ᗯᕼEᑎ TᕼE ᗪEᗩᗪ ᑕOᗰE ᗩᒪIᐯE [ ᴅᴀʀʏʟ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ]

- 34 -

Carefully I made my way in the direction of the dim glow of the flames. As I grew closer I could hear hushed whispers from what sounded like 4 different people. Three male, one female. Using the tree trunks to hide myself as I grew closer, the camp soon came into my view. I could see two tents set up side by side, one larger than the other, with a fire flickering from within a shallow hole dug in the ground a few inches in front of the tents. The faces of the people who sat around the fire were barely visable through the low hanging branches before me as I struggled to get a good look.

No way, I thought as I caught glimpse of their facial features as I moved around. They looked so familiar to me, but I had to make sure before I did anything stupid. I quietly moved to the next tree ahead of me, peaking around the trunk of the tree where I could get an unobstructed view of all their faces. As I did so my suspicions were confirmed.

"Chris. . ." I whispered in disbelief as I soon saw not one, but four families faces in front of me. From the camp, one of them began to turn in my direction. Panicked, I quickly ducked behind the tree trunk once more. As if my string of bad luck had already caught back up to me, when I moved I had stepped on a stick hidden under the brush, causing it to snap under my weight. The sound was heard clearly from the camp, alerted the four as they got up with knives ready in hand.

"Damn it" I whispered inaudibly as I lightly slammed my head again the tree bark. I give up.

"Who's there?" One of them called out as I accepted my fate. I could only hope they would remember me as I decided to reveal myself to the familiar faces. Slowly I stepped out from behind the tree with my hands raised in the air to show I was not a threat. I kept my eyes down at first, feeling nervous to meet the gaze of people I hadn't seen in a long time.

"Y/n. . ? Y/n is that you?" One of the voices called. I knew it was Chris, one of my managers from the past. It wasn't too surprising he was the first to recognize me. Slowly I raised my gaze to meet his own as I awkwardly laughed.

"Yep. . It's me" I said as I scratched the back of my head, unsure what to do in the moment. His sister sat quietly beside him, staring me down with what I'm sure was a cold look in her eyes. I couldn't remember her name, and truthfully I didn't care to as I was well aware she did not like me in the past.

. . . Chris and I had a bit of history, not in the dating sense, but more so that he liked me and I didn't. At the time him and his sister had just moved to the states from Puerto Rico so their English comprehension was still lacking despite being able to speak English pretty well. I had become well aware of Chris's feeling towards me early on, but any time I tired to hint at him that I wasn't interested in dating, or straight up rejecting him before he even had the chance to confess, it all just went straight over his head. Due to this, his sister grew to hate me as she believed I was leading her brother on in order to use him—for what? I'm not sure—until the day he finally understood that I was rejecting him. It wasn't until later on that I found out there was a lot of red flag when it came to Chris as I was informed that he had been leaving out some VERY important details when talking to his sister about our interactions. Because of this, I felt it would be best to keep my distance from Chris and his sister even now just incase he were to get the wrong idea. . . .

"No way" another voice called out "that's Y/n? Like Y/n who we worked with?" He spoke in disbelief. It was Robbie, my other manager from before the end of the world we use to know. Chris nodded in response to Robbie, confirming he was correct.

"What are you doing, get over here and join us!" Robbie exclaimed excitedly as he gestured for me to join them around the fire. Hesitantly, I walked over and sat beside him, mostly to avoid having to sit next to Chris. I looked over to the last person that had yet to say a word.