“I’m good, buddy,” I said. I reached down to try and lift him onto my bed but turning my torso sent daggers of pain down my back.
Instead, I tried to steady my breathing as if that would lessen the pain. I looked forward and inhaled deeply, scratching Louie behind the ears for comfort. Another piercing stab, just below my chest this time, stopped me from completely filling my lungs with air. It looked like focusing on my breathing wasn’t enough to do the trick, so I would have to find something else instead.
It was only natural that someone had called the police, given how many people must have seen the fight. That would explain my being here, but how exactly did Louie’s pillow from the office end up next to me?
I tried to pull myself up on the bed to rearrange one of the two large pillows behind me to keep me sitting upright. I remembered somebody once had said that the pain cowers away if you don’t think about it. That pain is but a terror of the mind. Fuck that guy.
There was a highly reflective metal tray on an empty bed opposite mine and I used it to try and assess the damage as best as I could without standing up.
Well, am I not a pleasant sight to behold?
My long hair covered most of the injuries on the left side of my face, but what I could see didn’t actually look that bad. I mean I would have expected pieces missing, but it was mostly there. In fact, there was quite a bit more of it and in different colors than usual since it was swollen, but the bruise-purple seemed to complement my blue eyes.
The left side, however, looked dreadful. It wasn’t any more swollen per se. The damage on the face was actually less, considering I could still see, but something far more horrible had taken place. There was a large patch on the side of my head where my hair had been completely shaved off. I looked like fucking Skrillex!
This was, of course, the only way they would have been able to stitch my head but I would’ve appreciated a less radical look. After all, how you look is what you are in this world. That’s why I’d always tried to avoid attention.
Now that my eyes had adjusted fully to the low light coming in from the single small incandescent lamp in the room, I noticed a red and blue bar on the edges of my vision again. When I tried to focus on them, they became more apparent and I could read some figures on them.
HP : 19/126
MP : 38/38
What the fuck is this again? Did I suffer brain damage?
I’d never even heard of anything like it. It looked more like a disease of the mind than anything a hit on the head might have caused.
Is this how it was going to be then? For the past three years, I would have liked nothing more than to lose my mind, but I pulled through. And now a fight broke me?
Focusing my sight on my periphery, I saw more hovering windows starting to creep to the center of my view. Before I had enough time to examine them, however, the door to the room opened and in came Leo holding my phone in his hands and one of Louie’s favorite chew toys. Immediately, I waved my hands to the side, trying to swoop the imaginary texts away, as if he’d be able to see them too.
“Are you sending me away?” Leo asked playfully. “I thought you called for me, sire!”
“I was just trying to avoid seeing your ugly face,” I replied jokingly.
“My ugly face?” he said, surprised. “Dude, have you seen yourself? They really messed you up. Besides, I’m a half-elf myself.”
“You should see the other guys. And if you’re a half-elf, I’m the fucking king of Westeros.”
“Your Majesty,” he said, feigning a curtsy as he handed me my phone. “Speaking of the other guys. The police will come by sometime later to ask you about them. Did you really get into a fight with five people?”
“Knocked out three of them, too! I guess it was you who brought Louie here?”
“Yeah, man. One of the bystanders called me because I was the most recent call on your phone. The last time you called me was years ago. Do you actually delete all your calls?”
Three years and two months ago to be exact. Sure, I delete all the calls I make. It’s definitely not that I haven’t made any calls since then.
“I made a little app that auto-deletes them. No big deal,” I replied nonchalantly.
“They told me you were attacked and left beaten up. At first, I had trouble believing that someone took you down, but five of them… what the hell were you thinking, man?”
“They stepped on Louie’s tail. On purpose!”
“That’s your excuse for picking a fight with five people?”
“I mean… they also looked like fintech corporate lackeys.”
Leo chuckled but soon his smile was replaced by a more serious expression. “This isn’t healthy, you know,” he said and raised his finger as I inhaled, obviously preparing myself to interrupt him. “Shut up. Let me finish. I know you’re hurting. But it’s been more than three years. You’re destroying your life.”
If this remark had come from anybody other than Leo, I would’ve lashed back with something like “trying to fix my issues won’t help with your inability to solve your own problems caused by your parents”. Leo though, was different. He actually cared. He always had. And I appreciated his honesty. Perhaps not enough to repay it in the same currency. No. Never enough to reveal to him that my life needed no destroying and I just didn’t care if people saw it anymore.
“You’re right,” I
