Who Are You?

Arc 2.4 - Grayson Hale

"Shit, Grayson....Are those permanent..?"

Grayson was wearing a short sleeve t-shirt. Meaning, the tattoos on his arms were completely exposed.

Adrian was seeing these for the first time and he was taken aback. Knowing Grayson's personality (only the introverted persona that Grayson Hale acted as in front of Adrian), he would never think that he would have tattoos, especially such bold and expensive looking ones. A full half-sleeve, an armband, a Viking symbol... words couldn't describe how Adrian felt about this.

"Hmm? What is?" Grayson tilted his head to the side in confusion as he played dumb. On the inside, Grayson felt excited as he watched Adrian's reaction from behind his sunglasses. He felt the sudden impulse to just reveal that everything is an act, but he contained himself. It wouldn't be fun for the secret to be spilled so easily, now would it?

"These tattoos. When the did you get these? Holy shit..."

"Oh...these...That's right, I'm perma- They're permanent." Grayson touched his arms as he showed a face of realization and pretended to clumsily mess up and look away from Adrian's direction. Him acting like the original was quite easy as Grayson had inherited most of the main memories of the original's time playing as this persona.

"Yeah...I think I've had them for about... two years?...I-It's actually all my brothers fault, he picked them out and made me get them. I'm not even sure if they're actually any good..." Grayson got his first tattoo two years ago, and his most recent one was inked just about half a year ago.

"These are definitely some good ones, especially that sleeve. Why haven't I seen these before?"

"I don't know. Even I forgot I had these ones."

Adrian just kept his gaze on Grayson, dumbstruck. Even if you're blind how does someone forget about having tattoos? Deciding not to think about it any longer, Adrian just grabbed his plate and sat in the stool beside Grayson.

"It's rice and curry tonight. By the way, you have brother?"

Grayson hummed in confirmation as he dragged his hands on the counter before finding the plate in front of him. "Older brother by 8 years."

"Any other siblings?"

Grayson shook his head as he dropped his head while he ate with his spoon.

"Oh."

They both fell into an uncomfortable silence as they ate.

The only sounds were the clanking of the utensils against the plates, the ventilation from the stove, and the soft breathing of the two people in the apartment. But Grayson could hear more, the sound of the next door neighbor's dog, the sound of a baby's wailing, the sound of the water flowing through the pipes, the sound of conversation going on from 10 stories down... Slowly....everything was becoming louder and louder as the silence went on.

He immediately dropped his spoon and clutched his head. Grayson couldn't think properly, his hearing was picking up things from all over the neighbourhood. Even if he properly trained with the enhanced hearing skill, he still couldn't get used to having this type of hearing in the real world. Hundreds of thousands of different sounds and frequencies were combining and rising in volume. He found that he couldn't stop it, he couldn't cancel them out as background noise, he was also finding it difficult to pin point his focus just onto one thing. It was becoming so overwhelming that his emotions were beginning to become more on edge as the deafening silence continued.

"Grayson." A soft voice spoke out.

Suddenly, all the noise retracted back, as if none of the above ever happened. It felt as if being snapped back to reality, Grayson couldn't help but feel bewildered.