Jungle Madness

Chapter 1, P9 - Mirror

"Hello. Thank you for accepting my request and sorry for messaging you so late at night."

A white bubble appeared a second after he sent the text, the words instantly flashing on his screen.

"It's okay. Don't worry about it."

He grinned at the quick and concise response, squinting as the bright light illuminated his face, and replied in kind.

"Taking a bunch of calls took a lot of time so I'm gonna give you a short summary. I recorded everything. I sent that video to Melissa. She contacted Yvonne, and Yvonne called me when I got home. Mark should be fine. I called an ambulance just to make sure they'd take him away for at least one night. I'm sorry you had to see and be so heavily involved in this."

This time there was a delay before the white bubble appeared again.

"What's going to happen now?"

"I don't know the details. She knows we were there so we may get called to her office tomorrow morning. Try to rest as much as you can. I'll make sure you won't be dragged along any further."

"My phone is being spammed with friend requests, but I could barely bring myself to accept yours."

"It's fine. You must be feeling overwhelmed. No one blames you. You can dig into the app another time."

He hesitated, nervously gnawing his bottom lip. His fingers softly and slowly tapped each letter on the keyboard before pushing send.

"Hey Ryuu..."

"Yes?"

"...Eh, nevermind it was a stupid thought. Goodnight."

"Nova, at times like this it's better to distract yourself. You overthink a lot which isn't healthy. Get some rest. Night."

Laying in bed and still wearing his daily clothes, the panda sighed as he held the phone directly in front of his face. He blinked, pushing it away slightly. The phone was his only light source in the dark room.

Exiting the conversation completely, the panda skimmed through the application, reading random posts of other students while ignoring all the invites he had received. Despite the humor and weirdness of the posts, it was hard thinking about other things.

"Honey, may I come in?" His mother asked, knocking on the door.

"Yes!" He yelped. The sudden sound causing him to startle, loosening his grip enough to make the cellphone slip from his paws and land straight on his face. Nova winced, holding back a curse as he rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Isabelle could barely see her son's face due to the dim lighting in the hallway. "Why didn't you turn on the lights? You'll hurt your eyes."

"I know." He rolled on to his side, turning away from her. "I'm sorry."

Unperturbed, she took a seat on the edge of the bed. "I feel like we've been doing this a lot recently. I can't ignore you when you're feeling down."

"I'm okay, really. I'm just trying to rest."

"But you haven't changed clothes yet."

"Is that really necessary? Tomorrow I'd have to change again. It feels like a waste of energy."

"Those clothes aren't as comfortable as your pajamas. Being able to relax is essential to having a good night's rest. I'd rather have you sleep naked than keep those on."

Nova roughly twisted his body, shrugging off his pants and shirt. Only his white briefs remained. "There. I did it."

The polar bear sighed. "Only tonight. Tomorrow I don't want to hear anything from you." She picked up the clothes he tossed, shaking them free of dust, then folded them before placing them on a nearby chair. "You ate a lot this time."