Skye Evans.

Unspoken Truth.

      Earrings and hair dangled off the edge of the seat, strands entangled in the metal as she spoke. Not at the ceiling—which she was currently staring at,—but the boy who sat across from her. She had invited Kai over to hang out, partly because it had been quite a minute since they had last seen each other outside of school, and partly to have a motivation to clean up the dorm, which hadn't been getting the most use in recent times. 
      "And so we unlocked the new area of the escape room, yeah? There was a bunch of fire on the left side, and then some jungle-ish area on the right. Nata took the left since I'm afraid of fire and all, and when I went over there, I nearly tripped right into a river. Luckily, she caught me with some vines right before I hit the water. Not like it would've been too hard to warm up." She paused to shove another bit of pastry into her mouth. Skye had been much more lax lately, and hadn't even realized any slip up.

       Twisting cold metal over scarred fingers, the boy listened carefully, nodding along. It had been a while since Kai had hung out with Skye, so he easily accepted the invite to hang out. Sat across, hearing another one of her adventures, he went to speak before pausing when her words finally registered. Wait. What? "You're afraid of fire?" The flamewing asked, quickly sitting up from his slumped state, alarmed by what he had just learned.

      "Hm? Oh, yeah. I forgot I never told you." she said off-handedly, more focused on floating on some new snacks over. She had never told him, it just didn't seem like a good idea, with what she knew about him. But it didn't seem that important in the moment. Not like it would lead to anything important, or her having to explain anything or open up. That's what she expected. 

      Kai blinked, baffled from her dismissive nature to her revealed fear of fire. It was startling how she never brought it up before considering that... well... he was a flamewing. "I, uh, can't believe you never told me." He murmured, sitting back, though his posture was a tad stiff. "Why haven't you told me?" He asked. Weren't they supposed to be best friends?

      She scratched the back of her neck. looking around uncomfortably. "Well, I didn't think it'd be smart. Y'know, since you're a flamewing and all. Hey, did you hear that one really popular company released a new game, uhh, Vince Gaming or whatever? We should play. I think it's free for today." Where had she thrown the controller? It was probably hastily stacked away in a shelf or something. Wouldn't take too long to find it, probably.

      Oh. Right. Kai shook his head, eyes narrowing at the change in subject but decided against commenting on it. "Okay." The flamewing shrugged, apricot eyes soon trailing away to anything that wasn't her. How was he supposed to act now? He merely blinked, forcing himself to think about what this game could possibly be about.

     "I think it's about fighting demons in hell? Weird concept, but it'll probably fun." After going over and digging through her room, she returned with two controllers. One was covered in pink flowers, and the other was a basic red. She set everything up, before handing him the floral one. When the game booted up, they were thrown almost immediately into the round. "Wow, the visuals are good on this one. Don't they kinda look like some monsters we've fought before?" 

       "Hm, sounds like Orchid." He commented with a deadpanned expression. Watching her set everything up, he took the floral controller and just stared at it for a few seconds. And shrugged. Kai looked towards the screen, surprised at the visuals. "Yep. How do you even play?" He asked, looking down at the controls again.

      "Dunno. Let's just try and figure it out. Oh, X to pull out a sword. Sick." She quickly had her character go run off and find a monster to test it out on. There was no shortage on that. The one she killed first looked like those monsters from that one time they got connected to a hivemind.. or something..
      Surrounding their characters was a vast wasteland. Mainly covered in fire, only broken by cliffs leading into neverending darkness or some kind of blood tornado. Her face barely even changed when faced with the environment. "Huh. They sure got creative with this.. how big do you think their budget was?"

       "Okay." He took a moment to get the hang of making his character run about before finding and attacking a monster. It was creepy. Eying the fire-filled environment, Kai glanced over to Skye, a tad surprised at her lack of reaction. "I thought you were afraid of fire." He said instead of answering her question.

      "Uh-huh," she answered off-handedly, trying to kill off a hoard of their enemies. She didn't even get to call for help, both in game and in the real world, before getting killed. "I've gotten used to ignoring it. Oh, there's a shop over there. Let's go check that out. Wait, we don't even have money. Let's get money."

        Kai blinked. Once. Twice. Oh! "Okay..." He slowly looked back at the screen, already dead in the game. "Let's get money." He repeated, not expecting that to be her answer. Wait, how were they even supposed to get money in game???

      Slowly, they forgot all about their previous conversation, focusing on the new game and its contents. They explored and died fairly quickly, forced to restart since apparently there were no saves. Which led to a fit of laughter. The day moved on as if nothing had ever been said. At least, for the skywing.

       Perhaps nothing had changed for the skywing, but there was a sharp change in perspective for the flamewing. Though he was enjoying the time they were spending together after so long, he couldn't properly retain the new information that she had quickly forgotten.

       She was afraid of fire, had probably been since before they met and it remained still. And was 'used' to ignoring it. How could he ever look at their friendship the same now knowing he harnessed the power that could trigger her fear at any given moment. Did that mean she was also...?

       Kai pushed away those thoughts, not wanting to spiral on them in-front of her and focused himself to focus on the game they were miserably failing at. Repeatedly being sent back to the start after dying from the frequent explorations of the fiery realm and it only served to him as a reminder to keep his temper in check.
       He didn't want to scare another person off, after all, especially not someone who was so important to him.