A fresh Breeze (2/2)

"Hey Sophie, everything alright? You seem a little distracted."

Monica's voice broke Sophie out of her trance.

"Hm…? Oh… It's just Izzy. She knows exactly how to make me uncomfortable. Being always so touchy."

Sophie stroke over her clothes with both hands, trying to rid them of the wrinkles that Izzy had caused earlier.

'That is what you get for leaving Felix alone to deal with that chaos…'

Monica's eyes drifted over to the innocently whistling girl, a stern expression on her face.

"You know she doesn't mean it in a bad way, still I should probably talk with her about it. Where is Felix?"

Her eyes searched for their friend, only to return and rest on Sophie. The green eyes were resting calmly behind her glasses. A welcoming change to Izzy's over-energetic nature.

"Just in the usual trouble. A bank robbery here and a shoplifter there, Felix is always in the middle…"

Monica's reaction was anything but nonchalant. A look of worry replaced her serious expression from earlier.

"What!? Where? Did he get shot again?"

Her words raised some alarm clocks in Sophie's mind.

"Shot? It was a taser last time. What are you talking about?"

That question replaced Monica's worry with a sudden fluster, to a trace of nervousness. Her stance shifted onto one leg and she fiddled with her red hair.

"Ugh… nothing. We should probably look if he's still in one piece. You'll come with me?"

Judging from Monica's reaction, there was certainly something that she was hiding from her, yet staying here to figure it out was out of the question. She couldn't take another round of Izzy's overwhelming presence.

Sophie followed Monica out of the store, but not without throwing another suspicious glance at the backside of Izzy's head. Somewhere under that brown hair was surely another pair of eyes. How else would she know to wave her hand for them to say goodbye?

'She must have eavesdropped, you dumbass! Stop fantasizing…'

[---][---][---][---][---][---][---][---]

The weather had cleared a little than earlier, with the dark clouds parting to reveal the blue sky for the first time that day. Despite that, it was still cold enough for her to shiver under her layers of thick clothes. Monica didn't share that low resistance of Sophie and opened her jacket to the now warming sun.

It kept Sophie occupied with thoughts of envy for her friends, who all were much better equipped for basically everything.

Thinking about her own lack of strengths distracted her enough to run into a passerby, who then dropped all of his purchases.

"Ouch!"

The incident didn't draw Monica's attention. Already being a little ahead, her figure disappeared in the crowd who must have gathered from Felix's little show.

"Oh excuse my inattention, young lady. I got too distracted by this wonderful place. So many profitable opportunities in one place in such a small space. Truly a wondrous time to live in."

Caught by the coarse, humming voice, Sophie furrowed her brows before moving her eyes over to the stranger.

'Ugh… okay?'

At first glance, he could easily be mistaken as a monk. A long brown cloak covered him from top to bottom, his face hidden by the shadow of the hood. The entire attire looked worn and used, yet decorated with golden patterns that seemed almost otherworldly.

He kneeled to look at the mess their collision had caused and began cleaning it up before hesitating for a second to address her again.

"Would you be so kind to help me with that?"

She moved her gaze to the dropped bags on the ground. They had a plethora of different things inside of them. Books, a bunch of electronics, and food were littered over the ground with some brightly colored clothes sticking out of the pile.

'Must be a convention somewhere. Those cosplayers costume get more impressive every year.'

"Sure, it was my fault to begin with. Sorry about that."

Sophie helped to put the various things that had splattered all over the place back into the bags. She couldn't help but wonder how anyone could even carry all of that at once. Lucky for them, the passersby ignored them and walked on the other side.

Most of the books were fantasy novels, which she probably had on her own bookshelf as well. A good explanation for the strange costume.

The clothes were also quite nice, even if yellow and pink weren't her color.

Only the electronics seemed kinda out of place. Some were older versions of mobile phones and others the newest ones.

After dropping the last book onto the pile, the stranger offered her a handshake with his left hand. It might have been weird, had he not had enough time to see that she was left-handed while they were collecting his stuff.

"Let me thank you for your help. We didn't even introduce ourselves yet. My name is Kaneís. I am but a humble merchant on the search of new and exciting opportunities for profit."

'Sure you are, fellow geek…'

Sophie couldn't help but smirk at that sentence while she extended her hand to take his handshake.

"I'm Sophie. From which convention did you escape and what character are you even playing as?"

A firm grip greeted her, feeling equally cold as the surroundings and almost metal. A closer look revealed a hand with three fingers, tightly wrapped with bandages that left no visible skin.

She could have almost thought he was actually right out of a movie with that impressive costume that he was wearing.

Sophie expected to see a creepy smile and feel the need to run away when he suddenly pulled her closer. Only to see a blank mask with four eyeholes instead. The following clicking laughter ran shivers down her spine.

"Kecha kecha…, this persona is entirely my own creation. Was nice to meet you, Sophie. I wish you a profitable day."

With that goodbye, the stranger disappeared in the crowd, leaving Sophie wondering what an absolutely crazy day this has been already.

'I should have just stayed in bed, only crazy people everywhere…'

[---][---][---][---][---][---][---][---]

Monica seemed to have solved the situation around the turmoil when Sophie joined them. The police just arrested the shoplifter and took Felix's personal information. Most of the gawking crowd had left as well, leaving them mostly among themselves.

Noticing some blood on Felix's face, Sophie got reminded of the last trouble he got into. Unlike that incident where she had to spend an entire afternoon at the police station answering questions, today's incident had gotten solved much faster.

"How did you hurt yourself this time? I thought you could take care of yourself."

There was no scratch to see, yet his clothes had gotten a few holes.

"Just a scratch. Why didn't you help me?"

The playful smirk on his face clarified he didn't mean that seriously.

"Oh yeah? I suppose I could have pulled a few moves there, maybe knock out three or four. But you looked like you enjoyed yourself and I didn't want to take the spotlight."

It garnered a laugh from him and a serious look from Monica.

"Don't you dare! One knucklehead is more than enough. Jacob and Max look up to our troublemaker here, and Izzy is constantly competing with him. I don't want to worry about you as well!"

She cleaned the blood off with some of the water from the fountain and a handkerchief. There wasn't any scratch anywhere. Then where did the blood come from?

"Sorry, I didn't want to get that loud. It's just been a lot of that trouble lately. You shouldn't encourage him to do that."

Sophie's eyebrow raised as she tried to remember what kind of trouble Monica could mean. The other robbery had been no real trouble either, just one punch from Felix and the idiot had fallen over. Her lecture seemed to come out of nowhere.

"What trouble? It's just the same as always, isn't it?"

Monica's eyes wandered off, clearly avoiding eye contact. There was something she didn't want to talk about, unusual enough that she left something unaddressed.

Felix broke the awkward silence with a cough, aiding the attention onto the object in his hands.

"Here, a thanks for the caught thief. Maybe we can play it online together?"

It was the newest Wall of Duty, a game he liked to play all the time whenever Sophie visited him. Not quite her thing, but she enjoyed hanging out with him.

"Sure, thanks. Just text me if you have time. Not that it happens often lately…"

She put the case into her jacket and returned her taxing look back to Monica.

"Whatever you're hiding, I've had enough for today. See you both tomorrow at school."

Sophie waved to them as a farewell and made her way back home. Slipping into the river of people walking through the shopping street.

[---][---][---][---][---][---][---][---]

The way home was uneventful, luckily. Yet the earlier events didn't leave her mind. Her friends were hiding something from her, and not even Felix wanted to tell her what.

'Not surprising that they would do stuff without you. You are pretty boring after all…'

Sophie shook that unwelcome thought away, telling herself that she should just ask them about it. Even if Monica wasn't willing to talk, she still had the others to ask.

Felix was usually brutally honest, to an extent that made him quite unlikable to the others. She should just approach him when he's alone by himself.

Her feet slipped over the loose steps in front of her house while she kept thinking about that mystery. Gravity had gotten the better of her, and she could only watch as the ground came closer and closer.

She panicked as she fell but tried to break herself from the fall with her hands, only to realize that they were still inside the pockets of her jacket. Hidden from the cold and useless to her.

"SHIT!"