sCene 43 - ᴡaᴛeʀᴘaʀᴋ ᴅaᴛe ᴘaʀᴛ 2

Right as I was handed the two soft pretzels and large lemonade I ordered, I heard a chair fall over and saw Nai-bu running away from the table. I didn’t notice anyone chasing her, and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by running, so I did my best to casually see where she was going, but she was moving too fast.

Sh-she didn’t do this like a trick or something, right?

No, no. That’s not Nai-bu. She’s always nice. Something must have been up. Maybe she saw someone she recognized but didn’t want to talk to? Maybe she noticed she dropped something? Was she wearing a bracelet or something? It’s been a long day, and hard to focus on anything other than her.

Once I was a little ways away from other people, I decided the best choice was to see if I could follow her scent. I started calling it “scent”, but that might be the “flat” term for it. My father’s explanation about how objects looked “flat” to him didn’t make sense until my recent transformation. If he is constantly seeing phantoms of people’s past and future actions, I guess it makes sense that things would seem flat. To me, it’s more of an extrasensory thing.

I slowly began transforming my eyes, causing the whites of my eyes to fill in black, and my face to try reshaping to form my snout as my eyes grew a little bigger. As soon as I could see the faintest phantoms, I paused my transformation, hopefully only looking a little strange. I knew how to tell Nai-bu apart from others, mostly testing it when Jason would come over to compare, but this was my first time doing this outside, and the phantoms were definitely affected by wind. I could tell where Nai-bu went, but the phantoms were much more eroded, even when they were this recent.

I saw that Nai-bu had gone into an area marked off with a rope for a party. The party was probably much later, and no one was really around to say anything. I slipped under the rope, managing not to drop our food. I was worried, but leaving our food behind wasn’t going to help. We were tired and hungry, right?

Nai-bu was balled up in a corner. She was rocking in place, mumbling something to herself. I don’t think I had ever seen her quite like this. Passing out or sounding dreary was one thing, but she looked absolutely panicked.

I sat on the ground in front of her, trying to bring myself closer to her eye level. She didn’t lift her head, or seem to notice me.

“Hey…” I said, in a hushed tone.

She lifted her head, and her eyes widened, and she started to act like she was covering her body up.

“Please don’t look at me! I didn’t want you to see me like this!” She shouted.

I tried to get her to lower her voice. Not an ideal time for us to get caught someplace we shouldn’t be.

“Like what? You look the same as when we got here.” I really did not understand.

“You mean–!” She started loud, but then paused. “You mean, you could see the whole time? You let me expose myself like this?” She asked, quieter.

I still had no idea what she meant. “Like what? You’re not making any sense.”

“You don’t see my scars right now?” She asked, confusing me further.

“What scars? I didn’t even know you had any scars.” I may not have seen her whole body yet, but I think I would remember seeing some scars by now.

She looked at herself in disbelief, and even touched her arms and legs like she was looking for something, but couldn’t find it. Was she experiencing heat stroke or something?

I tried to hand her the lemonaid, but sat it down in front of us instead. My hand was really cold. She watched me now holding the pretzels separately, trying to eat one by just biting into it. I thought she would stop and take hers, but she just kept staring at me.

“Are you going to eat or what?” I asked, turning my face away from her.

She took her pretzel and started eating too. She was still staring, but I was just glad she was doing better. We both lamented not having a cheese cup or something to dip the pretzels in, but then just laughed about it.

“Did you…have to transform to find me?” She asked, looking down at her pretzel.

“Just a little. Does it look funny?” I didn’t even think about shifting back.

Nai-bu shook her head. “No. You always look pretty.”

At least she sounded normal again.

While we talked about doing more after we ate, neither of us liked the idea of doing the slides again, and more people were starting to show up, so we decided to leave. Nai-bu still seemed like she kept checking her arms and legs, but nothing was there. Her skin honestly looked really clear, but maybe she was making sure she still had her limbs? We agreed to not talk about it today, but I was still checking to make sure I wasn’t hurting her. But maybe the damage was already done.

When we got back to my place, she immediately went to the bathroom. I could hear her uncover the mirror, since we installed a curtain to make it easier for her to use it. Maybe it was my fault.

The rest of the day she wasn’t exactly distant, but we were definitely both tired. I tried to do a stream, but was too tired to keep up with my chat, and when I signed off Nai-bu asked if she could go to bed. She was knocked out before I finished washing up for bed, and I ended up just zoning out in the living room.

If it’s my fault, she knows she can talk to me, right?