Chương 25: Conditional Flaw

June was in the subway. He was on the way to the theater to watch a film.

'Any film would work.' His mind was stuck on the events of his previous months. It was ten hours in the waking world, but he spent two months in the nightrealm. He aged; he changed plenty. A flaw was something a person could choose to manifest; it was a sacrifice in exchange for a greater power. Most flaws had their physical or behavioral tells; it wasn't too hard to find someone who had chosen a flaw, as rare as those few were.

There were plenty of flaw types; they were created by letting one's will flow through their body with a single-minded goal. It was as difficult as it was unwanted to manifest. The flaw June picked up was ambiguous; there was not a mystery system to whisper hidden truths into his ear. Instead, his flaw was an intuitive truth. He would be compelled to kill the beast, and if he didn't, he would lose control of his body and be forced to watch through the eyes of a husk until its regenerating body gave out.

If he had chosen to gain his flaw, he would have had some say in what the failure conditions would be, but he didn't. His flaw was born from the single-minded thought to slay the sky. And his failure would make him behold his failure as a mindless puppet until something else killed him. It was intuitive to him as much as it scared him.

'But alas, that was how life was.' The trip towards the theater was almost finished. As June was deep in thought, he caressed a raccoon that sat in his lap, and around him was a bunch of other street animals. He looked like the prince of sepia; his skin, his clothes, and his hair that was tied into a bun made even the crazy people on the train stare speechlessly. His eyes were covered in cheap tinted sunglasses, covering his golden eyes with an inlay of ruby.

He heard the people furthest away whisper; they weren't close enough to be bewitched, but still they were entranced. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. His purlicue hair tie was hidden in a mass of luscious hair. This was his stop.

June made it through the mall complex the theater was in; he was starting to regret not wearing a face mask, since his transformation he has been increasingly aware of people and creatures staring at him. It was like a survival mechanism that every creature had was turned up to a hundred, and his beauty made everything else behold him intently; it was hard to tell if they wanted to kill him, devour him, or just stare at him. He got a ticket from the digital kiosk; less interaction made a better day for him.

He picked a random movie; he closed his eyes when picking, so he didn't even know the genre. He, of course, snuck snacks in; the theater doesn't allow snacks from outside, but at the same time they sell the same snacks at exorbitant prices.

'The gall of these people to sell a chocolate bar for $4 when I could get it at the dollar store for 99 cents.' June walked to the theater immediately; normally he would leisure around the mall until the theater started playing the pre-movie ads. He just wanted to be left alone, and dark places let him feel that, so he picked the seat the furthest away from the screen, in the corner away from everyone else.

So in the meantime, June sat alone in the corner of the theater with his plastic sunglasses on in the dark room, continuing to re-read the novel he loved. It had plenty of chapters, thousands even, so he didn't need to worry for a while about completing it again. Even though he completed the book not too long ago in waking-realm terms, he still hasn't read the novel in two months due to his nightrealm trek.

So he felt like a giddy little kid looking at the presents under the tree on Christmas morning; he was so happy, in fact, that instead of reading for a while, he just zoned out thinking about how much he would enjoy continuing the novel. And by the time he came to, he noticed someone sitting in the seat next to him.

'Every other seat is empty! Why here?'

'Do urinal rules not apply to theatre seats anymore?' June let out a groan within his mind; he didn't show his displeasure at all physically; he even made sure to show any micromovements in his facial muscles and kept his heart rate and breathing steady.

'Am I overdoing it?' June just feigned ignorance of the person who sat beside him; he didn't need to look at them to sense them anyways. He had his own extra senses. So instead of turning and looking at the person, he mustered his ears so that he could see what they looked like through echolocation. The room was dead quiet, but the calm humming of the surround sound speakers and the screen in front was enough to distinguish some things.

One thing was that there were two other people in the theater other than himself and his unwanted seatmate. A couple was making out on the middle seats.

'Yeah, no, more echolocation.' June stopped trying to echolocate. He felt a hole being burned in the side of his head; his seatmate was staring at him.

'Do they see my eyes through the side of my sunglasses?' His eyes still glowed no matter how dimmed they were, and the room was already dark enough for them to emanate some light; his glasses dulled the light enough to make it look like he was wearing contacts instead of having literal glowing eyes, but people could still see his eyes through the sides of the sunglasses.

'Maybe I should invest in horse blinders.' A thought popped into June's mind; he closed his eyes and tried to echolocate again.

'Ah' And then stopped echolocating again; the couple was still going at it. So now he was just blind and felt a hole being stared into the side of his head.

'Oh, what do I do?' He was silently panicking. This was the biggest conundrum he experienced since finishing his favorite novel.