Status Quo | ✓

-13-

"You're the slowest to realise," Clara scolded, stabbing her fork into the bowl of salad in front of her as she tossed the veggies around.

"I'm sure you didn't know about it until now," I rolled my eyes in response, stretching my hand out to steal a crouton from her bowl.

"It's so obvious, my friend," Clara shrugged. "And stop taking the croutons!"

"Those are the only things I would eat in that salad," I complained. "The rest of the ingredients are just bland and insulting to my tastebuds."

"Not everyone has an appetite like you and still manage to stay in shape," Clara clicked her tongue, munching on a mouthful of greens.

"Well, Mom had good genes," I laughed, attempting to take another crouton but Clara caught me by my wrist, and I winced at the grip.

"Gosh, I'm sorry," she quickly apologised.

I shook my head and assured, "It's okay, I reacted out of reflex. It wasn't painful at all."

Suddenly, I felt a moment of awkwardness when she looked at me with worry. I shifted uncomfortably under her gaze and she asked, "Rae, do you want to talk to me about it?"

I clasped my hands together and rubbed my fingers against my knuckles nervously when I had no idea how to reply to Clara. Since waking up from it, I hadn't told a single person about what happened to me. Not even Mom, because I knew that she would be worried sick and insist on flying over just to make sure that I was alright.

I wished that hiding emotional scars was as easy as trying to hide the patches of faint bruises on my body — a simple sweater was all it takes to make you look normal like everyone else. I would be lying if I said that the whole incident didn't bother me at all because recollecting about it still made me shiver in fear and irksome all over.

Averting my gaze away, I said nervously, "It's not that I don't want to talk about it, but where do I start? I couldn't remember half of all that happened except of how angry and scared I felt back then. Everything was frantic and I was acting on pure instinct."

Clara bit on her lip and apologised, "Rae, I'm really sorry—"

"Please don't apologise, Clarabug." I tried to lighten the mood with a small laugh and reached my fork into her bowl to toss the greens within it. "If you hadn't called for help, I wouldn't be sitting here and eating this blandness with you now."

"Seriously, stop joking in moments like these," she chided.

Honestly, there wasn't anything light-hearted about the entire thing but I had only wanted to make her feel better. Since she wanted to talk about it, I was also reminded of the gap in my memory when I passed out halfway. I asked, "What happened then?"

"When I found you, I really freaked out and I couldn't get past all the people, so I ran back to Max and his friends. All of us split up, trying to get a hold of the bar owner and that was when I found Leon and Tyson. They were just at the counter, having a chat with the bar owner, Gabriel. I quickly told them what happened, and everyone just moved as fast as they could," Clara recounted and I could feel her fear when she spoke, knowing that this incident had definitely shaken her up badly.