𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔: 𝑻𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝑩𝒓𝒆𝒆'𝒔 𝑬𝒚𝒆𝒔

7. We Sneak Out of An Airport

"I wonder if they have Chinese food!" Mindy was saying to her book huggers.

"You're in Germany for the first time in your life." I said to her. "Don't you wanna try German dishes?"

She blinked twice as if this has never actually occurred to her. "Maybe yeah... you might be right." She said clearing her throat.

I rolled my eyes and sighed. This had been a long lonely day. Yes, I was accompanied by the book huggers but that doesn't count. They do act like a wolf pack, I wasn't kidding. So I was completely left out the whole day till now.

If only Conner was around, I kept thinking to myself the entire time.

This day we went to the Mall of Berlin. We did some shopping – or rather, they did some shopping. I only bought a cool Tokyo Ghoul themed notebook.

And now we were sitting in the food court to order lunch. I had already ordered a while ago while the book huggers were still deciding – I'm sorry, arguing on which restaurant to eat from.

I sighed and decided to get up and take a walk around until my food is done.

I plugged my earbuds in and stuffed my hands in my pockets. I couldn’t help but notice that people didn't look at me the way they looked at the book huggers. They didn't look at me as a foreigner. I actually blended in kinda smoothly among germans (appearance-wise only of course, the only german words I know are anything that comes after guten and that's it.)
This was probably because my grandma was german and I kind of resembled her a little.

Conner would have enjoyed being here, I thought.

I had noticed that my thoughts keep drifting back to Conner all the time ever since I got here. I couldn’t shake him off my mind. He had apologized to Mrs. Peters this morning saying that he can't come. He had caught a bug at the event or so he says, and needed to rest at the hotel.

Did I believe that? No, I didn't.

Conner himself had told me at the cemetery that he was shaken up like that because of that third story reading. I had been thinking about that ever since, but couldn't figure it out on my own. I needed him to talk to me. To just tell me what happened.

And it wasn't only because I was curious. No I was genuinely concerned for him. And I hated how he had to be alone like that while we were here supposed to be having "fun". But guess what. Fun was the last thing I could have with the book huggers.

~ ~~~~~~~~ ~

We returned to the hotel a few hours later, the sun had set already.

My mind automatically thought of Conner again at the thought of sunset. He told me how fond he was of sunsets while we were together on the plane.

Literally, everything was reminding me of Conner. And nope, I wasn't gonna deny that like how I used to in the past. You happy now?

We got back to our rooms, Mindy and Cindy collapsed on their beds and immediately fell asleep. Today was really tiring, I couldn't blame them. I was tempted to do the same but I was craving a nice cold pepsi can first.

I exited my room and headed for the vending machine. The receptionist had told me it was in the second floor so I just took the stairs down one story.

As my foot hit the last step I spotted him.

Standing there by the vending machine, was a very pale tired Conner Bailey.