"Alright, you kids be good!" My dad waved while Ikaris and I stood right beside each other to return his farewell.
Upon watching him close the door, I immediately left the room and grabbed my skateboard with a deep sigh of relief.
Ikaris follows right behind me with her hands clasped. "Where do you think you're going?" She asks in a monotoned voice.
I threw her a glare before carelessly walking right pass her to leave. "Outside, where else?"
"Outside better mean just the backyard."
I let out a sound of distaste while walking over to the backdoor to unlock it. "Can you just leave me alone, please?"
"Aren't you tired of breaking the rules?" She sharpens back.
"Aren't you tired of following them?" I ask while walking over to the back door to unlock it. "I mean you have to be since you're so obsessed with everything that I do."
"I'm obsessed? Weren't you the one getting ready to jump out the window for someone you don't even know?" She immediately crosses her arms and continues. "Do I need to remind you that you have a Blood Bond with someone and yet here you are again, getting ready to go o-"
I immediately swung the door shut to cut off her voice. Nothing went across my mind other than the need to get the hell out of that sad educational prison that I shared with my annoying sister.
I ran across the backyard until I stood right before the fence that separated me from the outside world. I took a second to look back and that's when I saw my sister's face on one of the window's. It was fixed into an unimpressed expression and I couldn't help but let out a devilish chuckle as I threw my skateboard onto the other side of the fence and flicked a finger at her before leaving.
I ran on grass and dirt for the first couple of miles, occasionally looking down at my phone to search for skate parks in the area. There was only one, but apparently, it had been closed down several years ago. I decided to go anyway until the dirt below me transitioned into a concrete sidewalk. I skated along the vast suburbia that gradually turned much more tattered and isolated until my phone loudly chimed to let me know I had finally reached my destination.
I nervously swallowed and looked around the dreary neighborhood that had withstood all of its beatings obtained from the lack of population. Nature had really taken over the entire area as thick green foliage had overpowered several homes, even bringing some down to their demise. Grass and vines had overgrown past graffiti-covered walls and broken architecture. Fauna had intertwined with vacant civilization, creating a green desolate area filled with nothing but beautiful flowers and large unbridled plants.
I checked my phone a few times to make sure I was in the right place. It would be quite unfortunate not to be able to even catch a glimpse of the fallen skate park.
I ventured away from the road while maintaining my attention at the digital map that portrayed me as a blue dot. I continued on towards the large plants and chain link fence until the sound of commotion began to emit from a distance.
Curiosity encouraged my hands to fight pass all the remaining foliage until I reached a clearing. The sudden sight before me had rooted me at my place with a flickering gaze and a pounding heart.
My view consisted of a large array of spray painted concrete and graffiti'd ramps. It was enveloped by countless skateboarders that filled the air with the sounds of laughter, tricks being failed and executed, and the never-ending noise of skimming wheels.
Fuck yeah.
I ducked down to enter the small crevice that had been cut open on the chainlink fence. I awkwardly looked around at everyone seemingly lost in their own groups and bubbles so I decided to do the same. I skated along pyramids, wave ramps, and a really cool launch ramp I had never tried before.
It was not until I had skated onto a half pipe is when I saw her fall. Her hair was jet black and visibly silky smooth. It parted down the middle to hug against her naturally freckled cheeks and fierce almond shaped eyes.
"Hey, are you okay!" I quickly rushed towards her and didn't hesitate to lend her a hand.
"You tripped her!" A much tinier voice came running up at us out of nowhere, causing my attention to frantically land on a small child along with another boy and a girl.
"No I didn't!" My face began to redden.
"Yes you did!" The girl on the ground angrily turns back towards me with a hiss.
My heart fell down to my stomach as I stared at all of them in fear. "What?" I inaudibly let out.
The girl who tripped suddenly bursts out laughing and uses my extended arm to get herself up. Her laughter was joined in by the others walking towards us.
"I'm just playing with you." She cracks a devilish smile and suddenly cracks the tension in half.
"You should've seen the look on your face!" A much shorter girl cackled while rushing towards her with a hug barely completing because of her tiny arms.
I let out a nervous chuckle before turning to face the girl that began to speak. "I'm Miyako, but you can call me Miya." She says while giving the tiny girl a couple pats on the head.
I observed how closely they resembled each other as I responded. "I'm Dydan."
She nods and looks down at the tiny child before her. "Well this is my little sister, Hitomi." She suddenly turns to raise a hand towards the other two. "That's Nikolai and that's Atalia."
The first thing I noticed about
Nikolai was how each of his eyes were a different color. One blue and one green, sitting just above his sharp features and a dirty blonde hair. I was only taller than him a few inches but he was much more bulkier than me. I also noticed how talented he was in acting like I didn't exist, skimming past my existence by ignoring my nod and eye contact.
The other girl however; Atalia waved and nonchalantly spoke right after a loud pop of her gum. "What's up." She wore thick lashes that accentuated her dark brown eyes. Her lips were lined with makeup, creating a beautiful gradient to the pinkish tone of her gloss that complimented her dark glowing skin very well.
If I were being honest, all these kids seemed pretty intimidating.
I nervously scratched the back of my neck and gave all of them a shy glance. "So-uh-um, are you okay?" I repeated my concern to Miya.
"Yea." She quietly laughs at me. "Everybody here falls all the time, except maybe for you though."
I widened my eyes at her and quickly shook my head to decline. "Oh no trust me, I fall a lot."
"Really? I saw you hit a couple axle stalls without even flinching." She tilts her head while looking me up and down. "How long have you been skating?"
"Pretty much all my life." I answer truthfully.
"Your board is ugly." Hitomi brutally chirps up at me out of nowhere.
"Hey stop, that's not nice." Miya gently shook her as Hitomi pouted. "Don't mind her, she doesn't have a filter."
I couldn't help but chuckle and nod. "It's alright, I have a little sister without a filter too." I momentarily looked down and tilted my board. "Besides, she's not wrong."
"How did you find this place?" Nikolai abruptly let's out, causing us to draw all our attention to his deep, husky voice that expressed heavy suspicion.
I gulped and did a series of cautious blinks before answering. "Well I kinda just searched it up."
"Searched it up?" His brows furrow tentatively.
"Yeah." I nod awkwardly at his glare. "I just moved here a couple months ago."
"Oh nice, where from?" Miya asks while tucking a strand of her hair back.
"Halyciane." The answer I gave undoubtedly weighed heavily on everyone's chest, as I was left wondering why.
"Halyciane? Oh so you're a rich boy." Atalia blurted out.
"Well I-I don't know, I just moved here-" I was quickly interrupted by Nikolai speaking out once more.
"Gentrification is what closed this park in the first place, to cater to people like you, and now you guys wanna search it up?" His eyes thinned out into a slicing look that was surely unwelcoming. "What a fucking joke." He answers vehemently with a clenched jaw.
"Hey that's enough." Miya winced back at her friends while still maintaining a tone of calmness. She turns back to me and does a small smile. "It was cool meeting you Dydan."
"C-Cool meeting you guys too." I awkwardly dropped my head down and hoped that this entire interaction would just end already.
I watched them leave as they whispered quiet murmurs to themselves. Any normal person probably wouldn't be able to hear what they were saying, but I could.
I have the ability to hear everything.
After that exchange, as well as processing what they were all whispering about, I think it was safe to say that Nikolai definitely doesn't like me, Hitomi thinks my board is ugly, Atalia thinks I'm weird, and Miya thinks I'm cute.
Wait, she thought I was cute!?
Well, shoot, I mean, I think she's pretty cute as well. It just doesn't help that all her friends, including her little sister, seem to hate me. What the heck does gentrification even mean?
I spent the rest of the day skateboarding until I was drenched in sweat, timing everything just right so I could return home without getting in trouble with my parents. Having arrived just in time before dinner, I quickly grabbed a shower and rushed up to my room to protect myself from another one of Ikari's lectures and hopefully get a chance to see Leone.
I gradually leaned further out of my open window while patiently tapping my foot on the floor in anticipation.
I occasionally distracted myself from the wait by tracing the crescent moon with my fingers, admiring the several constellations coming into view, and counting the endless pool of starlight that was just as breathtaking as he was.
I waited for him for hours.
I wondered where he could be.
I wondered what he's doing.
Could he be back at that cliff?
I closed my eyes tightly, honing in on all my senses, hoping to gain some sort of insight into his whereabouts using my abilities.
In the house, I didn't hear him at all, only his dad watching TV and drunkenly crying about something I couldn't transcribe due to his slurring. Even though I was able to smell him, the scent was extremely faint, enough to make me question whether I was actually smelling him or not, just until it began to grow stronger.
Without any careful thought, just as I was preparing to lunge out of my window to drop down on the ground to look for him, there he was.
He was hissing, dragging his right leg on the ground as it hurt to watch his tiny frame struggle to hobble up his porch. My heart dropped once I saw his face. It was much worse than last night. Although he had a band-aid on top of his nose, it wasn't enough to cover the scar on his brow and lip.
"Where were you!?" He was immediately greeted by a roar from his dad the second he entered his house.
"I was-argh!" His voice cracked out as the sound of him being shoved into a wall suddenly succumbed me into anger. "I-I tried to make it home on time but they-" His words bursted into a struggled yelp as if he had just been punched hard in his stomach.
The smell of his blood got stronger, emitting from either a wound being given or reopened which immediately caused me to lunge out from my window to meet the ground in heaving breaths.
"They!? Who's they!?" His father roared and followed it up with another sound of a smack. "You always shift blame on everybody else besides you, you're just like your mother!"
My heart began to pound as fiery roots began to branch uncontrollable aches all throughout my body, enough to make me drop down on my knees with balled up fists.
"Please father, you have to believe me." He sobbed in pain, only to be met once again with another punch that caused him to uncontrollably explode into a haunting scream that coalesced with a cry.
My muscles coiled and tightened as I unsheathed by fangs with a groan. The only thing clouding over my senses now was the need to protect what was mine, which was his blood.
His blood is mine and mine is his.
Without any sense of control and consideration for my surroundings, I quickly took off from the ground and bursted through the thick wooden fence that separated my house from theirs.
"You'll learn when to-" The dad abruptly stops as the loud sound of cracked wood emitted up into the air. "What the hell was that? Stay here and don't move!"
My chest heaved as I got into position to prepare and kill the waste of a man, my claws and fangs prepped into a sterling sheen of blades that were fueled by absolute blood-thirst.
"Now what the hell is going on out here!?" Just before I could've jumped at the man once he got out to face me, an impactful mass of volatile strength immediately tackled me to the side until our bodies hid beneath a thick overgrown bush.
My mouth was immediately covered in silence as a pair of similar glowing eyes met mine in burning fury. I thrashed and fought with hisses and snarls as the man looked around his backyard.
"What the!? What kind of animal did this?" The man exclaimed while stomping back inside the house.
"W-What happened father?" The boy's question is quickly overpowered by an angrier yell.
"Get out of my face!" The man roars. "There is no dinner for you tonight! You let out another word I'll meet you with the belt until you pass out, now go to your room!"
A faint whimper and cry could be heard as the boy scampered up the stairs.
Before I could throw off the body that weighed me down, my mouth was abruptly met with a pouch that effortlessly cut through my fangs. The taste of blood quickly took me out of my bloodthirsty state, the rich vital fluid calming my entire body down.
"I'm telling mom and dad." Ikaris' sharpened out with a tone tainted with pure disdain.
My eyes immediately widened as I got up to follow right after her. "W-Wait Ikaris no!"
"Shh!" She silenced me with a pointer finger against her mouth.
"Ikaris-"
"Shut up, or the man will hear us!" She warns while tip-toeing past the thick pieces of wood that were messily splayed all over the neighbor's lawn.
"Please just-I can fix this!" I whispered as we eventually passed by the cratered fence to head back into our own backyard. "You can't tell them!"
Ikaris immediately turns to me with anger I had only ever witnessed from my mom. "Enough!" Her hands momentarily rise beside her tilted head, practically fuming. "I'm letting them both know, once they get home!"
"Can you just hear me out!? I'm sorry, Ikaris." I pleaded while letting out a series of blinks, feeling nothing but pure guilt inside. "Whatever you do, they can't know-you can't tell them!"
"Try me." Ikaris continued her stride back into the house.
"Y-You know what, you're right, I don't know him!" I frantically blurted out, causing her to suddenly freeze just in front of the door. "But what I do know is that no one deserves to have to go through that much pain. He goes through so..much..pain."
"Dydan-" I quickly interrupted her voice.
"I-I can't help but feel the need to help him-to protect him from all the pain and make sure that he feels it no longer!" My voice cracked as my eyes passionately pierced right into hers with a reddened tint. "M-Maybe it's because of the Blood Bond but I don't care, nobody deserves to go through what he's going through!"
She reluctantly turned back towards me with a deep inhale. "So what are you gonna do about it?"
I sniffed and threw my attention to the side with a clenched jaw. "I promise I'll deal with it, just please don't tell mom and dad."
Her chest visibly rises and falls with a deep breath. "This is your final chance to get yourself together, for the sake of our family."