Eric Grey is...
'' Hey roomie..'', my voice feels forced even to me.
Eric still has that frown on his face, he leaves the door open and goes back into our room, ignoring me completely.
I get inside the room.
It's pretty spacious, there's two beds at the opposite sides of the room, there were two tables as well for the both of us. There's a window that was shut in the edge of the room, There's also a bathroom inside the room, that too was completely normal.
After finishing my exploration of the room, I go and sit at my bed where my luggage had already been delivered. I lift my suitcase and put it on the bed , I open it and start casually throwing my clothes into my closet.
Seeing me casually throwing my clothes in, the frown on Eric's face becomes even more prominent.
He gets up from his bed and walks towards me, as he walks his long blonde hair starts bobbing up and down. He takes the clothes in my hand and commands me,
'' Move.''
As expected.
Eric was an extreme neat freak, even seeing other people being messy aggravates him. I purposefully acted messy so that he would help me.
If I was going to interact with him anyway, why not use him too. I thought about asking the principal to change my room but later decided against that idea as that would put me in Eric's list of enemies and believe me when I say, I don't want that.
'' I'm Adam Creed, what's your name ?'', I ask while he took all the clothes that I had thrown in and start folding them one by one.
He stays silent for a second, his eyes focused on the clothes.
'' Eric Grey.'', he says in a voice that sounded a bit sad.
We don't say anything else and after 15 minutes, he completes the work and goes back to his bed after nodding his head in my direction.
The room also had two personal training rooms, so till dinner I train using the spear I had been given. I didn't really know how to use the spear, so training just consisted of me just waving the spear around.
Then dinner came, the food was given in the school cafeteria. I go with Eric since I didn't really know anybody else here. I won't become too close to Eric since he's going to....
The food was not as good as the food I got home, but it was alright. They served a lot of meat and vegetables with a very small amount of rice. None of us spoke a word to each other.
After dinner we go back to our rooms and sleep, at least Eric does because I can hear his snores at this very moment. I couldn't sleep, not because of his snores, sleep just didn't come to me. I wonder why ?
I look at Eric who was sleeping peacefully.
Eric Grey.
He was a member of Max's party.
His grandfather was the CEO of ' Grey Tech', they mainly manufactured weapons from the materials found in the portals.
When he was younger, he was a very innocent boy that laughed at the smallest jokes and he looked a lot happier than he does now.
Another interesting fact about Eric was that, he was gay.
Well that alone isn't that interesting. But his backstory begins with him realizing that he's gay.
Eric didn't know that he was gay untill he was in middle school, he probably didn't even know what being 'gay' meant before as he had led a life with not much exposure to the real world. Everything he did was monitored and reported back to his grandfather.
He gets a girlfriend in middle school, since all his friends had one too. But the moment they kissed, he knew that there was something different about him.
In his second year in middle school, he meets a boy named Aaron, they become close friends and without him even realizing it...he falls in love with Aaron.
One day, after school they go to a deserted park and some things happen and they kiss. Eric felt happy but he knew that if his grandfather or father found out about his secret then he would get in trouble . So he makes his relationship with Aaron a secret.
But it doesn't matter as his grandfather finds out about his relationship either way. It's hard to keep a secret when you're monitored 24/7.
Eric's grandfather, Alexander Grey was a... conservative man. He detested change and thought that being gay or anything of that sort was 'unnatural'. Of course he wouldn't say something like that in public though, that would be bad for business.
Eric's mother had died after giving birth to his younger sister, he only had his father and grandfather to call ' family', his father was just a younger version of his grandfather.
After the both of them found out, as expected their reactions where adverse. Eric was immediately transferred to another school, he was forbid from meeting Aaron again, he was hit by the both of them, But that wasn't the end of his suffering,
Eric's grandfather tied him to a bed with a rope and hired a prostitute to force herself on him, this was done to make him 'normal'. Before trapping him, his grandfather makes him take some pills for 'helping him' as well.
What his grandfather hadn't considered was that, a mere rope couldn't trap the hands of an awakened person like Eric, even though he was just an F- rank at the time, he was far more stronger than boys his age. So with a little bit of struggling Eric breaks free from the rope and pushes the women off him.
But the prostitute had been a normal human, like Lecia she was deemed a less evolved human. So when Eric pushes her away with all his strength, she flies of and hits her head at the edge of a table in the room. She instantly dies.
Eric still remembers the expression on her face when he pushed her off him.
After finding the women dead, his grandfather instantly ' handles' the situation and covers up her death.
He also tells Eric that it was his 'unnaturalistic condition' that killed her.
Hate, disgust, anger at himself and his 'family' bloom in his heart.
Originally I planned for his character to go through a some character development and finally he finds it in him to forgive himself and embrace his true self. But I had to change it as the readers hated his character...
A majority of the readers said that they wanted the 'faggot' out of the story.
Those were their words, not mine.
I ignored their comments at first, but then the sales of the novel dropped and the novel started to become unpopular.
There were some people who didn't mind ,but they were a small majority,
So I changed his fate from what I had intended...
In the novel, he gets corrupted by angels and kills his entire family including his sister. He was manipulated by one of the angels to see that his family were monsters, literal monsters, it's kind of like a brainwash thing.
He's killed by Max and he say's his usual, '' Sorry..'' as well.
Now I'm not a person who's ashamed of himself, but when I changed his story I truly did feel ashamed. I felt like a slave who does anything to appease his readers.
It might have also been because of the fact that I had just learned the fact that my wife was cheating on me with Richard as well.
I actually based Eric's story from a true story, I heard from a friend of mine in juvie, his name was Larry and he had the exact same backstory as well. He killed his father in anger. Years later when I heard that he died of a drug overdose I felt the need to honor him and decided to add in a character based on him into the story.
I wanted to give him a happy ending in my novel at least... but that didn't happen so...
Sorry, Larry and yes...… I was in juvie for some time, but that's a story for another time.
Is it surprising that something like this can happen in real life ?
It was the 90's then and a lot of things were different than the present day.
People find it hard to accept that other people can be different than them, the 'norm' must be followed always. I'm a person who kills people without a second thought but even I can accept that people can be different.
Being different than the rest in anyway was not a bad thing.
It just meant that you're unique.
One of a kind.
I wish I could tell this to Eric, but sadly I cannot...
If he was someone that wasn't that important to the plot, I would have at least tried to save him, but he's an integral part of the story and his death motivates the rest of the team, it makes them see who exactly their enemies were.
So, nothing will change...
This was one of the reasons why I wanted to avoid him, I feel bad.
Another reason was that getting close to him bore no benefits for me, if I became friends with him than my resolve to let him die would waver.
My eyelids become heavy and I finally sleep.
~~~~
'' Wake up.'', I feel someone slapping me in the face.
I wake up with a frown on my face, I cup my cheeks with my right hand while glaring at Eric.
'' What is it ?'', I ask in an annoyed voice.
'' You're late.''
I notice that he's already wearing his uniform, I take a look at the digital clock in our room, it showed that the time was currently 6:50 am .
Shit.
I was late.
I jump out of bed almost bumping into Eric and go to the bathroom to quickly wash up.
I brush my teeth, shit and change into my uniform in record time.
I open the door to our room and get out, to my surprise Eric was still waiting for me.
'' You waited ?'', I ask him in a confused manner.
'' I figured that you won't know where the class is, since you arrived just yesterday.'', Eric says in monotonous voice.
He was right... everything that happened yesterday felt like a blur and I might not remember where the class exactly was but,
'' You don't have to wait for me, it's not like we're friends or anything.''
I wasn't joking when I said that I wasn't going to be friends with Eric.
He remains silent for minute and says in his usual monotonous voice,
'' Okay.''
I couldn't see any sort expression on his face.
He starts walking and I follow him stealthily.
We reach class and the day begins.
We had the same exact lessons as yesterday.
This is so boring, knowing everything that happens sucks. But I can't change anything since it also gives me an edge as well. But these classes are so boring...….
Other than me saving the princess, which I think won't cause that much of a difference , I don't really think the plot will change that much.
-------
I didn't really know then how wrong I would be...
~~~~