Chapter 29: Chapter 29: To hate and to love

Emily woke up to the sound of metal hitting marble, along with the faint scent of fried eggs, though she could only catch a few subtle traces of it every now and then, not a coherent, continuous smell. If that was the case, then the enhancer had probably worn off already, which was good. Considering the amount she’d ingested the night before, she didn’t know what she’d do if Kay ever saw her. With that… face.

The burning had stopped and her body felt light and soft now, if not a bit warmer than usual.

Trying to make some sense of things, she blinked several times and after a while she could faintly distinguish the white ceiling of their living room, along with the regularly sized windows through which the first rays of sun shone through in the early morning, between minuscule gaps left by the thin-looking curtains mostly covering them and hit the floor a few meters away from the couch.

Trying to move her arms around, she soon realized, slightly hindered, that a large blanket had been placed over her, covering her from neck to toe. Still, the girl moved around on the couch, struggling against the lingering pain in her back, and just barely managed to sit straight with the blanket still around her. Thinking clearly was somewhat hard, still. She hadn’t yet fully awoken from slumber.

The frying sound stopped. Kay turned off the stove and started shuffling with what sounded like plates, finally leaving the kitchen and heading to the sitting room soon after.

She stopped just short of the door, giving the pale girl a tired glance, despite having been asleep when she’d arrived at the apartment. Emily figured it must’ve been the first time Kay had slept in days.

“Good morning.” the woman muttered, morosely. “Didn’t think you’d be waking up so soon.”

That was when it hit the pale girl. Everything that had happened the night prior. Her own eyes had immediately shot downwards, focusing on the blanket wrapped around her. Her surroundings, as she actually took proper notice of them.

“Kay… What is…?”

Katherine sighed. Looking behind just once to make sure she’d turned everything off, she took a few steps towards her sister, though not enough that she could actually reach the couch.

“Something you want to tell me, sis?”

“... I…! This is just…”

The pale girl’s breath had caught in her throat. She couldn’t say anything else. Resigned, she simply went quiet, eyes piercing into the half-discolored surface her head had previously been lying on.

“I did what I could to improve on the bandages you did. Still, you were looking pretty bad when I found you here.”

Katherine spoke plainly. You could say, almost casually, even. There was no affectation to her voice at all.

“You were out again last night.” she went on. “Weren’t you?”

She wasn’t vexed. She wasn’t happy. She simply was, standing idly over the pale girl, as though the current situation was only par for the course.

Despite the lengths Emily had gone to to keep that information from her… Even though she hadn’t told her once…

“Kay… Please, listen…”

Her voice stuttered just slightly, half-whispering its way out. And once again, she found herself unable to utter anything more.

Katherine remained there, standing before her in silence. Her sister’s eyes stared directly into her own. Emily, on the other hand, couldn't keep her own eyes in place for more than one second before inadvertently turning away.

“Don’t deny it.” sighed Kay. “Don’t stress on it, either. It’s not like I’ll chew your fingers out because of this, either. I’m just curious. How did you end up like this… exactly?”

After a long moment fighting her own tongue, the pale girl was finally able to force another pair of words out, stuttering all the way through.

“... You knew…?”

“Of course I knew.” the woman’s toneless voice went on. Her eyes showed the girl not even a hint of a sheen. “Tonight, I woke up to a bright light coming from the corridor, so I went to check. The bathroom was all lit up, there was a bunch of drenched, ripped clothes lying around sullying my nice, clean floor. And a long trail of slob later I find a broken window lock and you lying half-naked on the couch. It’s pretty obvious something happened to you, isn’t it?”

She could feel her nails stab into the palms of her hands. Her eyes shot up towards Kay, locking down her own at least.

“I…I…”

Panic and confusion gave way to frustration. That wasn’t all. This wasn’t something her older sister had just suddenly discovered the day prior, or even at another point as of late.

No, Emily realized. Although she hadn’t quite cleared it up as she spoke, she was sure of it. This went back much farther than Katherine was letting her on.

“Kay…” she muttered, on her own end, a faint wind of her feelings seeping into her own voice.

Her sister nodded, yet impassively.

“But to answer you, more concretely…” she said, taking a step closer. “Yes, I knew you were involved in the city’s gangs long, long before yesterday. The White Phantoms, isn’t that right? I don’t have any details on what your position is inside it, nor am I aware of what exactly you do out there every night. How you spend your time, or what function you accomplish in the hierarchy. But that doesn’t really matterwhat you say. You already know what I think. You already know what I’ll think, regardless.”

Emily couldn’t force herself to let a full phrase out. She simply settled for shaking her head sideways, eyes wide as if trying to pierce the floor between her feet.

“Don’t you?” Katherine prompted her once again, her voice just slightly louder.

But no answer came. Silence dominated, once again.

Katherine sighed, taking it upon herself to keep the conversation going.

You are reading story Crimson Phantom at novel35.com

“Won’t you say anything?”

Taking in a deep breath, the pale girl obliged, at last.

It was over. The secret was out. What did it matter anymore, whether she was tactful or not?

“What is there to say? You don’t approve of me taking this path, isn’t that right? The way you see it, you’d rather I just closed myself inside a tiny, little box and tried to live the same empty life you do, ignoring everything that goes out there.”

“... That’s how you see it.”

“Naturally. That’s how you like to do things, after all. You cover your eyes, so you won’t see the chaos at night. You cover your ears so you won’t have to hear the yells and cries. And you want me to be just like you.”

“...”

“What happened before, exactly? Every day, I ask myself the same question. What made you hate the nights in the city so much, that you would hide yourself so thoroughly as to not even hear a beat out of them? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know.” said Katherine, her face enveloped by a deep scowl. “Just know that I hate them, and that is the only way I will ever feel towards them, no matter what. It doesn’t matter to me what it means, or what birthed that hatred in the first place.”

“...”

“You, on the other hand, seem to love them so much, you would rather spend your whole lifetime under them. But why is that? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know.” replied the pale girl. “Just know that I love them, and that won’t change, no matter what might come to pass. I don’t know why, but I don’t need a reason. It doesn't matter what birthed that love in the first place, or what it means to me.”

“ “I see.” ” the two of them spoke.

“And that said,” Emily continued. “You don’t have to hide your feelings towards me, either.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I already know what you think of all this. You want to give up on me. I know you do. You’ve wanted to for a long time. But there’s no need to feel guilty about it. It is the right thing to do.”

The pale girl let go of the blanket, letting it drop down. It hit the couch first, then slid slowly over it, eventually hitting the floor, one deaf clump after at a time, revealing her tintless, feeble-looking body, now thoroughly covered in cheap bandages.

“This is what I look like when things go wrong. I know I made a mistake. I paid the price for it, too. That’s what happens when you actually try to live in the world around you. Things will go wrong at times. It’s inevitable. However, if I don’t learn from that, if I don’t become stronger from it, can I really call myself human anymore?”

For the first time that morning, Katherine’s perfectly frozen face seemed to crack a corner. It was a tiny, barely noticeable split of emotion, but Emily was used to catching on to those. People never could just be honest with each other. It went against their nature.

“Accept it, Kay. If you won’t have me like this, it’s not worth trying to change me either. This is how I am. This is what I do. I fight.”

With that last statement, the pale girl couldn’t help but to chuckle a bit.

“Well, you know, it’s not like I was ever good at anything else, anyway…”

“Emily…”

There was something else. Her older sister wanted to say something else, but she, as well, couldn’t get the proper words out.

Fear. Emily could smell it from miles away. Inevitably, Katherine’s hand trembled ever slightly behind her left thigh.

She feared. Neither of the two, however, was sure exactly what.

She went on, regardless, now in a clear struggle to keep proper eye contact with the teen.

“Don’t misunderstand me. I won’t go out of my way to pry into your personal life. Inevitably, though, many of the things you do are just too obvious for me not to notice. I always knew you weren’t working at any fast food joint. I always knew you went to overnight parties. And, I always knew, as well, half the money you use on a daily basis doesn’t even come from our own savings. The look in your eyes, too. The sheer exhaustion, every single day. Because, when you don’t sleep, your head gets the short end. Haema may be able to perfectly fix up your body, even external fatigue, but it can’t fix your head. Well, not that it could even help you with that much this time, it seems.”

“That’s true.” nodded Emily.

After a brief struggle with the couch’s seat, she’d finally been able to push herself back to her feet.

“But even so, I won’t stop. Even if you don’t like it, I will continue to be a part of Seagate’s underworld. Tonight as well, I will be out there, doing what I do best. Or, on the contrary, are you going to try and stop me?”

Reverting back to her previous, expressionless self, Katherine had no more to say. She simply shook her head to each side. Slowly. Gracefully. As if posing for different angles of a static, lifeless portrait.

The sunlight was becoming brighter. It closed in on the two girls as they stood there, each facing the other, lighting the side of each of their faces with a weak glaze.

“Breakfast is getting cold.”

“Yeah. I’ve got to hurry and get to school, already.”

You can find story with these keywords: Crimson Phantom, Read Crimson Phantom, Crimson Phantom novel, Crimson Phantom book, Crimson Phantom story, Crimson Phantom full, Crimson Phantom Latest Chapter