“So… we’re just going to trust him?” Damian is surprised to find Aoi still hasn’t changed her mind in regards to Lucas’s plan, six hours after he initially announced it.
Amid the very depths of the van, the young woman shifts against her pillow. She sighs, then shrugs. “Honestly, I’d usually say no to these types of plans, but he hasn’t questioned why I need so many bathroom breaks. He seems… nice. Plus—” Aoi turns to face Damian.
The young man thinks her eyes are filled with more life than they initially were, when the trio first embarked on this trip. “Isn’t it kind of exciting?” She grins. The red light from the crosswalk they’ve currently stopped at reflects against her pale skin. “The mystery of not knowing when and where you’ll wake up tomorrow?”
Warmth rises to Damian’s face. He leans in to ruffle her hair. His gaze is gentle, as he observes her slender features. “As long as we find a rooftop every morning for you—er, I mean,” Damian pulls away to cough into his palm, “for me.” He clears his throat. His cheeks are still flushed. “Then,” the young man scratches the back of his head. “I guess it should be fine.”
“What’s that about rooftops?” Lucas calls, from the front of the van, as he lowers the volume of the corny pop music he’d been blasting for the past couple hours or so.
They drive away from the crosswalk.
Aoi’s face returns to its original state—without much emotion or care to show for the world—whilst Damian’s remains a darker red. “I like watching the sun rise from them,” Damian tells Lucas. “So much, in fact, that I just can’t get enough of it.”
“Yes,” Aoi adds, as she pretends to let out an over exaggerated, exasperated sigh. “It’s gotten so bad, that he needs to do it every day without fail.”
Damian cannot help the laughter that escapes him. “Screw you,” he mutters, under his breath, as he throws Aoi a rather annoyed glance, yet, still plays along anyway. “She is right, though!” The young man huffs. “Would it be possible for me to request you add a Rooftops At Sunrise activity in our schedule, oh, wondrous tour guide?”
Lucas rolls his eyes. He turns on the van’s front lights then takes a turn to his left. They’re basically in the middle of the desert now. And although the road is mostly a straight line from here on out, Lucas can feel himself tiring; he considers finding a spot to park for the night soon. “Sure, whatever,” he finally tells Damian. “If it makes you happy, I’ll see what I can do.”
Damian punches the air and lets out a victorious cry. “Yes, awesome! Thanks, Lucas, you’re seriously the best!”
This time, it is Lucas’s turn to blush. His head recoils into his shoulders. He cringes. “Please, stop. You’re embarrassing me.”
“Aw,” Damian falls back down to his knees, against the van’s built-in bench. “Come on, you can’t handle a little praise?”
“I’ll take the Rooftops off the list,” Lucas warns, which—somehow—does work, and gets Damian to go quiet.
The low humming of the van’s engine fills the silent space between them, until it is overtaken by Lucas’s music, that comes to make itself known once more when he turns up the volume again.
Aoi shuts her eyes. She takes a deep breath, wonders if her parents have found her note. They have not texted her yet—not that she checks often. But she would have likely heard the notification, if it had come through.
And now, she is suddenly stricken by the urge to verify her claims. She reaches into her backpack, blindly shuffles through the bag, then finally takes out her cell phone, once her palm collides with its cool, metallic surface.
As expected: Aoi has zero messages. Zero missed calls. Perhaps the young woman should be glad, yet, her heart sinks, ever so slightly.
She shoves the device, that has partially blinded her, back into the bag, with the rest of her belongings. She sighs. “I’m sleepy,” Aoi tells Damian.
“Well, I’m not the one driving.” Damian observes the small keychain in the shape of a banana, that rattles against the van’s door. He did not peg Lucas as the kind to hang those types of trinkets up; he wonders if someone did it for him—a girlfriend, perhaps? “Hey, Lucas!” Damian stares at Lucas again. “Any chance you’ll be stopping for the night, or are we going to be motion sick, even in our dreams?”
Lucas clicks his tongue. “Come on, I’m not that bad of a driver,” he mutters. “But, fine,” he huffs. “I was actually thinking of parking soon. It’s getting dark. It’s less fun driving when all you see is black fog.”
Aoi snorts. “You know, you can just say it’s scary, or creepy—we won’t hate you for that.”
“What’s scary”—Lucas’s attention briefly wanders to the mirror by his left, that allows him to see Aoi’s figure—“is that you’re currently laying against my ingredients, Aoi,” he says.
The young woman swiftly rises to her feet and apologizes. “Crap, sorry, I knew something smelled nice, but I just assumed it was me.”
Damian barks out a laugh and holds his stomach for good measure. “Well, at least you’ve found some use for them, since you won’t be eating with us!”
The entirety of the van falls silent. “Dude…” Lucas cringes again; he switches his music off, then slowly drives away from the main road, and onto a parking lot that seemingly belongs to a nearby factory that’s currently closed for the night. “I don’t know what’s wrong with Aoi,” he mutters, “but it’s probably not cool to joke about it like that.”
Damian’s throat goes dry. He gulps, then turns to Aoi in order to ask her, “Is that true? Do you mind, that I…” He bites his lower lip. “I thought you didn’t that much, since—”
“Yeah,” Aoi admits, all the while refusing to face either of them. “It is kind of uncomfortable, I guess...”
“Oh.”
“If you can help it,” Aoi takes a swig from her water bottle. “Refrain from those remarks, please?” She rises from her seat and walks up to where Lucas is seated. “Anyway, is there a bush I can piss in nearby?”
Lucas shuts his eyes. His nose creases as it twitches. The young man reaches into a backpack of his own. He hands her a flashlight. “There’s one to your left, if I’m not wrong,” he tells her. “We’ll leave the van’s door open while you’re gone. Scream if you need anything. Or, if there’s a snake.”
Aoi’s smile is forced. She holds herself back from making any unnecessary remarks to his face as she takes the flashlight willingly. “I think I’m just going to pee, without the screaming, thank you,” she mumbles, before she hops out of the van with her medication hidden in her right pocket.
She thinks, that it is colder than she expected outside. Her footprints leave behind boot-marks in the soil.
Whilst the young woman is attending to her nightly activities, Lucas hugs his leather seat and turns around to face Damian. “So—” he whistles, “you fucked up pretty bad, huh?”
“Oh, shut up.” Damian shifts away from Lucas, so that he does not have to see his face anymore. However, when he hears the vehicle creak under someone’s weight, he tenses at the sudden sound. “Aoi?” Damian asks. “A-are you back already?”
There is no reply.
The young man turns around. He notices a faint, golden glow emanate from Lucas’s seat. His eyes widen. His lips part. Damian rises and approaches Lucas slowly. “Lucas?” he whispers, as his pulse drums rhythms of fear into his throat. “What’s—”
“I thought you were looking for me.”
It is Lucas’s voice, yet, it isn’t, simultaneously.
“What do you mean?” Damian asks him, as he observes the glow disappear, then return by his shadow.
He still cannot see Lucas, however, Damian cannot deny the sight he is witnessing right now seems much too real to be a dream. The light that attracted him to the van’s driver’s seat in the first place, is now trickling into the back of the vehicle, as it reflects, then bounces off against the rearview mirror. “Lucas?” Damian repeats. “Dude, come on, please, this joke is far too creepy, even for—”
“The aliens,” the voice mumbles—again, it sounds like Lucas; yet, also, like many other voices and whispers stacked on top of one another. “You were searching for us, weren’t you?”
Damian’s eyes widen. He turns around. “I—”
“God, I didn’t mean to upset him that much.”
Damian blinks. He frowns. A figure stands above him, though, it is definitely not Lucas, or the strange glow from before. “Aoi?”
“Who else?” the young woman asks. And then: “Anyway, here,” she hands him a tissue.
Damian takes her offering, though, he is still dazed, and rather confused.
“You were crying in your sleep. Look…” Aoi rests a hand against her hip, she averts her gaze. “It wasn’t funny, what you said, but I won’t hold it against you for the rest of the trip. I get that it was a mistake on your end. So, it’s kind of whatever, really. Just… don’t get so upset. It’s not like I hate you now.”
Crying? Damian thinks, as he brings a finger to his cheek, that is indeed damp with his tears. “Where’s Lucas?”
She shrugs. “No clue. He wasn’t in here when I came back. Maybe he had more… pressing matters to attend to.”
Whilst Damian listens to her, he thinks of the aliens, and Lucas potentially having to go hide his flying saucer. And then, he wonders, if he is going mad. “Was I dreaming?”
Aoi yanks off her pants to change into something more comfortable. As she slips into her pajamas, she shrugs off his remark. “How am I supposed to know what you were doing? Geez,” the young woman pauses, to turn his way. “What’s up with you tonight? It’s like you’ve seen a ghost, or something.”
He laughs; it rings awkward, however. “Yeah…” Damian mutters, as he hooks an arm around the back of his neck and forces a smile. “It does kind of seem like that, doesn’t it?” Another forced snicker. “Well, uh— Never mind, then. I guess… I’ll just wait for him to come back.”
As she wriggles into her sleeping bag, Aoi raises a brow, then stares up at Damian, who is still in his everyday wear on the van’s bench. “You’re not going to sleep?”
Damian shakes his head. “I mean, I will, eventually… once Lucas comes back. It’s just… I don’t think it’s the best idea for me to get some shut-eye while the van’s open, and anyone could come in.”
“Suit yourself.” Aoi readjusts the pillow she borrowed from him earlier this morning. She isn’t personally worried about this kind of thing happening—the young woman figures that, if someone was truly motivated to break into this van, they could easily shatter a window and enter, in either case.
And, despite his own claims, Damian feels the same way. In reality, he wants to wait in order to ask Lucas when it was exactly that he passed out, for he does not recall ever falling into a state of slumber, and beginning to dream.
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