MEMENTO MORI (a fyolai fanfic)

CHAPTER 2

FROM THE LAST CHAPTER:

...I highly doubted he had anywhere he must attend so I ended up doing something completely irrational.

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FYODOR'S POV:

After our little introduction, I didn't feel like making people acknowledge me so I started to leave. I turned my back to Nikolai but I felt a draft hit my head. My ushanka. It's gone. I felt very annoyed, I turned back around and saw that the white haired boy was fitting it on his head. I couldn't believe it. That brat.

"I really hope you don't mind, your hat looked very comfy!" He said with a small accomplished smile on his face.

"Give it back."

"Well, how about in a little while, you seem really interesting! Let's talk a bit more." He responded in a curious manner, "You know what! Would you like to come over to my house? I just realised that it's quite close by and your house may be very far." He looked directly in my eyes once again, it sort of creeped me out but at the same time I felt my heartbeat going up whenever he looked at me. It was very strange, I was normally never usually sick like this.

He extended his hand out once again and something in my body compelled me to finally accept his hand. His grip strengthened and then started running again while I was being dragged along the cobblestones. I felt people's stares at us but whenever I analysed this boy, I always get the images of birds flying in my head. The way his hair moved from side to side so elegantly, it felt like hypnosis. Granted it wasn't extremely long, it was around 3 inches past his actual head.

"Make sure you hang on tightly! The next couple of turns will be quite sharp!" He called out, looking back to make sure if I was coping, his smile still plastered all over his face while I must've been very panicked.

After a decent 5 minutes or so, we reached a very stained apartment complex. The side walls were thick with grime and god knows whatever bacteria was festering over there. Although I couldn't judge, many apartment complexes were similar to his.

Nikolai pushed through the worn down door. It made an eerie creak and he happily skipped through the hallways forgetting that I was with him. He seemed to be in his own world as he happily trod down some stairs.

"My apartment is basically like the basement. The landlady, Anya, has been renting it out to me for a lower price since I basically share my food with the rats. She must take some sort of pity on a child like me huh?" He giggled after that sentence and he didn't really seem to take into account that he lived in inhabitable conditions.

Nikolai looked through his pockets for a key, which he ended up finding. The door looked quite flimsy and didn't even look like it needed a lock. He unlocked the door and I witnessed the mess on the ground. I stepped in between the free spaces of the floor.

"Oh yeah, it seems I may have forgotten to clean up, I wasn't really expecting guests?" He looked at me with that same grin on his face. It made me feel envious but I didn't know why. How was he able to smile while living in these less than humane conditions.

"Well, if you don't mind, I have to clean up a tiny bit here, it'll only take 5 minutes!" He called out, Nikolai quickly bounced off of each wall picking up pieces of garbage and just shoving them in a different room. I felt a bit annoyed seeing the utter lack of care, so I started picking nearby trash and placing it in the corner of the room so that on my way I'd carry it out with me.

Wait. Why? Why was I doing this? It must be out of pity? Right? Never had I doubted myself this much before. Why did his existence make me question everything? I convinced myself that I cleaned up his main room out of pity for the boy's living conditions as they were similar to mine.