Before heading to the library, Julie went to her dorm and picked up the letter that the letter thief had left her—
'Ah ah ah. Not so fast, troublemaker. The rules are mine and you seem to have forgotten to reply back to one of my questions. Here's a little motivation, I have the answers to your questions, but don't think I will be giving it to you that easily. Haven't you heard the give and take policy of the bully? You answer my question without a single word of lie and then I will give you your answers.'
Julie bit her bottom lip. She should have known that he wouldn't reply to her that easily.
Looking at the watch, she noticed the time was ticking and realized she was late. Locking the door, she half ran, and half walked to the library. This morning when she had woken up, she had forgotten about Roman tutoring her today, and it was only a couple of minutes ago did she remember it. On her way, she met Dennis, who waved at one of his classmates, and when he turned around, he caught sight of her.
"Are you visiting the library?" asked Dennis, his eyes falling on her bag.
"Yes," Julie said breathlessly, and he smiled at her.
"I am glad to hear that. I am on my way to go there too," stated Dennis, and he started to walk next to her. "Is the textbook you borrowed due in a few minutes?"
"Huh?" she asked, confused.
"Because it looks like you just ran," Dennis looked in the direction Julie had come before turning back to look at her.
"Oh, no," Julie smiled, linking her thumbs into the sides of her bag on the front. "I have a study session with someone."
They had reached the front of the library entrance, and Dennis asked, "Is it with Moltenore?" his expression turned serious as if he didn't like her mingling with Roman.
Right on time, Roman appeared in front of the entrance from the opposite direction. He looked at Julie and then at Dennis, who stood next to her.
Dennis stared at Roman with distaste in his mouth. He hadn't forgotten the way three days ago Roman had disregarded his very existence in the lunchroom. He said, "It must be bad luck calling people's names who are delinquents."
Roman, who was leisurely chewing the gum, said, "You know what they say. Speak of the devil's name and he doth appear." His eyes fell on Julie, and he said, "Get your textbook. Didn't I tell you to not make me wait or did you decide to forget?"
Before Julie took a step forward, Dennis raised his hand and Roman's eyes subtly narrowed at the little action while still keeping a calm face. Julie was surprised, and she looked at Dennis, who said,
"Stop trying to threaten her to get your way."
"It is fine, Dennis," Julie assured him, and Dennis lowered his hand with a slight frown.
Roman then said, "She doesn't have any problem, so why are you meddling in it? Instead of offering help, maybe you should help yourself in getting higher grades than me," he raised his eyebrow. "Don't do what you did now ever again. I cannot assure you if your glasses will stay intact," and he stepped inside the library.
A little awkward, Julie said, "You don't have to worry about me, Dennis. He only means to help me with the subject."
Dennis pursed his lips and then said, "Let me know if you need my help. I will be here." Julie nodded her head and stepped into the building, walking forward to pick up the textbook. Dennis, who stood there, muttered under his breath, "I thought today we would be studying together."
Picking up the textbook, Julie made her way up the stairs, passing the racks on her right before seeing Roman, who was already sitting there with his legs crossed. When she entered his vision, she sensed him glaring at her.
Julie took a seat and placed the textbook on the table as if nothing had happened a while ago at the entrance. Pulling out her notebook from her bag, she placed her pens on the side and then opened the page they were going to continue studying. When Roman didn't say anything, she slowly looked up, noticed him watching her.
"You look angry," Julie stated the obvious.
This only poured oil into little flame to burn more. While Roman uncrossed his legs to place them flat on the ground, his knee hit the table, and for a second, it made Julie's heart slip from her chest.
"Aren't you smart," remarked Roman and Julie's lips twitched while she tried not to smile. "Why do you think I am angry?"
"It is kinda hard to say…" her words trailed at the end, and his eyes narrowed.
Roman snatched her notebook from the table, writing something on it before handing it back to her. He then said, "Let us see if you can solve what we discussed two days ago. You have five minutes."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Julie knew Roman was going to pull something from his leather jacket, and he had pulled out an equation that was nothing like they had solved. He must have been mad because she was late.
When five minutes passed, Julie was only half done solving it, and Roman commented, "Too slow."
"But half of it is right, right?" asked Julie, her eyes lighting up, and Roman saw the excitement in it.
"They are. Don't look too happy about it. There's no point in solving only half and not finishing it. You get no points for it," said Roman before he started tutoring her, and Julie internally smiled.
After teaching her, Roman had given Julie to solve the problems that were harder than what the textbooks had. In the meantime, he had picked up a book for himself to read.
"Did you finish solving or are you looking for answers on my face?" questioned Roman without looking up from his book.
"I wanted to ask you something about the thing that happened the day before yesterday," said Julie.
"What about it?" she heard Roman's nonchalant words from him. His eyes looked up at her.
"Did you, maybe tell Eleanor something when you went to meet her? Something about me?" she asked him. He relaxed the wrist that was holding the book, and he leaned forward.
"Why would I talk about you with her?" he questioned her, tilting his head to the side.
It was because Eleanor had not come with her baseball bat along with her friends to hunt her down. It had Julie wonder if he had anything to do with it. His eyes looked back at her with an unfazed expression.
"It was because I was the one to deliver her letter to you," said Julie.
"Not enough that I would bring up your name," replied Roman unconcerned.
So she had guessed wrong, and Eleanor had decided to keep up her end of the deal? But Roman was right, why would he bring her up in the conversation when he was tearing Eleanor's letter, thought Julie in her mind.
"Now that you have brought the matter up, how many other dorms' have you broken into?" questioned Roman, biting into his gum.
"It was just yours. Why would I go breaking into other dorms?" asked Julie, looking down at her book when she remembered the push and the brush of his finger on her wrist.
"I don't know, you tell me. Instead of knocking on the door, you decided to break into someone's room. The number of whispers that have gone around," Roman clicked his tongue while shaking his head with disappointment.
Julie's face turned red, and she whispered, "You are the one who has been telling everyone about it!"
"I? Why would I ever spread anything like that. I have other better things to do than mention about you to people. Maybe you should ask your dear friend Eleanor, after all, you did break into my room upon her word. And which idiot even agrees to something like that?" his eyes subtly narrowing at her.
"You are calling me an idiot because I called you one before," muttered Julie and Roman stared at her. "I know it wasn't a good idea…"
"What if it was some other guy, who decided to tie you in the room and killed you? No one would ever know," deadpanned Roman.
"Isn't that a little stretch?" asked Julie, her eyebrows furrowing, but Roman's expression didn't change.
"You never know who is a murderer, Winters," he said in a serious tone that somewhere made her worry now. "This is why you should talk to selected people and not the second. It will reduce your IQ."
Julie pursed her lips at the shade Roman threw at Dennis, and she said, "That's like you telling… your IQ will reduce with me," because she was nowhere in the top thirty or forty of her year, and Roman looked as if he had the highest.
"It is good that you are aware of it," responded Roman. "Now get back to working on the problems."
Julie held her stare for a few more seconds before tearing away her eyes to look back at her books.
A minute later, Roman raised his gaze from his book, and his eyes fell on the girl, who sat in front of him. Like the good girl she was, she diligently studied in front of him. He noticed she had twisted the sides of her hair and tied it in a medium ponytail. He noted that her glasses hid her dainty face.
Though Julie might have considered Roman's words to be dark humour, it wasn't far away from the truth. A human entering a possible vampire's dorm at night, would be nothing less than a midnight snack.
When Julie's study session came to an end, Roman stood up along with her. Julie noticed he had decided not to stay back like last time and started to walk away without waiting for her. He walked to the nearby racks and placed the book back in its place.
Julie's footsteps were much slower, and she watched Roman standing in front of the rack. He was tall enough to reach the top books of the racks without the need for a ladder. Walking past the rack, she left the library.
Once she was in the room, Julie stared at the letter that she had received from the letter thief. Staring at the words written there. She hadn't answered two of his earlier questions, but she decided to answer the latest one.
What he had asked was something that she had never discussed with anyone before.
Gripping the pen in her hand and a fresh page in front of her, Julie took a deep breath before she started to write—
'Alright. What happened a year ago…'
Julie had written only one line when she decided to strike it out. Using a new page, she wrote—
'How can I trust you, when I know nothing about you. If you will keep it to yourself as a secret or if you will tell it to the other students for your own advantage? I don't know anything about you, and you still hold the leverage by keeping my letter in your possession.'
As easy as it was to share the story with a stranger, at the same time, she didn't know much about the letter thief. There was the worry where it might be shared.
When she received the response, the letter read—
'Good to know that you aren't dumb like other students in Veteris. Your concern is fair and in light of it, I am returning half a page of the letter that has been in my possession until now. Along with it, here is my response to one of your questions. The dorm that you live in, I have lived there.'
"It used to be a boy's Dormitorium before?" Julie asked herself and noticed the torn letter that was left along with the letter.
Picking it up, she noticed her handwriting in there, and it was indeed her letter that she had hoped to reach Uncle Thomas, or it would be more right to say it was the lower half of her letter. How cunning, thought Julie in her mind. All the important information was in the first half!
But at the same time, she was more than intrigued by the thought of this person who said he lived in this very room that she now occupied. Weighing the matter, she finally decided to pen down what he wanted to know—
'If you would have met me a year ago, you would have found a different me. I used to speak less and not as much as I do now. Like many other places, the students there were of different kinds. Some nice, a lot of them worse. I used to have good grades, some decent friends, at least that is what I thought until they turned their backs. I don't know what triggered it, but soon I turned into one of their favourite targets to be bullied.
If I think about it, Eleanor, the girl who lives in my Dormitorium, is nothing compared to those students. Or maybe it is because I didn't let Eleanor take a hit at me.
It first started with girls comparing with each other, and then friends secretly comparing with the other person until it turned into a rivalry. My friend Natalie one day turned popular, and she soon cut ties with me before turning some of our lives into Hell. I never knew she could turn into a completely different person…'
Julie looked up from her book, staring at the wall in front of her while remembering how she felt turned into her once friend's target.
It was one of those days after the class was over where Julie placed her books in her locker. Suddenly, out of nowhere, someone pushed her head right against the next locker. Flinching in pain, she had turned and saw Natalie standing in front of her, looking at her with rage-filled eyes.
"You little slut, I knew you would do this to me," Natalie harshly pushed Julie against the locker. "You couldn't resist, could you?"
"What are you talking about?" asked Julie, confused. She touched her forehead with her fingers and noticed spots of blood.
"Korbyn said he won't go out with me, because he has plans with you. Since when did you start talking to him?"
"Korbyn? I don't even know him, Natalie. It is a misunderstanding," Julie closed her locker. She wanted to get back home and wasn't looking forward to fighting. She started to walk away from there, but someone tripped her, making her fall to the ground.
"What is wrong with you?" Julie had never raised her voice before that. She stood up while Natalie's friends laughed at her. Natalie, who was used to Julie's demure nature, had not expected her to talk back.
"You. You are the eyesore of this place and the more I see you, the more I hate you," said Natalie. She looked at her friends and said, "Drag her to the projector's room."
Before Julie could escape, something hard hit her head, knocking her unconscious for a few minutes. When she regained consciousness, she found her hands bound to the chair and in a dark room with just the projector running.
Natalie walked to stand in front of her vision with a relaxed expression on her face.
It was the first time Julie realized how messed up her friend had turned over a couple of months. Opening her mouth, she screamed to get the attention of the students or teachers.
Quickly one of the girls pushed a cloth into her mouth, and another tied a handkerchief around her mouth before tying it behind her head. To Julie's luck, someone had heard her scream and knocked on the door.
"What is going on in there?" came a male's voice from outside the room.
Natalie glared at Julie and said, "Let me talk to him." She walked towards the door, opening it. Julie felt her heart beating loudly and tried to make noise.
"What is going on here? This is no place to be practicing for plays and making noise," said the teacher.
"We apologize, Mr. Seymour. We didn't find any other empty rooms. Please let us use this room for a while and we will be sure to be good," Natalie smiled brightly at the teacher who stood outside the room.
"Okay," agreed the teacher and walked away from there. Julie's eyes widened, not knowing why the teacher had left without questioning or entering the room to see what was going on.
"Always trying to be the smartest person in the room, aren't you, Jules?" questioned Natalie, walking back to the backside of the room where Julie was. Julie glared. "Even when we were small you were like this, behaving you were better than me. Trying to make it look like you were prettier than me, but you know what the truth is? You are nothing but weak. Look at you now."
Julie tried to relieve her hands from the ropes, but they were rightly tied to the armrest. She didn't understand how one knock on her head could turn her unconscious.
Natalie then smiled and said, "You are right. Korbyn didn't say anything and I just made that up. If you didn't bring your ugly face in front of me, I would have not done anything to you. Unbind her left hand," she said to one of her companions. "You should have listened to me. I will give you a gift today, Jules." Turning to the other girls, she asked, "Did you get the blade?"
Julie's eyes widened, and she shook her head while making incoherent voices.
"It won't hurt much and I will be careful to not cut too deep," promised Natalie with a continued smile on her face. It was like the person Julie once knew as her friend was long gone, and now all Natalie wanted to do was hurt her.
Coming back to the present, in her dorm, Julie, who sat on her bed writing the details, continued—
'I didn't bleed too much, but I do remember the pain when Natalie ran the sharp blade over my wrist. My mouth muffled, and she stood there smiling at me. I passed out, and when I woke up, I was alone in the room. That week, my parents had gone to visit my relative's house, and by the time they returned home, the little mark on my head had healed, and I hid my scar from their sight.
It wasn't like I hadn't tried to speak about it to the teachers, but that only put me into further trouble. I would suddenly be pushed into small spaced rooms and locked by students who didn't even know me, people I didn't speak to. Thrown things at, made to trip. They listened and did what Natalie said, and it was like the whole place had turned against me. She didn't pull another stunt like that again because I tried to be more careful after that incident.
It was when I decided to wear glasses hoping it would change the way others looked at me. It helped very little, but sometimes even little is enough to be able to breathe.
That's all. Now it is your turn to answer my questions.'
And Julie added a period at the end of her sentence. Now that she had written it down, it felt like some of the demons had escaped from her mind.
Getting out of her bed, she started to get ready for her classes.
When Julie was walking with Melanie outside the building in the afternoon, she noticed Roman looking at her from where he stood. Even though their eyes met, he didn't look away. It was strange how he seemed more familiar when teaching her while he looked aloof right now. When Melanie asked her something, she finally looked away from him.
Simon, who was usually with Roman, noticed him staring at the human girl.
"You are going to scare her, if you keep looking at her like that," remarked Simon, looking back at Roman, who hadn't bothered to shift his gaze even after being pointed.
Roman played with the broken toothpick in his mouth and said, "How fast are the rogues multiplying?"
Simon gave a thoughtful look before answering, "Not much in recent years. Most of them have been eliminated so that they don't cause any threat in exposing us." He then asked, "You seem to have been spending quite some time with her."
Roman pulled out the recent letter he had received from Julie, and he turned it into a thin roll, "Have I?" It was because so far, they had spent time in the library only twice. "I don't think it registered."
"You never had a pupil before, and it has made some of them curious. Not that you don't lend a hand, but because you don't like involving yourself in other's matters,'' hummed Simon, a mischievous smile on his lips.
Pulling out the lighter from his pocket, Roman lit up the letter that he had rolled that started to end from one end to the other. He watched the secret that was written to him catch flame, removing the evidence.
"I thought you already analyzed it," Roman's gaze turned to look at Simon with a lazy expression on his face.
"Mm," Simon nodded his head, "Sometimes burning curiosity can engulf someone. Careful, Rome." When Roman started to walk, he looked perplexed and asked, "Where are you going?"
"To see Dante," replied Roman.
He walked towards the main office where the headmistress' office was located.
Reaching the front of the room, Roman pushed it open and saw Dante sitting behind the desk.
"What brings you here, Rome?" questioned Ms. Dante, her eyes curiously looking at him.
"When was the last time the filtering was done?" Roman questioned her, and he came to stand right in front of her desk.
Filtering was the one way to wipe out the vampires who weren't in the records and did things that didn't follow the ethical code. Rogue vampires were often the ones who were created to cause destruction.
"Probably five years ago," replied Ms. Dante. "Did you find something?"
"There's a rogue who has possibly turned one of the humans into a vampire. A student," responded Roman, and Ms. Dante's eyes narrowed at this information.
The woman then said, "I cannot let any of you go after the rogue because of the protocols, not to mention the arrival of the Elders here and I would prefer all of you unharmed. If you know where this person might be, relay the information to Enoch and he will take care of it."
"I heard about it," said Roman, his gaze turning dark over the mention of the Elders while his face looked calm.
Dante nodded her head. She said, "The blood transfusion process was quicker than we first assumed it to be and it is only a matter of time until it completes. Also, I am glad to hear that you haven't bothered Mrs. Hill to switch the human from your room to the one that turned recently empty," she looked impressed with him.
The corner of Roman's lips pulled up, "What can I say. I didn't want to waste my time on unnecessary things and decided to put my time to better use."
"Donovan will be proud when he meets you," stated Ms. Dante, mentioning one of the Elders' names. She picked up the glass of water that was on the table and took a sip. She said, "Thankfully, there have been no other deaths after the last one. One of the girl's relatives had come here, and Evans got everything covered. Every death causes heavy damage, which is a ripple outside Veteris."
Away from the headmistress' room, Julie and Melanie walked around and outside their Dormitorium. Julie walked to the window of her dorm. She pressed the window, trying to open it.
"What are you doing?" questioned Melanie, wondering what Julie was up to.
"I was wondering if there was a way to open the window," murmured Julie, trying every angle but the window stayed locked.
Usually, by this hour, she often received a response from her letter thief, but today it seemed like he was running late. Or maybe it was because she stood right outside her dorm's window.
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