"When Nomoro first appeared in our lives, I thought he was going to cost us a lot of trouble, maybe even an expulsion,"
Wyne thought, her eyes fixed on Trizha and Margaret from a noticeable distance.
Trizha was leaning into the handsome Zackier, chatting easily.
"But this guy... I feel like he's bad news."
She knows that Trizha, not having any 'partner' before, wouldn't be able to easily react in a stable way.
But seeing her with that… man, it felt like she could handle it all effortlessly—a, yet, another unusual behavior of hers.
Trizha smiled brightly, introducing Zackier to her friend. "Margaret, this is Zackier. My boyfriend," she announced, pointing to him but keeping her eyes on Margaret.
And Margaret, she kept her eyes on the man before her. For some reason, she seemed to be deeply staring at his face as if she was observing.
But for some coincidence, so was Zackier.
It took him a second to speak after spending seconds of silence, seemingly contemplating… Margaret's existence.
"Nice to meet you, Margaret," Zackier said smoothly, extending a hand politely. "You can call me Zack if the name 'Zackier' terrifies you."
Margaret was so focused on Zackier that she was startled when he moved.
"Oh okay… Zack," Margaret replied softly, shaking his hand with a polite, but brief, gesture.
Trizha leaned closer to Zackier, whispering conspiratorially into his ear. "Trust me… she's the type to take anything 'scary' as a compliment."
Zackier threw his head back and laughed, a pleasant, booming sound.
"Is that so? I should've been the one who's terrified then!"
Both Trizha and Zackier continued to laugh easily with each other, their sudden, comfortable intimacy striking Wyne, who was watching from the distance, as intensely weird.
"...Now there's two weirdos in the group,"
Wyne thought, sighing internally. "Or is it a Fourth in a Trio? Oh, whatever…"
She decided to shrug off the ridiculousness, but her gaze quickly hardened as it turned back onto Zackier.
"...But this guy is definitely weirder," she mused, placing a hand on her chin. "Weirder than when Nomoro suddenly started acting like a mother hen to Trizha. This guy… didn't he act completely arrogant just moments ago? Now he's acting so soft, so personable…"
She tried to puzzle out Zackier's rapid shift and his underlying motives.
Suddenly, Zackier's striking red eyes snapped directly to Wyne in an instant.
Wyne instantly looked away, a nervous shudder running through her.
A silent acknowledgement had passed between them.
Noticing Wyne's surveillance, Zackier smirked faintly, then huffed silently before clapping his hands together in a cheerful, exaggerated demeanor that mirrored Trizha's usual exuberance.
His movements, his reactions, it all seemed on purpose. At least, to what Margaret could observe.
"Alright, everyone," Zackier announced loudly. "How about we go eat at some fancy restaurant, hmm? Don't worry, I'll pay for the bills. My treat."
Trizha spun back to Zackier, her eyes sparkling with spontaneous excitement.
"Really?! Let's go then!" she gasped.
Trizha immediately wrapped her right arm—the one with the throbbing knuckles—around Zackier's arm, giggling cheerfully and intimately.
But before she could start walking forward, her phone suddenly started to ring inside her purse.
She turned to her purse and took out her phone, her excited expression replaced with one of simple curiosity.
Zackier's gaze immediately tracked the device.
"Who could it be…" Trizha murmured, looking at the screen.
She saw that her mother, Claria, her adoptive mother, was calling.
"Oh, it's… mom," Trizha announced silently enough for no one to hear, preparing to answer the call.
But just as Trizha was about to take the phone call, she froze.
She suddenly started feeling a sharp, almost overwhelming fang of annoyance emerge inside her in an instant, coming out of nowhere, an emotion she rarely felt toward her mother.
She stayed silent for a few significant moments, holding the ringing phone in a tense grip, before decisively cancelling the phone call.
She turned back to Zackier with a wide, dismissive grin. He looked back at her with an interested curiosity.
"Who was that?" Zackier asked.
"Oh, don't worry about it," Trizha said, shrugging carelessly. "It's just some stupid 'fan' of mine being pushy."
"That was rude… but I like it," Zackier replied, his eyes gleaming. "You shouldn't waste your time talking to strangers."
"Right?" Trizha agreed, tucking the phone back into her purse.
Trizha and Zackier walked together, laughing easily at one another, with Margaret and Wyne following silently behind them.
Wyne, however, was staring at Trizha with both deep concern… and a slight, building sense of anger.
"Trizha... that was your mother just now."
As Trizha and her so-called 'boyfriend' walked ahead toward the hotel's expansive food campus, Wyne and Margaret trailed them, speaking in low, serious tones.
"Hey Margaret… don't you find that Zackier guy—" Wyne began, frowning.
"Strange, yes." Margaret finished for her, her eyes scanning the new figure.
"Yeah that—wait, you're trying to investigate him too?" Wyne asked, surprised by the quick confirmation.
"I'm a very silent observer, you know. I thought you already knew that."
Margaret said calmly, adjusting the strap of her purse.
"Just because I'm always silent doesn't mean I'm not doing anything useful or slacking around." she added.
"Oh yeah, good point, my bad…" Wyne admitted. "...I sometimes forget that you're 'that' type of person, since you only engage or whenever Trizha and I start arguing randomly…"
"Not all the time." Margaret murmured. "But sorry, if that concerns you."
"Oh no, no need to apologize," Wyne waved off the apology. "And speaking of Trizha… don't you find her strange as well, over the last few days?"
"Times when she hasn't touched the social media, yeah." Margaret agreed. "I'm trying to figure that out as well. The lack of content isn't like her."
Not that it's really her.
"It's definitely because she's doing it out of guilt toward Nomoro, and her subsequent breakdown of identity," Wyne analyzed, nodding.
"But let's change the topic about her from Past to Present: she's acting genuinely unusual now that Zackier is here. The shift is instantaneously getting weirder and weirder by the second."
"Yeah," Margaret confirmed. "She's changing drastically when it comes to Nomoro—which is good—but when it comes to Zackier, she's becoming weird, almost completely out of character. She's too accepting."
"Yeah… should we… investigate them deeper? Like, look into his background?" Wyne pondered, rubbing her eyes.
"No, too risky." Margaret stated firmly. "For now, it's best to keep an eye on Trizha."
Margaret elaborated on her reasoning.
"Zackier is still a total stranger to us. We haven't seen him appearing in our school either." She plundered. "...he could be pretending to be someone else. For instance, he killed someone and took their identity just to approach a person with reputation; Trizha. it's best to go on defense and observe Trizha's reaction to him."
Wyne stopped walking and turned to Margaret, her eyes wide with a worried expression. "Margaret… that's a bit disturbing to think about, you know. I was thinking maybe he was just a guy trying to get to know her in weird ways."
Those words, and Margaret's face suddenly hardened.
"I'm serious," Margaret insisted, meeting Wyne's gaze.
"Seriously?!" Wyne squeaked.
Margaret nodded her head in solemn agreement, then crossed her arms. "Remember those cases where famous celebrities get killed by so-called 'fans'? Apparently, Trizha is popular enough to make something like that happen."
She then paused, and continued.
"Horror is a thing I like. But disturbing was never part of that list—and that guy…" She glanced at Zackier. "...he fits that description."
"Geez…" Wyne sighed, running a hand through her hair. "You're the type to always say creepy stuff whenever you start speaking. But doing it seriously? It's almost disturbing rather than terrifying."
Wyne sighed deeply and shook her head slightly, trying to snap herself out of every disturbing possibility currently flooding her mind.
But as she opened her eyes, she noticed Margaret staring at her with an intense combination of concern and firmness, refusing to let her dismiss the situation.
"Wyne…" Margaret said slowly, carefully choosing her words. "You said that Trizha is not acting like herself, right? When it comes to that… There's a chance that whatever the girl we all know and love had changed entirely according to Zackier's influence—but could be because of herself. The true her."
Wyne's eyes widened slightly, and she gulped, listening intently as Margaret delivered her heavy conclusion.
"So… if she were to do something according to her own free will… I fear our relationship with her won't last long, because we won't recognize who she has become." She added. "She changes nearly all the time. Just what are the chances that… she would choose to stay into 'one' of them just to "avoid" it all."
Chances.
It was inevitable.
The idea of a one and only Trizha staying to avoid it all.
To avoid…
…responsibility.
The idea of her choosing to keep walking into that one path, that one route.
A route she lied to herself that will bring her happiness, a defence mechanism against the reality that forced her to confront.
It was at this moment that Wyne herself, the person who knows Trizha the most and was the first to be her friend…
…had realized that the consequences of her choosing the wrong route had finally sparked through its way, its destiny, its fate.
She has a slow mind, but she could feel it.
Something wrong is already happening.
"This is… one hell of a vacation." Wyne muttered to herself.