Sinner's Game

28 - Beyond the Heavens

2 Years later

Jack

Fast fingers danced across the keyboard. Jack had found his rhythm, typed away as line after line flowed out of his mind right onto the screen. It was like a trance, a flow state he only managed to achieve when he was inside one of his worlds, united with his characters. He peeked over to his notes – a pile of small squared pieces of paper – random scribbles and fast handwriting all over them. No one besides him would be able to navigate through the mess on his desk, but all of it had its defined place, and he knew where what was laying without even looking.

One note caught his attention. He stopped typing, his hands hovering over the keyboard like an eagle over its prey. The note was written in red marker, had several circles around it.

"Oh yea... still need to change that off."

Right as he was about to return to his typing, the bell rang. Usually, Jack would have been annoyed by the disturbance, but this time it was different. His parents were on holiday for the next two weeks, and he already knew who was on the door.

He got up, headed out of his room, and went downstairs to the main entrance. He opened the door, was surprised to only see one and not two familiar faces.

Jim was standing in front of him, both hands pointing into his direction as he held him at gunpoint.

"Damn, you would have been dead right away. Didn't I teach you better than that?" Jim asked, his trademark smile on his face.

"How foolish of me," Jack said, smiled as well. "Where's Ann? Did she find someone with better finger-gunning skills than you?"

"Very funny. Nah, she joins later, has some tournament to attend too. Won't take too long, I suppose."

It still felt weird that they weren't in school anymore. They still had around 3 weeks of free time left before they had to go out into the wide world, do the things adults had to do... whatever that was. Now that he thought about it, Jim had also changed quite a lot over the last few years. Not in a bad way, just appearance and some other stuff. Jack had to admit the longer hair really fit him, something in between the total mess of a haircut he had back in fifth grade and the too stern one he had worn later.

But he wasn't here to think about chances, mights and maybes. There was more than enough time for that later on.

"Does she still try-hard?" Jack asked. "I thought she did want to take it a little bit slower."

"She is not playing for scores anymore. Just for fun, so don't worry."

"Ah, alright." He waved towards behind him. Jim walked in without Jack even saying a word.

"Hows your writing going?" Jim pulled off his shoes without even using his hands, stretched out a little.

"Good... until you arrived. I decided to change off the main char's name."

"Huh?" Jim stopped. "Why though? Guts is a very cool name in my opinion."

"Don't you think we knew someone who deserves it more to be the one to give the main character his name?" Jack's lips narrowed. "Someone who went through hell alone."

Jim's eyes had dimmed a little, but through the dark shone a certain light. "I'm sure he would have been honoured."

Jack nodded.