Mina ✓

•|chapter thirteen: the knife in the fourth floor [present day]

Hot showers after a long day were one of the ways in which Yvaine relaxed.

Not a thread of cloth covered her lithe frame. The droplets of warm water trickled down her smooth, naked skin, traced the attractive curves of her body and seeped down the blue-tiled floor of the bathroom. Yvaine's hair was open and fell upon her shoulders, the ends of which were wet from the shower. She kept her eyes closed and enjoyed the sound of the water rushing past her ears, occasionally rubbing circles upon her bosom, the area of her neck directly above the collarbone and the sides of her forehead.

The hour grew late with every passing minute, yet Yvaine showed no signs of cutting her shower short. It was almost half-past seven when she had exited from Oleander's apartment and had returned to the chateâu. The serene smile on her lips showed how much she was enjoying it; the feeling of the water running down upon her, the feeling of being without care and free like a bird.

The warmth reminded her of those chocolate brown eyes of her mother, as she would look down at the toddler Yvaine with love-filled eyes. It was the only thing that she remembered about her mother, her eyes. Yvaine was barely five when her mother had died due to the lingering cancer in her body, the ailment the doctors had taken a bit too late to diagnose.

But her death had never bothered Yvaine a lot, she was after all very young when it had happened. She had barely got the chance to bond with her mother. What caused her tremendous grief was the passing away of her father when she was in the second year of her graduate program. It was tragic and sudden. One moment she was attending her classes when the cursed call came and the next she was in the hospital with the doctors declaring that her father died due to a massive cerebral stroke.

Her final year had passed in a flash. And it was decided that she would move in with her maternal grandfather in Andrasville till she got a proper job. But once more death messed with their plans and Yvaine's grandfather died alone in the chateâu just a few weeks before her moving in. And as a last favour, he had secured her the job of a librarian in the town library.

Yvaine's eyes were watery when she opened them at last. She tightly gripped the tap to the shower and turned it off. It was quite painful to think of all the deaths she had to experience in such little time and she was thankful her librarian duties kept her busy and her mind away from such dreary thoughts. Then there was the mysterious disappearance of Wilhelmina Andras, which now had become an integral part of her life.

Sighing, Yvaine pulled down a white towel kept upon a clothes hanger adjacent to the shower and began to dry herself. Swinging her hair to one side she put on the grey shirt and pants kept beside the towel and came out of the bathroom. On her way to her bedroom, she switched on the lights of the hallway, warm luminescence filling the formerly tenebrous corridors.

Unlike the hallway, however, Yvaine's bedroom was not completely dark. The windows allowed the rays of the moon to enter the space and light it up considerably. Further, the lamp beside the bed was switched on which illuminated what would otherwise have been a very dark room. With easy, languid steps Yvaine climbed up on the bed and rested her back against the headrest.