So I read my own author's note for this story and was reminded about the reasons why I write. I love you guys ❤
"Isaac?!"
I pushed my eyelids up, feeling my body being shaken by the shoulders and also the chill that made me realised I was actually lying on the floor.
"Baxter!" I exclaimed as I reached for his arms and he helped me to get up instantly. "What did I do on the floor?!"
"Are you okay?!" He sounded so worried while what I did on the dirty tiles earlier was all I cared about. "We were discussing a case and you just fell off the chair"
I sat myself at the table, looking around the meeting room that Baxter and I were in.
"Yeah, I'm alright" I looked down, fixing my top to get rid of the wrinkles that had started to bother me as soon as I noticed them. "What date is today, Nick?"
Glancing at the time that was wrapped around my wrist, I waited for his answer.
"It's June 29"
There was a hole that just made its depth in my heart, creating a hard thump against my chest when I found out that it had been 3 weeks since my movie hang out with Chae while I took a sleeping pill at 11p.m. on the same day as her funeral in the morning.
The time here was insanely fast compared to my universe! And I started to think if every single day that I spent awake from morning to night would cost me 3 weeks in this universe. I might need to sleep for 24 hours a day just to make sure I didn't waste more time of not sleeping and travelling to see Chae.
"Are you kidding me?!" I asked him, taking the Lisa's phone out from my pocket to recheck the time and date at the moment. "June 29?!"
"Yeah, what's the matter?"
I landed my forehead on my palm, holding it with my elbow on the flat surface in front of me. To be honest, I wouldn't mind if it was just 1 or 2 days but 3 weeks were really time consuming. If it was this fast, I began to doubt my own ability to pull this mission off.
Every investigation would need time and serious concentration apart of full time commitment towards it, and I couldn't do any of those if I kept returning to my world once I woke up from sleep.
I would be wasting time that I couldn't get back.
And Chae didn't have much time left.
"If you are worrying about the case," Nick's voice was heard again. "It's stressing me out too. We don't even make any progress yet"
I brought my head back up, eyes looking at him when I heard something that I never heard before in my entire career.
So I asked him. "What do you mean?"
"It's been 2 months without any lead and we have another 4 cases on stacks"
I frowned this time since 2 months without progress for a homicide case sounded nothing like Detective Lisa Isaac's work. It was almost never for me not to be able to find the holes no matter how cleaned the murder was executed.
Also, the fact that my team still had 4 cases in queue as I was told by Baxter really scared me just like the wrinkled top I was wearing. These two were so terrifying!
Getting up from the chair, I closed all the files on the table as I refused to think about work. "That's alright, Nick. We can continue after lunch"
"Just leave the files, Isaac" He responded. "I still need to assess them"
"It's lunch time?" I denied him. "Come on, Nick. I don't want to eat alone"
I walked away from the table to head to the exit door but Nick's voice stopped me shortly after.
"Isaac, are you alright?"
Turning my body back, I connected our eyes again. "What's with you calling me Isaac so many times?"
I could feel that something was wrong. Nick would only address me like that to greet or in between conversation, not in a repetitive pattern.
But it was him who formed a hard frown on his forehead when I asked that question.
"What should I call you then?"
"My name?" I responded quickly. "My name is Lisa, right?"
His mouth hanged opened slightly, staring at me with the greatest bafflement carved inside his eyes.
"Isaac, nobody here ever calls you with your first name"
"Why not?"
"Because you don't like it? You warned everyone right from the start"
"What?"
I mouthed that word under my breath, thinking about the Lisa here and how she had been doing in this universe.
She was weird. That was all I could say about her so far.
"Do you want to go to the clinic? I mean, you fell off the chair"
"I'm just hungry, Nick. I don't want to go somewhere else"
"But you are not okay"
"Nick," I sighed, leaning against the door frame. "Can we just go?"
"Go where?"
"Huh, you really don't want to have lunch with me?" I pushed my body off the wall as I was ready to leave, alone.
"Isaac, we never have lunch together before" Nick said, blowing another punch of surprise straight to my chest. "You should go to a clinic because you are acting weird"
I stood straight when I just couldn't stop staring at him, feeling how my palms just started to sweat when I curled my fingers in.
"Nick, you are the one who's acting weird" I was getting impatient to something that I knew was the real deal by the way he looked at me; he wasn't lying, and I still tried to deny it. "Stop it. You are my best friend" My breath went heavier second by second as the weight was pushing my eyeballs at the same time. "Get up from there and let's have lunch"
Baxter pushed the chair behind him, grabbing those case files in his grip before he made his way to where I was standing, still staring at him.
"I'm your best friend?" He asked as his voice lowered when he reached me. "What are you talking about, Isaac? Everyone here knows you hate me. You even told me that straight to my face"
Shaking my head, I denied everything. "No, no no. That doesn't make any sense, Nick! I would never hate you!"
"Isaac, you called me slow loser every day-"
"You are my best friend and I freaking love you!"
His eyes widened when I muted him with a sentence that I was sure surprised him right in the guts. I could tell by his facial expression.
I began to question this universe that another Lisa was living in and how she was as an individual, as a person, who called another person a slow loser. Was she a bully at work? Because never my entire life I would ever say bad stuffs to anyone.
Taking a deep breath in, I was ready to ask him a few questions that were crucial to my stay here just to avoid any confusion later on.
"So, you are not my best friend?"
"Yeah"
"Not even a normal friend?"
"Not even that, Isaac" He crossed his arms.
I looked away, eyes wandering around the hallway and looking at other officers who were going out to get some food.
"Lisa Isaac," I asked again. "The best detective in England?"
"You need to beat Hopkins for that title"
I dragged my gaze back at him. "Hopkins? He's the best detective in England?!"
Baxter nodded and I took few steps backwards.
"I'll see you around, Nick"
I didn't even hear what he said to me since I started to run, leaving the police station with my own heartbeat drumming in my ears.
This Lisa had 5 pending cases with no progress made so far and she wasn't even the female Sherlock Holmes she was well known of. And the reason why in her stupid brain that she wore a wrinkled top to work would forever stress me.
I would rather stay at home and lock myself than going out looking like a potato. I spent at least half an hour in front of the mirror just to make sure my hair looked good! I didn't even talk about my clothes yet.
She was absurd!
Standing near the tube door, I noticed how dirty my fingernails were. I had some black dust or just dirts in them, and the Lisa didn't even bother to clean her fingers properly. To add to the worse, my fingernails did look like they were never polished since birth.
I began to bury the idea of Lisa Isaac in this universe; a bully with no OCD, low performing detective with less self maintenance.
Those were nightmares!
It felt like forever since I last took this tube to my favourite stop, Camden Town. I shouldn't have gone there since it would take time and I had to go back to work in time. But I thought about this place as not mine. I didn't need to work here whatsoever.
Plus, the Lisa had been a cunt to Nick all these while. I could at least put her in trouble at work.
I resumed my chase as soon as the tube door slid opened, having a destination and also someone in my brain to focus on despite of the crowds that had started to distract my steps harder than before.
My heart was already shaking from the running and it was tortured even more when I was approaching the only food stall in town that had my favourite.
It was Chae. She was my favourite.
I stood behind another customer who just ordered his food, waiting for him to leave the spot so that I could stand right in front of Chae Richards to watch her cooking, just like I always did whenever I was buying the Yakisoba.
"Hey?" I greeted her as soon as the guy moved away from blocking a beautiful view. "Hi Chae..."
I lifted my hand slightly, giving her a small wave as my eyes were darted at the cute sweat above her upper lip.
But my excitement of seeing her again was replied with a shock expression as if the one I received from Baxter before wasn't enough.
"Hey..." She responded when she ran her eyes away, causing a sad nerve in my sense that I noticed in the way those browns moved.
My Chae Richards would never greet anyone like that. She would never. I had known her for 2 years and she always had a smile on her face. She even had one before when she talked to her customers but it was totally vanished at a hey from me.
Her reaction gave me another scare to be feared of.
Lisa, what did you do to her?!
"Detective? Haven't seen you for weeks!" A voice that wasn't belong to Chae called me, revealing Natalie when I changed my gaze to the other woman. "We thought you didn't want to come here again?"
Feeling the nervousness in my chest, I chuckled.
"What? Why should I?"
"I'm sorry but if you disrespected someone, do expect the same treatment"
Chae grabbed the other chef's forearm instantly. "Nat!"
"What? You wouldn't say anything to her, let me say it for you!"
"Do you want the usual, Lisa?" Chae changed the subject while heating up a wok, probably hoping for my answer so she could distract herself with the cooking even more.
"Chae, can I talk to you?" I gave her a different response since my hunger was thrown away by the worries I was dealing with. "Please?"
She looked at Natalie who still had some annoyance on the face.
"I'm sorry, Lisa but I'm working-"
"I'll wait here then"
"But-"
"6p.m. right? Can I?"
She sighed, still avoiding the eye contact that I had been trying to establish with her.
"But, do you want to eat anything?" She asked me. "Have you eaten?"
My eyes watered when I lost at that question, thinking about this Lisa had disrespected her according to what Natalie just said, probably had hurt her feelings too. Yet, she asked if I had eaten.
Chae still cared for me in whatever shit Lisa had done to her that I knew nothing about.
I cleared my throat to prevent myself from entertaining the sadness that barged into my heart.
"You will cook for me?"
"Yeah, but do you prefer Natalie to do it?"
"No, no no. Please, please cook for me. Please..."
That was when Chae brought her head up and I saw those sparkling, hanging tears in her eyes that reflected what was in mine as well.
"Lisa, are you alright?"
There were worries in her tone when she heard my voice cracked at the end of my sentence.
"I'll just wait for you around here," I gave her a forced smile, and I walked away from her station to give her some space to do the job.
Shoving my hands into the pockets, I walked towards the Regent's Canal since I would love to hear the sound of the water flowing.
My mind was packed with fears and theories of what might have happened after the movie hang out with Chae since my ears caught a piece of information from what Natalie said to me, which was they both hadn't seen me for weeks.
As my fingers were touching an object in the pocket that I recognised just by the shape of it; a cell phone, something hit my memories box about my feelings after I had a short walk with Chae in the underground station that same night.
"She talked about angels and demons. You know those things turn me off!"
So I took my phone out in hurry just to take a quick look on something, which would decide if my guess was right.
"I thought I could just sleep it off, you know?"
I could still hear my own voice and what I said to my best friends about Chae Richards over a year ago while my thumb was looking for her name in the device.
"I was thinking to block her number and never go to the stall again, act like it was a bad date or what"
And my knees began to shake because of the 'unblock' option under Chae's contact name that I was looking at with my blurry eyes.
Lisa?
I swallowed my throat as the trembles had infected both of my arms too.
What the hell is wrong with you?
This world around me that wasn't even mine, falling. They were all falling.
You woke up that morning, and you didn't like Chae anymore?