Bad Bleed | ✔️

Fourteen// Him:

My dad left shortly after my birth. He just ran, I don't know where to, leaving my mother with one two-year-old and one two-day-old. Maybe he was scared, worried that I wasn't normal like the others. He's the only male figure in my life who I can agree showed some level of weakness, but even then I don't know if he was ever broken to the point of tears. Everyone else: the leaders, the doctors, the teachers, my combat trainer, Ian, they all seem untouchable, never broken.

And here lies the body of a boy who represents the opposite of that ...

I can barely keep up with him as he continues his angry trail through our Division. He walks us to a fancier block, with nicer looking apartments - the kind of area reserved for people with the time, those who really matter. Our city is planned out so that the capital is divided into four. Each Division forms part of it, the most elite houses and members are the ones that find their way into its center. This block suggests that we must be getting closer to the capital.

He hurries into a lift and I watch him enter through the windows embedded in the door frame. From here I can barely see him click the number 23 out of all the other options. I quickly scurry to the side, hiding myself behind a potted plant so he can't see me through the transparent elevator doors. When I'm confident he isn't on this floor anymore I walk into the lift and punch the same number into the system all too eagerly.

'Is this not what you people call stalking?' the disembodied voice in my skull which may as well be my conscience chimes in.

"You could call it that, sure, but if you can see what's going on in there then you know why I'm doing this. I want to see it."

'You're going to be found out,' she warns me.

"For both our sakes I hope this is just you being paranoid and difficult," I retort, the upward movement of the elevator causing a slight disorientation of my senses, leaving my insides feeling inclined to pull away from me.

'I think he's more aware of your presence than he's letting on,' she warns me, but it's already too late.

The lift slows to a stop, the glass doors opening up to reveal one very pissed off boy.

"You couldn't have said that before I got in the lift?" I whisper dryly, my eyes wide as I stare directly into the face of Kai Dassin.

The boy who knows.

My mouth opens as if it has some grand plan, some amazing string of words that can justify my presence and maybe work a smile out of him, but nope ... I got nothing, so my lips close again.

"What the fuck is wrong with you," he seethes, his voice barely surpassing the volume of a whisper.

I stand dumbstruck and unable to really think, let alone speak. My heart beats angrily in my chest, pounding an over-emphasized rhythm into my system as if I don't know that a heart goes lub-dub, lub-dub and a cow goes moo.

It should be easy to come up with something ... anything, but nah! His bloodshot eyes stare into my own, the after-bite of his tears ringing loud and true in my ear drums. His orbs burrow so deeply into me that I fear he could pull out all the words I can't seem to say straight from my mind and out through my eye-holes, forget my mouth.

It looks like there's a war in his oculars and the crystalline blue is losing. There's so much emotion in his eyes. Too much emotion and it hurts just looking in. I want to say something. I should say something. I know that this pause I'm sitting in is the exact moment in which I should be saying it, but I'm just cotton mouthed.

"You shouldn't even be here," he sighs and his voice cracks unattractively and I flinch at the sound.

There isn't a whisper of the strong, happy boy I looked in on, or even the icy one I sat next to on the very same day. This just isn't him.

"Why are you here?" he whispers, his voice dropping an octave as a sliver of composure slips into his stance.

His shoulders broaden as he lifts himself up, gaining a little more height over me as though there's a tiny AI slowly fixing whatever it is that's broken inside of him.

"I'm sorry," a choppy, breathy voice croaks into the atmosphere and I'd hate to think that it's me.

There's nothing else to say.

"How are you here? This just isn't fair," he mumbles, his pink lips sewing themselves together, pausing for one last glance at me and then he just walks away, pulling his hood up as he goes.

The elevator doors choose that moment to close and I choose that moment to stick my hand out, stunting their plans.

"Wait, Kai!" I yelp, his name sounding so awkward in my mouth, like it shouldn't really be legal especially since I'm saying it with him in the room.

He stops, but it isn't a smooth movement. It's unsure and clumsy like he isn't certain he should even be considering this. And then he turns around slowly. His eyes find their way back to my profile sticking for a moment on my brows and I wonder if it's because of the new change there. I shaved a slit into my left brow, splitting it into two sections which will apparently never grow back. It isn't much. It's not a tattoo or a skin stamp or anything else like that, but it's something.

"I never got to thank you ... for what you did for me, you kind of left before I could," I whisper and I realise that my chest is heaving, taking in as much oxygen as possible.

"It's good you said it today then seeing as I'll be gone by tomorrow and you'll still be here ... escaping the fate we were meant to share. Just my luck right?"

"Look I get it. You're scared, I was too and to some extent I still am, but I didn't really choose this. It just happened for me."

He nods his head in a manner that's more sarcastic rather than an indication of understanding.

"Don't you worry about me being scared of anything, death doesn't scare me. What scares me is how little I managed to do with the time I had before it, but rest assured I'm happy for you," he adds, offering me a small smile, a pretty one and under different circumstances I would've loved it.

He pairs it with an unblinking gaze that forces me to look down more out of shame than anything else. I stare at my hands, noting how tightly I'm clenching them and it dawns on me that if I squeeze any harder I might just break something. When I look up again he's long gone, leaving me with just the image of his back running away from my front.

Him and his messy mop of brown hair.

Him and his bloodshot eyes.

Him and his lips that tear apart all the work I've done to stop my guilt.

Him and the tether that tied our fate together.

"Bye Kai," I whisper to the fancy walls on floor 23.

X X X

A/N
Just curious ... how many of you would've followed him? PHEZONALLY I'm not so sure if I would've 😹👀 ... but maybe you're braver than I am.

Please vote ⭐️ and comment 🗣👀