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Chapter Three: "Opposites Attract"

At one point, she stops yelling, and she listens into the phone with her fist clenched, and 10 seconds later, she hangs up. She doesn't do anything for a few seconds, until she takes a deep breath, and walks away.

"I'll be right back." I said, turning towards Jaiden, and crossing my arms. She nods as I walk away.

...

I follow this girl around in the dark for about 10 minutes, until she reaches a bench that's in front of a wall. She sits down, and she starts crying.

I don't come exactly close to her, but I'm standing near her enough, so that she can kind of see me.

"Hey." I say, trying to get her attention. (a/n: yes, Adrian crosses her arms while saying this, as a matter of fact, they were already crossed.)

She turns towards me, stands up, and takes a deep breath.

"Hey."

"Why are you crying?"

"I wasn't crying, I had something in my eye." She said, stumbling over her words a few times. I could tell that she was definitely lying to me.

"Yeah, I don't buy it." I said, shrugging.

She takes another deep breath.

"It's just that..." Her voice begins to break, and she sounds like she's going to start crying again.

"Sometimes, it just feels like I don't belong here, in this world. The people around me make me feel like I'm unwanted, and that I'm doing everything wrong. They have such high expectations of me, and due to the nature of their expectations, there's literally no possible way for me to meet them without tearing myself apart." She takes another deep breath. "They all want me to be like them, and everything I do is wrong in their eyes. Every step I take is another mistake to them."

I didn't know what to say. I don't know what it's like to go through what she's going through, but I can clearly tell that it's fucking terrible, basically living your life on strings, because toxic people think you're nothing short of a puppet for them.

Something about seeing her so distraught really just did something to me. I mean, I've seen the innocent eyes of some of the people I've saved, but that was different. The way she looks and acts...I just don't know.

"Damn, I'm really sorry that you're going through that. You deserve a lot better." I said. I know that what I said wouldn't help as much as I may have thought that it would, but still.

"Thanks. You know, you're the first person to who's been genuinely nice to me in a long time." She responded, with a positive tone in her voice.

"No problem. Honestly, I don't see why people would mistreat you, you seem like a really nice person."

"Oh please, you're too nice."

"But it's true though."

I'm not usually a social person, I only socialize when I have to, mainly on account of the fact that no matter how much I may seem "tough", or "badass", I absolutely suck at talking to people most of the time.

It was, at that moment, I realised that something was off. I had been looking at this girl for a little bit, while being lost in my thoughts. She was starting to turn a little bit pale, and she looked like she was having a hard time breathing.

"Hey, are you ok?" I asked, increasingly getting worried.

"Yeah, I'm just a little tired." She said, slightly slurring her speech.

"We walked really far away from the gala...plus, she's obviously not feeling well right now." I thought.

I don't know why I was so worried about her. I've been worried about people before, but not like this. Either I don't want her to possibly be going through what I went through in the past, or I've been around so much dysfunction, that I forgot that that's something any decent human being would do.