"All right." Hood's frantic glances darted wildly in all directions. "You stay here and... and take this." He handed Olivia a mop.
The girl had to bite her cheek to hold back her hysterical laughter. "Are you kidding me? He has a gun! And you're giving me.... this!"
In a split second, Hood covered her mouth with his hand. "Can you keep your voice down?" He whispered frantically. "Do you even have any self-preservation instinct?"
Olivia suddenly felt a stupid awkwardness because the guy was too close. She felt as if her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. A brief pause passed before she gave a nod.
"I think not!"
Having come to her senses, she removed the guy's hand from her face. "Can we not argue about that right now?"
"Okay, okay," Hood muttered, his throat tightening with nerves. "Listen to me. Sooner or later, he will find us. So you're going to sit here tightly embracing this mop. And I'll go and try to distract him, and then—"
"No way," Olivia protested. "You're not going there."
"I didn't ask your permission," the guy grimaced. "So then, when I get him out of here, you grab your mop and run straight to the psychologist's office. You lock the door and wait for me."
"No."
"What do you mean, 'no'? I'm trying to save your stubborn ass!"
"Don't you want to think about your own ass? No time to play superhero! Stay here and be silent."
"God! Why can't you just trust me and do as I ask?"
The old floorboards suddenly creaked very close to the storage room. The unknown person undoubtedly caught their muffled whispers.
The guys looked at each other in a daze and again covered each other's mouths with their palms. It seemed as if the breathing had become several times louder. A paralyzing dread gripped the both of them.
Hood realized that he needed to act right now. He slowly walked away from the girl, pursing his lips. And Olivia was suddenly overcome by fear of her own powerlessness. Her head was spinning, and she could barely restrain herself from howling in horror.
The guy crept up to the door. Having waited for the right moment, he raised his leg and struck a powerful blow to the left of the door handle. The flimsy lock didn't even try to resist. With a loud roar, the door burst open and sent the unknown man behind it crashing to the floor.
"Change of plan! Run!!" Hood yelled.
There was no argument from Olivia this time, as fear and adrenaline had completely taken hold of her. Without thinking, she hastily seized the mop and fled from the assembly hall, as the guy told her to do.
Without glancing behind her, she was racing ahead at top speed. But the sudden, terrifying sound of a gunshot caused her to freeze in her tracks. Olivia felt her insides begin to tremble—truly tremble. Images of potential horrors that could have happened to Hood immediately erupted in her mind.
"To hell with the plan," she said to herself and ran back.
<><>
Fearing what awaited her, she braced herself and pushed open the massive door to the assembly hall. Olivia hastily glanced all over the guy for any bullet injuries; fortunately, he appeared unscathed. But his attention was solely on defending himself from the brutal strikes of the attacker, completely oblivious to her presence.
YOU ARE READING
DIFFERENT-WINGED ANGEL
超自然Imagine being nobody in this life. You were thrown into the street by your birth mother when you were just a few days old. And adoptive parents once picked you up like a homeless puppy, and now they're slowly destroying you from the inside out. But...
