Page 3 of Challenge Me

You were avoiding me because I was too familiar.

I leaned back against my windscreen, frowning as the thought settled deep in my frame.

Fox glanced up from his game. “You’re doing the dramatic silence thing again.”

I ignored him.

You and I, Lai, were two parts of the same whole.

I just had to figure out how to prove to you that I could complete you.

Chapter Two

Lai

Dragons didn’t burn; in fact, dragons rather enjoyed the sensation of being boiled alive. That’s why I lingered in the shower that morning, the handle turned all the way to the red dot, as water hot enough to strip flesh off a human cascaded over my body. Steam filled the bathroom, thick as cream, as I stepped out, not bothering with a towel. The moisture evaporated from my body as I strolled naked to my dresser, and by the time I sat on the plush velvet stool and picked up a hairbrush, I was almost completely dry.

Today promised to be good.

I ran my brush through my long lavender hair and froze.

Countless men had died by my hand, and most of them saw just one thing before drawing their last breath.

A flash of silver.

A flash of silver and they were no more.

I stared at my own reflection in the mirror, an ivory carved brush in my hand, frozen in mid-air. In that moment, I saw the same flash too. One single strand of silver stretching from my temple. Perfectly white against the freshly toned lavender.

So that’s what it felt like? To finally face your mortality?

I should have expected the Fates to be so ironically cruel.

I plucked the silver hair, ripping away the evidence of my decaying body, defying the gods that had set the countdown to my damnation.

‘One thing is for sure,’ I thought grimly to myself as I threw the offending strand into the trash in disgust, ‘This day cannot get any worse’.

◆◆◆

Leaving the cruelty of the dresser mirror behind me, I dressed myself in my freshly dry-cleaned suit. Red, as always; I looked good in red. Great, even. I could still turn this day around.

I frowned as the top button strained a little before sliding into the buttonhole. Can dry cleaning shrink wool? Was it senior prank day already? Surely this was just a cruel joke.

Maybe it wasn’t my suit. I reached inside it, finding all the hidden pockets my tailor had put in.

Definitely mine, and definitely a little bit too snug for my liking.

This day had one more strike left before I would return to bed and sleep until the reset of the next morning. Gods help me, it was only 8 am.

But my prayers landed on deaf ears, as always.

I eyed my cane by the door, but today I needed to salvage what was left of my pride. I could do without it for a day.

Or so I thought. I barely made it out of the family apartments on the second floor before my boot caught a bunched-up corridor runner, tripping me like a toddler who’d learned to walk yesterday.

I gasped, stumbling forward, both hands in front of me, catching myself on the wooden paneling of the hallway wall. I spared my face, but the damage was done. I felt it; the leg that had refused to heal fully was in the jaws of gnawing pain that radiated through my right ankle as I carefully adjusted my weight onto my left leg.

I was going to need that cane after all.