Kapitel 10: Prelude 2 - Bright-Colored Words, Part 2
"Lauren Cherith…"
Zachary mumbled as he held the piece of paper high up while taking a look at it. It had the name of the girl and her number written on it.
He had spent a good half an hour in his room, sitting near his desk, trying to remember where he had heard that name before. As far as things went, she was just the girl who had her eye on him for quite some time now. And yet, he felt that something was missing, that there was more to her than meets the eye.
It wasn't a thought, it was a fact. Her actions made it so. She might have shared a mentality with him to some extent, but she was much more outward with her feelings and desires than him. That miraculous girl was a perfect fit for an honor-student type of character in a teenage story.
However, it was when he realized that the simple joke was more of a reality than he had originally thought, that it all clicked in his memory.
「There's no way!」
A dazed smile formed around his face.
That girl was the 'Lauren Cherith,' the prize student of his school. She was an American exchange student that enlisted the year before, and, from that brief encounter that day, seemed to have been still in the school considering it was the new year.
As he recalled from the many stories he had once heard about her, she was a three-time award winner of the 'Writing Bee' competition back when she was in elementary school and a two-time award winner of the annual 'Magical Story Jars' contest in middle school. The stories about her ended there, however.
Guessing by the order in which she had won, it seemed that she had yet to win or enlist in any competition after those three prizes. This time it looked like she was aiming higher than ever before, as she wanted to join the new 'Wonderworld Fantasia' competition hosted by Myung, even going as far as getting him as well on the ride.
It was here that he found a peculiar gap in her resolve — at least, from what he knew about it. Judging by her track record, she was a winner and anything but the opposite.
Zachary tried to rack his brain as much as possible to find an answer to his question: Why would she go as far as get him to want to join the competition with her when they will be competing against each other? Why help a rival? Did she think too low of him that he wouldn't surpass her?
「Am I looking too much into this?」
That was the norm for him, to riddle his mind with doubtful thoughts.
"But really…," he mumbled to himself once again, "She really is different."
He placed his palm on his face and sighed deeply.
Each time he thought about it, he realized more how much of a gap there was in the experience and perspective between him and the girl, despite both of them being roughly the same age. He remembered the time he spent thinking of his decision in the station before he ran off to confront the girl, he wanted to remember the feelings he felt, the desire he wanted.
Were they truly genuine?
He knew he felt something, yet he couldn't shake the doubt that it might have been an illusion in his head.
「Can I really change?」
Tired of all the overthinking, he tilted his chair to the left and right, emptying his mind from all the useless assumptions. He moved his torso forward and rested both his elbows on his thighs while keeping his hand as a support for his head. He looked around his room to try and distract himself, but seeing as it was just a library, there was not much to see but books everywhere — and he wasn't in the mood for reading.
But then came the distraction… a dangerous one.
"..."
Zachary's eyes widened with fright.
It was the entrance to his room.
The door was closed.
There wasn't anything particular about a closed-door… if it weren't for the fact that he always kept the door to his room open. As a matter of fact, he preferred to keep all the doors to rooms he frequented to be open at all times, despite his inept nature that would seem to indicate otherwise.
"..."
He stared at the door for quite some time, never to keep his eye off it. And as he did, he felt his chest tighten and his breathing got heavier. His mind was burning with the question of who closed his door.
Just then… as his gaze prolonged for more than it should, the door got closer.
It was an unbelievable sight but… the door, the inanimate object, was moving, and not in the manner of it tilting back and forth due to the wind.
No—
The door, in its closed shut state, moved from its place, disconnecting itself from the wall. It inched closer in a straight path. There was no sound. No hard screech against the wood as it moved, and it was all the more terrifying. Perhaps it was simply Zachary being pulled closer to the door, but that wasn't the case.
The door still moved.
Zachary felt a chill pass through his arm and run down to his spine.
With each passing second, it was getting harder to breathe normally. No matter how hard he tried to slow it down, it just got heavier and faster. He felt a lump in his throat and an itch on his hand.
In an effort to outsmart it — or to prove to himself that this was simply an illusion — he moved backward with his chair, and yet… the door advanced. He tried to stand up but it was then that an immense, terrifying pressure dropped down on him like a boulder.
"Stop…" He averted his gaze.
It kept on its slow march toward Zachary. The closer it got; the bigger in size it seemed. Cracks were starting to appear on the door's wooden surface, however, they were not of decay. They were claw marks, giant, horrifying claw marks carved recklessly onto the door. It was as if a beast lied hidden within and was rattling its cage to escape.
After maintaining silence throughout her movements, it finally made a noise.
*creaaaaaaaaaaaaaak*
The door slightly nudged itself open with a loud and prolonged screech, just enough to show what was behind it. Zachary shifted his gaze back. There was nothing behind it. No hallway. No light. Nothing, but complete darkness.
Zachary held onto his chest. He almost tore his shirt apart from how tight his grip was and how he kept pushing it away. His heartbeat was in a spiral. One moment, it would be the beating of exhaustion, and in another, it would be one beat closer to death.
Looking at that void behind the door, he figured what it was. It was a tale as old as time. Stare long enough into that void and one will be swallowed whole by it, never to see the light again.
But he wasn't going to let that abyss stare back at him.
He did not want that.
He did not want a world of complete darkness. He wanted just the world as it was, the normal world, the bright-colored world.
With no sight or sound, that would be a fate worse than death.
He instantly turned his head away and closed his eyes.
「It's all in your head. It's all in your head. It's all in your head. It's all in your head. It's all in your head. It's all in your head. It's all in your head. It's all in your head. It's all in your head. It's all in your head.」
"..."
Right at that moment…
*RING* *RING*
His hand shivered violently from all the buzzing against his chest.
It was his phone, which he had held onto this entire time. Still, with his body rolled up like a scared little child on the chair, he looked at the phone to see who was calling him at this time.
One glance… one glance at the caller ID was all it took to blow everything away, to break him out of that nightmarish world. He was back to the mundane world, the ridiculous world that he desired for the most at that moment.
|____________|
([Lauren from School])
{[(01524) 1018 2104]}
|¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|
Despite saving her contact with that name, there was only one girl that went by 'Lauren' that Zachary has ever met in his life.
He quickly raised his head back up and looked at the entrance to his room. The door was still closed but it was back to its place. The darkness had disappeared. The silence was cut off by the continuous buzzing of the phone.
Everything felt normal at that moment.
Letting out a huge sigh of relief, he jumped out of his chair, to which he was held captive before, and roamed around the room while keeping the phone ring to itself. He held it up for a brief moment to look at it once again.
「My savior…」
"I've never felt happier before in my life to receive a phone call."
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein