Purity || Nine Percent You Zhangjing

Prologue

The sound of my feet pattering against the ground echoes each time my feet hit the concrete earth below me. My breath coming in and out in large pants. My heart fiercely pounding against my rib cage, coating my ears in its rapid pounding.

I round alleyways. One after another in a search.

'Where? Where is it this time?'

I halt down an alleyway. I squeeze my eyes shut trying to seize my pounding heart. My breath still flows out in a rush. I feel my chest rise and lower as I will it to slow down.

It is late and the streetlights illuminate every corner. Shadows casting an eerie aura as they lurk in nearly every corner. The cold October breeze sends chills across my skin like a hand was lightly stroking the tiny hairs covering my body.

'Where?!'

I huff in frustration. This was not my normal personality nor did I like it to be. I can easily get confused and stumble across problems, but never had it rendered me even more useless than my own kōngxū born person.

I deeply inhale trying to gather my mind. My eyes snap open as a possible location forms in my head. Spinning on my heels I run to the possible and maybe the only place she could be.

With everything in me, I launch forward. Again I cut corners, run down alleyways and again my ears fill with the sounds of my over accelerating heart.

I reach the front of the restaurant. I freeze in front of the glass doors. In front of the building. The steps awaiting my ascend up them. Only, I didn't come to enter the doors into the diner or place a single foot upon the steps.

My head snaps around the side of the building, into the shadows. Upon first glance, nothing stood or lied in the small alleyway. Any traces of human or a being existence wiped clean.

I continue to walk down the small lane between the buildings before turning on my heels and beginning to leave. A snuffling sound catches me in my tracks. I freeze. I wait for the noise once more. The sniffs become muffled and I can't locate where it comes from.

The vibration of my phone causes me to immediately whip it out.

Trouble Magnet: There is someone in the alleyway still. Help me...

I could already sense the fear in the message. Something that was off and wasn't her normal go-lucky self.

"It's me! Please come out!" I shout as I bring my hands to cup my mouth, turning my hands into a megaphone.

I hear something shuffle and move along the right in front of me. Slowly I glide closer. A box covers my view of the living object behind. Lightly and slowly, to not scare her, I remove the box and place it to the side.

Her light, cotton color, shoulder-length, hair in a mess around her face. Beads of sweat forming and falling along the edges of her face. Her dark onyx eyes coated in fear.

As soon as her eyes land on my figure a smile manages to pull at her lips. Like normal, she starts to begin to erase everything that had just happened to her.

"What took you so long? I was beginning to think you wouldn't come." Her voice comes out dry. Cracking in a way that fear was removed from and now was replaced with the lack of water.

"What happened?" I exhale as I raise my hand and wipe away the bodily liquid resting on her forehead. My lips never returning a smile back.

"It was nothing. Smile." She tries to laugh but, her air gets caught and it turns into a cough.

"Stop hiding these things," I say slight irritation running through my voice. She looks into my nearly black eyes unfazed.

"I'm not. Smile. I like it when you smile." She reaches up and places her fingers on my skin, at the corner of my lips. She pulls at the skin making me wrap my hands around her wrists. I feel her freeze under my touch.

"And I would too if you could stop using it as a mask to cover your pain."