Someone You Knew-After Stellarlune

Chapter 23

Ruy beamed as he said, "I'll change, I promise."

Those four words gave Sophie the energy to smile. The smile was weak, but it was still promising.  Then Ruy did something that made her smile disappear in shock.

The boy took off his addler, revealing his face for the first time. He had light olive skin and black hair. His features were sharp as he smiled at her, but Sophie couldn't smile back. She was too shocked by his eyes.

His eyes were red. Not that blood-shot kind of red, the color of his pupil was red.

Sophie froze, unable to move.

"It's okay to stare," Ruy told her with a kind tone, but his smile vanished.

Sophie wanted to slap herself. As a girl with freaky brown eyes, she knew how it felt when people kept staring at her pupils. It made her feel self-conscious about her looks. She couldn't believe that she was doing the same thing to Ruy.

"I'm s-sorry, I was just a little surprised," Sophie stammered, forcing herself to stop staring.

"It's okay." Ruy told her, but his voice was hurt. He studied her expression as he said, "In case you're wondering, I also don't know why I have red eyes."

He stared at her. Something about the gaze made Sophie's inside feel nauseous and  warm at the same time. Her brain felt like mashed potatoes.

"Mine's brown because the Black Swan modeled my genes from an alicorn." Sophie blurted out without thinking. Her face went red after she realized what she had just said. Why was it so hard to think under his stare?

Ruy laughed as he noticed her embarrassment. "Hey, at least now you know you're not the only one with unique eyes around here."

Sophie nodded, then realized something was off. She scanned the boy's face, wondering why it bothered her so much. Then it clicked. "You look... young."

Ruy frowned, "What do you mean?"

Sophie examined his face. According to the Exillium records Dex had stolen about Ruy, he was supposed to be a year older than Alvar. But the boy in front of her looked too young to be that old. He looked about Fitz's age.

"How old are you?" Sophie asked.

Ruy frowned as he stared at the ceiling, "Honestly? I don't really know. I think I'm about seven-teen, but I lost count years ago."

"Seven-teen?" Sophie nearly yelled. She blushed as she cleared her throat. "Sorry, I thought you were a year older than Alvar."

Thankfully, Ruy didn't ask how she knew that. "I skipped a lot of grades when I was younger, about seven grades, I think. But then I was banished to Exillium, so I lost count of my age."

He shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal. But Sophie's brain was wiring fast, that meant that their age gap had closed significantly. She wondered why she cared. 

Silence suffocated them once again as Ruy continued to lead her somewhere. They soon arrived at a dorm room near the end of the hallway as Ruy opened the door.

"This is your dorm," He told her as he stopped aside to let Sophie in.

The dorm was equivalent to the size of her room back in the Forbidden Cities. All the furniture was black along with the wall. The room had a small bed with a desk and a closet. Sophie was shocked at the good quality of her dorm. She had always imagined the Neverseen rooms to be depressing and small, just like Keefe had described. But this room shattered her stereotype.

As if he was reading her thoughts Ruy said, "Fintan assigned Gisela's son to be in a fake hideout and ordered me, Alvar, Umber, Trix, and Fintan himself to go live there for a couple of months, so that the hideout looked real."