The Vagabond Girl of Nothingtown

Chapter 11: If You Love Someone Let them Go

       "I'm going to a coffee shop," I said packing my laptop into my backpack. I still had a chapter left to write and very much planned to finish my story that night.

"Can I come?" Dandelion asked grabbing my arm.

"Better not, you'll just get bored," I said patting her head. I turned on the TV in our hotel room to a channel playing a nature documentary.

"Just watch this until I get back okay?"

She nodded but continued to grab my arm. For some reason, her face looked more worried than usual, like she had seen a black cat or some other bad omen that day.

"Be safe," she said.

In response, I gave her a small smile and after a bit of effort, managed to pry my arm free.

"Of course I will, see you soon!" I said heading off.

"See you soon,"

I said those three words without much thought.

"See you soon,"

Three words that still ring in my head.

"See you soon,"

An ordinary promise, an ordinary lie. That night while walking along an ally way off Nowhere Street in Nothingtown 3, I was ambushed. I was ambushed by 2 men, who drugged me with a chloroform towel. And as I began to fall asleep under its effects, the last thing I saw was the symbol of the Blue Sun on the crests of their suits.

"Where... where am I?"

I awoke tied up to a chair inside an unknown room. Standing in front of me stood 2 men in suits both of which wore the same Blue Sun crests. They appeared to be talking to each other in a foreign language I did not understand. When I awoke and they saw me, they whispered quietly to themselves something I could not hear.

Do you expect some movie-esq villain to show up at a time like this? I will tell you now that no such villain came into my room that night giving the monologue of some Shakespearean philosophical quote and revealing their tragic back story and master plan to fix the world in some way all at once. If you have at all paid attention to not only this story, but how the entire world tends to function, you'd realize how absurd something like that is. Why would a global organization care about an ordinary man like me? You don't achieve such powers in the world by being bombastically cocky and evil; you achieve it by being intelligent, in both resources and movement.

So as I sat there unable to scream due to the gag over my mouth, unable to move, unable to do anything except watch the two men in suits continue to converse in an unknown language and occasionally laugh, the only thing I could do was cry. Well, I won't bore you too much with the details of the agonizing 10 hours I spent overnight in that damp room. This isn't a story about me; it's the story of a vagabond girl, a vagabond girl who stayed in our hotel in Nothingtown 3. The hotel room whose room card I kept in my wallet, a wallet that at this moment I could feel was very much missing from my pocket.

At the end of the 10 hours, the Blue Sun agents dropped me off at a park nearby along with my wallet. The only thing they left for me was another note they dropped on top of me.

"Keep everything you saw today a secret, and we won't hurt..."

I trembled in fear as I read what was written next. The list of names typed out in standard times new roman font. The name of every one of my contacts that I had texted on that train ride to Nothingtown 3.

"And if you ever see Dandelion, take her to your local police station immediately."

It was short, simple, and scary just like the last letter, though the last sentence gave me a bit of hope that they hadn't caught Dandelion yet. Grabbing my wallet, I quickly sprinted towards my hotel room.