Gifted | Sleepy Bois Inc

Chapter Twenty-Two

Finding George was a lot easier than I had expected. He was literally on a bench in the park, eating a sandwich, which was very different from the evil lair I had been looking for.

My first instinct was to slap his sandwich out of his hand as revenge for him helping Smiley and generally being annoying with his skeletons, but I wasn't about to waste a perfectly good sandwich.

The park was still full of people, even though it was getting harder to see. People training with things like sports balls, rackets, nets. Kids laughing as they played on the equipment, being normal civilians, not having to worry about some murderer dude who drew pretty flowers with the blood of his victims like some weird creep.

George was happily munching away at his sandwich. If I didn't know him or what he could do, I'd say that he was just as normal as the kids in the park were. He didn't look like anything worth noticing. No muscles being flexed. No crazy anime hair or scars or whatnot.

I sat down next to him. "I hate you so much."

He glanced up at me warily. "Can't you just say 'hello?'"

"Hello," I amended. "I hate you so much. Why'd you have to go all necromancer-mode on me at Tryxel?"

George lowered his sandwich and frowned at me. "That's what you came to talk to me about? Gosh. I really wish there'd be a day when someone comes up to me just to hang out."

I didn't respond, mostly because I knew that anything I said would probably just make him more angsty. Technoblade with a filter. Improvement.

"To you, Smiley must seem like a horrible person," George said. "A killer with no morals, ruining your city. Threatening your friends and everything you hold dear, especially as a Gifted."

"And you're gonna tell me that he's not a horrible person."

He blinked. "No. I totally agree. He is a very horrible person."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Talking with George gave me a headache. Maybe that was why I hadn't tried to find him and start up a conversation after our first encounter.

"So why'd you help him, then?" I asked.

"I have my own reasons," George said evasively. Then he sighed. "Well... I'm trying to help a friend. He was really dear to me, and I miss him a lot, but things happened and took a turn for the worst. I'm just trying to protect him."

A "bad guy" with a good heart. Not exactly what I had been preparing to deal with, because it made it infinitely harder to hate him for letting Smiley go. However, I wasn't deterred.

"If that friend you're talking about is Smiley, I still hate you," I said.

George harrumphed at me. "Well, he is and he isn't."

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?"

"It's---"

"'Complicated?'" I said, cutting him off. "'A long story?' I know you want to say that, but those are excuses. A person can't be is and isn't. That's some Schrödinger's cat-level stuff that I don't want to deal with right now."

"You asked if he was the friend---"

"You replied with a freaking mind puzzle."

George threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. "I don't know, okay? Everything is just all over the place right now, and it has been for so long. I--- I... it's..."

He looked so depressed that I couldn't help but feel sorry for him, which was counter intuitive, because he threw skeletons at me and Philza and gave me a perfectly good reason to hate him while doing so. But at the same time, it was clear that he was struggling with something.