. She turned off her phone but she also turned it on to call her Aunt.

"h.e.l.lo, Aunt. I want to ask this again so don"t be mad at me, okay?" She pressed her eyes closed while breathing heavily. I couldn"t help but to stared at her angelic face.

She"s beautiful, no wonder. She looks like her Mom. Speaking of her Mom, how much does she miss her daughter?

"Did you notice some weird things in the video?" she continued.

"No. The whole video itself is not weird. Why?" her Aunt in the other line said.

"N-none . . . " She ended the call while her eyes were widening. Probably, she was thinking that all of what she saw, heard, and felt were just hallucinations.

Somehow, I pity her. But what can I do? Tell her that all of what happened was real? Tell her that she"s a demiG.o.d? A half-human and half-G.o.ddess? Tell her that she"s the one who made the fire?

It"s a big NO!

We couldn"t, me and Aunt Wart, we couldn"t tell her those right now. Not until we caught who"s spying at her.

After few minutes, I decided to sat beside her and asked her to watch the game with me. Gladly, she didn"t refuse.

~*~

"Watching soccer isn"t bad at all, huh? It"s much better than watching basketball!" Scarlette commented after the last round of the game. "Let"s go."

I just let her stood up and pulled me up. She was smiling as she looked at the team who won.

I just sighed when she turned her face to me and gave me a playful look.

"You lose," she uttered. "Now, treat me."

"Okay. Fine. What do you want?" I asked.

"Um . . . " She paused to think. "I don"t know. Maybe, treat me next time."

"You don"t want now?" My forehead creased when she shook her head in response. "Why?"

"Nothing. I just want next time. Let"s go. I want to go home."

I stared at her eyes, trying to know what"s the reason behind but I couldn"t see anything.

She"s also hideous, like her mother.

~*~

SCARLETTE"S POINT OF VIEW

I watched Asher as he went outside of the gate before I locked the door. I went inside my room and stared at my reflection at the mirror on my study table.

What happened to me earlier . . . flashed in my mind again. I couldn"t help but to feel confused.

Why did it happen to me?

Uh . . . maybe, that"s the effect of being nearly-barbecued.

I just brought out my Chemistry book from my backpack and read it. While reading, I remembered what Asher told me in the middle of our walking earlier before we got home.

"Don"t mind those what happened to you," he said out of the blue. "The student who caused the fire was kicked out already."

To be honest, I don"t care about the one who caused the fire but, to the hallucinations . . .

I stopped on my track. "Who is he?" I seriously asked.

"I didn"t know what is his name but, what I know is . . . he"s one of your cla.s.smates."

My right eyebrow raised. "One of my cla.s.smates . . . what is his reason? Did he tell?"

He shook his head. "No, that"s why he"s been kicked out."

I gritted my teeth to control my anger. "Tsk . . . "

"You know what?" He put his right arm on my left shoulder and pulled me closer to him. "Just forget about those. What important right now is that "you are safe"."

Somehow, those words calmed me and my confused mind.

~*~

"TOK! TOK! TOK!"

I woke up from my leaning on my study table because of the continuously knocks. My eyebrows met when I realized that it was coming exactly from my room"s door.

"TOK! TOK! TOK!"

I started to tremble, my hands began freezing . . . then a horrible memory . . . that I nearly forgot . . . refreshed from the past.