Chapter 79 - The World Against Him : Part 3

Axel didn't know how long he had been walking. Probably one day or two days, maybe more. Time was confusing, after all.

His throat was sore, and his stomach ate itself. His lips had become pale the last time he saw his reflection on a puddle. He did not even know when was 'the last time'.

Because sometimes, if he were lucky, he would see his mismatched eyes in the reflection. And other times, he would not see anything at all as if he wasn't there. As if he was a ghost.

It scared him.

What if he disappeared forever? What if he would forever be in the shadow? What if no one searched for him? But if someone did, it would probably be Kiaran or his demon family, and Axel did not want that to happen.

What did he want, really?

Ah, he went back to this question again. It was a cycle that kept happening as he roamed in an empty street. It seemed like the moon was not even wanting to hear his thoughts as it hid behind the black clouds of night.

He wanted a real family. So the world offered him a fucked up answer by sending him an even more insane family from another world.

And so he changed it and wished for a normal life without getting wrapped up with his own last name. Just being Axel was enough. So he got a new friend and stayed with his best friend.

And the world got angry because he abandoned the answer from his first wish and decided to mess everything up.

He knew it was Kiaran's fault, and yet his brain kept blaming anything but Kiaran. It was as if his head was conditioned that way.

And most time, he would blame himself.

Axel suddenly stopped after letting himself wander for God knows how long. He took a long deep breath and gazed at the dark sky.

The dim street was empty as quiet buildings surrounded it. He stood in the middle of it, letting the wind blow away his fluffy hair, swaying it around. The boy snapped his eyes shut and tried to listen to his surrounding.

He could hear the rustling of the trees and the movement from the third building from his right. He quickly opened his eyes as he managed to finally catch the source of the disturbance that caused him to stop his walk.

Right after he opened his red and blue eyes, a man in black was thrown out of the window and possibly died. Considering the pool of blood that kept coming out of the man, Axel knew he could not make it.

Poor guy.

Axel sighed and walked over to the building out of curiosity. Maybe he really shouldn't have done this since his face was all over the news, but then again, what more could he lose anyway?

He lost everything already, even to the point that he had lost his own humanity and possibly life too.

He stood right in front of the building entrance and stared at the inside. The door was already broken, so he did not have to waste his time by opening it or crushing it.

A man's body flew over to where he stood, and the boy dodged it easily. The poor guy went past his head like a fly. He looked back at the dead man for a moment and quickly diverted his gaze to the inside again.

He felt chills run down his spine like needles, stabbing his body when he saw a certain red porcelain mask. The hood fell from her head and revealed her beautifully braided hair when she flipped in the air.

Everything she did was unintentionally beautiful, even when she mercifully killed the three men in front of her. She elegantly landed on the floor and accidentally caught Axel's mismatched eyes.

Overwhelmed by the sudden shock when she saw his little brother, the assassin failed to notice one of the men was still alive and knocked her gun from her hands.

The man pointed the gun at her, commanding Adreanna to raise her hands in surrender. She raised them and quietly stared at the enemy from behind her mask, making the atmosphere more dangerous than ever.

The man chuckled. "You can't run away now, slut. Say goodbye to the w-"

The man suddenly dropped down to the floor when Axel smashed his head with a chair, creating a mess from the parts of the chair that scattered around right after making the man fall. He threw away the chair's leg from his hand and looked over to his sister, who was adjusting her cloak and porcelain mask.

"Uh, this is kind of awkward, isn't it?" Axel started, trying to hide his trembling hands from Adreanna's sight.

She finally looked up and focused on the boy, probably. Axel could not tell from the porcelain mask that covered her whole face anyway. It was kind of intimidating, really.

"Thank you for the help," Adreanna said with her usual monotone voice.

Axel, who was taken aback by the sudden thanks, flinched. "Ah?"

This was the first time Adreanna showed her gratitude. What's gotten into her now? Was she planning to kill him right here?

"Axel?" Adreanna asked when she did not receive any answer from the boy and tilted her head. Her long braided hair fell to the side when she did it.

"Right, um." Axel scratched the back of his neck. "You're welcome, I guess. It's not much anyway. You could easily do it without me intervening."

Adreanna stayed silent, not moving at all. Totally not scary, nope, not at all.

The boy fiddled with the edge of his clothes and cleared his throat. "I better get going then. Nice to see you?"

"Me too." She answered without moving an inch. It was too uncanny. She was like a living statue.

"Right." Axel snapped his fingers and turned his back on her. "Bye."

The boy was only a few steps away from her when she suddenly spoke again, almost making Axel's heart jump out of his chest.

"Where-" Adreanna paused, trying to find the right word to ask. "Where are you going?"

Axel bit his lip at the question. He honestly didn't know where he would go either. In the end, he probably would walk aimlessly again and wait for something to happen.

"I don't know. I don't really have a place to go." He decided to answer with truth because Adreanna must have known about his whole identity situation, right?

If she actually cared, that is.

"I'm kind of famous right now, so-" Axel shrugged nonchalantly, trying to melt the chilling ice within the air, vaguely explaining his situation in case she didn't know.

"Do you want to go with me?" She offered, completely out of nowhere.

"What?" He croaked quizzically, finally turning around to face his sister again. He frowned at the friendly confrontation. Because the last time they faced each other was when the world burned. He still remembered how they tried to bring each other down.

He did not really hear what happened to Adreanna after he was being taken away by his family's demon version. Everything was happening too fast at that time.

Adreanna offered her red-gloved hand to him. "Join me, Axel."

For a second, everything morphed into the day when they were young. For a moment, Axel saw tiny Adreanna offer her hand to him with her long unbraided hair in her old training room.

He looked down to the offering hand, and everything yet again morphed into a different situation. The empty hand suddenly had a gun in the grip, pointing fiercely at him.

The world was burning behind Adreanna as her clothes were covered with the ashes from all the bombs Kiaran had planted that day. She stayed still as she waited for the answer of her offer in between the war their brother had caused.

Axel unconsciously took a step back. The memory rotted in his vision as he tried to calm the sudden panic within him. He was trying to breathe, but he couldn't. Someone was holding his throat and choking him, taking all the air that he could possibly get.

"Are you okay?" The sudden question from Adreanna broke all of his thoughts, causing the boy to look up at his sister.

The assassin did not retreat her hand away as she used the other hand to open her red porcelain mask, revealing a face with a horizontal cut right below her left eye. The stoic face was full of concern as she kept her hand offered at the boy.

The boy diverted his gaze from Adreanna's face to her hand again. Axel did not take the hand that time when they were young. He also did not take the offer the day the world burned.

And this time, as he slowly reached out his hand at her, he finally took it.

He had nowhere else to go anyway. What could go wrong?

She awkwardly put her other hand on Axel's head and patted him. The boy stiffened at the sudden show of affection, causing both of his cheeks tinted with a slight blush from the unusual movement by Adreanna.

She huffed, and if Axel looked up for just a moment there, he would find a slight smile on her face. A really vague one.

"Very well."