It had been 2 years since we met each other, right on the first day we both started our job here. And he had always been like this since that first day. He said it was natural for him to take care of others in the same office. He couldn't live without taking care of others. So I asked 'But you don't serve others everyday, do you? Only me.'. His answer was simply a princely warm smile. To my embarrassment, I did feel my face heat up a bit at that so I never asked him about his strange behavior again.
Still, I didn't really mind him serving me coffee everyday... because there were other things he does that could bother me much more. Such as... standing right behind me and watching me work silently. Every. Single. Day.
"Hmm... Only a file left, right?"
"Yeah..." How did you know that? I felt like asking him so bad. There were many times he can just guess what I've been doing or how I was feeling, heck, even what I was thinking about. Sometimes it just got real scary and I really wanted him to stop. But... I just didn't have the heart. Someone like me telling the prince who served me coffee every day "Stop acting like you could read my mind."? Hahaha. Absolutely impossible.
So I decided to leave the conversation at that. Let sweet silence fill the air between us. The good thing was... we never got nervous being in total silence together.
Today was just like the other days. In the middle of my square-shaped office, there was me sitting on my stupid chair, working my ass off, and then there was him, mysterious Prince Howie who never seemed to get bored just standing there, sometimes watching me, sometimes looking out the window with an expression of... longing and nostalgia? Every single day his slender figure would move from behind me to that glass wall where he just stood still, not moving an inch, allowing the dusk to paint his perfect body in scarlet light.
"I wonder... what would the Outside be like today...?"
"..."
And that question he just asked was also one of the things he always did that really bothers me
Every time, as he was staring into nothingness, he would ask that question - the question I had never answered. Instead, I did ask him back in my mind 'Why would you give a damn about the Outside?'
Because there was nothing great about the Outside. Just imagining what it would be like made my hands shake.
It had been 5 years since that day the Holy War broke out, since the demons flooded into our realm, killing people left and right, and driving humanity to despair. We fled into this cage so that we could forget about that world where the sky was blue and continue to thrive under this violet hue.
The Outside, it was a no man's land where humanity fell.
Why would Prince Howie want to know about that Outside?
As for me, the only thing I wanted was to forget everything painful, the past, the memories, the days I could never take back... and just live on while trying to be happy.
You could call me a hedonist or whatever, but I have my little bro to raise, you know? I just had to live a happy and ordinary life, which means 'No demons. No bad vibes.'
The only suffering I need as a human would be 'To work my ass off until the deadline'. Such was the price of peace I'm always willing to pay.
*****
About half an hour later, when that *ping* sound rang as a signal telling me that my suffering had come to an end, I swore my finger had never pressed "send" so goddamn fast in my entire life.
"Sweet merciful corporate! Finally, my water bed~ I've come for you, my dear water bed!" My ass did spring up from the chair and my body immediately climbed over the water bed-- the computer desk right after I had shut it down. Then my mouth said something like "Howie, I'm gonna take some nap~ You can leave without me! No need to wait!" before my head touched the cool surface and my consciousness began drifting away in a span of 30 seconds as always.
Somehow Howie seemed to be deep in his thought as he was staring out into the twilight, hazel eyes fixated on whatever he took a sudden interest in, hence he didn't respond to me. It was strange since Howie ALWAYS responded to me, no matter how deep he be in his abysmal depths of thought sometimes.
Should I be worried? But it was just a man being deep in his thought, there was nothing to be worried about? It was not like... he was seeing a demon flying in the sky out there?
Anyway, I couldn't hold my eyes open for another second, for real, so I was just gonna leave him at his little sunset gazing. Sleepy Adel shall venture into the land of sweet dreams. Let us meet again when the day starts anew, my Café Latte Prince.
*****
"A--"
"Ade--"
"Adel!"
Hmm...?
I didn't know how long time had passed since I fell asleep on this water bed, but when I heard Howie's voice shouting my name, trying to wake me up, the sky had already gone pitch black. When I opened my eyes and was trying to adjust to the dark, a particular pair of hazel eyes were so close to my face and they were illuminated in dim light, making them look almost like binary moons.
"How strange..." I thought to myself. They looked almost non-human but so beautiful that I couldn't take my eyes away even when I was fully awake.
"Adel, are you awake...? Like... really awake?"
"Uh... Yep, I guess...?" And I had no idea why he had to ask me that question with such a shaky voice when my eyes were clearly fully open and I was looking straight at him in his eyes. After a second had passed or so, I also realized that his hands were grabbing my arms so freaking hard like... non-human hard. Had he always been this strong? If that was the case, then he must have been so gentle to me this entire time since he woke me up doing this arm-grabbing thing every day...
"Howie?"
"Adel..."
Right at that moment, I started to think that maybe I should get worried about him after all, but then...
"Run--"
The second I had that thought, it was the same second when some screeching sound pierced right through my eardrums and stole my attention away at once. It was a loud as f*ck revving sound of an airbike in which I swear I could vomit if I had to listen to it for more than 3 seconds. It was so loud that it could attract every Peacekeeper in the city to come arrest this outlaw biker or whatever the frick kind of abomination to the society they were, and also wake every napping employee in the downtown up from their dogmatic slumber--!
"Sh*t--!? ADEL, GET DOWN!"
"Ah--! W-WHAT ARE YOU DOING, HOWI--?!"
Before I could finish cursing that revving biatch, suddenly Howie decided to plunge himself toward me and covered me with his own colossal body, making my soul scream inside as I didn't know shite what was happening but my face was already deep in his mountain-wide chest!
"Angel's bum hair! They are coming, Adel!"
"Huh? THEY??? What do you mean by THEY--"
As soon as I asked that question, it seemed that something up there in the sky really wanted to provide me an immediate answer. In the corner of my eye, there was a freaking shadow as big as the size of a buffalo appearing on the glass wall, which means there was also some solid thing as big as a buffalo flying toward the glass wall?
OK. If I remember correctly, this was a super strong tempered glass, as strong as a barrier, so there was no way that thing would be able to crash into the room within a single impact. Howie and I still had time to run. Yes, as he said to me earlier, we had to RUN.
"Howie?! Get up! We can't stay here!"
"Adel..."
"What are you doing?! Get up! We still have time!"
"Adel, I think..."
"I think it's too late."
However, it was revealed to us that whatever the corporate had said about their product, there was indeed something that the strong-as-hell tempered glass couldn't stand against.
It was a whole ass airbike as big as a buffalo flying straight toward it.
The moment that wall of glass got shattered into bits before my very eyes, I swore I could hear my soul screech ten times louder than the sound of that revving bike.
'Here marked the end of Adel Ozwald's ordinary life' it said.
'Are you really awake, Adel?'
That question from Howie suddenly rang in my head for countless of times under the sound of glass pieces raining down upon the floor.