Calm and Calamity

Chapter 32

Day: 542

Days Left: 4938

Lives Saved: 2

Kai asked around for Corinna's whereabouts, but everyone merely shrugged or shook their heads. Groaning in frustration, Kai searched around the construction site and caught sight of someone with long golden blonde hair behind one of the buildings on the outskirts of the construction site. He turned the corner and stopped to see Corinna and Harmony talking to one another in hushed voices, their eyes gazing into the others'. Corinna's hand slowly rose up from her side and wrapped it around Harmony's waist, pulling her closer and-

"Kai!" Harmony yelped, retreating back a step as she noticed the man's presence. "We were just um..." Her voice trailed away, heat rushing to her cheeks.

Corinna, however, did not appear at all embarrassed but rather annoyed as she glared back at Kai, her hand still around Harmony's waist.

"Sorry," Kai laughed. "Didn't mean to interrupt."

Corinna's eyes narrowed, then widened, dropping her glare instantly as she gasped. "Wendy! I'm so sorry; it totally slipped my mind." She gave Harmony a quick peck on the cheek then dashed away. "I'll go now!"

"Thank you!" Kai called back. He turned to Harmony, who was fidgeting with her fingers and gazing down at the ground. "Did I come at a good moment?"

Harmony cleared her throat. "It's fine," she mumbled. "I think I've got a shelf that needs painting." And with that, she too left.

*

Klei stood on the sandy slope that led down to the grey beach. The black waves rose and fell, slowly devouring the debris of once was a tall tower of rocks that almost touched the ceiling of the sky but was now a pile of collapsed rubble. Above the remnants of that tower was where one of the portals to this realm would open; it was the portal that Klei and so many other prisoners had fallen through.

A shiver crept up Klei's spine, and he hugged his arms around his stomach, remembering how cold the water had been. Then there was the darkness, how pitch-black the ocean was, how he had to swim up not knowing when he would ever reach the surface. And those pair of eyes, the rotting hand reaching grabbing his ankle and-

He shook his head, attempting to evict that memory from his brain. 

But Calixte... he used to be one of those creatures, the water nymphs, prisoners forever drowning in the Eternal Abyss.

"Mister Klei!" called out a voice.

Klei turned to see Salim strolling along the beach with the rottweiler Reggie at his side. Today Salim was wearing a cyan-blue sweater with matching trousers and his hair wrapped up in a cyan headscarf that had lines of silver that sparkled when it caught the light.

"Out for a walk, too?" asked the old man as he reached Klei.

"Of sorts," replied Klei. "Just... needed to think."

"Understandable. I imagine it has become quite difficult to find some peace and quiet with so many people around."

"Yeah." Klei nodded. "But there was another reason why I came here specifically." He gazed over to the ocean.

Salim looked to the rubble of the rock tower, then up at the sky. "Considering escaping, my boy?"

Klei snorted. "Not at all. Well, I wasn't considering escaping but rather helping someone else."

"Who?" Salim hesitated.

"I learned earlier that Calixte used to be a water nymph."

"And you wish to free him?"