Guarded Light

The Details ~ Chapter 4

I participate in classes that day, looking forward to an explanation. This might all be explained, or at least, I can finally get a faint idea of what's going on. When the end of day bell finally rings during English, I rush out to the hallway to my locker. I put all of my papers inside, and run to the meeting place. I agreed on meeting Luka out in the front garden of the school. He said it was the best place to talk, since no one ever exits that way. It's also really quiet there, so that when he talks, I can hear him. He told me to take a pencil and a notebook or something to take notes on. If this is so complicated that I need to take notes, then this must be really complicated. I sit on one of the benches and wait. I brought a book with me as well, so I take it out and start to read it. It's nice out here. The weather was cloudy though. I find cloudy skies to be the worst kind of weather, other than sun. It's like a halfway between sun and rain. The breeze pushes past me, and it moves my hair into my face. I hear footsteps, so I look up. Luka waves at me, "Hello again. I see you came." I nodded. He sat on the bench next to me. "You ready for a full scale lecture that might be interesting?" I shrug, "As ready as I'll ever be. Go ahead and explain. I'm tired of being in the dark." I put away my book and look at him. "Here's an explanation for you." Luka grabs his bag and takes out a piece of paper and starts to sketch. "The idea is that everyone here in Heartace is stuck here, and has a soulmate somewhere in the town. The people are stuck in the town until the found their match." He pushes his glasses up, "If they try to leave, they get knocked out. Also, once a person turns eighteen and haven't found their match, the enter a permanent coma. Anyway, those are the rules. These-" He points to his sketch, "-Are the 'signs.'" As he finishes up his sketch, I scribble down notes. He continues, "The major tell, as I'm sure you've noticed, is the glow." He points to my chest, "Eventually, once you meet the right person, you start to connect with them. After that, you gain 'intense' emotions for the person, emotions like want or desire." He uses his pencil as a pointer, and he points to one of the sketches on his page, "It's just a sketch of one of my friends, I asked if I could use them as an example." He points to his drawing. "This was their first day. Annywaay... In this drawing, The 'Starter' is the blue girl. 'Starter' is a term for the person who glows first, as 'Ender' is the person who glows second. She starts to glow after a little bit of being near the red guy. The glow gives of a wave of emotions the Starter has for the Ender. The Ender receives all of the Starters emotions, and they have to accept them, but it's not usually immediate. Once the Ender does accept the emotions, they glow as well. That's the most of it, do you understand?" I nod again. "Alright, I only have a few more pieces of info. The first being that, although they might glow, it doesn't mean the Ender fully accepted the Starters feelings. They might still be thinking, so, it means they don't accept the Starter. The distance away from the Starter you have to be before you glow increases every day until you fully accept the Starter. It's like a punishment as to not accepting your soulmate. Second. The glow continues after acceptance, only it's optional. If the couple wants to glow, the original Starter and Ender follow the same process as before. And finally, you are roped into all of this. These rules apply to you as well. Just because you moved here does not mean you are exempt from it. Got all that?" "Yes. Thanks for the explanation. I just have one question." "Fire away." I start to blush. As far as I know, this is his own business and I shouldn't be meddling, but, "Why do you think you are connected to that bully?" Luka looks down. "I mean, you started it, right? Why?" He gets up and starts to walk away. I messed up, I shouldn't have asked... but then, he stops, "I used to hate him. It was the same every day." He clenched his fist around his pencil, "He would beat me up over some silly whim. I had no idea why. I wished my day would change from that." Luka turned around to me, "I used to hate how he would be me up. But then, I had a moment to think. I thought, 'Why do I let him still beat me up?' I realized that, he always came back. I didn't want him to leave. That's when I realized that I liked when he always came back. No matter what he did, I didn't want him to leave." He looks off, walks to a bed of flowers and brushes his hand against them. "I didn't realize that I had thought that until two days ago. When he came back two days ago, I just thought, all of these things had been stuffed inside of me, so why do I keep them. I didn't notice what had happened until he glowed too. That was when I realized I'd messed up. I couldn't stay there and look at him, so I ran away. I guess he must have had the same idea, or at least, something close to it." I started to clap, and he looked at me all funny. "Why are you clapping?" I got up, "Because you were willing to tell me everything. Not many people would trust a stranger." He looked at me, "I thought you could be trusted with this. Besides, it's not like you didn't watch that happen. It'd be weird if you didn't know my side of the story." I thought for a moment. Why would he want to tell me that? "I'm sorry, but I have a few more questions." He looked at the ground. I bit my lip, "Why did you hide yesterday?" "I was scared. I didn't think I had actually started that... I didn't want to accept that fact, it scared me to think that I was meant to be with him. I didn't want to be right, so I hid, I guess it didn't matter anyway." Fair enough, I'd be scared to death if that happened to me. "Right. What is his name?" "His name? It's Ryuu. I guess neither of us mentioned that, huh?" He shrugged, "Any other questions?" I think harder this time... I wanted to understand this, but, he starts to glow again. "He hasn't fully accepted it yet huh?" He zipped up his coat and crossed his arms across his chest. "Nope." He laughed anyway, so I started laughing too. "I guess I should go. I don't want to be caught." "Can I walk with you? I don't want to walk home alone again." "Sure, I don't mind." and with that, we left the front garden and the school grounds. After that big explanation, my mind was running. Being told I had no control in my life now upset me. How can people be alright with never being in control of their lives? I know I can't accept that as my fate. To get my mind off of it, I talked with Luka until we reached my dorm, "I'll see you tomorrow." he waved again, and walked away with the sun. I entered the dorm. "Your late home today. Whats up?" There to greet me was Ashi. "Dida join a club? Or did you stay after with a friend?" She went to the thinker pose. "No wait, maybe you were stuck in the school, and a mass apocalypse happened!" She giggled, "Really, why did you stay after school? I would have thought you would have wanted to wait before joining a club." She walked over to the couch and flopped onto it. "I stayed after with a friend, he walked me home." She cheered, "Oh really, who?" I walked over to our new window, and stared outside. "No one really. Just a friend." "Who was it? Come on! Tell me!" She got up and tickled me. "Who was it?!" I fell to to floor, I couldn't stop laughing. "I-I-I ca-an't t-ell y-o-u i-f yo-u a-re tick-ling m-eee!" she stopped, "Who'd ya talk to? I wanna know!" She had a big grin on her face, "Alright, alright. I was talking to Luka. Do you know him?" She sat up and pondered. She shrugged, "Nope, can't say I do. Oh! Right, tonight is game night. Be sure to be back down here before 7:00! We're playing Clue tonight, Simpsons version. I've already called Mrs. White." She ran upstairs to her room. I should get working on homework, but I can't stop thinking. I head upstairs to my room, and start to open the door. It stopped halfway. "Is that what you were doing?" Cara is behind the door. "Is that why you were on the other side of the curtain?" She crawled behind me. I walked over to my desk to sit down. "I know who you were with whilst you were out. What did you talk about with Luka?" I kept my lips shut. I figured I shouldn't talk to Cara about it. "He wanted to chat." Cara shut the door. "I'm sorry, but I need the truth from you. What did you talk about?" I put my bag on my desk. "It was just idle chat." She gripped my wrist. "What you were talking about!?" I got up out of the chair. "Why? I don't have a reason for telling you." She sighed, opened the door, and walked out of the room. "I just wanted to know." I held out my hand, "Wait!" She turned her head slightly. "What?" Why was she so forced about it? That was going to be my question, but then I thought, "How old are you?" She looked at me sadly, "Seventeen." and she walked away. I realized why she wanted to know now. She was almost eighteen, that's why she was so desperate and upset, because she wouldn't be alive much longer. I hope she finds the person in time. Yet, I want to look at the laws in this town. I have a feeling there were no laws against marriage, so I pull my laptop out of my bag. I start up Google Chrome and search 'Heartace Laws'. I clicked on the second website down. The page loaded to show many categories, things like school rules, driving laws, work laws, neighborhood rules. I finally found a tab that said 'church and marriage laws' I read through it, or really, I just skimmed it until I found the laws for marriage. There were a lot of laws for churches, strangely enough, the marriage section though, well, it was barren. It only had one law that states, "Must have proof of ID to fill out a marriage form." That was different. I don't think I've ever seen a law like this for anything other than filling out a driver's license. I check my clock. It flashed the numbers '6:53' I should get downstairs if I want to play Clue with the others. Ashi steps out of her room with the game in her hand. "You ready to play a game? I have to warn you, I'm very good at this game." I nod, "It'll be a good way to get things off of my mind." She looks at me, "Wanna help me set up the game? I need five books and pencils." We walk down the stairs as she talks to me, she gives me a list of things to get. I run back to my room and grab everything except a green Lego wand thingy. Its supposed to represent a radioactive rod they lost. By the time I get downstairs, Ashi already set up the game, Mideli sat next to her. "Who are you playing as? I'm Mrs. White and Mideli is Miss. Scarlet." I pick up the blue character. "Oh, Mrs. Peacock. Nice choice, but in this game, I don't think it matters one way other the other who is who. It just really matters on how well you figure out puzzles." Mideli picked up the purple guy and turned it in her hand, "The only thing we like to do is use every piece except the Professor. We like to think he was murdered as well as the host of the manor." She put the purple guy down on the classified folder. Kais and Cara walk down the stairs. "I'm the Colonel!" Kais stated, she jumped of the stairs at the third step. Cara looked happy again. "I'm Mr. Green then." They sat down and took a book, "Here are the papers, and here is everyone's cards. Remember to mark them on the paper, I don't want what happened last time to happen again." I hear scribbling of pencils on paper, then the shut of the books. "Everyone ready?" Ashi looks around at everyone, "Yeah." She picked up the dice, and rolled. "Lowest goes first." She rolled a four and handed the dice to Cara, and it went in a circle. I got the lowest with snake eyes, and Mideli got the highest with nine. We went in a clockwise motion, and eventually, we figured out there was no point in which the murder occurred. There was only a murder weapon, but there were two murderers. We gave up on starting a new game, the others stayed downstairs, but I retired to my room. I grabbed a book out of my bag and jumped on my bed. I opened the book, but I couldn't concentrate. I fell asleep after I put the book away.