The End of Fire and Ice

chapter 6: silly old bear

"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit."
ೃ⁀➷ Nelson Henderson

┊ ➶ ｡˚ 　　°

Another day, another disaster. Well, I suppose not entirely.

I actually got paired up with Sunghoon for today's training and accepted his offer to let me sneak off to the library again instead of forcing myself to run. In a way, I kind of was running...running from my responsibilities.

I made my way quietly out of the training room once Mr. Doyle had retreated to the track with some of the other blessed.

It was the same path I took nearly every day of my life, but somehow my steps felt lighter. I couldn't find the reason why. I just didn't feel so burdened for a moment.

I had done my routine check of the hallway before carefully opening the door to my secret world, shutting it quickly behind me for fear that some of the magic might swim out.

*. * ·

I did it. I was there before I even knew where my feet were taking me.

Trailing her tracks from a safe distance. Down the hall, up the stairs, and now standing outside the door she disappeared through.

Escaping the training room was much easier than I expected, and I was glad Sunghoon also hadn't noticed me leaving.

I don't know why I was still just standing there. Maybe I was scared to disturb something. Maybe I was scared she'd disturb me. But after a long moment's hesitation, I cracked open the door and silently crossed the border to her side.

I was met with absolute silence. And I already loved the feeling. It was hard to find peace like this in this facility.

Someone is always asking you questions, but here it is just you and hundreds of books that can't exactly talk to you. The only questions I had to answer now were where in the world was Jin and how do I keep her from noticing me.

It didn't take long for me to answer the first question when I heard a faint voice singing a soft and unfamiliar tune. It came from behind a shelf in the far left corner of the large room.

It was a simple yet enchanting song and I knew it had to be her.

I got the sudden urge to 'shh' her, not sure if it was because I wanted her to know I had found her or if I wanted to steal the silence back. But I decided to ignore the urge and focus on hiding.

Now, what in hell possessed me to stay here? Why didn't I just go back to training in order to help save the world? Well, I figured I could do my part by staying here and supervising this girl. Who knows what kind of madness she engages in up here and it was better I found her than Doyle did.

Suddenly the singing stopped and I wished for it to come back. Wait, no I didn't. I didn't like it...did I?

Then I heard her footsteps approaching from around the shelf and I quickly took cover behind a sofa.

To my displeasure, she waltzed herself all the way across the room to sit on this very sofa.

I wanted to scream in disbelief, but I couldn't because, at least for now, I was very afraid of what she'd do to me if she caught me spying on her. So, I stayed perfectly silent and perfectly still.

I busied myself by just looking around at the shelves surrounding us and soon got bored of that.

I wanted to know what she was reading. What was so important that she had to skip training for it.