The Oracle of Trickery [Kid x Reader x Killer]

17. About ideas and impressions

The next days went by normally. Well, to be honest, it was quite a weird normality. Do you know the saying "The elephant in the room"? Well, that's how it felt like. Like there was a huge elephant in the middle of the ship, but everyone acted as if there was nothing there. In my case, we could have substituted the word "elephant" for "spikey red-haired infernal beast", aka Eustass Kid.

Not everyone in the ship noticed it, that's for sure. But the sharper and closer ones did.

"Don't you think the captain is acting a bit weird?" Toba asked each time we sat on the table at mealtime.

Everyone shrugged, agreeing with him, but without interest or without an answer for the captain's weird behaviour. I did the same as if I didn't know anything about the matter.

But I did know (or at least I could faintly fathom) why the captain didn't get close to talk to anyone if I was close; why he spent more time in his workshop; why he didn't look as excited in the parties they threw from time to time...

What maybe he didn't know was that, because of him, I couldn't stop thinking about that day in his cabin.

"Then tell me. Tell me why I can't stop thinking about you since you laid a foot on this ship. Tell me why I dread the thought of losing you and not being able to avoid it. Tell me..."

After repeating his words so many times in my head like a broken record, it even started to sound funny. Had that been a confession? They should give him an award for his dramatic acting because I almost took the bait. But after days of intense meditation, I realized it wasn't possible. Nope, no, nein, niet, non. Impossible. No way.

We were talking about Eustass Kid. Eustass Kid, for fuck's sake! An unscrupulous sadist without empathy. How could such a being be able to love? I was convinced Eustass had just attached like a child to a new toy. And we all know what happens when they get bored of said toy.

I would jump over lovesickness. It's not like I had had any experience in love in Imbir, anyway. Yeah, some other time I met people who looked attractive to me, physically and for the way they were, but I could never see myself starting a relationship with any of them.

In a sense, I felt like it held me down. That you should start to plan your future like everyone else and end up like them: buy a house, have children, live your monotonous life faking you are happy every day and waiting for the day you would have to write your will.

And I loved freedom too much to choose that life.

I doubted someone like Kid could make me change my mind. I mentally laughed. He was attractive, I admit it. I would be lying to myself if I said otherwise or I should check my sight. Tall, nice body, strong, an assertive and intense look... Hell, he even had a certain charisma, I couldn't deny it. It was the "bad boy" prototype so many people liked.

But it wasn't the prototype I was looking for if I even was looking for something at all. I tried to convince myself that my increasing heartbeat whenever I thought about him was just the result of the many dangerous situations we had experienced together. Too much adrenaline.