Byron's Secret (Slenderman Romance)

Chapter 71. Mine and Yours

【Tim's POV】

"Hand me the light." I outstretched a hand. Brian gave me the flashlight without complaints since he's not even doing anything, "Should we just take these books back home or do everything here?"

"I think we should take it home." He suggested, "It's not worth staying here, we need other resources to translate this."

"Well, let's say we do take them back," I said, "after that, how will we translate everything or how would we even know which books to take?"

"Take the books on the desk? They seem important." Brian offered, "Hire a German translator and kill him or her afterwards?" He nudged me, joking.

"We're not killing anyone and we're keeping this between us." I cleared, "For now, let's take the stuff that looks important and ask Byron later."

"I think Byron already have the other stuff at his house."

"The article and journal he's been translating?" I asked and he nodded, "No worries then. I'm sure Byron will help us once he gets a hold of himself."

"By that, you mean he'll end up doing every work . . ." Brian muttered with a blank smile, "Why'd his dad have to pass away like that?" He suddenly asked.

"What?" I was a little surprised since we barely mention Byron's father.

He shifted awkwardly, "I mean . . . if he knew he was going to, y'know, die, I'm sure he would explain everything to Byron before he left." His gaze dipped, "Like, we wouldn't be this lost if he just knew beforehand."

There was a long pause between us as I try to come up with words to answer, ". . . Well, there's never really a way to know when or how you'll go."

"We still don't know anything about this." Brian just gave a sort of irritated sigh, "If he were still alive, we would know what to do."

I could sense the sadness in his tone. Byron's father was a good man despite their circumstances. Byron is a lot like him. None of us expected his death, none of us knew what would happen to Byron if he stopped existing. For years after he died, we were stuck figuring things out. It was a dreadful process of elimination. We're not even sure if what we're doing now is the proper thing to do.

Byron got stronger at controlling himself, but it still wasn't enough. We needed to know how his father handled it. He wasn't there when we needed him because he was already gone and we're like children left out in the wild.

"How did his father do it?" Brian turned to me, "How could he keep things under control for so long? Why can't Byron do it?"

"Brian, you know I don't know that . . ." I shook my head, exasperated, "Let's just–"

I didn't finish my words when Brian took the flashlight from me. He frantically rummaged through the desk, checking the articles, the pages, the books. He opened the drawers on the right side of the desk. They were filled with the same things, plus a few memorabilia of Byron's dad.

On the bottom drawer, Brian took something out of it and placed it in the ray of light from the flashlight, revealing a dust-covered key, "What is this fo–?" Brian stopped, a particular object catching his eye, "Tim." He called as he pointed the light under the desk.