The Numbers on Our Arms

Chapter 22

Remi stepped outside of Blyke's room and into the corridor beyond. Quickly, she walked over to John's room and knocked on the door. John answered.

"What do you want?" he questioned, frowning and crossing his arms over his chest.

"I'm going to mediate between you and Blyke," she replied with a quick smile before she grabbed his wrist and began to drag him out.

"What?" He ripped his wrist out of her grasp. "Why can't you just ask me first? Maybe I'm behind on homework?"

"You two are rooming together and still don't trust each other. I think you should talk it out and explain what happened to him."

"And what about him?" he asked.

"I think you can imagine his side," she said.

He followed her as she took the few metres back to Blyke's room and walked in to take back her seat on his bed.

John took a few steps inside before he stopped, unsure of what to do under Blyke's heavy glare.

"Why did you go get him?" Blyke mouthed to Remi.

"You two are roommates," she mouthed back. "Do you honestly want to live like this forever?"

"Um... Remi said I should come and explain my side to you," he replied. "or well, maybe more of what happened leading up to it."

Blyke nodded with his arms crossed over his chest and deep scowl etched into his face. "Go on."

"So, I enrolled into Wellston as a cripple. I didn't want to use my ability then – it wasn't the first time something like this had happened. I also thought that Wellston would be more academics focused than other schools, but I quickly turned out to be wrong about, as you can imagine. However, I quickly made friends with Seraphina, so everything was going fine up until a year later."

"It all fell apart at the same time: Seraphina got suspended, Isen started stalking me and Arlo befriended me."

"Isen did what?" Blyke exclaimed. Then he cleared his throat. "I mean I have seem him do it before." He glanced to the side of his room. "In fact, I might remember him doing it to you where he had pulled out old photos of you."

"Well, it definitely felt like stalking in retrospect. He questioned me about my personal life and background for a newspaper article that never came out and started following me around the school, doing weird stuff he wouldn't have done before. And eventually, he became scared of me. It was very annoying. He kept poking into my personal life that didn't have anything to do with him."

"Oh..." Remi glanced away from him. "I didn't realise how upsetting that would be."

"Why are you feeling guilty about it?" Blyke asked to her. "You didn't ask him to do it, right?"

"We got reports from Isen about you, John. I... It was a real invasion of privacy." She stroked her arm nervously.

"Don't worry about that. He did it a long time before you asked about me," he replied. "However, it turned out to be all organised by Arlo. He always said that he didn't want to be friend with a cripple, but he acted the opposite of that. So I trusted him to go 'run errands' but instead, he dragged me out to a Turf War's location to beat me up as I was a cripple who was acting in my place. It was humiliating to have that trust thrown in my face after I had been warned about him so many times.

"It broke me, so I beat them up. I told Arlo that he would still be King because I never wanted the position when I enter Wellston – I never should have had that position – as long as he didn't bother me again. But then Sera lost her ability so I asked him to help, but he refused because 'I could do it myself'. Which I could and I get that, but I also didn't think it was that far out of his reach. He stopped when Sera asked him to not help her.

"Then Zeke attacked Seraphina and I, and that's how the Joker thing started. Originally, I went against people I was irritated but Arlo refused to 'look' for her so I went looking myself. After looking for so long, I had to get abilities, specifically Isen's as I needed to see further, and Cecile helped me. Eventually, I did find her, or technically, where she was because Arlo had lied and he actually was looking for her. I had worried and stressed out that I would find her dead or hospitalised but instead, he lied again. Then I-."

"What about Juni?" Remi asked.

"Who's that?" John replied, raising an eyebrow.

"Mid-tier with green hair in buns."

"Oh right, she was the one who wrote the article on Sera that revealed her ability loss. For 'fun' or whatever." He took a deep breath. "Then I planned to go up the hierarchy to make sure to break it. I included Cecile so no one suspected we were working together. Between Cecile and you Remi, Arlo did 'apologise' – it was very fake to me. I don't know if he actually meant it or not even now.

"Arlo wasn't supposed to jump in that fight, but the overall thing shorter. I won so the hierarchy should have been destroyed, but of course, the school decided to take the opposite fucking message."

Remi nodded at that part. She had always wondered if the fake Jokers were what John intended or unintended. Both seemed to fit.

"Everything was supposed to fade in the background, but Arlo had made Sera see the fight. I should have told her earlier – I had so many opportunities to tell her but I dismissed every one of them. It's my fault. However, losing her isolated me form everyone else – I was barely sleeping with nightmares every night and my brain magnified the paranoia over everything. Then Isen fucking revealed that I was Joker and everything got bad.

"The other day, I mentioned Zeke. I still have no clue how it started because before this, I thought Zeke would be the last student who I should trust. But somehow he weaselled his way into my life, and then figured out what made my paranoia tick. If he wanted me to do something, he would tell me something to make it my enemy in my head, though it was hopefully only successful because he mostly targeted the Safe House.

"I'm sorry for what I did. It was wrong and it hurt a lot of people," he finished off, clutching at his shirt.

"I'm sorry for not doing anything sooner," Remi replied.

Blyke stared at Remi open-mouthed. She looked to him with a pointed look and he fiddled with his fingers.

"Um... So I don't understand why? I tried to be friends with you, protect you. You were my roommate and I tried. You threw it in my face," he said through his teeth. "Why?"

"Arlo." He didn't meet his eyes. "It wasn't the first time I had been stabbed in the back by a friend. By then, the only person I could trust was Seraphina. I had been friend with her for over a year at that point and she had never done anything like that. It didn't help that from your point of view would be that I was weak and I didn't feel comfortable with you as a high-tier wanting to be my friend at that point. I thought it would turn out like Arlo did."

Blyke nodded. "I'm sorry if I have a hard time believing that. It's just the opposite of who I have known of Arlo – or at least what I expected of him."

"I get that. Everyone except me and Sera seemed to be under a different impression from him."

He met Remi's eyes again. "I'm also sorry for judging you based on... nothing?"

"You don't have to apologise," she replied.

"I want to start over. At least, so far."

A/N: How many times has John explained this by now?

I've started writing this again as I'm going into exams. Technically, there's currently a chapter of about 200 words because I cut out a scene. I may write in the necessary part in again, but I wanted to go along and write the romance more.

Thank you for reading this. Please share your thoughts in the comments.