Chapter 15: Endgame

The line disconnected. The police officer went back inside the car and started to drove away. The sound of his engine as he exited his parking spot distracted the tranquil night, waking our senses to make us realize that what we did was nothing but a mere act of buying time. We’re not done yet. In fact, we never started anything yet. 

As Philip withdrew his phone back inside his pants’ pocket, he made a one big gulp. I felt his Adam’s apple burned. His entire neck burned. He languidly crept his fingers onto my hands, making a throttled sound that could have meant something like a cry for help. “I—I can’t breathe,” he said chokingly as he patted my hands. 

I trudged a few steps backward, pulling him closer to me. My chest against his back. My chin touching his neck. I loosened the squeezing of my hands on his throat, and while feeling the heat of his intense inhalation, I ran off at the mouth. “What were you thinking? Huh? Don’t you know that what you did could get us all in trouble?” I spoke in muted tones. I felt the coldness of my insufflation as they ricocheted off the bareness of his skin. 

 “I—I’m really sorry. I didn’t know what to do.” He gasped. “I’m just afraid. Like all of you.” 

I screwed up my face. “Forget it.” With all my force, I pushed him away. He fell down to the floor, centimeters closer from the gross emulsion that stunk stronger and stronger in every brush of the wind. I led myself to my locker. And while the only thing that gave light to the entire hallway was the dimming brightness of Philip’s phone, I opened my locker very slowly, refraining from producing any noise. I pulled out my shirt and my pants, and threw it directly over the pooling blend of blood and vomit.

Flummoxed, he asked. “What are you doing?!” 

I stared at him blankly, although there’s nothing much of him that was visible to me. “I am doing exactly what is the best thing I think I should do.” I undressed my feet and got my socks. I rolled them together, in-tucked, and pitched it straight inside my locker. “Your turn.”

“My turn?” By the sound of knees against the floor and shoes making too much sound, I felt Philip standing up. “My turn to what?”

“Undress.” I treaded towards the direction of the music room while calculating probabilities and thinking of solutions in my head. Just when I successfully made somewhere between ten to fifteen steps away from him, I left him with a simple explanation. “I understand that you’re a fucking model and fashion is the only thing that’s clear to you. But please, for the love of God, have some common sense. It’s very beneficial especially in times like this.” 

A moment of silence. A moment of getting to grips with my words. That was all Philip was asking for. And so, I gave it to him. 

“But I don’t really get it.”

“Expected.” I turned back at him. 

“Why do you want me to undress?” 

“To use it to wipe away everything. The evidences. The blood. The vomit. The disgusting parts of the body. We have to get rid of them before your father arrive,” I explained. 

Philip turned his phone’s torch to its brightest and pointed it beside him. Looking at it, he surely felt nauseated. I could see it in his face. The way his lips curled in. The way his eyes shrunk. The way his brows moved closer to each other like a magnet attracted to another magnet. It was all obvious and visible. 

“All right.”

“Want it or not, you still have to do it.” I continued walking. “You don’t want to see your heart ripped out of your chest, do you?” 

“How about you?! Where are you going?!” he yammered. The echoes of his words followed me as I walked past the bloody walls of the hallway far off him. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back,” I replied. Although it wasn’t loud, it was enough for him to hear it.

 

I got back to the entrance of the music room a couple of minutes after I left Philip on the floor between the lockers. Since the light around was more stable than on the other side of the hallway, the splattered blood on the walls and on the  floor, as well as the prints of the same substance on the door were now all vividly visible. From the way I looked at them, I could tell they were all left untouched. 

As I entered inside, my eighteen remaining classmates welcomed me with fear and tremor on their faces. The Black Chain were facing the windows, trembling without me knowing the reason behind. Samantha was hugging his twin. Eva Grace and the rest of the band were all down on their knees, hands were clasping as if praying for miracles. Yuri held hands with Geodie. Cylvia was crying. Ashley was crying. Even Andrei and Nicole were crying, too. It was only Rabiya who was standing firm on her feet, biting the fingernails of her left hand while her left was tapping on her lap—fast enough to compare it to Jieve’s fingers when he once attempted to play a Beethoven’s piece on a piano. The way I see it, she was the only surviving flower in a garden full of withering ones. 

I walked closer to her. My feet were heavy. In every step that I made, it created a loud thudding on the cemented floor. “Rabiya,” I called. As I whispered her name, she looked up. Our gazes met in between. “What happened to the task I gave you? Have you done it?”

At a leisurely pace, Rabiya held my hand unexpectedly. Her cold, smooth, yet sweating palm activated the chills hidden beneath my spine. “I think we are—” Drops of clear crystals started to fall off her eyes. Those were the first tears I ever saw from Rabiya. Unbelievably, those weren’t tears of sadness. Those were tears of fear. “I think it’s endgame. The culprit succeeded.”