Shadow (ONC Entry)

X : Part One

-- Unedited --

Chapter 10 / Memories

" I have embraced many beautiful memories in my life but the one I admire the most was when I met you."
- Kymberly.

..........

The clonk sound of the door - probably coming from the living room - informed Melissa that someone had gone out.

She couldn't help but wonder if it was Rhoda.

Considering the fact that she did hear someone else's muffled voice come from the parlor, Melissa concluded that Rhoda and that person must have gone out together.

But who could that have been?

She could discern that it was the voice of a male. But which male was that? Her cousin? Fiancee?

Well, the only way she would ever find out was when Rhoda eventually comes back from wherever she had gone to. So she had no other choice but to wait.

As she tried standing up from the cozy bed she'd previously laid facing upwards, she let out a cry of pain the moment her foot accidentally hits the rack standing very close to that bed.

This plus the fact that she was still very much upset with Rhoda made her regret ever entering Rhoda's room in the first place.

Of all places that a vexed Melissa could ever go, she went to the room of that one person she was so angry with. Seriously?

Sitting back on the bed while grimacing as a result of the unwanted foot ache, she started massaging her foot so as to soothe the excruciating pain. As if Rhoda hadn't already done enough damage, now her rack wanted to do even more by inflicting such physical pain on her? Jeez!

After few minutes of incessant messages, the pain had subsided and she already started feeling a lot better. Instead of laying in bed and sulking about her bruised foot and her fight with Melissa, she decided to take a small tour round Rhoda's house (or should I say mini-mansion) in general.

Getting up, she shifted her eyes to the floor and glimpsed at the fallen rack, several items that must've fallen with it laid beside it.

To her utmost surprise, in an attempt to pick the rack and the items that had fallen with it, she saw a somewhat wooden box not too far from the same rack.

It looked marginally familiar, so - with strange interest - she leaped towards it and with a bend of her knees, she picked it up.

Still, on bent knees, she scanned the box.

It was indeed a medium-sized wooden box, with a cover that could be removed and placed back. There was an initial 'R' smeared with white paint, on its pinkish body frame.

With the way it was scrawled, one could easily tell that an eight-year-old must have been the scribbler.

'R' for Rhoda. It must've been Rhoda's. Of course, it was.

Rhoda's toy box. The one thing she never joked with. The one thing she could fight even the president for. She always stored every toy she got as presents - at birthday parties, weddings, normal guest visitations, etc - inside that box.