The Target [Complete]

Chapter 9

Kong's POV

Where the fuck is he? He should have been home hours ago. Is he doing this purposely to annoy me? He has been acting completely out of character lately. Other than stopping all interactions with me, he basically never comes home at reasonable times anymore. He is always hanging around campus or going to P'Knotts room. Which is making my life harder. Now I need to have Krit and Lila positioned at different places before he makes his way home. As diligent a student he was trying to be, this was way beyond the norm.

Tonight he was pushing even his old limits. It was way past midnight. He is always home by now. Lila was outside P'Knotts saying he wasn't there for sure. Krit said he lost track of him sometime during the evening but was sure P'Arthtit was on his way home. When I next see Krit I am going to smack him. He was given one job that he messed up and now I am sweating buckets with worry.

Since last week I have been getting the inkling that I am not the only one on P'Arthit's tail. There is definitely someone else lurking in the shadows. This.....this is impossible. Absolutely no one other than us know P'Arthit's identity. Jes would have made sure to not let anyone other than the people he trusts have any information about P'Arthit. Did Jes send someone to keep an eye on me in case I mess up? But there wasn't anything to mess up yet. Nothing would happen for another year. Why would I need to be supervised?

So I set out to track down who else was interested in P'Arthit, and more importantly why. But try as hard I might, I would never be able to figure who that person was. Did that person exist at all. Maybe I was just being paranoid. But one of the training Jes had grilled into me was never to ignore your instincts. No matter how irrelevant they seem.

Which was exactly why not knowing where P'Arthit was right now was driving me crazy. I just couldn't sit around waiting for him. I needed to go make sure he was safe. So muttering every cuss word I could think of I ran off to campus as the most likely place to look for him. But the campus is huge and probably completely shut off by now.

I was walking around wildly from building to building, room to room searching for him when I felt it again. That stranger following P'Arthit. He was here too. In the 10 years since I was last bullied, this was the first time I have felt the jolt of fear. This was not right. I had no idea where P'Arthit was, but there was someone else tracking his footsteps. I started following every sight and sound around me frantically. I was confused. I was overwhelmed. I couldn't sort out my mind to figure which direction I needed to go to reach P'Arthit.

Breathe.....breathe. Slow down. Think. It took me a few more minutes of forcing myself to calm down. Forcing my years of training to take over to finally figure out where both of them were. I rushed with all my might towards them but once again I was a few steps behind as I heard footsteps run away from me. Maybe it would have been better if I followed that stranger. But he was neither my mission nor my priority. My mission was to keep an eye on P'Arthit, and right now I needed to make sure he was fine.

I burst into the room, thankfully to a completely untouched P'Arthit. I was so relieved that I didn't even come up with an excuse for what I was doing there. I went right ahead and blurted out that I had been waiting for him to get home. But even that didn't concern me right now. What I wanted to know was why was he once again covered in blood. Since the day at the tutoring session he has been bleeding every single day. That cannot be normal.

I walked towards him to ask him if there was anything else happening other than nose bleeds, but I saw him step away from me with fear flash through his eyes. Well serves me right for behaving like a jerk and making him suspicious of me. I doubt he was going to volunteer any information to me. I followed him to P'Knott's house and planned to camp outside to make sure nobody weird showed up around him again. I think I owe a trip to Jes to figure out what's going on.