Secrets, Gossips, and Rumors

Chapter 6

 One year and a half.

One year and a half. Eighteen months. 504 days. Everyday, 504 days, he'd been planning and plotting his revenge. He'd sworn to himself he'd do it. And he had.

A few days had passed since Gos had last visited his sister. Those few days, he'd invested in planning. Planning and perfecting revenge. It wasn't just a promise to himself anymore. It had turned into an obsession of his.

Now, after all his hard work, it was finally complete. All he needed was just one piece of information. And he found it, after lots of planning. He now knew how the Secrecy Chest worked, where it was placed, and where the key was hidden.

All of that hard work for 18 months was worth it. It all paid up.

Everyone had been laughing at him his whole life. Everyone looked down on him. No one took him seriously. Never had anyone ever, not even his own parents, had trusted him to do anything.

They acted more like they were scared. Of him.

Whenever he brought up the topic, it was quickly dismissed. They, his parents, always told him that he was overreacting when he said those things. According to them, he was just being dramatic. He should've just accepted that his sister was the Secret Keeper and move on. It wasn't such a big deal. Just suck it up and go about his life.

Oh, but they didn't know. They didn't understand how it felt like to have a childhood dream taken away. They didn't know what it was like, having hours and hours of practice and effort wasted in a single sentence. Yet they all still judged him, without even understanding his side of the story.

And they all said to be inclusive, empathetic, and understanding.

No. Gos was tired of having other people push him around like that. So, he stood up for himself, being the boss of himself. But according to them, standing up for oneself was wrong.

Either way, Gos's whole business about being Trust Keeper didn't include any of the other members of the Kingdom. It shouldn't have even concerned them. When was the last time they were asked to become the Chosen One? The answer: never.

It was all going to be worth it though. It had to be, and he wasn't going to be taking no as an answer. He spent 18 months planning out in secret, and he would make sure those 12,096 hours wouldn't go to waste. All his hardwork had been wasted before, because of a minor inconvenience. But he would make sure it would never happen to him. Never again.

The last time he felt such power, a burst of energy or great dedication towards something was when... was when Serca stole his title. That was all fine now. Why? All the planning was done. This was where all the real fun begins.

***

Gos spent his last few days cleaning doing all of his tasks.

That even included cleaning the showers. Plus re-cleaning the toilets, and all of that other stuff.

No, he wasn't being dumb. Or doing it out of his happiness for completing his plans of revenge. In fact, the reason was much smarter. Gos decided to clean everything, that way the King couldn't assign any more work for him for that month.

What? Revenge was going to take about a month. Who said it would've only been one day?

He finished his tasks, all very efficiently. If the plan went right, when the plan went right, Gos wouldn't have to clean anything else for the rest of his life. Which made this the last day of cleaning. Good riddance.

In a few days, his plan would be set in motion. After everything went according to plan, Gos would become the Trust Keeper, like he should've been. Never again would he be treated carelessly, or be asked to be a janitor for anyone ever again.

No, it wasn't considered "evil" or "wrong", like how others might have considered it. Think of it as Gos was taking back his job, something that rightfully belonged to him.

After all that work, he was done! The entire month's load of work was something he didn't have to worry about. Tired but triumphant, he made his way back to his room.

Soon, after climbing all those stairs, Gos found himself on the fourth floor of the castle. The floor where all the workers, like maids and cleaners, got to stay. The hallways were empty, not a single guard or person there. What a shock.

Paint thinning and cracking on the stainless walls. Out of all five lights, all of them worked, but they were dimmed, close to turning the room all dark. Lamps and bulbs were there at the sides of the walls, like all the other floors. But these hadn't been touched or used since... a long time.

The furniture worked just fine. Filled with dust, but fine. Other than that, the hallway was empty. In other words, the fourth floor was a mess. A mess which everyone was too lazy to clean up. People could pitch in to help clean all the floors, even the fifth floor, but not the fourth. Even the castle wouldn't do anything about it.

Why? Because this wasn't important to them. They could invest all their time and money into giving hundreds of guards new fuzzy slippers for the night. But they couldn't spend any of that energy to help clean up the fourth floor.

Nevertheless, he walked towards his door. A plain, wooden door. With a start, he reached forward and twisted the knob.

***

Home sweet home.

The room wasn't much. Just a small bed, big enough for one person, for him to sleep in. A closet was placed on the right-most side of his room, with hangers, drawers, and all those organization tools. That was all. Nothing else. No personal bathroom, no guards standing in front of his door.

Nope. Guess where he had to go if he wanted to use the restroom? The public one on the fourth floor. The restrooms were at least decent, since he was the one who cleaned it. But still, the nerve King Rhon had!

At the side of his bed, next to the left-side wall, there was a small table. Well, it was bigger than the Chest of Knowledge's table, so that was something. Anyways, that was where Gos was headed: to the table.

The table was full paper, paper, and more paper. Those sheets of wood held all his plans from the last year of so. Every single draft of revenge ideas sat there. Even the horrible ones were among the pile, since all of those papers were too valuable to throw away. The ones hosted on the walls, however, were his final drafts. The real deal.

He gazed at his beautiful master-piece. A slight smile appeared on his face. "A year of hard work, and this is the end product. All we need to do now is carry it out." Gos sat on his chair and leaned forward, trying to plan out the right dates.

When that didn't work, he tried talking to himself. Then he got up, and started to pace among the room. After all that hard work and accounting, Gos knew exactly what to do. But he just couldn't figure out a good date to execute his plan. The irony.

"Need a little help?" a voice called from behind.

Gos froze in between the room. That wasn't his voice, or the voice of anyone he knew. As far as he was aware of, he'd never heard that voice before in his life.

Still, something about that voice sounded strangely familiar. The answer was just within reach in his brain, but he just couldn't catch it.

He did the next best thing and turned around to see who was there. Why someone would have visited Gos, that was something that curioused him too. Turning around and looking at the person, he froze.

That wasn't a person's voice. That being wasn't even a person. It was a spirit. He'd only heard about spirit's before, but this spirit only existed in myths and stories. Or, that was what he taught until now, when that spirit was standing in front of him.

Floating right in front of him was Lysth.

Lysth happened to be the spirit of honesty... and deception.