Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 310. Sprout
FUCK!
Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!
I still stared at the mirrored letters, not turning the paper around, as my heart beat so fast that I was nearly having a heart attack.
"Kenny? What’s wrong?" Henry stood up and started to walk to me, so I put the forty or so pieces of paper back to the past—every one of them but the last page, which I now folded into a little square.
I conjured up a black tracksuit jacket with a breast pocket on the inside and changed out of mine that had none, then put the square in said pocket and zipped it shut before pulling the zipper of the jacket up as far as I could.
I cleared my throat.
"Nothing."
"What did my present self write?" Henry came closer, adopting a dangerous look.
I ran my hands through my hair, holding onto it as I still felt shaken to my core.
"Stuff a dog would write." I chuckled breathlessly.
"Why won’t you tell me?" He asked, placing his hands on my shoulders while I still had mine in my hair.
"Fuck, you didn’t tell me either; shut up now." I tapped Henry’s chest twice, firstly to appease him and secondly to silence him, doing it with a bit more strength than usual, which made it look as if I wanted to provoke him into a fight.
"You will know soon enough. You are the writer." I finally said, my still trembling hand gripping his wrist so that I could drag him to the others.
"I hate him..." Henry sulked in the back as I navigated through the trees, hearing a woman’s happy crying ahead of us.
I laughed and turned back to him while I continued walking.
"Don’t hate yourself, you dumb dog." I finally managed to say something meaningful yet cringy in this strange setting.
Henry’s gaze was glued to me as he stopped for a few seconds before humming quietly.
We could hear the middle-aged woman sobbing from the place we had been, and it grew only louder the closer we came.
It was really an interesting picture when we returned, seeing a human mother crouching down and hugging her human child, and a crystalline mother doing the same with a small crystalline child.
Would you look at that? If I hadn’t already seen the most intriguing, crazily obsessive, and lovable love letter in existence, I would have probably been moved to tears now.
Anyway, the commander looked at me and came closer. It was strange seeing him without Mr. Aslan mirroring him by his side.
I turned to look at the Office Guys and saw that Mr. Aslan had chosen Chubby Guy as his next victim; the poor fellow stood there frozen, trying not to move while Birthmark distanced himself from the two of them.
The mother hugging her daughter finally turned to us, and kneeling, she said something in her language as Henry pulled me to his other side, away from where the commander had walked to.
"She says thank you for saving her life!" Birthmark translated.
"Tell her there is no need to kneel." I told him, uncomfortable as hell.
Birthmark translated it back to her and then helped her up. The mother also seemed to be in relatively good shape; looking at her clothes, which were not as tattered as the Office Guys’, it seemed that either the mother and child had been protected by others, or they were just badass.
"Where did Mrs. Suri and her daughter come from?" I asked Birthmark, who translated the question and got an answer that nobody but them understood. They both started to talk among themselves, with even Chubby Guy saying a few things, while we all stood there and watched—well, not all.
Henry had his arm around my neck again, his gaze wandering to the spot where the inner breast pocket was on my zipped-up training jacket.
I needed to be careful when sleeping for the night. Maybe I’ll just stay awake to fend off people who had experience in lock-picking and stealing.
"By the way, why can you pick locks?" I asked him quietly. He had also stolen a gun from a ward to shoot the ceiling and get locked up with me, which should warrant some skill.
Henry’s blue gaze went from my breast pocket to my lips before it jumped to meet my eyes.
"Finally asking?" He chuckled.
"Yeah, please enlighten me."
"Because of a party game. You could buy lockpicking sets online, and it was a trend back in my youth. I took a liking to it, going from prop locks to real ones." He said it as if his youth was over, at the same time looking at me as if he wanted to be praised.
"But you are also good at snagging guns from wards?" I raised my brows.
He leaned closer to whisper in my ear.
"As it turns out, I am really talented with my fingers."
That fucker was actually trying to talk dirty with me in front of people—unbelievable.
His cockiness knows no bounds. He distanced himself just enough to meet my gaze, looking at me as if he wanted a beating.
I conjured up the golden coin my mother gave me when I was a child, the one I used to train tricks with.
"Really? Prove it." I said with a smirk, nodding to my hand for him to look.
He stared in amazement as I let the coin dance effortlessly between my knuckles before I took his hand and placed it in mine.
"Show me your mighty prowess." I said, suppressing my laughter at his dumb look.
Henry looked at the coin for a few seconds before putting it in his white pant pocket shamelessly.
"See? It’s gone."
I broke into laughter at his nonsense, looking up at the others to notice that everyone was watching us.
"What?" I asked them, and Henry also turned to them, furrowing his brows at the audience.
"We finished talking," Birthmark said, clearing his throat.
"And?" Henry asked with annoyance.
"Mrs. Suri came from the world we woke up in to this world, without crossing the smaller ones we had crossed." The commander explained, looking annoyed for whatever reason.
"They skipped two worlds?" I asked him as Henry pulled me back to him when I stepped forward to face the commander.
"It seems like it." The commander answered.
Apparently, we even missed the translation if the commander was able to explain the situation.
Anyway, what to say to that? Even Kenny2 had to wander through each world to get here, so why had these two found a shortcut? How?
"So the jungle you all woke up in melted together with the crystalline world for them?" I asked Birthmark, who spoke to Mrs. Suri and translated her answer back.
"No. She says the jungle led them to a swamp with fallen trees; from there, they came here."
"It’s like a checkerboard," I mumbled, not finding a better comparison as I looked at Henry.
"You can move forward, but you can also move sideways and diagonally."
"What influences the way they can take?" Henry tilted his head.
"Hmm..." I looked at the mother and daughter, together with their crystalline counterparts.
"Did they wake up alone? Only mother and daughter? Were they alone the whole time?" I asked Birthmark, and after speaking to Mrs. Suri, he nodded at me.
"Yes."
"The counterparts?" Henry contemplated.
"Because their group had been small, and both their counterparts in this world had attracted them?" I nodded.
"Possible."
The little girl let go of her mother, reaching into the big pockets of her sailor school uniform and taking out two crumpled tissues, the crystalline figures beside them mirroring each of their movements.
She stepped to me, and I had two little girls in front of me—one of them faceless, both holding their hands out for me to take what they presented.
I took the tissues from the human girl, seeing the crystalline copy in the faceless girl’s hand vanish the moment the real tissue changed hands.
The mother spoke, and Birthmark translated this time directly.
"We found them in the swamp; we really liked them, so we took them with us. Are they dangerous?"
I uncrumpled the tissue and found what seemed to be a little seed, halfway sprouting; the other tissue was the same.
I flipped the coin over both of them, revealing it on my palm—golden—which would show the past of the nearest counterparts of the sprouts.
Both times I saw Mrs. Suri and her daughter.
"No..." I said, stroking lightly over one of the sprouts.
"Not dangerous. You each managed to find two of your counterparts in two worlds." I would call that an amazing average.
I put the sprouts back into the tissues and handed them to the little girl. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎
"Take good care of them; they really like the both of you as well."
