A week swiftly pa.s.sed by.
School resumed. The incident in the haunted house was forgotten.
Wendy did receive some scoldings from his brother who learned of the matter through an officer who phoned every guardian of those who partic.i.p.ated in the game of courage. But after that, nothing more happened. At least nothing as eventful as saving someone who turned out to be a mafia man and getting saved by that person in return.
It was a fine day. Sunny. Warm. Scratch that. Frighteningly hot. The newscaster on the police station"s TV had just finished warning people to stay indoors and blast themselves with air from their electric fans or air conditioner.
"Almost 42 degrees? Wow. Quite the d.a.m.nable weather."
Wendy yawned from her seat. She was already bored to death manning the reception desk of the police station. For one, she highly regretted why she volunteered for this place when their immersion training began.
"I should have just gone to any company or store. Maybe that won"t be as boring as counting lizards on the ceiling and ants in the corner."
"It"s just my first day yet the boredom is already killing me!!!"
"Wendy, the Chief told me you"re now good to go."
Dead fish eyes met that female officer"s announcement. Wendy had long packed her bag so when she heard the lady officer"s words, she picked up the blue shoulder bag dangling from the side, thanked the other, and then bolted out of the place.
The recently turned nineteen-year-old girl was seriously considering whether to change place to intern herself into. No one warned her that even if she was to become a staff there she wouldn"t be given any chance to be on the field.
Receptionist? The heck? When did she have the patience to sit all day and record complaints from people?
She"d rather go become a mascot at malls! At least she would be able to run around chasing and scaring kids!
"Toss the stupid thoughts aside. Go home and rest." She told herself after a pout.
Minutes later...
She played with the end curls of her hair as she looked at the ever-changing sceneries outside. She was currently in a train, seated right beside the gla.s.s window.
When it stopped at the third station, she got off then joined the crowd of people going up. She then left that subway station and headed left, another turn and there she saw her new place about ten meters on the left.
It was around 5:20 when Wendy arrived at her new apartment. Most girls at her grade left the dorm since the places where they would be interning was most of the time far from the dorm or school. Well, Wendy"s was actually not really that far, but since everyone else moved out, she also followed. After all, it would be better to get used to being alone since she would still have to stay in this country for two more years by herself...
"Hmm?"
She was removing her shoes to put on her sky-blue slippers when she noticed something odd on her front porch. A pair of shoes. For men."d.a.m.n!"
"A polite thief or a trespa.s.ser? On my third day of moving in?"
When she rushed inside with her trusty umbrella, it didn"t take long for her to stand there in the living room at lost as she watched the man in front of her TV turned his face slowly towards her direction.
"You"ve got a nice and safer place." The trespa.s.ser said after coming back to his senses. With a smile he stood up, his d.a.m.nably handsome face looking so like it was picking a fight with her.
She gulped.
"Nice to see you again, Miss Gomez. Did you miss me?"
...
Wendy didn"t know what happened after. She just learned that Ver Drilon, the annoying Pretty Boy returned. And he somehow became her neighbor, saying he still had a conscience and knowing that his savior was now in the hunted list of that mysterious organization he was opposing, he decided to guard her, free of charge, until the threats to her life were eliminated.
When she first heard of the explanation he said, Wendy only took a few seconds to get the real situation.
"You fell for me?"
"What?!"
The suspicious trespa.s.ser who also even got himself potato chips as he watched the TV news coughed out what he had just put inside his mouth. He stared blankly at Wendy after. "Did you hit your head or something?"
But the girl didn"t reply as she was busy dialing the police.
Ver watched her with extreme boredom. A host with full points like him wouldn"t fear getting reported anywhere.
"Stop that, Miss. There is no way you"ll get through them."
Wendy gritted her teeth when minuted pa.s.sed yet the call still couldn"t connect. When she heard what the man said, she dumbfoundedly asked, "You installed a signal jammer at my place?"
"What"s that?" His expression blatantly told her. But she didn"t retract her suspicious gaze despite seeing that.
She took a step back and put her long umbrella in front. "State your real motive, you criminal! I only let you go last time because you saved me!"
"I told you. You will be hunted down. You saw a member of that organization. n.o.body is allowed to see or know of their existence."
She scoffed. "What are they? An evil group working underneath the surface like "The Enlightened"? Vying for world domination?"
"Nothing threatening has happened to me so far aside from you trespa.s.sing in my home, Mister." The tone Wendy used was so sarcastic.
"Good then. I can see that you"re in good condition. I"m glad. It only means I won"t be guilty since the one who saved me that time is not yet dead."
Inside this madman"s head, a mysterious evil being laughed at him so much for his bulls.h.i.tting and gave him points for it.
Ver continued, "Don"t tell me even though you saw how aggressive towards your life that masked man is, you still haven"t grasped their modus? He tried to kill us precisely because we saw them."
Wendy couldn"t shake off the feeling that he was lying, and so she didn"t take her gaze full of doubts off of him.
He was a criminal. Even though he seemed not as bad as the others, in the end, he still had a violent and immoral tendency. Why would she let him near her? Even if.... it was true that she couldn"t help remembering him sometimes due to his brief stay with her at the dorm and his saving of her life, still, her morals would not let her go past helping him to evade the police once.
Wendy really felt the dilemma this time. How she wished her brother was here to rout this trouble away!
But what about that organization? It really seemed to exist since the authority found four more people masked the same as that one who tried to blow her up with a grenade.
After some time, she reluctantly asked, "... Do you have proofs that they are around?"
"No? But don"t worry, I"m more than enough to ensure your safety."
"... Why will you even care for my safety?"
"I told you, I"m a man of conscience."
She looked at him weirdly.
"I plan to ask help from the authorities to aid me with this. I"m sorry to say this. But even if you saved me once, I don"t trust you. I"m not someone with holes in my brain yet. No, maybe I already have some because I"m still talking nicely with someone like you. But. Do you think I"ll be someone who dreams of being a female lead of an action movie where a handsome man protects her from all evil all while wielding guns and batons herself?"
The man could only say, "... Your imagination is quite amazing."
Wendy shook her head. "No matter what, I"ll better be reporting this to the police."
The immoral host looked at him quietly and did not comment anymore. When he was asked to leave, he merely shrugged his shoulders then walked out of the house.
Of course, she knew the man wouldn"t give her peace, thus she repeatedly tried to phone everyone concerned that she could.
Yet for some reason, starting from that day, whenever she was near that man, all the numbers in her phone couldn"t be dialed.
What she didn"t know was that he simply asked his system to bar anything or anyone that would make him go away from her side because like what she first guessed, though not to the extent of really falling for her, he did couldn"t erase her face from his mind.
Four months pa.s.sed that Wendy couldn"t disentangle herself with the pretty-faced young man who did not leave her side for the sake of protecting her. And to what went after between them, of course, there were inexplicable moments and encounters with that organization which as he predicted, had tried to kill her numerous times.
...
Midnight, in the laboratory located at the bas.e.m.e.nt of a resort East Coast of Edogawa Prefecture.
The non-host previously encased in ice finally woke up from his more-than-year long sleep.
Unfortunately, when he realized his situation after looking around for almost a quarter of an hour, his beloved"s name, Sofony, was not the first thing that came out of his mouth...
"..."
But profanities laced with extreme indignation and anger.
"... b.a.s.t.a.r.d FRED MENDEZ! YOU"RE A PIECE OF S***!"
...
...
=>Link to the original site:
"-Queen