- HAZEL -
I can’t find my freaking laptop.
Heck, I’m not even looking for it that much anymore but it’s still on my mind. Now I’m kind of worried I forgot it in the uber I took from his place yesterday and not at his place.
A lump forms in my throat. Just the thought of it is very unsettling and gives a wrenched feeling in my stomach. Loosing my laptop is like restarting my life from day one since I got here. And beyond.
I shake my head. I left it here, I left it here. Losing it is not sothing to think of, I try to convince myself as I co out of Killian’s other room. Most of the rooms in this place are locked. Part of understands why but the other part wants to be unreasonable especially when I saw that purse!
What on earth is Killian hiding? Why does he have so many vacant spaces when he lives alone? Why live in a place like this in the first place when he lives alone? He could’ve bought a house smaller.
My jaw clenches. My mind suddenly drifts back to when Killian and I first t in the club. His house was huge back then as well.
I take a deep sigh. Maybe I’m overthinking things. I keep walking down the corridor, turning every door knob of every door I co across.
A door cos open. Or not.
I take a deep breath as I push the door open. Here’s goes nothing. I take a step inside. My body freezes the mont I have a look on what lays behind the door.
Here looks so modern yet so old. I walk inside, examining every brown cabinet and furniture in this room. It looks like a wooden haven safe room. The kind you see in inns in movies. I let a finger slip on top of a table aligned adjacent to the wall, it has an arranged stack of folders in a file organiser box on top of it. I run my finger against another finger, trying to feel a dry texture. No spec of dust. This place is cleaned probably every day.
I make my way around this room. Part of is in awe a place that looks like this was left open for any outside engagent at all. Killian definitely wasn’t expecting visitors.
Then who owns that purse? My brows furrow. I am running out of patience trying to wrap my head around it. It’s a small, all round beaded purse that goes from white to light pink till it’s red at the bottom with silver edges. I swallow. I know every bag that belongs to enough to know that one is sothing I have never owned. I sigh, averting my gaze to sothing else.
When a room with so much files like this is open to on such rare occasion, who am I to deny the urge to search through? Who knows, my laptop could be in one of these drawers.
The child in feels a sense of relief as I make my way to one of the wooden drawer cabinets. I don’t know what I hope to find, but I guess I’ll go through every boring docunt in here till I get what I want, whatever it is.
My tummy churns. The longer I stay in here, the more uncomfortable I get. I feel like I’m invading his privacy and I shouldn’t be here but since when did I start caring? A sigh escape my lips. Since always? I’ve been caring about him for quite a while, I say to myself.
Snooping around just seems wrong. What am I hoping to find?
I pull out a drawer and so papers co falling down. Well that was easy. I laugh under my breath. If every drawer is this stacked with files, then I’ll gladly see myself out. Confrontation is way better than sneaking around.
I bend down to pick up the scattered pieces of papers on the floor, assuming a squat. The mont my fingers reaches out to them, a puzzled look forms on my face. They’re not papers, they’re pictures.
I hold them carefully in my hand and drop them on top of the drawer. Now I pull out the drawer completely. It’s filled with pictures. Lots of pictures.
Today just seed to be my lucky day.
I hold one of the laminated single photo up to my face. It’s a photo of two boys who look like they’re sowhere in their first decade years of age. I flip the photo back.
My eyes widens as I read what’s written behind at the bottom end of the picture. Killian and Liam, first vacation to the Iva island. -They hated it.
I chuckle. There’s a date written just after the note. I drop that one and hold another picture up. This one’s of a crying child with a floaty around his waist while holding a fruit stick. I turn it to the back.
Killian hates cheese. Apparently, he thought crabs love them and got pinched.
Okay this is hilarious. I fix my gaze on the boy in the photo. I’ve never imagined Killian being all cute before. In the photo, he’s just a boy. A very innocent, cute boy.
Now there’s nothing innocent about him. Nothing innocent about the things he does to . . . Nor the things he makes my body feel.
I drop the photo and proceed to look through the others. Maybe that’s why this room was left open and unattended to. Maybe whoever owns that purse is a childhood friend of his. Maybe they were here together and I just overthought things. I hate that my mind went in a different direction in the first place.
A fuzzy thought runs through my mind as I stare at these mories. Killian hasn’t talked about his childhood much yet. Hasn’t ntioned these either, I would’ve killed for such photos.
I wonder when his parents left him, I think he told before but I can’t rember the age it happened. Thinking about that right now makes understand how sad that must’ve felt for a child. I hold a photo to my face. I just realised that in all these, not once have I seen a family photo. Just of himself and his brother. I wonder if he keeps pictures of his parents. Or if he has any. I wonder if he rembers what they look like.
The picture currently blaring in my face is one of him and Liam as the writing at the back says. One of them is stuck in the arms of the other as the other ruffles his hair, their mouths stained with snack remains. Loosing one’s parents at a young age can change any human. Can make a very seamless life rough and rugged.
I drop the photo amongst the ones I’ve already taken a look at and hold another up my face.
My jaw clenches. This is a photo of a teenager is sat on a concrete bench just by a fence painted with graffiti at night. The photo graphics gives a late nineties aesthetic. Wearing a leather jacket and black cargo jeans with a can of beer in his hand, the teen stares at the cara boredly. The reddish eyebags around his eyes prove and tells a lot of tales. A lot of struggles most people back then would refer to as teenage hormones. Teens are always misunderstood. I know that because I am one.
I take a careful look at the picture before turning it around. -Killian.
All it says is Killian and nothing more. No fun quote to jot down any mories. No lovely doodles like those in his younger photos, just ‘Killian’.
I sigh as I go through the others. Most of the ones in this section are of his assumably teenage years and beyond. When his masculine features were shaping and in all of these photos, sothing familiar oozes out.
Despair.
Almost as if he was waiting for his saving grace. Hoping to see his own heaven. A sudden sadness envelopes my heart. Is this why he never really talks about these monts? I can’t tell. Oh, I wish I knew him sooner.
Back then when these were taken, I doubt I was even born.
The thought makes a dry, brief laugh leave my lips.
I drop the picture down and hold another. How neatly arranged these are through all the years is impressive. Significantly, I can see the difference and scarcity of photos as his childhood years ended.
I hold a photo up. In this one, Killian still looks sad and depressed but here, he’s smiling. Smiling genuinely, as I’d like to believe, into the cara.
There are more of such. Still in his gloomy, black outfits but not looking so sad anymore. Like he found so closure. Or he was finally accepting life.
I hold turn to the back of this photo.
Asami’s fingerprints 001. A date is written beneath.
Oh.
This is the first photo to have the na ‘Asami’. I drop this one and dive deeper. Call a non-business minder and intruder of privacy but these are the only things close to a dive down his mory lane that I’ve got. For now. I long for the days he’d reveal this aspect of himself to .
The boy who thought it was all faded till it wasn’t. This is definitely sothing to add in my diary. I sigh, dropping that picture and taking another. I feel bad for Ahd, he can’t even reach and has no other option but to wait yet I’m here, patiently going through a certain soone’s photos when I haven’t even found my laptop yet.
I look at the photo. In this one, it’s winter and snowing. Despite the cold, he looks happy. Very happy. I wonder who took these photos of him. I look at the back.
First winter with Asami. This lady won’t be the end of .
Oh. He wrote this one. There are small heart shaped drawings at the end of the sentence.
I added the ‘heart’ since he’s too bland to do so, tch.
My lips forms a line at the different handwriting already knowing whom it belongs to. I don’t know what to say, this Asami person seed to be a huge part of Killian’s life. Yet there are no photos of her here.
I go through the others. Unlike the previous ones, these ones portray joy, annoyance, yet joy in different parts of the country and beyond. Each picture quote cuter than the other. This ti, I can tell the obvious difference.
Killian smiles and frowns and does all sort of faces in these photos. Like soone at peace. And in these photos, I can see ‘Asami’s’ body parts during certain selfies and hug photos or kiss on the cheeks or piggy back rides and the latter but never her face.
Is this what he does? Wipe away every trace of soone from his life when they’re no longer together? Because there’s no way he has none of her photos.
I’m actually quite curious to see this lady. I wonder what she looked like. What she was like. Probably cheery and full of life. I sigh. This must be the woman Killian talked about. The one he cared about other than his mother.
I don’t know how nor what to feel as his current girlfriend. Am I supposed to feel sothing positive or negative? I’m not sure but I do know I feel sothing that I can’t describe. I exhale.
Staring at these is starting to get exhausting. I imdiately gather the bunch of photos I packed out together, shabbily arranging them back into the drawer.
So fall to the ground. This has to be my ssiest arrangent yet. I groan as I bend down to pick them up. An envelope makes its way down the cabinet top and lands right on my head, spilling its content everywhere.
Oh no. Shit. How do I know which ones ca out from where?
I pack them all up anyway, trying to separate what I thought was right while sorting them in my guessed respective places. That was until a photo ca to my sight.
My breath hitched. Everything in my hand scatters back onto the ground as I hold the photo to my face.
It can’t be. . . . Can it?
Maybe it’s a lookalike.
I turn to the back of the photo. What I read made my heart shatter. It feels like lumps ford in my chest making it harder to breathe. My head suddenly begins to pound with a headache.
Killian heart Asami, till death do us part and the date this was taken was written there in bold.
I take a look at the envelope and dip my hand inside, taking every photo inside out.
Each one left my eyes getting watery. Every single one of them. One can’t look like the younger version of sobody this much. There’s no denying who Asami is.
Or who Carol is. Whatever she is, it’s her.
I sob. He never told about her. My mouth slowly drifts open to enable to breathe. This explains so much. Why he asked about her. Why he said she is too old for . Oh God.
My hand begins to shake as it accompanies many more pictures. My chest feels heavier than usual.
Killian and Asami’a first night out as lovers. Tears well up in my eyes and pours down my cheeks. Okay, this broke .
I manage to lift my weight up the floor, nearly tripping as I stand.
I don’t even have the courage to sort this ss out anymore. I just want to leave this place.
I run out of the room. When I try to close the door, voices slid in my ears. Voices belonging to a male and a female.
I don’t know why but my body freezes as I stare ahead. Soone cos out of the door. A lady.
Staring at , seductively dressed is Carol. A smirk forms on her face. “Killian, you have a guest.” She purrs, walking back inside the room she ca out from. “Wait here, I think she’s going to co in.”
The audacity leaves angry. Rage. I feel myself get evoked in the flas of rage.
She was right about one thing, I am going in there.
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