Chapter 313 Volume V – Chapter 31: A Strange Morning

?I turned the stove down slightly and slowly flipped the cracked eggs in the pan. I chopped a few slices of cheddar and added some sausage. After adding a few spices… the smell of the breakfast I had prepared started to tickle my nose and I couldn’t help smiling.

I placed the pan in the center of a rather big tray, then chopped a salad, toasted some bread, and added some different things. Finally, I picked up the tray and walked into the living room. The moment I walked in… the person sitting on my couch caught my attention. He must have smelled the breakfast because his nose wiggled slightly for a moment, then his eyes slowly turned in my direction.

A slight smile appeared on his face. His black hair was a little longer than I was used to. His brown eyes, tinged with yellow, were filled with curiosity as he looked at the tray in my hand.

“I only came once… you overdid it, Clara. If you keep this up, I’ll want to come here every morning.”

I put my hands on my waist and smiled sincerely as I placed the tray on the table in front of the armchairs.

“What makes you think that’s not my intention, Paul?”

I sat down on the sofa without saying anything else. Paul, his expression full of curiosity, reached for one of the toasts and dipped it into the fried egg in the pan. When he looked satisfied, I couldn’t help smiling again.

Since her sister hadn’t returned yet, there was nothing for him to do during his summer vacation. So he had come to my house about half an hour ago, and after breakfast, we were going out for a walk. It was going to be a normal day…

I took some of the salad and looked at Paul’s face.

His lips were curled upward, his eyes were on the table. But… in a strange way, he also wasn’t focused on it at all. Maybe a normal person wouldn’t have noticed, but I wasn’t a ‘normal person’. It wasn’t hard to see that something wasn’t quite right.

“Are you okay?”

Paul paused at my sudden question. His eyes left the table with his fork in the air and fixed on mine.

“About what?”

I replied as I briefly raised and lowered my hands.

“Anything… You haven’t looked well for almost a month. Ever since the news about my brother spread. At first, I thought you were worried about me… But even though I’ve more or less recovered now, you’re still the same. It’s like… something’s always keeping you busy. Like there’s always one or more thoughts you can’t get out of your head.”

Paul finally put the fork he had been holding in the air back in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed the thing in his mouth a few times, sighing slightly.

“It’s something to do with my sister, actually. I… I’m sorry. It’s not something I can talk about because it’s her private matter. Well… to tell you the truth, I also have a bit of a headache. I apologize again if I’m too obvious.”

Oh…

“If you have a headache, you should tell me in advance! Let’s cancel today’s plans and go out tomorrow.”

If it’s something to do with her sister… it’s not something I can delve into. If he doesn’t want to or can’t tell me, there’s nothing I can do.

After all… I hide a lot of things from him too, even though we have a romantic relationship.

“Actually… it would be good. I don’t want to be out and look soulless when I’m not feeling very well.”

With that, he ate his breakfast and lay down on the couch in the living room. After taking a painkiller and clearing the table together, he closed his eyes. A slightly relieved expression appeared on his face as he let himself sink into the comfort of the couch.

Sitting in the other armchair next to him… I looked up at his sleepy face for a moment and waited… doing nothing as I rested my head in my hand.

Paul… he was cute. He wasn’t handsome. He wasn’t ugly, of course. But he wasn’t like anybody else, either. He had a special, strange air about him. It had felt that way since the first day I met him. Now, with his eyes closed as he slept, his face was even cuter.

How long has it been? It must have been almost half a year… We’ve done a lot of things in those half a year, and the relationship between us has been getting better and better. But there are still things I’m keeping from him. That’s why sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing.

Is what I’m doing… the right thing? Is it the right thing to do to hide the truth from him when he is the only person in my life who is as close to me as my brother, maybe even more so at this point? I’m really struggling to make a decision… Part of me still tells me not to tell him, to wait for my brother to wake up first. But another part… tells me that every second I don’t tell him the truth, I betray his trust and our relationship.

I sighed lightly. I hadn’t even blinked my eyes once when I paused for a moment at a change in his expression.

Paul… his expression remained unchanged as he stood still for a moment. The corners of his lips curled up slightly as if he had encountered something exciting. The fingers of his left hand tried to close as if trying to grasp something, but… there was nothing to grasp, so he couldn’t achieve anything.

Is he dreaming? What kind of thing is he seeing…?

I found myself just focusing on his body movements. But… when I saw that he wasn’t doing anything different, I lost interest a little bit.

Anyway… I’ll keep waiting for my brother to wake up, for now. In any case… he’ll understand me when the time comes. And now, I don’t want to disturb him.

In the end, having chosen, as usual, to continue hiding the truth from him, I thought I would go to my room and surf the internet.

So I stretched slightly and then stood up. I made my way to the door, but before I left the living room, I wanted to take one last look at Paul.

First, I turned my head slightly back, and then… the first thing I saw was not his body lying on the couch… but a shadow right in front of my face, standing just behind me.

Before I could even realize what was happening, I was frozen in place. I hadn’t finished turning my head back, and I couldn’t stop myself from seeing it out of the corner of my eye… but I couldn’t scream either.

As my eyes reflexively closed, I threw my hand behind my back for the same reason. It was at this moment, just before my eyes closed… that I met the pale eyes of the shadow.

They were yellow. They weren’t exactly yellow, they looked that way because they were a quite light shade of brown. But… the important thing was that they felt familiar.

My eyes closed. My hand passed through the void without tripping over anything. Even my knee, which I also reflexively raised, did not hit any object. When I realized this… my eyes slowly opened, and what I found in front of me was… nothing. It was really nothing. There was no shadow in front of me, and Paul was still lying there with the same expression.

I stared at him blankly, the silence of the room enveloping my body, the ticking of the analog clock in and out of my ears.

What happened…? That shadow… that was Paul. I… I’m sure.

Did the Clairvoyance activate? But even if it was activated… what was it trying to show me, to tell me?

I just locked onto Paul’s expression. After a while, the ticking became even annoying, but I still didn’t move a muscle.

My eyebrows furrowed. I shook my head from side to side as I sighed.

Was it my imagination? Was I tired…? Why did I suspect Paul?

No… it would have been absurd if I hadn’t thought that for a moment after the eyes of the shadow. Then…

Oh, no… I’m being stupid. What am I thinking…? I’ve known him for almost six years.

As I started to get angry with myself, I finally turned around again. This time, I entered my room without hesitation, trying to clear my mind and relax myself as I made my way to my bed.

But… before I let myself fall on my bed, I just stayed where I was for a moment. I don’t know why, my whole body stiffened again. I felt beads of sweat forming on my forehead and realized that my fingers were trembling.

My eyes involuntarily shifted to the floor, fixed on the tips of my feet. As the silence surrounded me again in an unsettling way… this time, my eyes began to drift to the right. First, I followed the patterns of the carpet, then the tiles of the floor. Finally, I reached the legs of my closet, then its door. Then… the bottom of the mirror on the same closet door.

I forced myself for a moment. Instead of going up slowly, I gathered my courage, suddenly turned my eyes upward, and looked at the entire mirror.

There was nothing there. What was in the mirror was a reflection of me and my room. Nothing was wrong or strange.

Finally, I let out a deep, really deep sigh… I just let myself fall back on my bed… I attributed this strange moment… to my imagination and fatigue… I simply didn’t want to think otherwise… and then… I gave myself over to sleep.

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