‘Society lives in an endless cycle of recurrence.’
‘Troublesome and riotous behavior is not out of frivolity.’
‘Everything has a reason, be it hate, love, or twisted passion. Even warm feelings can catch fire.’
‘They are all signs of asking for help, even if the owner is unaware of them. They are signs that have gone out of control for feelings that do not accommodate the owner.’
‘Hatred has its causes, whether from a clear, visible, or hidden reason.’
‘Everything has a cause, every action has its result, and every hate and malice has precedents that motivate it.’
‘There is no “either good or evil.” They both live at the same time.’
‘This is our reality, and this is our cycle.’
‘Being dead may be a way… to live.’
‘After all, there are no such feelings…’
‘In a dead person.’
A teen boy stood silently in the crowd, dressed in all black, matching his long black hair. Nobody seemed to pay him any mind; maybe even he was not noticed by anyone, as if not existing at all. His eyes, as cold as ice, glanced behind his shoulder as if being watched.
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The Red Flower
Chapter. 1
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“Many years ago, people witnessed a frightening incident… they said a stranger was standing under a big tree in the middle of the forest… After speaking alone, something happened, blood was all over the place… and the stranger disappeared with only his clothes and blood under that tree…”
“They tried to cut the tree after the terrible incident, but… they couldn’t cut it at all. Days passed, and slowly… a beautiful red flower grew next to the tree…”
“They found out later that the flower radiates and produces a sound like a sad tender tone hummed by someone at night, and because of that, it is widely known till this day…”
“Or so they said~” said a little girl with long light purple hair, swinging her tiny legs back and forth on the black-covered bed.
The other one in the room, sitting on the black bedroom bench beside the window, slowly diverted his attention from the book he was reading to the smiling girl. Sending her an uninterested look, “Oh, yeah? Isn’t that some random story you made up again?”
The girl scrunched up her face a little as if offended. “Hey, this time it’s a real one! There is even a book stating it in…” the girl paused, seeming lost in thought for a moment, which made the black-haired teen blink, “‘in’…?”
“DAVANTE!” She gave a sudden wide smile and happily hopped down from the bed to walk to the teen as she found something interesting to tell him. Davante was still uninterested and calm while waiting for her to say whatever she had to him.
“Let’s play a game!”
Davante suppressed a sigh, and with a still face, he complained, “Again…?” he then proceeded to go along with it as if used to the girl’s shenanigans. “The rules?”
She smiled gently with red eyes that seemed to hold something unfamiliar to Davante. She held her index finger up to state the rules.
“Simple, don’t cheat, okay?”
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“Alright…” Davante stopped in the middle of the path with an expressionless face, standing still and letting people pass by his left and right. “Where do I go now?” after some time of standing and thinking, his legs slowly moved to walk leisurely and aimlessly, ‘Oh, well… let’s take a walk for now.’
He glanced around the busy city, kids running happily and calling for their parents to catch up, friends chatting and laughing together, and busy people walking hurriedly to a meeting or whatnot… an ordinary day in any city, yet Davante felt very foreign standing in it. ‘Nothing has changed since then…’
He wasn’t looking ahead when he suddenly bumped into someone. He calmly looked down to find a groaning teen girl with pinkish, fluffy short hair. Hesitant, he bent down a little to offer his hand to her. “I’m sorry…”
She awkwardly laughed while rubbing her head as if it were a usual thing. “Oh, no, it’s ok! I was just… um!” she awkwardly pushed herself up to stand and hinted out, “I was… I was looking for someone to help me with something…?”
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“I’m so sorry again! Sorry for dragging you with me out of nowhere! It’s just- it’s kind of dangerous to go there alone, and no one was—”
“No problem, I was on my way there anyway.” Davante stretched his hand toward the medium-sized green handbag in the girl’s hands. “Want me to carry this for you?”
The cheery girl blushed a little with a troubled smile. “Oh no, no! It’s not even heavy, so don’t worry!” she carried on with an apologetic smile, walking alongside Davante as if he wasn’t a total stranger. “It’s already enough you’re walking me to the academy! If only my brother could come and get his stuff by himself… can’t be helped, students can’t leave the academy unless on holidays…” she stopped herself from complaining and looked to her side to the taller boy dressed in all black walking beside her, “Do you also have someone you know there? Or perhaps, are you a new student?”
Still looking ahead at the long road with a poker face, Davante answered after a moment of silence, “A game…” he was hoping the girl wouldn’t ask what game he was talking about, simply because it just didn’t make any sense, he was just going along with Emmie’s whims. He tried to change the direction of their conversation when he noticed her confused look his way and was about to ask him to explain further. Even though he wasn’t by any means a talkative person, let alone starting up a conversation with anyone, he decided to try this once. “By the way…” he contemplated shortly, “TDF Academy, was it? What does it stand for?” it was just to change the topic, but it’s not like he wasn’t a little bit puzzled and curious about the name.
The girl, fortunately, forgot about his answer earlier and went along to answer his question with a friendly smile. “Ah, it means ‘The Dark Flower’! It refers to a strange flower under a big tree in the forest inside the campus… rumors say that one of the headmaster’s family members was influenced by that flower. I don’t get why they’d choose such a name for the academy, and my brother was wary of studying there at first because of it, hehe” she laughed to herself at the silly memory of her scared brother, unaware of her escort who fell silent and didn’t give any input to the matter.
‘So… Emmie was right…?’ despite being shocked, his face didn’t move one bit, and just walked silently while looking down and thinking.
“Ah! There it is! The huge gate! TDF Academy!”
He was slightly startled when the girl cheered suddenly beside him to announce their arrival at the academy. Looking up, he was faced with a massive black gate and guards standing around it. He suddenly needed to fix his red scarf around his neck; the wind got a bit chilly for a moment.
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“Where did he go this time?” a white-gloved hand calmly reached for the half-filled glass with a suspicious red liquid, raising it up slowly to have short sips and savor the taste, waiting for the answer from the girl, Emmie.
“Said he wants to have a walk in the city,” came the clear answer from the smiley Emmie, shrugging her shoulders playfully.
“It’s been years since he stepped out of the castle. Why suddenly?” asked the man with light silver-blue hair, casually swirling his drink with his hand.
“Who knows? No one can understand that boy after all~”
When the clock bell rang loud over the silent spacious room, Emmie turned around and opened the luxurious black door, tossing a final playful smile to the man sitting by the long window on a fancy chair. “Well then, I’ll have to go now. See you later, Albern.”
“Have fun with your game, Emmie.”
She stiffened at Albern’s words and his knowing smile just seconds before closing the door. She stood with her back to the closed door and looked down with a serious expression; her smile washed away.
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“Are you sure you don’t want me to show you around the academy?”
“It’s fine,” the girl was still looking at him; Davante decided to add on, “You can go to your brother.”
She hummed and contemplated for a moment; she seemed unsure if it was the right thing to leave the guy alone and go, but she didn’t want to insist and annoy him, so… “Okie~ Thank you again! Bye, bye!”
Davante looked at the girl waving cheerfully at him before disappearing to some building inside the campus. He noticed a tiny thing slowly descending to the ground and looked up at the sky. ‘Snow…’ he was looking at the snow lifelessly before he saw a rather suspicious gate from the corner of his eyes to his left and turned to look at it properly. He slowly walked to the open gate through the bushes and stood just before entering. ‘So this is the forest?’
He slowly walked into the shady forest; he didn’t know his way; he was just walking in a straight line and hoping to be in the right direction. It wasn’t long before he caught sight of a big tree in the middle of a clearing; it was like the forest’s center. It was so noticeable how different that tree was compared to the others that he was sure it was The Tree.
He pushed himself between the trees and bushes and walked to the tree to stand under its shade. He looked up at it in silence. ‘First mission accomplished… now I should just go back…’
He slightly widened his eyes at the sudden flood of memories running into his head all at once. A memory of a familiar woman covering her mouth and stepping back in fear, urging someone to hurry and leave the place. Another memory of his tiny hand reaching lightly to someone in the dark, asking them if they were lonely sitting alone in that small place. Or a memory of a man telling him gently that it was time to return home. Familiar, this place was familiar to him; Davante thought. ‘I know… this place…’
Stoic face looked down at the red flower in complete silence. ‘Was she scheming something…?’ he recalled Emmie’s smile while telling him the game, just as simple as she said it was.
He decided to stop thinking and turned around to leave. ‘Anyway, I’ve done the job. Time to leave.’
He didn’t notice the flower behind radiating just the moment he turned around, so he was startled when a hand grabbed his leg out of nowhere to stop him from leaving. He wasn’t ready for what he saw when he turned to look behind him, back to where the flower was. A corpse, or was it a monster? He wasn’t sure; it was crawling in a pool of blood on the ground while still holding him in place by the grip. He wasn’t even sure if he suddenly fell asleep and started dreaming because everything was black around him; the forest and trees were no longer there. It was too dark to look at whatever was holding his leg. He was frozen in place, even more so when the monster spoke.
“I’ve been waiting…”
The monster-like person moved abruptly and grabbed multiple parts of his body just to get to his face; the bloody monster grabbed his head with two hands and opened its mouth wide enough to bite his whole head.
‘What…’
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Emmie put her cold hand on the closed book, silently sitting on the bedroom bench by the window in the dark room. The night’s gentle breeze forced itself into the room and swayed her long hair as she gently patted the book, the same book a particular teen was reading this morning.
She mumbled to no one in the room.
“Enjoy…”
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The End of CH. 1