CHAPTER 59: THE BLACK BIRD AND THE METAL WALL

Staring through the open window and crossing his right arm on Clara’s shoulder, Gray inhaled deeply, focusing on the cries of the little birds crying for their mother as she fed them in their nest at the canopy of the tree.

"I’ll send two men into his village to search for whoever has that name and either bring him or her here to give me more knowledge on that," Gray said, jolting his gaze from the tree to Clara.

He turned, watched the little boy already dozing off in the chair, and smiled, turning back to her and gesturing to her to take him back to his room, which Clara didn’t hesitate to do, hearing her brother and her boss’s command.

She strolled, greeted Wang for the second time, tapped on the boy’s shoulder, jolting him up, and then held his hand as they walked out of the office.

Despite the boy not remembering anything he’d done, Wang still couldn’t tear his gaze from him until he saw Kai’s shadow moving as he and the nurse turned right, finally exiting from the transparent window’s view.

He closed his eyes, sighed, and then turned toward Gray, who stood at the window staring at Wang with amazement. Wang shook his head the moment he realized Gray had been watching him for a couple of minutes. He rose, walked toward Gray at the window, and placed his palms on the stool, stretching himself slightly.

"What did the temple people say?" he said, turning sideways at Gray and staring deeply into his dark-blue eyes.

...

’Hope we get any member of the Fenlore or who Kai Fenlore is,’ Clara thought as she opened the door and let the drowsy boy take the lead, then followed him inside. Surprisingly, when she tried to move outside, Kai didn’t react or try to follow her, so she went out anyway.

Clara placed both hands on her waist and sighed heavily. When she turned, ready to head back to her room and get a good sleep, she saw Max walking in the direction she was heading. At that instant, her cheeks reddened so hard she couldn’t control herself.

’Should I tell him my affection? Or will that make him toy with me like my brother keeps telling me?’ she thought, kept her calm, and began moving toward Max as if she wasn’t having any feelings for him. But when they crossed each other at the same pace and line, she turned sharply, wanting to spill the beans.

Her eyes widened when she noticed Max had also stopped, staring at her as if he also wanted to tell her something, but wasn’t having the strength to say to her yet.

"Uhm, Max Payne, I... I..." she said, pausing and scratching her head with her finger while curling her lower lip inside. She stared at Max’s lips as if a treasure were buried deep beneath his skin and she was the only one to uproot it.

Max, who also kept talking in his head, stared at her, rolling his eyeballs and scanning Clara’s unique, unearthly body stature; huge hips, breasts, and ass. In his mind, he had already begun an intimate relationship with her, but in reality, he hadn’t even hugged her for a millisecond before.

"Clara, right?" Max said, laughing afterward. He straightened his face slightly, trying to gather the courage that wasn’t there, and moved toward her. But at that instant saw Gray walking from a distance, coming to where they stood.

"Clara, we’ll talk later. I have to attend to something," Max said, jolting away from Clara’s presence as if a force wasn’t naturally allowing him to spend a single minute with her and was driving him away little by little.

Clara laughed when she saw Max rushing toward a door, opening it in haste, and lastly entering it like diffusing a time bomb. The moment Clara turned and began walking to her room, she started whistling and shaking herself as if she had won a lottery no one had ever won before.

At that moment, Max, who had locked himself in the tiny storeroom where the poisonous parts of the monsters’ leftovers that were always carried were placed, dashed out coughing heavily. Unluckily, he bumped into Gray, who had also reached that area and was staring at Clara from a distance as she stood continuously hopping in joy.

Gray jolted his gaze from Clara at the last minute and gazed at Max, squeezing his face and clutching his palms around his nose.

"Why are you smelling of rotten carcasses?" he said, taking two steps back and stretching his right arm toward Max and gesturing to him to rush and take a bath.

As Max walked from Gray’s sight, Gray’s hand remained on his mouth and nose until he also moved from the door and onto Kai’s door. Gray knocked once but heard no answer, and when he was ready to give it a second try, he saw the door hanging slightly, indicating it wasn’t locked.

He frowned slightly but took it as normal since he’d never closed her door before; he just took it as nothing serious. Gray walked inside the boy’s room, stretched his hand trying to press the switch and ignite the bulb to produce light, but stopped when he heard snoring sounds coming from the table in Kai’s room.

After taking two steps forward, his expression changed as he thought of seeing someone only seen in movies coming to him and holding onto daggers like how Kai held the daggers whenever they trained.

Gray moved his hand, using the left as a shield and clenching the right as if he held onto an invisible sword, and moved forward. He was shocked to see that it was just the air and the night’s rays that were casting things like that to him. Yet, he didn’t feel safe inside Kai’s room, as he kept on seeing things of different nature and stature, almost about to attack him.

After spending a restless thirty minutes in Kai’s room, Gray walked to the door and stared at the sweat beading on the boy’s face, and shook his head.

’What at all is going on in this boy’s small head?’ he thought, finally opening the door and walking out of the room. Closing the door and standing in the hallway, he turned back to Kai’s door and sighed before heading to his own room in the other tall building standing in the far distance.

...

The moment the main entrance door of the building Kai was in sounded as if it was being closed, Kai’s body twitched, causing him to raise his hand and slam it hard while still being asleep.

The sound echoed so loudly that it shook some of those sleeping in the next room from their sleep, yet Kai never woke up, and the sweat beading on him never stopped. Instead, it doubled, even as heavy wind tore through his open window.

In his mind and in his dream, he followed the black bird until they reached a large wall with a tiny gate that kept popping out smoke. The bird that stopped before Kai cried out and rushed into the smoke, vanishing.

Kai stood there, confused, not knowing what to do. When he decided to head back and turned, he noticed the trees that were behind him a few minutes ago had turned into a metal wall and were closing in fast, as if they wanted to crush and smash him completely.

Metal screeching sounds kept on echoing as the metal wall behind reached a few meters away from Kai, and at the last minute of it reaching him, he noticed the door from which the smoke was also popping out starting to close.