𖤐⭒๋࣭ ⭑ this side of paradise

Chapter 3

—Feel like I've been living life asleep

A week passed since the first time Emil and Leon texted, but still the chinese didn't text him again.

Emil started feeling like Leon was lying, and it made him feel terrible.

His situation at school didn't help; that week he had three interrogations and his classmates always interrupted him every time he stuttered. That made Emil so embarrassed he couldn't say a word.
Some people started beating him up in the corridors, which made Lukas worry him even more.

That day, when all the lessons were done, Emil grabbed his backpack and got out the structure trying to ignore those bullies.
He was lucky they didn't beat him.

That day felt weird. He didn't know why...
The thing was, there was literally nobody in the street.

He felt like someone was following him. He heard two pairs of shoes on the cement.

Emil felt faint for a split second, realising someone was really following him.
He froze up, which terrified him. He had to keep walking and ignoring them, but he couldn't. He was like paralised.

A hand placed on his shoulder and he flinched. He turned around to see who it was.

It was a big, humongous, enormous* (and many more synonyms) guy.
He probably followed Emil from school, and was now looking at him with a terrifying expression.

«did you bring me those muffins you told me about, 'B-B-Bondevik'?»

Emil frowned too.
First of all, he didn't stutter on letter b, but he prolonged it, so the mimicking was wrong. Take that, humongous person.

Second, he totally forgot about those muffins.

He took some steps behind, in an attempt of starting running away, but the guy blocked him.

«Did you bring me those muffins?!» he repeated in anger. Emil shook his head slowly.

The guy lifted his arm, closing his hand in a punch; then punched Emil on the face with such a aggressiveness. And all this for some muffins, people are weird.

That punch made Emil feel dizzy (which wasn't that impressive, since making him feel dizzy was easy). He couldn't feel his nose, and at the same time it was painful breathing, which made him tear up. Something running down wasn't helping; he touched it, then looked at his fingers. Blood.

As soon as the guy left, Emil covered his nose and ran as fast as possible to his apartment. He almost knocked on the door, but his hands were stained in blood so he decided that maybe he would've knock with his kneecaps.

And somehow it worked.

The door opened fast, revealing a smiling Matthias. Not a very rare view.

«Welcome back Emil!» he exclaimed, then he suddenly lost the enthusiasm. «what's up with your nose? Why are you hiding it?»

At that point, Emil cried even more.
He didn't want to say some random person broke his nose. Or at least, not in that way.

Before he could say anything, Matthias grabbed his hands and dragged them off the nose.

And he stopped smiling.

«what...» he whispered, then added in a more loud tone of voice, «Lukas! Come here with some tissues! Quick!»

Lukas was soon there, kinda frightened. Hearing Matthias concerned wasn't really common.

He almost dropped the tissues boxes when he saw Emil.