Chapter 13: Underneath a Single Bed Sheet
After a while, Lynn finally tired herself out. She fell asleep on the carpeted floor, a bottle still firmly wrapped around her arms. Theo shook his head and involuntarily sighed. It was a good thing that he managed to avoid all the things that she had thrown at him. Unfortunately, that also meant that the living room was no covered in broken glass.
That little tantrum of hers only resulted in more things to clean for him.
Theo lifted Lynn up from the floor and settled her down on the couch. He tucked her in with the quilt blanket, before Theo turned off the lights and headed upstairs. As for the mess, well, that was a responsibility best left for future him.
Theo was also quite tired. Today had been quite hectic and full of action. Right now, nothing sounded better than a good night’s sleep. As he made his way to his room, he stopped in front of a door.
It was Lynn’s bedroom.
Previously, she made quite a big deal about it, going on about how it was uninhabitable and what not. Curiosity got the better of him, so he turned the knob, and peeked into the room.
“Wow, she wasn’t exaggerating.” He gawked at the mess inside.
Ramen cups and empty pizza boxes, beer cans and wine bottles. A pile of laundry was haphazardly shoved into a corner of the room. It resembled a towering molehill, and probably measured at least three feet above the ground. Shards of glass littered the carpeted floor. They twinkled with the light that seeped in from the hallway.
Bra and lingerie sporadically appeared all over the room like scraps of newspaper.
The bed did not have any beddings. In fact, for some reason, the mattress was missing. After looking around for a bit, he finally found it. The mattress was propped onto its side, leaning against the wall. There was a stain in the middle of its surface. For a second, he instantly thought of urine, but the most likely scenario was alcohol. God knows how much of the stuff that aunt of his had consumed during the last seven months.
The scene reminded Theo of a dungeon from the Alparline Kingdom. Alparline was a nation in Mistelhan ruled by a despotic king. Its numerous dungeons were famed for their crooked wardens and disease-ridden cells.
He shook his head. Although he knew from past experience that Aunt Lynn wasn’t very meticulous or organized, it seems that his long absence unknowingly caused that little trait of hers to undergo a drastic evolution. The stress of his disappearance, the workload of her new job, he could only begin to imagine how life had been like for her these last seven months.
A bitter expression flashed through his face. Now that he was back, all of this turned into his responsibility. From cleaning, laundry, dishes, and scrubbing toilets, all the household chores with the exception of cooking, had always been his part of the labor. He certainly did not think that little rule would change any time soon.
After grieving over this matter for a few seconds, Theo left the room and closed the door. He picked up a timely call from Shirley, went to the bathroom to relieve himself, before he finally retreated into his bedroom.
To his surprise, unlike the rest of everything else in the house, his room was spotless. More specifically, it had been left perfectly intact, almost identical to the state before his disappearance. He would have happily gushed over his memories from twenty-five years ago, but the fatigue from today was simply too heavy. It hit like a runaway freight train, and Theo collapsed onto his bed with a heavy plop.
He lay there for a second, his face pressed against the mattress, before he began to strip. He took everything off.
In Mistelhan, he had grown used to sleeping with a full set of armor, so honestly speaking, he would have much preferred to sleep with his clothes on. That was his original plan, but then he recalled how he had always slept naked back on Plume.
He wanted to chase that persistent feeling of nostalgia, so he stripped himself completely naked, before he jumped back into bed with a satisfied expression. It was a minor change, but it went a long way towards Theo’s mental recovery.
It did not take long before the heavy bags in his eyes grew too heavy to resist. Theo closed his eyes and drifted into a dreamless sleep. Unfortunately, that did not last long. A few hours later, in the dead of the night, Theo’s eyelids suddenly shot open. His neck twisted, as he turned to face the door.
He heard something. It was faint and sort of muffled, but he definitely heard it.
That little girl didn’t actually sneak into my room, did she? He had made sure to reply to Shirley's call, so hypothetically speaking, she should have no reason to crawl into his bed tonight. Still, he had to admit, a woman’s emotions were quite fickle. Who knows, maybe she was so overwhelmed by loneliness that she actually decided to go ahead with that little late-night escapade of hers.
After thinking for a moment, Theo hurriedly ran to the closet and put on a pair of fresh underwear. He also added an undershirt for good measure.
One second, two seconds, ten seconds passed, before the door creaked open. “Theo, are you asleep?” A quiet whisper filled the room.
To his surprise and slight disappointment, the voice did not belong to Shirley.
“I am now.” Theo blandly responded, before he focused his gaze on the head that peaked in from behind the door.
“Why are you here?” He asked.
“Let’s sleep together.” She spoke straightforwardly, as she entered the room and closed the door behind her. She had changed clothes, and now wore a set of pink tiger pajamas. In her hands was a pillow.
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“Sleep together?” Theo absentmindedly repeated to himself. If he had heard that from any other girl on the planet, then he would have definitely misunderstood. It was too bad that those words had come from his Aunt Lynn.
“What’s the matter with you?” After seeing the weird expression on his face, Lynn couldn’t help but comment. “We sleep together all the time. Don’t be so weird about it.” She did not wait for Theo’s response, as she directly crawled underneath his blanket and forcibly pushed him to one side of the bed, before boldly taking the other.
Theo bitterly laughed. It was true, they had slept together before, but Lynn did not mention the fact that the last time they slept together was when he was thirteen! That was all the way back to when his parents first died. For him, that had been a time of immense grief and suffering. Unless Lynn was by his side, he found it nearly impossible to fall asleep.
He shook his head and decided not to say anything. In the end, he thought her sudden desire was due to a bout of clinginess that aroused as a result of his disappearance. Sort of similar to the way he felt at thirteen. Since she was like this because of him, then so be it. Let her sleep here!
With his silent consent, Lynn pulled the blanket up to her shoulders and wedged herself deeper into the folds of the mattress. The two of them lay side to side, with their faces pointed to the ceiling. Less than three inches separated the two from one another.
Right now, he felt that those three inches were as long as the width of the universe.
Ten minutes of silence went by. Theo found it immensely difficult to go back to sleep. He was too focused, his mind too caught up on her. The sound of light breathing echoed through the room, a certain warmth seeped into the air.
Suddenly, she spoke. “Do you notice it?”
“Notice what?” Theo responded back, his gaze still fixated on the tiny dots in the ceiling.
“The bed sheets.” She paused for a moment. “Don’t they smell like me?”
“Like beer and whiskey?”
“No! Smell it for real. It smells like me doesn’t it?”
He furrowed his brow. He hesitated for a moment, before he brought the blanket up to his nose and sniffed. In truth, he couldn’t really tell. With Lynn right next to him, he did not know whether he was smelling the blanket or her.
Still, now that she had brought it up, he couldn’t help but think, ‘maybe that was the case’. The longer he sniffed, the more convinced he was that Lynn was telling the truth. It did smell like her. It wasn’t the overbearing stench of alcohol or the fragrance of fabric softener. No, it was a feminine scent. Gentle and mild, yet not too tepid.
It smelled like her. It really did smell like Aunt Lynn.
“I slept here a lot.” She quietly explained. “The bedsheets get washed pretty often, but that shouldn’t have stopped the mattress from smelling just a little bit like me, no?”
“But why did you sleep here?” He asked, just as a thought came to his mind, "Is it because your room’s currently an uninhabitable mess… or is it the pee stain on your mattress?”
Her shoulders stiffened for a moment, she turned on her side and stared at him. In the dark, all she could see was the faded outline of his silhouette. “You looked in my room?” She said it not so much as a question, but rather as fact.
“Yeah, I couldn’t help it.” He simply nodded.
“…You really shouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s embarrassing, you know. Also, it wasn’t pee.”
Theo almost laughed out loud. This all came from a girl who had no qualms drinking liters of beer and puking on the front porch. He really did have to wonder what kind of sense of shame she possessed. It was very skewed.
“But that’s only part of the reason why.” Eventually, she continued. “I slept in your room because I missed you, dummy. Isn’t that obvious?”
A long silence filled the room. After a while, Theo nodded. It took him a moment to realize that she couldn’t see him in the dark, so he hurriedly added, “Yeah, I missed you too.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course, there’s no point in lying about it.”
She paused for a moment, before she broke off into a fit of laughter. “If that’s the case, then you really should have come back earlier. You know you missed that little girley’s birthday, right?”
“I know, no need to remind me.” He bitterly stated, but honestly, what could he do? It wasn’t so convenient for him to return all the way from another world, after all. It’s not like he could perfectly time his return either. “At least, I made it back in time for your birthday, didn’t I?”
If he remembered correctly, Lynn’s birthday took place on the fifteenth of May. That was next month.
She silently nodded. In truth, Lynn herself had forgotten all about her birthday. It wasn’t really much of surprise. Considering how hectic everything’s been lately, what with her new job and Theo’s disappearance, she hardly had time for anything else.
Of course, alcohol had a completely different schedule.
As the two continued to converse, time passed and they eventually ran out of topics to discuss. Soon, they entered another round of silence. The sound of howling wind echoed from outside. Theo started nodding off. The fatigue from today really was too much for his current body to handle.
Just before, he could fall back to sleep, Lynn’s voice suddenly interrupted the quiet. “You really won’t tell me what happened?”
He turned his neck towards her. Outside the window, the clouds had parted. A full moon lit up the night sky. Illuminated by the dim moonlight, he saw that her eyes were closed shut, while her face was turned up towards the ceiling.
“I thought we already went over this.”
“Well, that was when I was drunk. I’m a bit sober now, so I thought I’d bring it back up again.” She stated without opening her eyes.
“…” He hesitated for a second. “You won’t believe me even if I do tell you.”
“You don’t know that unless you actually tell me first.” She reasoned.
Still, Theo was having none of that. “I promise. Like what I told Shirley today, I’ll explain everything to you later, eventually. You know I don’t like hiding anything from either of you, so just wait for a while.”
Truthfully, Theo already planned to tell her everything, but there was a certain measure of preparation needed if he wanted to really tell her everything. Theo was not a big fan of the stories where the protagonist hides their secrets from their loved ones. He believed that doing such a thing would only lead to confusion, anger, and feelings of betrayal.
At the same time, Theo also believed that some things were too great of a secret to divulge. At least, not all at once without any proof or preparation. If he wanted to tell Aunt Lynn or Shirley the truth of his circumstances, then he needed sufficient proof to thoroughly convince them.
She turned her head to the side. The two stared at one another for a long while. “Promise?” She suddenly asked. “You’ll really tell me everything, eventually?”
Theo nodded. “I promise.”
Lynn silently nodded. She paused for a moment, before she moved towards him. The distance between the two immediately shrank, and after a bit of maneuvering, Theo’s arm had been transformed into her own personal pillow. With one of her hands placed on his chest, and with her legs entwined with his, the two looked no different from an intimate couple sharing the same bed.
Throughout this time, she did not say a single word.
Even though Theo felt flustered at first and a little bit angsty, as time passed, he gradually calmed down. He breathed out a heavy sigh as he looked down towards her face. A subtle smell of alcohol lingered on his nose, but he did not mind.
Even though their current circumstance appeared very intimate, it neither felt wrong or dirty. There was a slight trace of excitement, yes, but he felt that the current atmosphere was like that of a child and his parent. At the very least, it felt like the relationship between two close siblings. Of course, Theo was just spouting some bullshit on his own. After all, he never did have any siblings, so how the hell would he know what such a relationship felt like?
Seeing Lynn sleeping peacefully by his side, he too felt the beckoning of sleep. Even though his heart thumped somewhat erratically, he eventually drifted off into the land of dreams.