I skipped into the living room but stopped short when Maho looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Why do you skip in every time? Like every single time." He demanded bossily.
I stopped, nodded understandingly and began to explain to him. "I once loved a guy and we used to skip together. When he died, I decided to skip every time in his memorial."
Maho looked bewildered. "That's the dumbest story I ever heard."
Blue shook his head. "And it's unoriginal. She got it from the Regular Show Cartoon."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." I brushed it off while Maho shook his head and began muttering to himself about how annoying I was and blah blah blah.
I just blew him a kiss in response before skipping over to Snow.
"How are we doing today?" I ask her cheerily.
She looked at me and smiled. "We are doing fine."
Beauty looked over to us. "Yo pregnant or something?"
"Language!" Race barked upon hearing what Beauty said.
She rolled her eyes in response before correcting herself. "Are you pregnant?"
Snow shook her head.
'Then why use we when it's only you?"
Snow shrugs. "Just feel like it."
Lately, Snow, Blue and I have been getting closer. We are almost like the three musketeers. Also, due to severe poke nosing and extreme eavesdropping, I found out some things about my gang members.
Snow, Blue, Les and I are the same age. We are all twenty-one.
Beauty, Icy and Maho are the same age. They are twenty three.
Sugar and Panda are age mates. They are both twenty four.
And Race is the eldest. He's twenty six.
Also, Sugar and Race are dating, Snow has a massive crush on Panda although he doesn't reciprocate her feelings. Blue likes Beauty and he asked her to be his girlfriend. Unfortunately for him, she doesn't like him so she turned him down.
Icy is the most quiet among us all. He is not in a relationship and as far as I've learnt, he doesn't like anyone.
The same goes for Maho, Les and I.
We are as free as a fiddle! Or as a bird.
However it is said.
I sat beside Snow. "Where are the rest?"
The rest being Icy, Sugar and Panda. Just like three weeks ago when I arrived, they weren't around.
"They are out on a mission. An actual one this time around, not just spying and gathering information." She replied.
"Oh. But why isn't everyone going with them? Isn't there a team spirit or something?"
"There is. But this isn't something that requires the whole gang going. The three of them are more than capable in handling it. I'm sure they'd come back reporting success." Blue answered as he sat down next to us, not even bothering to hide the fact that he had been eavesdropping.
"Alright, alright, I understand." I replied before yawning. "Gosh, I'm feeling sleepy. Going to head to bed now."
"You woke up about two hours ago." Blue pointed out. He knows because he was the one that was sent by Race to wake me up.
"Yeah. But you woke me up early."
"This is three pm. That means I woke you up around one. How's that early?"
I scratched my neck sheepishly.
That's true...
But I couldn't just go down like that. I need to fight my losing battle nevertheless.
"Well, I was swimming in my dreams, so I woke up feeling more tired than I was when I slept." I stated.
Blue and Snow rolled their eyes.
"For some reason or the other, you're always an athlete in your dreams while in reality you can hardly move your fork while eating." Snow pointed out.
"Yesterday, you were a football player, the day before yesterday you were a wrestler -"
Maho scoffs in response to the 'wrestler' part. "As if."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Yo jealous, Pine?"
"Language!" Race barked once more.
"As if." Maho repeats in response to my question before lifting his arms and flexing them. "And it's Mahogany." He corrected flatly, both of us ignoring Race.
Because he's the leader, he's more concerned about the rules and regulations of our gang more than the rest of us. And because we are the respectable gang, we have to talk, dress, act and behave like it.
"Lemme see you beat this." He challenged with a smile before kissing both arms and making his muscles twitch several times.
I further narrowed my eyes at him until they were completely closed and I couldn't see anybody or even anything for that matter. "Challenge accepted. I'll show you."
"I bet you will." He mocked back. "And why are your eyes closed?"
"Sincerely, I have no idea."
So I opened my eyes and pointed to my minions.
"Both of you, follow me. We have a conquest to win."
____________________
"Really? Do you have to take it this far?" Blue huffed as he and Snow tried to squeeze in more ice packs.
The thing is, I'm taking up Maho on his challenge. But I can't exercise and suddenly grow muscles between now and evening when I present myself before him.
The three of us had to engage our brains and we eventually agreed on me wearing a tight jumpsuit of mine with several ice packs underneath to make it look like I had bulging muscles.
Well, that's if we position them properly. If not, I'll just look lumpy all over.
At least, this is better than the rocks Blue suggested I pack underneath my clothes, so that I'll look like a mountain when we're done.
Afterwards, I was left shivering all over due to the cold from the ice packs.
"What if they melt? They'll begin to sag." Snow seemed worried.
"Don't worry, nothing will go wrong." I assured her even though I was feeling doubtful myself.
We walked back to the living room, my arms stretched sideways because of the icepacks strapped to every part of my body, apart from my face, neck, feet and hands. I couldn't walk freely and neither could I put my arms down.
I tried to bounce into the room but I was too stiff, so I ended up staggering and looking drunk instead.
I walked straight to Maho and turned sideways before pointing my fingernail so close to his eye, any movement on his or my part could blind him. But he didn't flinch, didn't even blink.
I wasted no time in rubbing it in. "Aha! In your face!"
I was literally in his face.
"I did it!" I jubilated as I moved backwards a little, then turned to face him. Wouldn't want to mistakenly cause him to lose sight in one eye.
"Did what?" He replied in a bored tone.
"I won the challenge!"
"How? I told you to beat these." He pointed to his muscles.
"And I did." I replied, feeling overjoyed at my victory.
He sighed. "Peaches, Pitches, Preaches."
I glared at him for that.
"You can't suddenly grow muscles in like three hours. Even steroids are not that fast. I know you did something, and those two-", He pointed to Snow and Blue who fidgeted under Maho's suspicious stare, "-helped you with it. Now get out of my face and come back when you have the real stuff." Then he made his muscles twitch again, grinning in satisfaction when he caught me staring at them as they shook voluntarily.
By now I was really cold but I tried to cover up my shivering.
I attempted to play it cool. "Whatever. You're just jealous because I was able to get mine faster than you could get yours. How long did it take you? Eighty two years?"
He didn't bother replying to that. Instead he stood up and came closer to me, looking me in the eye all this while.
"You might want to look down." He said calmly.
I frowned a little. What's that supposed to mean?
But still, I looked down all the same.
Whoops.
The ice packs were starting to melt, and the water had streamed down my legs and were starting to form a puddle around my feet.
I looked towards Snow and Blue, who looked back at me. We were all befuddled as to how to handle the situation.
Maho looked like he was trying to hold back a smile. "Looks like your muscles are dripping."
"Yeah... They just came out to say hello. They'll soon go back. That's what they do every evening, you've just never noticed it yet." I babble.
They all looked confused.
"That doesn't make any sense." Maho told us before walking out, leaving me to wallow in self pity at my failed attempt in winning the challenge.
I thanked Snow and Blue for their assistance, rushed to my room and changed my wet clothes. Then I dumped the icepacks somewhere I can't remember now. Will deal with them later.
After that, I curled up on my bed and wrapped myself up in order to generate warmth.
Ah, I feel much better now.
**************************