Chapter 53: Soundless

"…I'm not particularly glad." 

"I don't feel anything."

————

Rip's careful movements of picking up the paper slip froze.

Even the silently waiting Chase looked up from Rip's actions and looked towards the corner where Butler Srca and Blake were at.

Their hearts dropped to the pit of their stomach.

Yet a sense of calm and relief took over their minds.

It was as if they knew this was coming from all the innuendos pricking at them this morning. 

Blake's silence in the face of the question about his friends.

Levi's parting words.

As a matter of fact, traces of this could be found from earlier on, back when they first met and were acquainted.

Blake's coldness and indifference to them that never changed.

The warning they ignored on the day they became Blake's friend.

And how Blake never tried to integrate into their life. It was only with their efforts that they and Blake never became strangers, maintaining their superficial friendship.

If they don't call or invite Blake, Blake would have stayed in place, not moving an itch.

Not outside or inside his comfort zone.

They have truly overestimated themselves, they realized. Not everyone could change or get along without changing.

Concurrently, an intense feeling struck Rip all at once, making him feel nauseous to his stomach. 

The gloomy and unpleasant atmosphere around Blake that Rip had thought to have weakened and lessened seemed to regain its strength all of a sudden and resurge, attacking Rip with a force a hundred times stronger than before.

Almost knocking Rip off his feet.

Rip staggered. Chase hurriedly went up to support him, alarmed by the other's sudden instability. 

However, even in the midst of their negative emotions, they remained silent, not wanting to be caught here when they should have left long ago.

As Butler Srca had irrefutably ordered, Rip and Chase had left first without waiting for Blake.

However, halfway through their journey, Rip reached into his pants pocket and failed to fiddle with the item that was supposed to be there. 

Rip remembered that he had placed it in that pocket, but being humble and thinking that he might've misremembered, he reached into his other pocket. Similarly, the other pocket was also empty.

Then Rip started going through all of his pockets, and even started rummaging through his luggage. 

Shirts, pants, socks, etc. that he had previously packed up flew into the air and smashed down in a crumpled manner.

In the end, he still failed to find even a corner of the thing he was looking for.

Looking confused by Rip's actions, Chase asked him, "What's wrong?"

As he looked around everywhere, Rip hastily answered, his tone sounding a bit like crying, "I lost a piece of paper—it had something important written on it!"

Watching Rip crazily ripping through his things and turning all the neatly folded clothes and pants into a mess on the shiny, marble floor reflecting the distraught Rip, Chase suddenly thought of something.

"Hey, maybe you left it back there."

"Where?" Turning around, Rip asked somewhat desperately. A spark of hope was subconsciously ignited in his blurry eyes.

Seeing how much Rip cared about the supposed piece of paper, Chase was a little hesitant to give him hope, but he still said with a hint of wishful thinking, "It might be where Butler Srca and Blake are. We were just there and you might have accidentally dropped it there without knowing."

Considering the possibility of Chase's hypothesis, Rip thought it made sense and there really was a chance that he had merely dropped it back there. Anyways, it's not anywhere on him or in his luggage so they might as well retrace their steps. There's a greater chance of finding it that way.

So Rip nodded and hurriedly repacked his luggage with Chase's assistance.

They quickly but carefully retraced their steps. Along the way, Rip felt disappointed and eventually disheartened when there was still no sign of the paper he had lost.

Chase tried to cheer him up, "It's okay. We still haven't checked the place we were at before."

Rip nodded despondently. Feeling anxious but with nothing he could do about it.

Once they arrived in the area where they were previously, Rip's eyes instantly lit up upon the sight of a lonesome white paper slip that casted a tiny shadow on the bright marble floor.

Skipping forward happily while being careful not to be detected by his dad—he didn't want to be misunderstood and get in trouble for not following orders from his superior—Rip leaned down with his butt sticking in the air and plucked the paper off the floor.

As he was about to rise up, his ears caught wind of his dad and Blake's conversation.

The moment those words were spoken by a familiar, but also infrequent, coldly pleasant voice, a cold wind seemed to blow through Rip and Chase's hair. It swept all their strands of bright, silky hair back, fully revealing their fair face and eyes full of a storm of emotions.

Orbs mixed with the colors of betrayal, sadness, anger, calmness, and other unknown emotions, turned into a colorful concoction of tranquility. 

It felt inevitable.

Like it was fated to happen.

This feeling has always been with them. Like a gloomy cloud threatening to rain and thunder, but staying in the comfort of their house, they remain consciously ignorant.

From the moment their friendship began, it ended. 

Their friendship was doomed from the start because of their natural differences. 

Black can't mix with white without one or the other tainting the other completely.

In their case, they were never bound to mix. Neither their white could influence his black nor could his black stain their white. 

Between the two colors was a thin but distinct fine line forming an untrespassable boundary that rejects their every contact. 

They were different, incompatible from the very start. 

The thing that Butler Srca was afraid of happened in the end after all. 

Quietly, Rip and Chase walked away the same way they came.

Soundlessly and without making their presence known. Just like how their entrance and exit in Blake's heart did not create even a single ripple. 

With their eyes downcast, Rip and Chase arrived in front of their new rooms without knowing how long they had walked. 

The scenery along the way was gorgeous, although they paled in comparison to the beauty of the Backgarden.

Furthermore, it was a cool, windy day today. With every stroke of breeze, the body gets cooler and cooler. Normally, this would have made them happy to not suffer under the torturous hot sun, but at this moment, it felt as though they had fallen into an ice cave where they yearned for the sun they had once spurned.

Everything was a blur to them from the impact to their hearts.

Although they were no longer roommates, Chase and Rip found that they will now be living next to each other and will have more privacy than when they were previously living together which unavoidably brought some inconveniences. 

Originally, this should've been exciting news worthy of celebration, but after what they had just overheard, not even this realization could raise their hit spirits. 

Slowly reaching out his hand holding his room key, Rip inserted the key gently into the lock and twisted it.

Click!

The door unlocked.

Rip took out the key and put it away.

Twisting the doorknob to the side, Rip opened the door and then stopped in the doorway.

Saying to Chase, or to no one in particular.

"…Maybe… we were forcing him."

A tinge of harsh red entered his uncharacteristically cold voice.

Then submerging himself in the darkness of the room with his luggage, Rip slammed the door shut behind him.

Inside, the darkness swallowed Rip.

Outside, in the hallway, Chase was quiet. For some reason, he made no movements.

Suddenly, motion came into him.

"It might be better this way. River water returns to the rivers, well water returns to the wells…" Chase sighed and unlocked his door and entered as well.

The door gently clicked close behind him.

The lock twisted back on with a clear, distinct sound, seemingly echoing the released sigh.

What was once open was now closed.

All was quiet as the world watched coldly and heartlessly with its nonhuman eyes.

The birds stopped singing.

The tree and its leaves stilled in the wind.

The wind ceased its comfort.

The world… was silent.