Be it a creep, idiot, scumbag, or creeping soul, everyone is born with a peculiar talent. Life either grinds it into shape through hardship or fate polishes it through luck. This usually happens on the days when gods rearrange destinies like chess pieces, with you stuck as the trembling king in the center of the board.
Klaire lacked the natural instinct women develop to detect creeps, so she learned it the hard way, by observing the biggest creep to crawl out of Yorkenstein's gutters: a fellow survivor of the streets she christened 'Creeper Carl.' The name stuck, much to Carl's soulful frustration. Because once Klaire names something, it tends to stay named.
The name didn't hurt his reputation; if anything, it boosted it, as Carl somehow managed to turn the title into a badge of honor, attracting even more fools who mistook infamy for expertise.
Carl could slip from a harmless glance to a silent pursuit in a single breath, and some swore he once shadowed a woman from a mile out, without ever losing visual.
A woman's mistakes; what she had done, what she was doing, and what she would inevitably do, hit Carl's mind with the force and certainty of a proven scientific law, the kind no one could deny, dispute, or escape.
Men would kill for such an ability, and Klaire praised the lord only in this instance for bestowing such a gift upon a single individual.
Whether Carl slipped up his daily routine, or luck favoured Klaire that day, she saw right through his creepy routine before it even started.
This didn't mean she kept her distance after that… No sir. Not even close.
Life—particularly the kind shaped beneath broken streetlights and in alleyways that smell of old sins—always hides lessons, hard-won wisdom, and the faint glimmer of impossible hope to those who seek.
Chase them, and you rise.
Hesitate, and life drags you down by the ankles.
There is never a middle ground.
Thanks to Metelda, Klaire made one simple rule to avoid future regret: always stay ten feet out of the creepo's reach, and never—ever—sleep with him; even if the act could prevent Armageddon.
Carl had taken his warped gift and polished it into something legendary in all the wrong ways imaginable and more. The man could charm a snake into knitting him a sweater, but he settled for Billionaires' wives and their precious daughters.
It might have been Klaire's immunity talking, but she never understood how any of them never became immune to his gutter-born allure. Perhaps one had to be blessed with Metelda-level luck. Or have the willpower of a monk who hates fun.
Klaire would never say it out loud, but every trick she'd learned about reading people came from watching that creepo work. She wasn't nearly as good, but she could still make you believe the supernatural was real, convince you to invest in it, and have you chasing some dusty lead for her, like a well-trained golden retriever who just happened to pay taxes.
Klaire cracked open her prehistoric flip-phone and yanked its barely-attached screen outward—still alive thanks to a few rebellious wires, duct-tape prayers, stubborn willpower, and a miracle or two. She dropped to the floor, crossed her legs, and set the phone in the center like she was summoning spirits. Then she curled over it like a turtle protecting her only egg, neck stretched until her forehead practically kissed the flickering display.
She scrolled past the Terrors' spam messages, opening only Metelda's before she and her screen froze.
It was a blank text. Just one lazy tap on the spacebar, yet somehow packed with more worry than a thousand words.
Klaire's breath hitched as her chest tightened. The empty message carried so much raw concern she felt her eyes sting.
Reading one and brushing off the others felt wrong, almost sinful, so Klaire opened the rest, bracing herself.
Lilly sent a formal message telling Klaire to come home, begging for forgiveness in a tone that somehow insulted her even as it showed concern in equal measure. Klaire wasn't sure a text message could achieve such a feat until she read this message.
"The Terrors are definitely something else."
Mr. Terror, on the other hand, tried for the same effect but sabotaged himself with a flood of crying emojis that made the whole thing look like a toddler's meltdown.
Tsuna skirted around the emotional minefield entirely and threatened Klaire with unemployment, reminding her she was the only person insane enough to hire someone like her.
She also deleted the final text, unaware that Klaire's cursed flip-phone had a mind of its own and chose to enhance the deleted message by capitalizing each word. The same message appeared copy-pasted throughout the week, so Klaire understood the sentiment anyway.
Junior—similar to his dad, yet worse at additional areas—had sent more than a hundred messages, each one a full essay long; the kind of messages students write only when their degree depends on it.
Klaire read the first, grimaced, and ignored the rest, mainly because the typing bubble was still active.
Feeling detached from reality, Klaire turned to Maria for advice.
Maria skimmed through the messages, raised a brow, and delivered her verdict in one word: "Yikes!"
"His heart is in a…" Klaire tried to be generous toward Junior, but the word "good" refused to cooperate. "…a weird place."
"Creepy," Maria corrected, shuddering hard enough to shake off the thought. "Let's pray the memory expires on its own."
The comment irritated Klaire for some bizarre reason, making her rush to protect Junior's imaginary honor. "Fine! Maybe I'll introduce him to Creeper Carl. Get him on the approved level of creepy you're comfortable handling!?"
"Hey—hey now!" Maria recoiled, pointing an accusatory finger. "You can't recycle that line for… whatever else you're implying! That's cheating."
"Pfft. Originality's overrated," Klaire said with a lazy shrug. "And I don't exactly have time to tailor insults." A devious smile curled on her lips.
Once Klaire slid her curiosity into Maria's phone and found Creeper Carl lurking under a lone "X," the woman cracked open like a confession booth.
From that point on, every detail Maria possessed: her observations, intel, and even classified nuggets from the supernatural investigation, flowed straight to Klaire's corner cell.
In return, all Klaire required were the ritual offerings of jasmine tea, a slab of steak, a decent shower, and an ungodly supply of snacks to maintain optimal cognitive performance.
Her access to the phone and the precinct Wi-Fi was another gift she extracted—exploited, inherited? Whatever term best suited both the ex-secretary and the newly traumatized one, she had gotten it.
See… that's the lesson the streets carve into you. Klaire can't mirror a god's gift, but she can siphon the essence and repurpose it to her own advantage. And with enough charisma and exploitation, even a precinct meant to uphold the law collapses into her personal domain, where information flowed freely, lodging became complimentary, and meals arrived like tribute.
"I'm heading out," Klaire announced. "Be a doll and handle the paperwork for me, yeah?" she added, her head still buried in her phone.
She had wasted precious days dissecting Kudo's method, clinging to the hope that his approach could help her grasp the unseen. Meanwhile, the supernatural frenzy on her blog was fading into silence. The moment she accepted his "one-true truth" knack as a divine cheat code, something she could never copy, her entire perspective shifted. To put cherry on top of the disaster, her passive income took a heavy hit for posting what the internet dismissed as heresy.
"Unloyal scum," Klaire muttered, cursing every follower who abandoned her as she swiped Maria's coffee.
"Hold up," Maria said, stepping in front of her. "Where are you running off to?"
"I need to get into that cursed school," Klaire said, already halfway out the door in spirit.
Maria scoffed. "Even if I let you—which, spoiler, I'm not—how are you planning to get in? You can't even afford their entrance exam."
A thousand dollars, Klaire realized, remembering her bank balance of twenty.
Her soul tried to leave her body, but the phone's notification slammed it back in. She fumbled the screen with jittery fingers until the message finally zoomed open:
"OVERCROWDED. NEED HELP NOW. WILL KICK YOU OUT IF I LOSE ONE MORE CUSTOMER."
Another message followed immediately:
"The last part was a joke. If you couldn't tell, that means you deleted my contact. Understandable.
P.S. THIS IS TSUNA, THE ONE AND ONLY. LOVE YA. BE HERE… LIKE, RIGHT NOW!!!!"
Klaire blasted coffee out of her nose. "Gotta— khff —run!"
She wiped her face, smacked a kiss onto Maria's cheek, and shot out the front door with a box of donuts tucked under her arm like stolen treasure.
Maria wrapped her arms around herself. "Too many mixed signals… far too many," she groaned, banishing the unholy images trying to spawn in her mind.
"Where are the donuts?" A cop asks.
Maria spun toward the cop, complaining about the missing donuts. "They're her breakfast, you donut-hoarding heathen," Maria snapped. "I'll go get more while you go hit the freaking gym." She poked his belly, striding past him, hard enough to make a point, soft enough not to file paperwork.
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Fifty-Five. ———<>||<>———