Paint Me as Villain ✔

Four

✦ ✧ ✦

For more than four years, Ady didn't talk to Mir after their fight. And for the last two years, Ady hadn't even seen Mir, because he moved to a new school.

Adélard didn't know what he would be able to offer the devil in return for his wish, he didn't even know exactly what kind of wish it was.

So, having miraculously found the right number in his phone--hoping that this number had not changed--with a doomed emptiness in his thoughts, Ady stood in the middle of a dark street and listened, listened, listened to the painful beeps, but only heard how often his heart was pounding in his chest. Even the fresh air couldn't calm him down.

"Mir?" Ady whispered, uncertain, when someone finally picked up. The echoes of music, not in rhyme with the heart, hummed on the other side.

"And who did you call?" Praejis's voice sounded friendly, bored, and lazy through the music. Not as detached and dry as Ady was used to. For a moment, Adélard even worried that another person was talking to him. "If your dad needs something from his lawyers, I don't..."

"No. No, it's me. I need your advice. Right now."

There was silence. And then, Ady could have sworn, he heard Mir's voice change from a smile. A long-awaited, smug, real smile.

"I'm listening to you, Adélard."

🕷

Adélard was convinced he'd stepped into hell.

Arriving at the address that Mir mentioned, Ady found himself in an abandoned alley, with no lights, only a rusty metal door leading to the basement of an old building. No sign. No mark. Silence and night.

Darkness.

What am I doing here? Adélard was ready to believe he'd got lost or Mir had laughed at him, telling Ady to get lost like this, but the darkness of hell hung over Adélard only until he entered. Only until he pushed the rusty door open, walked down the broken concrete steps, and opened another door at the bottom.

The music hit his ears. Ady suddenly found himself standing in a nightclub that seemed to have grown out of nothing. Neon lights flashed everywhere, mingled with drunken voices and a popular song, which contagious rhythm was now pounding not just in Ady's ear, but in his very heart. As if stunned, Adélard froze. Half an hour ago, having run out of the graceful theater, angry and anxious, but still pushing himself into the image of a courteous person who wasn't supposed to be wayward and have fun, Adélard now felt like a fish that had been thrown on the sand and was drying up in the sun. Ady didn't even realize how he, trying not to disturb anyone, just to squeeze into a quieter corner, found himself in the very center of the dance floor.

Lights.

Laughter.

The heat of the crowd swaying to the rhythm of the song, the smell of hookahs and alcohol, and the carefree joy, joy, joy on every face around his...Now it seemed to Ady that he himself had been the one dead in his soul, not Praejis. Because Ady didn't feel any joy. No, just loneliness and disappointment in his fate.

🕷

When Adélard finally made his way through the crowd, toward the more or less empty place by the stairs leading to the second floor with VIP tables, he was already sweating. Sweating either from the hot club air, or from the emotions he tried to suppress, or from the euphoric freedom--which Ady did not allow himself in public--reigning over the club, but his head began to buzz. And because of that buzzing head of his, Ady almost collided with Mir, when Mir was slowly descending the stairs.