Re-Arranged

Chapter Thirty

"...day! Midday! It's fifteen seconds past midday now! Twenty!"

It was hard to pinpoint which noise triggered his eyes to open – the incessant yelling or the incessant pounding that accompanied or the intervals of snickering present within the room. Whichever be the reason, Darian woke up feeling annoyed.

Until he realized the one making those weird noises, which sounded adjacent to short laughter on a broken tape, was none other than Sawyer. Before he could ask him anything, the yelling voice had a question of its own.

"Are you awake, Uncle Darian?"

"Yes! Stop drumming the door already!"

"You sound scary!" Ben burst out laughing before his feet could be heard running away.

Darian sighed and turned towards the enigmatic person, who seemed to have developed a new side to his personality overnight. Well, Darian had been a witness to the change. He just did not think it could be permanent.

Sawyer sat in the same way he had late last night while opening up about his life, except he had his earphones on and sniggering away to whatever he was listening. When he noticed Darian eyeing him suspiciously, he put the audio on loud.

"...she's grown up, for crying out loud! You'll see she would come back smiling."

"Oh yeah! Because you're the great predictor of future if there ever was!"

Though the second remark was much fainter than the first one, it was unmistakeably clear cut. Darian could not stop the colour from creeping into his ears.

He had underestimated Allison after all, and had paid the price by being woken by the same shrillness, if not more, of her voice three more times! He did not have the patience to ask whose numbers she had called from, and he could not care either, but the amount of blocking he had to do in the morning had drained him completely. If not for worrying that Kelly might call any time, Darian would have switched to Silent mode without a second thought!

In the last recording of the calls, there was silence between each sentence that Darian spoke. That was when Carl had taken over the tirade and assured him Allison would not be handed a mobile device for the whole day as a punishment. Her protestations too he hushed out quite easily. Darian had been mighty impressed with Carl in his half-conscious state.

"So you let your phone record all night long? Doesn't that make it heat up?" Darian eventually asked, ignoring Sawyer's amused expression.

Sawyer shrugged. "Not yet, it hasn't. The recorder runs as a background program and without anything else on, it doesn't heat up the phone either."

"Even while you're listening to anything, it keeps recording?"

"Pretty much. I usually stop and save the file when I get the time to listen, and restart a new one right away. It only records outside noise, so whatever sound I play on the phone, it does not matter."

Darian considered it for a moment before shaking his head and standing up. He stretched out his limbs and muscles as he remarked, "I might need some time to get used to you talking for so many consecutive seconds."

Sawyer chuckled, to which Darian added, "As for your transparent amused expressions and sounds, those might stay alien to me for a long, long time."

"You're telling me."

"Fair enough."

The bedding rolled up with the pillow sticking out from the middle, Darian tucked the roll under his arm and said, "I think lunch would be ready soon, so hurry up down."