Aspen’s eyes shone with a feeling that River couldn’t name. It was something akin to affection or camaraderie.
“You don’t mind me doing this?”, he inquired, almost placing his head on the other’s bony shoulder.
“No.” River’s face was empty of any emotion, but that made him all the lovelier to Aspen in the moment. “They are merely shadows. It doesn’t matter what happens to them.”
“Right”, Aspen purred and retreated when he felt River tense his shoulder as a sign for him to stop. “You’re right. They’re merely shadows, and we don’t have to care what happens to them.”
Like a child having gotten a piece of candy, he folded his hands behind his back and jumped away, humming. He skipped through the lessening masses of students and soon vanished out of sight. River felt a complex feeling inside his heart at the sight. He understood very well that Aspen’s display of joy was due to River mirroring Aspen’s mindset, even if only here.
In all honesty, the mindset wasn’t that bad. If he didn’t regard other humans as something related to him, something he had to care about, something of value… Life would be much easier.
The easterner shook his head clear of the thoughts and kept an eye out for either Skirt or Teacher as he went down another direction.
He found Teacher talking to other adults with a fawning attitude. It was disgusting to look at how he lowered his head and forced laughs. River thought that this kind of man was the useless type who would only waste a student’s precious time. He was obviously not as interested in the growth of his students as he was in raising his own position.
This type of teacher was the one River was used to, but that made it no better.
It took him another hour to find Skirt while also sticking to Teacher.
Frowning at the small figure in the courtyard, River quickly went through his options. Either calling the girl up or making the teacher go down. Neither was easy.
Out of pure curiosity, River suddenly paused his thoughts and stared at the phone poking out of the teacher’s pocket. What would happen if…?
He snatched the phone as quickly as he could and placed it on the windowsill of one of the opened windows. He tapped a finger against the glass, creating a sound, and took a step back.
The teacher looked back at hearing the noise and froze up. For a solid two seconds his body was without movement, then he reached out for the phone as if he had accepted that sometime while standing here, he had for some reason taken it out and placed it there.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Hardly logical but he went along with it, maybe because he had not noticed River taking it away in the first place. Had he done that, he’d have surely devoured River.
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Alerted by the item falling down out of nowhere, Skirt jumped to the side. Nervous, she approached the small piece of greenery to check what was lying in the grass before looking up at the window.
The teacher cursed audibly – assumed cursing anyway – and shouted something down to her. Skirt obediently waited and Teacher rushed down the stairs, unknowingly with another person in tow.
It was a good start so far. River didn’t see Dude around and he had his own two key Actors together.
Teacher’s phone hadn’t survived the fall, to no one’s surprise. His shoulders slackened at the sight of the cracked display and he cursed under his breath. Skirt flinched at the harsh tone not even directed at her, a reaction that told River that she was used to enduring harsh words or even physical violence from people – or men? – in bad moods around her.
Probably due to that, Skirt was the one who wanted to distance herself as quickly as possible. Not to mention that this man had completely ignored her cry for help. She exchanged a couple of words with the adult before retreating.
Her behavior made River sigh.
Apparently she wasn’t going to stay next to a person of authority of her own volition, so he’d have to help as much as possible.
Thankfully this was a school, and teachers were everywhere. Not every teacher was busy at the same time, so there was always someone around who River could trick to interact with her.
It was fun. He had to find new ways to use his environment each time.
One time he made her trip over something so that a teacher helped her up.
Another time he caused an adult to let go of the stack of books they were carrying, making Skirt help them.
A negative side-effect was that the constant coincidences were starting to stress Skirt out. With her enhanced, more obvious body-language it wasn’t hard to see.
Especially the afternoon, where lessons stopped and the students went to their clubs, started to be troublesome. River couldn’t take a break as Skirt was often on the move and he lost sight of her for a while on several occasions.
Somewhere in a corner, River spotted two shadows. He paused to recognize the arrogant Ponytail and her follower Glasses. While Ponytail was leaning against the wall, checking her fingernails, Glasses was squatting and noting down something that Ponytail was talking about.
Out of curiosity, River approached. It was some sort of calendar, filled in with notes and cellphone numbers. River found his eyebrows involuntarily rising.
The angle of his eyebrows only grew steeper when someone called Ponytail. She answered in a sickeningly sweet, squeaky tone that made even Glasses awkwardly turn her head away. From the other side of the phone came a male voice – Dude.
For a minute, Ponytail stuck to whining in a sticky tone. Then it changed, quite abruptly, her voice turning fierce. Dude on the other side laughed but tried to pacify her.
She said something. Glasses made a small sound, head jolting up.
With hesitant fidgeting, Glasses stuttered out a couple of words but was quickly silenced by an annoyed Ponytail.
The arrogant girl hung up her phone and motioned for Glasses to follow her. Since River had lost his targets in the crowd again, he decided to follow her for a moment, having an idea who she might be approaching.
As expected, he finally ran into Aspen, who was obediently following Dude around.
In the background, Dude and Ponytail exchanged a couple of words, sometimes lighthearted, sometimes sneering. Glasses kept her head low as she stood at a distance.
“How’s it going?” Aspen gave River a friendly pat on the back.
“Good?” River’s eyebrows furrowed for no reason at all. “How is it on your side?”
“No issue.” Aspen shrugged and pointed at Dude, who appeared to be flirting with some random shadow. “Honestly, this guy doesn’t seem to be bothered about not having seen Skirt for a while. At the very least he’s not seeking her out or anything like that.”
River hummed again. He scratched his thumb with his index finger, gaze turned to nowhere.
“Okay. I don’t like that look. What’s bothering you?”
“We haven’t seen Skirt’s full route. I feel like we are missing something important here…”
Next to River, Aspen crossed his arms. The slender young man tilted his head, eyes lowering a bit. “We don’t know her trigger.”
The sentence immediately alerted River of the thing that had been worrying him all this time, although only subconsciously.
Yes, Skirt was likely being bullied and sexually harrassed. This was indeed a reason to become suicidal, but Skirt hadn’t done something that implied this was long planned.
Rather, the situation had seemed like it was a sudden decision.
And if it was – if there was a sudden impulse for her to take her life – then there had to be a trigger.
A decisive event that would cause her to give up.
No matter how much they helped Skirt around it, if they tried to keep her safe, unless they could ensure that her trigger wouldn’t appear, there was no certainty that she wouldn’t hurt herself again.
Thankfully it was easy to assume that her trigger was related to either Dude, Ponytail or Teacher – with Glasses being very timid and Bun not appearing hostile. It only raised the urgency of ensuring that they wouldn’t run into each other, then this Play would go the way they want.
Aspen nodded at him summarizing his thoughts. “Sounds good to me. So you think we will be done this round?”
River nodded. He thought of another thing he hadn’t really been watching out for, and tried to recall the exact situation.
Author’s Note
….I forgot to schedule
Thank you for the update ❤
Hello! I am a beginner in writing stories (BLs). Actually I wanted to know that how can I publish my stories on this platform(CN). I hope you can guide me cause I really don’t know the owner of this platform. So I randomly took your story (cause I remember your story) to ask!
Sorry didn’t mean to reply you
Thanks for the chapter !
Thank you for the update!
Hello author! I am a beginner in writing stories (BLs). Actually I wanted to know that how can I publish my stories on this platform(CN). I hope you can guide me cause I really don’t know the owner of this platform. So I randomly took your story (cause I remember your story) to ask!
Hi!In fact, CG doesn’t always accept new authors. When they do, there’s usually a banner on the top of the page that you can use to apply for posting here. Just wait until you see it, or join the discord to hear news about them opening applications again.
So it means till then I should probably start drafting few chapters right?
Yep 🙂