After last night's failed mission, I lay on MJ's couch the next morning snoring away from the lack of sleep. I felt a pillow hit me on the face, and I sprung up in a panicked state. Kavin, the perpetrator, asked,
"Are you just going to be sleeping or what?" I take the pillow and hug it, laying my head on it, "Sorry. I slept later than I should've last night."
"Did you see Hana's post on SNS last night?"
"She posted something?", I tried to look for my phone and saw it in between the couch pillows. I went on SNS and clicked on her profile. Thyme is delirious, barely conscious, and she's displaying it to everyone. "She has no shame. This has got to be illegal right? She can't just take someone against their free will?!" I exclaimed.
Kavin walks over to MJ while saying, "It is up to Thyme to press charges if he chooses to." I stood up to walk over to them, MJ still typing away on his computer. "Have you been able to contact Thyme? Why are you so lax at this moment? Your friend was kidnapped." I asked, leaning on MJ's chair.
He shook his head and combed through his hair, "No, I haven't. No one has. If she has an inch of intelligence left, she wouldn't do anything to Thyme. It's basically suicide if you harm a Paramanaantra."
He continues typing on his spyware, numbers, and letters flashed throughout the three monitors–enough to rack my brain trying to understand it all.
I ask, "How are you doing all of this?"
MJ clicks his tongue, "Can you sit? You're distracting me."
I whistle, bringing my arms up in surrender, "Sorry, I'll get out of your hair." MJ continued typing as Kavin sends a smirk my way. I stood next to him and crossed my arms as I asked, "Should we call P'Roslyn or P'Tia?"
"I don't think Thyme would want his mom coming back from Singapore right now," Kavin responded.
"I got it!", MJ exclaims. He hastily twists his chair around, showing his monitors to us. "Her real name is Hana Vidalha Malakarn. Her father is Kristana Malakarn, a financial sector. Kavin, this is why she's so familiar." Malakarn? That doesn't seem familiar to me. I look towards Kavin, who suddenly goes to a bookshelf, "Do you still have the yearbooks?"
"Of what school?"
Kavin takes out a book and flips through the pages, "Remember in primary school, there's a student with that surname."
He continues until he stops at one page and points, "Here." He hands me the yearbook to show MJ. We look at the picture together, "Kornkanok Malakarn.", he reads out. He types the name in his software and an image of her records pops up on the screen. Kavin claps his hands and points at the screen, "I remember her now."
I am still confused as I asked, "You guys knew her from primary school?"
Kavin nodded, "She had a crush on Thyme but, he rejected her. Afterward, she was never seen again."
MJ included, "She even went as far as to change her whole name. It's very suspicious. I'll call Thyme right now." He makes the call, but it's suddenly disconnected. "She must've turned his phone on airplane mode."
"So, what now?" I asked.
No one answers but, my phone vibrates all of a sudden. I hastily take it out to check and discover it's my class's group chat.
Student 1: Where's her bike?
Student 2: Quick let's find it.
I look towards the guys and I show my phone to them, "Gorya. She must be in trouble. I need to go right now." Kavin stops me by grabbing my arm. "Not so fast, you could get hurt."
I attempted to get away from his tight grip, "Let go! I can't leave her to suffer alone."
"And what are you going to do? You're two against 50 or so people.", Kavin declared. I tug my arm from his grasp, infuriated, and he sighs, "We know you're Ren's fiance."
I froze, looking at both of them in shock, "Wh-what?"
MJ quietly observes both of us as he explains, "Ren didn't tell us but, we know from his mom. She explained to us what happened after I called to ask her why Ren left. She swore us to secrecy. I knew it was more than just Mira choosing to live in France."
I shrugged, "It doesn't matter. He's not here so, I don't care about his opinion or any of yours in that matter." I walk towards the elevators and Kavin elevates his tone,
"And what? You get hurt? I don't know what happened between you two but, you are connected to us now. If anything happens to you–"
"I didn't ask for any of this. Ren made his decision just as much as I made mine." MJ's phone dings and he stands, raising his phone, "Stop! Thyme texted me. He said he's on his way to the school."
I walk towards him, "He's awake?"
He nods as he shows me his screen, "So, you shouldn't go, he probably wants a chance to talk to her." They both look at me, wondering what I'll do next, and I take my keys out of my pocket. "Hey-" MJ and Kavin begin to say but, I stop them, raising my palm.
"Relax, I'm not going to do anything, I'm just going home," I explain. They breathe a sigh of relief and I said, "Anyway, thank you for helping. I appreciate it."
Kavin smiles, "We are always here to help."
"You know, you guys are not as bad as I thought. You should use your "powers" for good."
MJ shrugs, "We are not bad people. We care about others. Seriously, we've grown since we were kids Nova."
I chuckle, "Sure, but can I ask you guys to keep this engagement...a secret?"
They both nod, and Kavin says, "No one knows except F4. Thyme wouldn't spread anything either."
"Ok."
...
Getting a nice amount of sleep after a long day was good for my soul, my body, and my mind. My stomach churned at the sight of the school, as I walked closer and closer. I called Gorya before I went to bed and she filled me in on the details...how she spent the night at Thyme's house. She never heard the end of it from me.
The first thing I see is Hana. She walked fast out of there and we met eye contact, stopping in front of me. I eyed her as she avoided meeting my eyes.
"Don't show yourself here ever again. Not in front of me or Gorya." I say with so much disdain I can muster. She gulps, "I'm sorry." As soon as she said that, she briskly walked away. Unfortunately for her, I am not a very forgiving person.
After I took all the things that I needed from my locker, I made my way to the cafeteria. Gorya sat by herself, sipping on a Lactosoy, looking a little depressed. I sped up and popped up behind her, startling her.
"You can't do that."
I laugh and sat next to her, "How are you holding up?" I pointed at her bruise on the cheek, "That's a cool bruise you got there."
She looks at the milk box and shrugs, "She gave this to me with a sorry note."
I look at the note on the box and asked, "That's it?"
"At least I got closure from her. I don't care about the rest."
"I guess," I muttered. I went to sling my backpack onto the chair and, as if someone called them–Jane's minions came up to us at the table. I scowl as Gorya sighs, "Hey, I don't want to fight with you anymore." One of them stammers. "We're not here to fight. We just want to-" but stops as if the words are challenging to say. I make a circle with my right hand, "Go on..."
"We just want to-" she nudges her friend's arm.
Gorya stands up and sips on her drink when all of a sudden, Thyme is at her side out of nowhere, draping his arm on her shoulder. Gorya likes at him surprised, as I stifle my laugh. The cafeteria was looking at all of us, with Thyme and Gorya in the center of attention.
Thyme asks, "Are you here to mess with my girlfriend?" My eyes widen as everyone whispers amongst themselves. The girls screamed,
"Girlfriend?!"
I need to film this. I make my way to stand in front of Thyme and take out my phone and start recording. Gorya shakes her head at me firmly and mouths, "Cut it out." I continue to record and giggle as Thyme declares, "No one should have any problems with Gorya from now on. If anyone has a problem with my girlfriend, you have a problem with me."
The girls scream even more, "Ahhh! You snake!
Gorya ignores them as she yells at Thyme, "Hey, stop making things up. People will misunderstand."
Thyme asks, "Making things up?"
"Yesterday, I asked you to be my girlfriend, and you said yes. Don't you remember?"
Gorya shook her head and he explained, "While you were sleeping, I asked you to be my girlfriend and you said, "Mhm"." I burst into laughter and Thyme, Gorya, as well as everyone else, look at me.
"I am sorry."
I motion my hand to Thyme and say, "Please, carry on."
Thyme shakes his head as he faces Gorya, "And that wasn't all you did." Gorya gets scared as she hugs herself, "Did you do something to me?"
"What? No, it just...never mind.", dismissing his train of thought. "You did something to me!" Gorya yells as she hits Thyme with all her might. He cowers back trying to get her to stop, while I need to get paid for my camera skills–capturing all of this.
"Seems like you two, have gotten into more trouble while I was gone?", a voice so present, that everyone goes silent– a voice that I recognize. "Ren!" MJ and Kavin call from up above. I turn immediately and point my camera up to the patio to see Ren in all his glory, sitting on the railing. Gorya and Thyme stop they're bickering. I put my phone down as Ren says, "I've been gone for a while, and the school is just as chaotic as before." He never met my gaze as he looked at Gorya and Thyme. My hands started to get clammy and my stomach was sick with butterflies as I thought, oh boy.
Instead of facing him, out of embarrassment, I leave the cafeteria all by myself–sneaking past people as they paid attention to Ren. I lean onto the wall, just behind the doors of the entrance. As students walk by, they gave me weird looks. After catching my breath, I turn to sneak a look through the doors and see Ren speaking to Gorya now, with his hand near her face. Confusion overwhelms me as I watch Ren touching my best friend's hair. Was it a mixture of anger? Jealousy? I couldn't tell, but I didn't want to feel these things.
A group of girls stood in front of me talking about Ren's return. I eavesdrop and one of them says, "I heard that he and Mira broke up, that's why he returned."
"No way, he was loyal to her for years. He never dated anyone else but her."
"Why else would he be here? As far as I know, the malpractice case against the medical center settled."
"Do you think they broke up?"
"Must be. Oh well, it means I have a chance with him this time."
The girls giggle amongst themselves. I frown at them but they walk away before I could contribute. Of course, they'd only think of him as an item and not a person.
F4 walks out and I quickly hid by turning my back to them, facing away to the side. I hid my face behind my long black hair. However, they quickly walked by without a glance. Thyme says as they walked, "How was France?" I turned my head a little to see Ren's back profile, as they continued their way out of the school. My heart picked up a little as I watched, losing control over the sense of longing I feel after not seeing him for weeks.
If he and Mira are over... My memory reverts to the scene with Gorya and Ren.
He likes...
Gorya walks out soon after them and hooks her arm on my shoulder. "Hey, you look like you've seen a ghost...what's wrong?" I cover her hand with my left hand and say, "Oh, that was nothing."
"Did you see Ren? I was trying to find you but-"
"Yeah, I saw him. He was leaving so I couldn't talk to him." I interrupt. I un-hook myself from her arm, "Let's go to class? We're about to be late." I couldn't explain why I was suddenly awkward around her, I wish I wasn't. I picked up the pace, leaving Gorya to walk behind–watching me.
...
Note:
Thank you so much for 6K reads, and for voting for every chapter! I appreciate current readers and new ones are always welcome :)
I would like to preface that I only post two chapters a week. I would like to post more but, I need time to edit and write the chapters (writing takes a while for me hehe). I sometimes change plot points and take out dialogue even when I am ready to post. I would like to ask for patience, I know it's incredibly annoying to wait for the next chapters. Thank you as always, for supporting this story!
I'll let you decide since a few have commented about posting (you haven't been ignored! I just wanted to have a post where we can talk about it, so everyone can see) Do you guys want one post a week with 2 chapters included or post twice a week but only 1 chapter each–x1 beginning of the week and x1 towards the end (So it's more spread out). Would love to hear your preference!
Dani :)