The Bond

Ch 81

"Bold."/"Bold italic" : animatronic is talking/animatronic is talking in mind

"Normal."/"Normal italic." : human is talking/human is talking in mind

=o^o=

"So ... are you going to tell me now? I won't force you if you don't want to, of course!"

Lucy's words made Michael bite his lower lip nervously. They were in the dining room eating breakfast together until Lucy decided to ask. Surely he knew, Lucy would bring up this topic in time, especially after his fight with Mark at the hospital at the time. Mark who bluntly said that he killed his own brother.

He couldn't refute Mark's words, anyway, they were true as they were. Evan died from a prank he thought would be the funniest joke on Evan's ninth birthday.

There was still no response from him for two minutes, but his purple eye kept glancing around at Ennard. Ennard seemed to notice this and looked back at him in confusion. He just puffed out his cheeks and looked at Lucy before looking back at the animatronic who was standing not far from him. Then repeat several times. That seemed to irritate Ennard himself.

"Why do you keep looking at me? It's your life not mine."

"But—but you know most of the story!"

"Nonsense!" Ennard argued vehemently, Lucy shot him a glance. "I just know that little prank of yours went wrong and caused an incident and then suddenly you work at a rental and kept talking to yourself about that trashy soap opera you watch every night every time you come back for your next shift!" The animatronic with incomplete units growled in annoyance. "Damn it, you have no idea how noisy Funtime Foxy was because of your soap opera."

Lucy frowned. "Mike, you watch soap opera?" Her tone was disbelieving.

Meanwhile, the eldest son Afton shrugged his shoulders. "The soap opera was good, so I just watched them instead of having nothing to do at all. While eating popcorn. Damn, I miss eating other foods." Michael sloppyly spooned a mouthful of soup into his mouth but glared at Ennard in annoyance.

"Why are you looking at me like that again? Want to blame me? I'll gouge your eyeballs later if you keep doing it."

"Why are you so sensitive this morning? Period?"

"Period your ass."

Michael just stuck his tongue out at Ennard before going back to eating his soup. Then, not long after that he straightened his lip line as he placed the soup ladle on top of the bowl, his gaze unreadable at all. If he kept delaying, there might not be another time to explain. "You could say I used to be ... a delinquent. A very difficult delinquent. Always causing chaos and trouble. Every week my father can be called to school."

"I'm surprised your father didn't disown you." 

"Shut."

Michael cleared his throat and decided to forget what Ennard had just said, Lucy listened with a serious expression. "I had three friends back then," Michael showed Lucy the number three with his finger, "Mark was one of them, the others were Simon and Alec. We usually wear the masks my father gave us everywhere."

"Mask?"

A nod was the answer Lucy got from Michael, who then grabbed something from the floor—a fox mask. For some reason he felt like he need to bring it this time after neglecting it. "In the past, Freddy Fazbear's restaurant was quite popular in my city, they provided animatronics for entertainment there and my father happened to be one of their designers." Michael lowered his words even more as his gaze dropped down. "My youngest sibling was afraid of animatronics, and because I was a big jerk who just wanted attention, I scared him every day with that mask, sometimes with my old friends."