Starry Days & Sunlit Nights: Volume 1 - Reluctant Blaze

Chapter 2.5 - One-Track Redhead

"So Yumi, I've been thinking it over last night, and I think I've figured out how to find out more about the stuff with the sun and white circle symbols," Kylie began as she sat herself down and unpackaged her meal, completely forgetting about the company she would have been unwelcome in.

"Oh?" Yumi said, willing to listen while she dug into the lunch her mother had packed for her. It was enough positive encouragement for the Scot.

"Remember that pendant I gave you, the one carved from white limestone?"

"Mhm," Yumi answered with a nod before popping a croquette into her mouth with chopsticks.

"It's been mostly the same with the other stuff I've seen that has that emblem. Although they've both been on a lot of bronze stuff, the ones with the sun are usually carved into white limestone or gold—although I couldn't get my hands on any of those ones, while the one with the big white circle is usually on black soapstone or silver. At first I thought they were from different time periods, you know, like some tribal dynasties for the people who lived here way before the city was founded. But why do they contrast each other so much in terms of shape and choice of color? What if they were actually from the same timeline, somewhere around the bronze age; two sides opposing each other?"

"You mean there was some kind of sun tribe, and a moon tribe?" Yumi inquired in an attempt to understand her friend's line of thought.

"Yes and no," Kylie answered. She pulled out her smartphone and showed her friend images of a sun etched onto white limestone and a white circle painted on black soapstone. "They do seem like that, don't they? But that doesn't answer why there are also depictions of crooked lines or a stick figure for those under the sun, or why there are sometimes small shards of crystal or glass on the stuff with the white circle. Maybe there's more to this stuff, like roles in the tribe, or something else, something we can't see. I'm planning on experimenting on some of this stuff by treating them with hot and cold. Maybe that'll reveal something hidden on their surfaces or something."

"You sound excited about this," Yumi noted with a smile, although she was only barely able to follow half of what she said.

"Of course! It'll be a huge breakthrough in my research my hunch is right," Kylie said while tapping on her phone's notepad. "I told some dude holding out a rose about it too. He was weird. Doesn't he know he might hit someone with that thing?"

A man holding out a rose to her? Did she hear that right? If he was trying to flirt with her best friend that way, he wouldn't get anywhere, the poor guy.

While most of the girls and a few guys in the school didn't like getting caught up in Kylie's pace, there had been a good number of young men who tried to approach her. From what she had observed, most of them were really just lusting for her cute face and bouncy body, an infatuation that would be short-lived once they realized that all attempts to woo her would go completely over her head.

Once, an upperclassman had tried to be as direct as possible without having to resort to sexual harassment. He had taken both hands of the redhead while asking her out straight, only to be shut down completely when she offered him the position of pack mule for her next expedition with Yumi.

Yumi looked at her friend, whose mouth was more occupied with scarfing down her second sandwich. The strawberry blonde had known her best friend long enough to know that she legitimately had no idea what the boys wanted out of her, and didn't care to find out. She had always been a person with a one-track mind, not that that was a bad thing either. At least she was very determined with her personal goals.

As for Yumi herself, she had been asked out on numerous occasions as well, but had kindly and politely turned down each one of her suitors. And when they tried to be forceful, she promised them that if they would get involved with her, they would have to accept Kylie being with them all the time. That usually worked, to her relief. It wasn't that she had no interest in the opposite sex—far from it, as she possessed a sizeable collection of romance novels and often enjoyed watching soap operas with her mother—she simply didn't feel that way towards anyone yet, and was not actively looking for relationships either.

As the two ate lunch together, Kylie spoke up again. "Hey Yumi, you heard about those recent "night beast" sightings?"

"'Night beast'?" Yumi repeated in a request for clarification.

"Yeah, the local tabloid says that people have seen more of this huge furry monster the past few nights. Someone even claimed to be a survivor from an alleged attack; he looked pretty messed up in his picture."

"So it's a real danger?"

Kylie shrugged. "Maybe? I dunno. It could just be some escaped zoo animal or someone with an awful sense of humor."

"That doesn't really make it any better."

"Relax, as long as we're all off the streets before it gets really dark or something, we're probably safe. You can get away on your bicycle anyway, so that's not really a big issue."

"I suppose," Yumi said, her mind now preoccupied with both this news of a monster as well as the possible connection her friend had theorized about her pendant.