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[Rei]

After the stunt, he pulled on me a couple of days ago, I just sort of distant myself from him and everyone. What else was I supposed to do? Throw a party! There was just so much going on in my head. I can’t even tell my own best friend about what’s about to happen or happening because of the mark he placed on me – even though she’s heard a bit of it from my sudden outburst – but I never approach the subject with her. Partly because I’m afraid that she might be the one to die.

I’m scared. No doubt about it. So, there’s no point of telling him about what’s bothering me anymore because he’s made his decision to invade my personal space, including my head, without feeling an ounce of guilt.

For the past couple of days, he’s been doing nothing but raid and snoop around on my personal thoughts – which I find terribly annoying and extremely rude.

He’s been asking a lot of questions like the marking my grandfather placed on me, my family, my childhood, the Oyabun position, the kidnapped, just about everything he found in my brain.

“Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened to you?” He barked. Another day, same question that I never seem to give a direct answer to.

I was just minding my own business by the front porch of his house, studying the gloomy-grey clouds, waiting for the rain to pour down on us. Rolling my eyes “What happened to me?” I reply him with a question which frustrates him more.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Rei.” He squints his eyes out of annoyance.

I laughed dryly “Ohoho! We’re on first name basis now? I didn’t know that we were friends!” I dramatically threw my hands up.

He groaned, clearly annoyed by how I was avoiding this, as if the question itself was cancer.

“Rei!” His voice claims authority, like it demands respect. Almost the exact one my late grandfather likes to use on me. It only made me laugh scornfully at him.

“I almost thought that you were my grandfather just now,” Note the sarcasm “Wow!” I breathe out the imaginary steaming heat that wanted to escape from my ears.

He looked guilty for a start. Well, that’s obviously something the old man was incapable of doing, especially in a split second.

I sighed tiredly and sat down on the stairs of his front porch, “What is it that you so badly want to know?” He stood across where I was sitting, frustratingly running his hand through his hair.

“Your scars,” He tried not to growl as he said it.

“Why don’t you go through my head again like you did the first time?” I challenged him. He held back from replying.

I had to hold myself back from rolling my eyes. Ever since I learn to build a wall – a barrier in my mind (thanks to Nala, Bambam’s mother, for helping), he couldn’t read anything else but what he had saw the first and second day after I got marked. “That – all those scars you saw, happened after my parents died.”

He stared at me for a while “Your grandfather?”

I didn’t know what to say but stay quiet. When he got his answer, he growled even louder, and said something that made my blood boiled. And in the perfect timing ever, the dark sky thundered loudly, as if they’re barking their own protest.

“He deserved to die.”

In a split-second I was on my feet, scowling “He may have deserved it years ago, but not now! I understand now why he had to do what he did. He’s still my grandfather, the one who took care of me when I lost everything, the one who fed me, kept me alive – it was him. I may have lost the chance to tell him this, and other things, and yet he’s still my grandfather. You don’t have the right to say what you said.”

“You sure as hell don’t have the right to growl or be angry at the things that happened to me because for one I was never yours.” I stood my ground.

Suddenly, I could feel the teardrops of the rain on my skin before it pours down completely. The rain somehow cools down my furious heated body.

His eyes softened, regret flashing his brown orbs “Rei, I’m sorry.” He paused “I never said