Emperor of Mayhem

f i f t y - s e v e n

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OLD FLAME
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"Hey, wait for me, geez!" The boy I had subconsciously began to love—platonically, of course—shouted across the hall, causing Elizabeth and I to thwart in our steps, both simultaneously releasing a heavy sigh. Though Elizabeth then decided to keep moving, I stopped to acknowledge him.

Hugging my jacket tighter against my body, I slightly whirled to catch his figure running down the hall, a string of dark curls bouncing against the tiny star tattoo on his jaw.

"You know this three musketeers thing doesn't exactly work if one of the musketeers gets left behind, right?" He said in between pants as he finally caught up to me. For an aspiring star athlete, he sure was unhealthy.

"You were busy," I shrugged, making reference to the girl he had trapped against a locker some minutes ago, doing God knows what, "I thought we should not act like some damn bodyguard and give you some privacy."

He made an incredulous facial expression, one hand tucking inside his pocket. "I was asking for the brand of her lip gloss. It's not what you think. She's-" he paused, scratching his eyebrow, "She's not exactly my type."

"As if you're anybody's type." We overheard Elizabeth say from where she was a good feet apart from us, and a grin broke out on my face. Shiro, being the receiver of such a brash affront, was struck with a perpetual frown, Mediterranean eyes narrowed at the back of Elizabeth's head.

"So why were you asking for the brand of the girl's lip gloss?" I raised a brow when his free hand dropped on my shoulder, "It's extremely glossy, you know. It won't look nice on a guy."

"I wanted to get it for you." He winked, ruffling my hair slightly. An action that quite irritated me. I spent half an hour on that hair trying to make it half as good as Mikhail usually made it for me. 

"Don't make me punch you on your birthday, Shiro." I said with a huff, a scowl on as I continued walking ahead, fixing the curls that seemed out of place. I could hear the echo of his soft laugh as his feet padded against the cold tiles of the hallway.

"He has no idea how annoying that shit is." Elizabeth intoned, a barely visible smile on as she glanced behind briefly at Shiro before returning her gaze to the direction ahead.

"Right?" I added, rolling my eyes then laughing when I glanced behind me again and caught Shiro with a pout on. And even though it was a short-lived laugh like most other ones, I loved the warmth that always spread through my chest at it.

As much as being in school surrounded by strange and an unhealthy amount of people often made me feel a bit too claustrophobic or paranoid that someone was about to stab me from behind, I found a way to always breathe with them around me. They felt like family to me. A shoulder to rest upon.

Especially Shiro Gusev.

I was glad I met him...well met him again, since he claimed we used to be friends before I disappeared into the deep blue. While Elizabeth had too many depths to her no matter how open she seemed, Shiro, on the other hand, was an open book. Transparent to the core you could almost see everything going on in that airhead of his.

He was funny, free spirited. And even with his bad boy appearance, he was cute, loveable and always looked out for Elizabeth and I.

The past few weeks had been rocky; finding out I might possibly have Stockholm Syndrome and Mikhail sending Mrs T to the emergency room, it was a chaos in my head.