25 1.22 — She's Gotta Be Kidding Me, Right?

Now I’m wishing that this was the last stupid decision I’ll ever get to make in my life.

We have been walking for 6 hours…or for 30-40 minutes, I don’t know. I tend to exaggerate stuff for dramatic purposes when I’m nervous but I like to think that it’s the feelings that count.

I thought my kidnapper simply wished to take me to some back alley, talk things out, threaten me here and there, and possibly even maim stuff to further persuade me to keep my mouth shut. Heck, maybe even take my money. Who knows what goes in the rotten minds of dead mages.

But surprisingly, she refused to speak to me. The only voice that came out of her mouth were the directions to follow her—‘walk faster’, ‘don’t walk so near to me’, ‘don’t walk so far from me’, ‘can you just stop doing that weird eye twitching thing? It’s getting on my nerves.’

The audacity of this woman to say that I am getting on her nerves!

She’s been dragging me through dirt paths and gravel roads without any explanation!

This is why I hate dead souls. This is why I don’t believe these powers of mine are some gift from god. No gift should have to make me deal with this crap on a daily basis!

Calm down, Aarav, let’s not lose your calm. Just remember how much you love to have this pretty little head stuck on your body.

…Yeah, that self-talk did not calm me down. Infact, I think just by thinking of beheading, my eye has started to twitch even more. Further angering the magician walking on thin ice with me.

I can’t help it. We all deal with nervousness in different ways. I happen to twitch in places.

“You mind telling me—”

“No.”

“So you’re just going to stay—”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She loves to chat, doesn’t she?

But then, after a few more minutes I asked the questions again and this time she answered!

Sort of…

“You’ll know when you’ll know”

“We’ll get there when we get there.”

“We are going where we need to go.”

I don’t know who taught her English but they clearly made no effort in teaching her how to answer questions properly. Not that she spoke badly. Infact, she spoke it very fluently.

...Why do I contradict my own points? Now I’m really thinking about whether I’m a masochist.

Do you know what talking to her reminded me of though? It was like talking to a monk or a wise old magician…which I guess makes sense since they are one. Kind of.

Eventually, I just gave up on asking any straight questions since I was not getting any straight answers.

With nothing else to do, and since we weren’t really taking up a scenic route to our mystery destination, my eyes naturally wandered over her.

Not in that way, you lusty monkeys!

I wanted to deduce stuff. Like you know, Sherlock Holmes.

She wasn’t particularly tall but not too short too. Definitely taller than her friend, or even Naina. She seemed to be in a fit shape too, which made sense considering her line of work. Can’t really fight demons if just 5 minutes of running gets you out of breath.

She had a tattoo——a band of two black parallel chains circling around her forearm. Wonder that signifies. A gang membership thing? Sign of being a professional dead mage?

She definitely must have been a model or something before she died. An actress too or maybe just one of those Insta-model. She had pretty green eyes, long black straight hair and a pretty looking face if you replaced that frown and look of annoyance on her face.

Like personally, she looked far from beautiful. Like sure, she looked pretty—I’m not blind—but another image of her with the claws out and murderous rage clear on her face overlapped in my mind that prevented me from seeing that outer beauty.

So yeah, nope. For me, she was scary. Frightening. Horrifying.

A reminder of what I had to go through yesterday.

After about another 15 minutes, she finally hit her brakes. Are we there yet?

I looked around but honestly can’t find anything here. There was nothing here. Not a single person was seen strolling around here.

…There’s nobody here.

It’s just me and her. Alone.

Oh lord, I’m going to die, aren’t I?

“Hey lady, look, I know I could be annoying and sure I’m not the best liar in the world but you-you have nothing to worry about here, okay? I will never speak to anyone about whatever happened yesterday.” I pleaded with my hands joined, a knee slightly bent, and ready to get down to my feet if that’s what it took.

“Good for you, Elsa,” She mumbled, distracted.

I hate that fucking movie.

Yes, I know I said I’ll keep certain words PG in case some of you are minors.

But I also didn’t guarantee that I’ll be consistent. Sometimes emotions can get a bit overwhelming.

Like the moment anyone calls me Elsa.

Ever since that movie came out, that’s all I get referred to as. Like they all think they’re something original and funny.

Fucking moronic assholes.

She stared at something in her palm, a rectangular piece of…metal? Glass? I don’t know. Could be a phone, not that I could recognise the model and trust me, I would recognise it just by looking at it.

She turned her head to the left and so did I. An abandoned construction site graced our vision.

Well, not exactly abandoned. Just…left aside and forgotten by the people who began the project who later on just got bored by it something and didn’t find the inspiration to build it up completely or even break it down.

From the looks of it, it seemed to be an apartment building. Didn’t seem that high though, probably 10 floors, 12 maybe. Then again, it wasn’t completed to maybe even higher.

There weren’t a lot of tall buildings in this town. I think the tallest one I saw was about 10 floors and there were only quite a few of them. Not sure why this one was stopped.

Well, none of my business. Currently, my business was begging for my life. Which, I don’t know about you, wasn’t coming along very well. So I decided to change tactics. Sympathise with their cause.

“Hey look, I get it, you wanted to beat the kid. Who hasn’t been in that position? Especially if that kid was a monster—” I paused, stopped, when she turned back around to glare at me. I could guess what that look meant. It was a look I received a lot from my uncle. The ‘please just stop talking’ look.

Too bad, I ain’t gonna stop. So, as soon as she turned her attention back to the gated and locked entry to the construction site, I resumed, “If I ever see you and your friends again, I won’t try to stop you. That’s a promise. Hell, I’ll help you if that’s what need—”

“What I need from you is to just stop talking for a minute here, okay?” She fully turned around and lifted, and I really mean lifted, me off the ground with just one hand.

Okay, I’m taking a vow of silence for life.

Realising I won’t be saying anything anymore, she put me down softened her gaze. By just a smidge, not much.

“Look, I know you have questions and I will answer them, but just…just give me a minute,” she said softly. That’s the first time I heard her speak that nice to me during the whole hour-long journey.

She pulled out the metallic glass thingy again and my guess of it being her phone turned out to be right. Except, I still couldn’t place the model of it and trust me, that’s gonna bug me the whole week.

Assuming I live.

Which is a possibility that, after witnessing her soft side, I’m kinda starting to believe in. By just a smidge, not much.

The device opened up a map with a blinking red dot—that I assumed was the location we stood at—and a message saying “R—Manananggal will arrive at 13:53 ±10”.

…I have no idea what any of those terms meant. All I understood from that was that someone is going to meet with us here in about…20 minutes. Guess we arrived early. Was it one of her friends? Or maybe a fellow colleague?

“Great, I suppose gives us enough time to talk things over,” She said, turning the device off and pocketing it her…uniform? Costume? It honestly looked more like a costume than anything else.

“I know you told me to keep quiet but can you atleast tell me why are we here?” I asked, pleaded. I felt like I was giving the performance of my lifetime by showing the scared expression on my face. Mostly because I genuinely was scared.

And perhaps she believed me.

“Oh don’t be so scared. It’s fine. All we’ll be doing is some minor breaking and entering,” She said with a sly smile. “So, do you want to do the honours?”