Wow! The revamped version is here! I hope you guys like it a lot, and feel as if you can still connect it with the old chapters. We will see a different side of Lina, and we’ll definitely see a more mature girl with a bit of an emotional intelligence than the previous girl that she was. I really, really hope you like it.

Tell me all of your thoughts down below.  

“Lina, pass me the salt, please.”

Lina raised her head from where she had been watching her hands poking around her food upon hearing her mother’s monotonous voice. She looked at her right, where the bottle of the salt was and frowned. From where she was sitting; the bottle was much closer to Lani, but her mother asked her to retrieve it. She doesn’t want to be a childish girl throwing a tantrum about it, but she knew that her mother asked her to bring the salt because she didn’t want to tire her precious little girl, Lani, as if stretching her arm a little was a strenuous activity. It wasn't very uncommon of her mother to request her to bring trivial things to her, things in which were much more closer to her sister. But then again, her mother never let Lani do anything when she was available.

Silently, she took the salt and passed it to her father, who was sitting on her other side and next to her mother. Her father handed it over without a word. 

“Thank you.” Her mom coldly accepted the salt shaker, eyeing her food and pretending that no one was there around her. 

It was almost funny how the harsh, well-disciplined mother of hers couldn't cook considering the fact she came from an up-tight family that focused a little too munch on manners and disciplinary actions like cooking. Most of the time her father would be the one in charge of cooking; since his job was a chef in one of the popular restaurants around the block and he liked to cook. But this time, her dad had returned late and tired; so her wife instincts kicked in and she tried cooking something for today. Lina wasn’t a fan of her mother’s cooking. Everything made by her hand resembled her cold and unseasonable personality. Lina would rather eat something her father cooked; but seeing as she hasn’t got a choice; she ate her food without a complaint.

Her phone, in the pocket of her flowery skirt, released a ding! of a text message, and she froze. Phones were prohibited in dinner times, especially when they all ate as a group. Lina, of course, knew of this rule, but being the rebellious little girl that she was, she couldn’t help but bring her phone out. She didn’t expect anyone to text her considering she only got one friend, and Byul knew of the no-phone-at-dinner rule in their house. Lina wondered if her bubbly friend forgot about this again. 

Instantly, her mother raised her head from her food, and settled her expressionless eyes on Lina. “Rules are you can’t bring your phone at the table in dinner time, Lina. How many times should I say this?”

“Sorry— I must’ve forgotten it in my pocket when you called down for dinner.” She quickly dived her hand inside her pocket, locked the ringer of the phone in place, and then shot her mother a small smile to placate her. “Won’t happen again.” She added. Her mother stared at her for long, the other family members — Lani and her father — watching the exchange silently. 

Her mother said nothing, and returned back to eating her food. Releasing a breath of relief; Lina quickly went back to her now soggy and cold food. From her side, she caught her father’s twinkling eyes, and when he saw her paying attention to him, he winked.

She smiled secretly under her nose.

-

Once dinner was over and she was in her room;  she immediately grabbed her phone from her skirt’s pocket and opened the text she received from none other than her friend, Byul.

Instantly, Lina’s eyes widened, and her grip on the phone tightened immensely. The heartbeats of hers that have been doormat for so long began to accelerate in her chest, and redness so harsh coated her hallow cheeks. She threw herself on her bed, eyed her phone as if she were holding a foreign object and then stared at her ceiling. Jimmy had been the only guy she actually found attractive enough to develop a likening to, and she didn’t mean it in a physical way. He was the only guy who was smart enough to kick his grades from the tenth in class to the second, and he was the only one that didn’t seem to play around with girls like most of the teenagers she knew around her school. His gruff, aloof personality made him an enigma and his tendency to ignore everyone other than his close friends made Lina anxious to unwrap all of his secrets; especially the ones that he didn’t want anyone to find out about.

To hear that he has an interest in boring little her, the girl with the blurry face; the girl that people deemed as a freak; made her heartbeats wild inside of her mostly tamed chest, and she couldn’t help but envision all sorts of scenarios with the charming boy. She opened her phone again after reducing some of the speed in her erratic heartbeats, and texted Byul back.

Byul’s reply was instantaneous. 

Lina scratched at her forehead, confused about the whole matter. Lina was practically an outcast in her school, and the reason that made her so was the belief she had a super power. Ever since she could remember, Lina was able to see people’s memories whenever her hands came into contact with theirs. Then, the ‘power’ developed, and she was able to transfer some of her own energy to them as well, making them feel rejuvenated and energized when they’d been sickly or weak. As she grew up; she learned to have the slightest of control over it, and that was by a massive time taken to rehearse over and over again. Only few people knew about this power of hers, and that was Byul and some of her friends which she ‘accidentally’ had blurted the secret to. 

The constant ringing of her phone pulled her out of her monotonous monologue. She checked her phone and found numerous texts from Byul. 

    • Lina? Where the heck did you go? Did you fall asleep on me again. You !

Due to the wide spread amongst Byul’s big group of friends about her power, they’d intercept her way and order her to do her ‘trick’ on them. Of course, she mostly refused or ignored them, which made most of the rumors die down. It didn’t mean that some of them retreated back to their shadows, and kept pestering her about it. Some even offered her real money to scan their memories and tell them their deepest and darkest secrets. Lina quickly became the freak in the school thanks to Byul’s blabber mouth and her inability to keep a secret, and soon enough, the small selected few who knew of her powers were the entire school. 

Lina sent back, closed her phone, and then flopped on her back to stare at the ceiling once more. Her ceiling was littered with little glowing stars and planets and if it weren’t for her father to present her with such a delightful present in her birthday; she might’ve spent a lot of her younger years with insomnia. True to herself, her eyes quickly begin to flutter closed, and in seconds, she was in dream land, totally inconspicuous to her phone ringing with texts from her friend.

-

School was an absolute torture. It was torture for everyone, but even more so for Lina. In the midst of everyone shutting themselves from her and her freaky-self, she was also having a battle with grades and trying to stay loyal to her mother’s crazy standards. She could be the bad daughter and screw her grades away; but a part of her is also completely drawn towards being a better person in school and academic work.

The walk to school was long and dreary. The sky’s completely dark and everything around Lina was buzzing in the sense of the coming rain. Her own body was abuzz and her fingertips were burning her to be flung to the side and extract her inner beast. But like the good girl that she was; she always sealed her desires away. She walked with a head held high despite the ache in her back; and she closed her hands around the straps of her backpack with force so her powers remain afloat. 

Upon the gravel ground of the school, she paused. There, in front of the gigantic open gates stood her bubbly friend Byul, laughing at something a stranger had said. The scene would have been absolutely normal to her, considering Byul’s wonderful personality in entertaining every single person that surrounds her; if she weren’t so suspicious of the people she was with. 

The past few weeks, Lina had noticed that Byul was recently hanging out with people from a different school. Nine males that would surround her like they were trying to protect her from an upcoming storm only they could sense. Their faces would always blur in Lina’s mind because she never really stood enough to memorize every nook of their features, and Byul didn’t stay enough on school grounds to talk to them, as she’d always shoo them away before Lina could march there and drill them with question about what exactly they want from her delicate friend. 

A movement from one of the boys caught her attention, and Lina snapped herself from her mindless chatter with herself to catch the boys getting ready to leave. A guy with brown hair and kind eyes reached over to tuck a lock of hair behind Byul’s ear, and leaning down to print a small, lingering kiss on her forehead. Even from her distance, Lina could see the red blush racing to Byul’s cheeks, passing by her neck and ears. Lina, unaware of herself; felt a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach, and that earned an automatic crease to her eyebrows. Lina bit her lower lip, and Byul waved goodbye to the boys and turned to jog towards the school, not sparing the retreating guys a glance as they slowly began to disappear away.

Lina continued her militant march towards her school, trying to put the scene she saw in the back of her mind. 

Once in her classroom, she put her bag on the hook next to her table and sat herself on her chair, ignoring the whispers and taunting stares that broke all around her, probably talking about her again. She stared straight ahead at the whiteboard, and maintained a blank expression that’d tell the bravest of hearts to steer away from her. Thankfully; her scary face always deterred people away from her, and it was an attribute that she found impressive to herself, because it helped her throw fools away from her shadow.

Byul came inside the classroom, her eyes narrowed like an angered cheetah and having a single minded determination look on. Lina instantly knew that she’d be scolded for what she did yesterday and readied herself. When Byul’s laser eyes fell on hers, they narrowed more, and people spread like the red sea when she stomped towards her to let her pass.

“Dude. You didn’t reply to my me