(#BBBXCOVID1920) The Final Sadist

4 || Narcissistic Hero

"Or you'll end up like them and go missing too for years!"

Yaya's put to an abrupt halt at Ying's puffing words of anger. She's never had a heightened tone like this before, one filled with vexation and frustration. It's apparent, an emotion transparent and visible even deep down. She's scared.

Ying has always been scared. She just never cries.

She chews on her lip. She can't say anymore things to hurt her best friend, it's the least thing she ever wanted to do. But the thought pulls her tightly. She can't lose a friend over a stupid dream.

The dreams were forgotten, Ying always remembers from the ballad. You wake up at the break of dawn after a horrid dream. But as you wake, you forget.

Dreams are meant to be forgotten.

If only she can scream it to Yaya's face. She takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Yaya. But you know what happened that day, right? You know what danger your father and your brother brought into themselves, you know what hole they fell in and you want to follow them?"

Yaya drops to the dirt, level with Ying. She can't bear looking at her. The thought of her missing brother and father puts her to pieces. "They only did that to look for Aunty Yah, you know," she murmurs.

"Well then, my bad, girl, because my mother came back alive, so you can't blame my mom for your family running away!"

Ying's yelling. She barely yells. Yaya's chest rises and falls, overflowing with emotion. Ying's eyes paste on hers before falling to the ground. She barely yells.

"Get back to the tents, Yaya..." Ying whimpers. "Please, I'm sorry..."

"Then I guess this is how we're sleeping, eh, Ying?" Yaya's lips tremble, trying to look up at Ying's ocean eyes. For a minute, she must've thought of falling for it.

She doesn't, strutting down the cool lawn to the tents. Both of them want to look back, though neither of them do so. It's a night of quarrel. A rare night of quarrel.

It seems like they won't be chatting themselves to sleep then.

※

"Ying-ying? Ying-ying, can you get up? I'll just ask you something. Are you up...?"

Ying moans, turning over her soft, folded blanket. She wakes in the presence of chilly air. "Uh...what...?"

The sound of her mother's voice enters her ears. "Has Yaya gotten up early? Did she go somewhere?"

Ying's eyelids tug open, rolling to look at the empty bed by her left.

She groans. "What, she left...? Fishing...?"

She forces herself up, looking to her mother's face. Aunty Yang's brows are furrowed with concern, a gloomy face shadowed over the morning sun. Ying's memory floats off to the night before, all of it mostly being a blur. She thinks of the fight, something she treated as a nightmare.

A nightmare meant to be forgotten, like the others.

She just can't seem to shake her head out of it.

All details were crystal clear. The said panther encounter, her attempts to leave. In the dim. Of night.

Her eyes blink. "Did you see her leave?"

"I came here just a few hours before sunrise, and when I came, she was already gone."

She can't leave that early for fishing.

Ying's mind is already racing. She doesn't even manage to notice the crown of the sun rising from the sky line. Her feet dance on the soil, pacing and scrambling back and forth, picking up some crops left preserved in old pots, tossing them into tiny sacks, and only stopping at the sight of a pair of odd leather boots.