[PREQUEL] (W) ᴜɴᴅᴇʀʟᴀɴᴅ ♗

5| Anti-Adult

His footsteps were heavy when they wanted to be. Although a massive man, his steps in anything but military grade boots would have suggested otherwise.

I thought maybe just maybe it was the different variation of polka-dotted stripes he wore that gave him that power. It was a good guess, until I remembered we weren't written in a book of that genre.

He was quick on his feet. But he usually throttled just a little, making one step on the ground sound like two. The steps sounded faint, almost like someone was wearing house-shoes or business type heels.

Once Leonidas entered a room he wouldn't leave for a couple hours. As routine, and a WEIA commander, he had a lot on his plate already. We were getting closer and closer to completing this long-term mission. The authority circle up in northern headquarters had been having him—and many others like him—overworked. It robbed his focus.

He couldn't have time to walk downstairs to his own house but he could pick me up from the other side of town?

I held that question in my head. Ready to confront him about it later on. But as for now, he was eliminated from being a suspect.

Baby Vivi could have walked. But she preferred to be carried everywhere. The kid didn't walk until it was absolutely necessary. Like running away from her father kicking and screaming when he brings her inside the house after a long day in the garden.

It couldn't have been her.

And besides, despite her small frame, Bravina had been the loudest in the entire house.

You'd hear her come. Whether in the form of a giggle, a light cough, or a cry of annoyance. It couldn't have been her.

But maybe it could have been her mother, Reese. She might have lended me her clothes, but I didn't know whether or not she was inside the house. And besides, she left Daniel on babysitting duty for a reason; she wasn't here.

I kept trying to narrow people down.

Even going as far as suspecting Ayumi had taken a flight from Singapore to the west just to take me back, kicking and screaming. My fingers dropped from my chin. It wasn't an impossible thought, it's not like he hasn't done it before.

The creaking continued behind me.

I whipped my neck back to the front. Bàs' back faces me.

Everything within me was screaming to go and investigate. Now I know I would have been the first person to die in a horror movie, but let's be real, freezing in place would have made you an easy target.

But horror wasn't written in the script.

Or was it?

I spend too much time in my head. This isn't good.

I shut my eyes. Inhaled as much air as I possibly could. I reached my hand in the cook's direction. A palm on my heart, ''I'll come back for you,'' I muttered faintly before pivoting my feet in the other direction.

I counted around 7 steps until I saw a silhouette. I rounded the corner, only to see it grow in the background behind a dying flash of light.

The 5'4 shadow casts over certain parts of the wall and expensive hardwood. Gold accents from those inanimate objects reflect a bundle of gray hair as well as the bright purple apron Georgina—WEIA'S maid—had always worn.

My body, that was once so tense, stilled for a moment.

Just now, as if my brain had ignored it all this time, I heard the sound of squeaking wheels onto the freshly waxed floors.