Chapter 50: Dumb (Part 1)

"Milo... what is a Bookmark?"

Behind her, the academy towered over the whole sky.

A lightning strike would be fitting.

"Ah. My notebook." Milo crossed the gravel in brisk strides and held out a hand. "Where’d you find it?"

"By your classroom." Layla turned the page toward herself and squinted at it. "Bookmark, absorbing relics, vomiting blood and... extra limbs?"

What had seemed like a harmless list of rumors in class now shared a notebook with three questions he had gone out to test. It would help if she spent longer on the extra limbs and less on the question about being hit.

"That’s clearly a joke."

"Which part?"

"The limbs, for example."

"And the blood?"

"Also the limbs. It’s obviously all one big joke." He hopped one pace forward so his fingers brushed the corner of the page. "They were inventing rumors about me, and I tried predicting the next ones. Ask Ollie."

"I believe you about the limbs, but..." Layla pointed at the three deranged questions. "Can I absorb one by getting hit..." she read slowly. "Were you planning to find out?"

The girl was smart enough to discern the three questions from the three predictions.

"You had to write this before Seb."

Apparently, the girl could also deduce a timeline.

"How would you know when I wrote it?"

"I’m returning your backpack to you after a week."

The notebook’s edge pressed against his split knuckles. He could dispute when he wrote it, though that meant making up a visit to the bag as well. The morning in class should be easier to explain.

"Okay, Layla, put yourself in my position. Somebody takes your chair, calls you a Plague case in front of the whole..."

"So you found the one person with a relic and told him to hit you."

"It’s not like I told him to do it."

"Can you stop?"

Milo followed Layla’s gaze to the notebook, which had started to tremble under his fingers. At least she was not telling him to stop lying.

"I insulted him," he continued after releasing the page. "In front of Tessy."

"Tessy is dead."

A buzz flashed through his head, as though his brain itself were cramping.

In the next moment, a student shuffled out through the gate.

Off.

While the Gauge climbed, he was standing on gravel explaining a notebook. All of a sudden, everyone had gotten interested in interrogating him.

"Look, this isn’t the place."

"You leave every other place."

He looked over his shoulder. "I miss home. If a capsule speeds by as we talk, that’s another hour."

"Then talk fast."

Once more, Milo grasped the notebook’s corner, but Layla didn’t let go. She brought it closer to her chest, and he didn’t let go, either.

"Okay, fine! What do you want from me?"

"I want a reason to believe that you’re okay."

Mhm, he was very okay, in fact so okay that saving everyone was his priority, and little did the girl know she was the only obstacle here!

Bookmark was an entirely alien concept to Layla, though the fact that he wrote about getting hit before provoking someone to do it remained.

An embarrassing hobby could plausibly explain both.

"You haven’t shown it to anyone, right? The notebook."

"I wanted the truth from you first. But if I don’t get it, I will show it to someone."

"Good, very good." His lips curled into a smile. "Because I’d rather nobody heard this. It’s embarrassing. Can I really, reeeally but really trust you to keep it from the school?"

"I’m not going to laugh at you. Just tell me."

"Tarot," he said. "I was fortune telling my own future. It’s a girl thing, I know, don’t..."

"There’s no Bookmark card."

Of course she knew tarot; according to him, it was a girl thing after all. Why would he even bring it up?! The one person in the parish who knew tarot had to be the one holding his test log.

"There is in my deck. I made it myself. Out of paper, before you ask."

"Well, where is it?"

"Gone."

"Gone where?"

"I’d rather not say."

Milo’s fingers slipped off the notebook as Layla closed it on her thumb.

"And what did you find?" she asked.

Talk fast, she’d said. Here he was talking fast and still standing on gravel. Fine. Last resort, then, which was to weird her out by being as edgy as one could.

"Darkness."

"...Darkness?"

"A lot of it..."

After looking at him for a long second, Layla slung his backpack over one shoulder and tucked the notebook under her arm.

"Let’s go."

His eyes followed the girl’s silhouette as it walked over the tall, metal beams on which rode the capsules, and made for the platforms.

"Wait, hold on, go where?"

"Home."

"You’re... coming?"

"I live on the line, you know."

"What about the academy things?" Milo gestured at the building, trying to convey her various duties with his arms. "Like, you did things. You were practically staff. You have yet to search the whole building? I thought you wanted the rooms checked afterward."

"It’s been a long week."

Apparently a week of helping the academy was enough now that he needed her to go back inside.

"Rosaline was really upset about everyone leaving. You should go check up on her, not me."

"Since when do you care about Rosaline?"

Since she was the only person in the building walking away from him.

Milo watched, hopeless, as Layla straightened on the platform.

Getting onto the capsule meant risking half an hour in an enclosed space with at least four other vulnerable strangers.

"Look, I wasn’t really planning on taking the capsule home."

"You just said we were going to miss it."

"It’s better if I go on foot."

"Milo, what. On foot? That’s—Jence is a few dozen kilometers from here."

"Only." Milo raised a finger. "Only a few dozen. With all the time I spent shut in, I could use some fresh air."

"You had time outside!" Layla yelled after him. "You fainted in the dining hall, Milo! How far do you think you’re going to get?"

To show just how much he’d made up his mind, he went left, along the capsule beams stretching over the vast fields in the distance.

You can do this. You did this in worse conditions. What’s a marathon compared to taking a Host down?

He made it about a hundred meters before footsteps caught up with him and a hand closed on his shoulder.

═══════════════════

⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Dumb (Part 2: Finale)" ... ⤵︎ [!]