Chapter 6
Why Didn’t You Kiss Me on the Mouth?
TIA
We’ve been here all day.
The lecture hall’s stage lights burn the nape of my neck, and I shift uncomfortably in my chair.
Somewhere between the tepid air conditioning, the overbearing attention of a hundred university students and professionals, and the claustrophobic media crew crowded around us, my will to live has shrivelled to a wisp.
I check our livestream numbers on my phone, slanting my screen away from Harper’s thieving gaze. But she’s already latched on, and we both watch the viewer numbers climb into the thousands.
She makes a sound, back of her throat. ‘We’re popular.’
I fight down the sarcasm in my voice. ‘Or, maybe, the public is actually invested in what’s happening with the moonstones. It’s almost like it could change humanity’s course if it works as an energy source.’
Harper hums again and sits back in her chair. ‘The general public isn’t that smart.’
‘And you are?’
‘Don’t go down that route. We have the exact same qualifications.’ Harper raises a brow and adjusts her mic. It was switched off when the moderators called a break, and we’re thankfully far enough from the audience to be out of earshot. ‘God, I hate people.’
In our third year of the Lain Co. internship, our responsibilities include completing assessments – all moonstone or Sentinel-related, this year – and presenting our ideas to professionals, other departments in Lain Co.
and the public. The latter is always most unfortunate, and the only plus to this is a day off lab work and the huge box of free pastries the university gives us on our break.
Today, Harper and I run through preliminary findings on the new moonstones. The screen is bright with predicted energy output percentages from last month, all slightly altered for security reasons.
A text from the media director dings through on my phone. It’s time to start the Q&A. You guys ready?
I flash the message at Harper, who straightens with a sigh before sending the media crew a thumbs-up. Cameras start again, the moderator wakes the dozing students with his booming voice, and suddenly there’s a smattering of hands in the air.
‘You.’ Harper rips into a chocolate croissant and points to a person in the crowd.
It’s too dark in the back of the lecture hall to see them, but I hear the question clearly. ‘What’s it like to be the lab partner of a Sentinel?’
Harper grins. ‘I think the main problem has very little to do with being partners with a Sentinel, and a lot to do with the fact that the partner is Tia. Her personality leaves much to be des—’
I shoot the moderator a look and he switches Harper’s mic off.
Harper blinks at her useless mic, surprised, but sets it down with an easy shrug.
The moderator announces a few minutes to fix the sound system.
Don’t kick her. I was born with restraint. I can do this. As the moderator tries to figure out a better system of responding to questions, I lean back in my seat and whisper, ‘Your parents must have raised you badly.’
‘Don’t fucking talk about my parents.’ The reply lashes through the air between us, low and edged with warning.
I don’t actually know much about Harper’s family.
I know she’s an only child, that maybe her parents aren’t around much.
Between fighting her for top of the cohort and trying to outdo her at press and publicity meets, we’ve never really talked about personal stuff, and Harper’s never mentioned family in any of her interviews.
But Harper’s shit-eating smirk has been wiped from her face. I’m smart enough to drop the fight. I tune back into the queue of people waiting to ask questions.
A man comes up to the microphone, asking about the possibility of molecule manipulation to formulate live matter.
I take the question before Harper can, because Lain Co. is working on it, but it’s highly confidential and Harper looks like she’s never kept a secret in her life.
The next question comes from a man with his hair gelled in a pompadour, his collar popped and his thumbs looped in his jeans. Perhaps that should’ve been enough warning, but it’s too late now.
He draws up to the mic, adjusts it like he’s taller (he’s shorter), and goes, ‘I just really want to thank you for all the work you’ve been doing to stop these violent protests. I love the Sentinels so much, and I just . . . I’m so grateful you’re protecting us from the Nagas.’
Protecting us from the Nagas. I recognize the subtext in his words. Lately, people have become very comfortable with acting like all Nagas are outright villainous. The public forgets that Sentinels have a duty to protect the city from damage caused by climate protests – not from Nagas themselves.
The stage lights suddenly seem a little too hot.
‘Thanks, but I’m here as an intern of Lain Co.
, not as a Sentinel.’ As Tia, not Lune, I want to say.
‘I know the Nagas are often leading climate protests, but please refrain from referring to the clan collectively in regards to the protests. It promotes discriminatory treatment towards Nagas as a whole.’
‘Right. Right! Sorry.’ He laughs like he’s embarrassed, but I don’t hear any shame in his tone, and I resist the urge to touch my moonstone. I need to end this conversation.
Before I can say anything, he adds, ‘And, look, no pressure, but could I have your number?’
Somehow it got worse. In my peripheral vision, Harper’s brows shoot up.
My skin crawls with the man’s smile, and my palms begin to itch with the urge to leave.
I drag my phone out of my pocket with a fake laugh. ‘Oh, sorry, I have to get this – could be an emergency. You guys continue without me.’
Planting a patronizing clap on Harper’s shoulder, I pretend to pick up the phone and head backstage. Heavy velvet curtains shield me from the public and the cameras, and I find a back door, leading to a tiny fire-escape stairwell.
My heart pounds in my chest, but I face the dimly illuminated stairs and prop myself against the dusty wall.
What was that? I’ve dealt with racist assholes who think the Sentinels are on their side and in league with furthering their awful, twisted ideologies, and I’ve always done my best to correct them.
So why are my insides twisting this time?
A door opens behind me, and I whip my phone to my ear. ‘Yeah, Niko, I’m coming. Don’t worry. I know I have to leave, it’s—’
‘Cut the act.’ Harper. There’s a rustle of sole against grit as she joins me at the bottom of the stairs. She grabs the paint-flecked rail and hops to sit on it. ‘You’re a bad liar.’
In the privacy of the stairwell, I finally allow myself to roll my eyes. I tuck my phone away and cross my arms, my shoulder against the wall. ‘What are you even doing here?’
Harper’s gaze glints. ‘Why’d you ditch me?’
‘I have social anxiety.’
Harper’s brows knit. Her lips part, and she blinks once, twice, but the progress bar on her buffer doesn’t inch. ‘Seriously?’
Actually, yes. But my social anxiety veers towards people-pleasing – not creating a scene by running out of a lecture theatre.
There’s a sneaking suspicion in my chest that my panic is less about a person asking me out, and more that the person had been a man.
Not like I’d ever confess it to Harper. ‘It doesn’t matter. Why are you here, honestly?’
‘I was . . .’ Harper still looks like she’s swallowed a frog. For a moment, it almost looks like she’s going to say worried, which is how I know I need a break. Harper Leong doesn’t get worried. ‘I was bored. I just told everyone to hold on and I left.’
‘Won’t they look for you?’ I say, right before sounds of a scuffle and muffled shouting kick up from behind the door, startling us both.
Harper catches my gaze. The unspoken question hangs in the air between us. Want to get out of here?
We’re already two levels down when I hear the door upstairs bang open, and the media director say, distantly, ‘Where are they?’
I keep my footsteps light until the door slams shut, vacuuming the ruckus out of the stale stairwell air and sealing us from the public with a satisfying thud.
For a while, I pause to let Harper catch her breath. ‘Really smart, leaving suddenly without any valid excuse. At least I pretended to have something.’
‘And yet I still graduated as the Academy valedictorian.’ Harper starts back down the staircase. ‘Isn’t that cute?’
The Descendant Academy in Singapore is the only school tailored exclusively for descendants in the country.
Heck, there are only a couple of academies across Southeast Asia, because it’s not like descendants can’t study in ordinary schools – it’s just that as descendancy often curses rather than blesses, Descendant Academies are able to work around every individual descendant’s needs.
As there aren’t many dedicated academies in the world, only more extreme cases are accepted into the school.
I grappled with chronic fatigue until I’d been given my medical moonstone, and the day I realized I could shoot lunar-kinetic blasts from my hands, I sat in a cell overnight for assault and the destruction of property.
With magic becoming less potent through each generation, there aren’t many others with powers so strong, and the police hadn’t even known what to do.
It was Niko who had bailed me out, promising the officers that it was an accident.
Later, I’d hear Niko was nearly sent to a girl’s home for accidentally manipulating reality and transmuting a kid through cement, and Kiran almost drowned someone when he lost control and created a whirlpool during a school swimming lesson – everyone’s powers came at a cost.