Chapter 1: I SLAPPED THE DEVIL KING IN THE FACE
1337 Words
It was just an ordinary afternoon after school.
Janet’s brain was full of the metrics of the spaceships in 3020. She designed some amazing technologies for the future world in her novel. She loved sci-fi stories, under the influence from her father. And she didn’t tell anyone that she wanted to be a sci-fi writer.
She had been writing the story for 3 years. Every day and night, she was writing and editing it on the notebooks. Now she had 10 notebooks.
So naturally, after the badminton class, she forgot her racket in the gymnasium.
She returned to the gym and got the racket. When she was going to leave, someone’s sobbing from the back of the gym attracted her attention.
She knew there was a group of bad boys bullying students they disliked. They called it “the Judgement”.
Their leader was called “the Judge”. He was the rule-maker in this school.
There were no so-called “standards” of “the Judgement”. It was purely bullying. They made fun of the students by violence and abuse. They selected the victims randomly. Bad performance at ball games, falling in love with a popular girl, even just being too pale or having a weird haircut could be the reason for their bullying.
She was a coward. She never dared to stop them when they surrounded the victims and said hurtful things. She never dared to walk the same way with them. She never even dared to look at them directly.
Therefore when she was looking for the source of sobbing, she was also carefully making sure that the bullies were not around.
It was Levi, the boy they called “sissy puff”. He crouched his body on the ground. Janet saw the scar on the top of his head, blood oozing from the burnt skin. It should be made by a cigarette.
It hurt just looking at the scar. Janet couldn’t believe someone did this horrible thing to him.
She walked slowly to Levi. She wanted to touch his scar but finally determined not to do so. He was shivering. Then she saw the metal bucket behind him. Something was still burning inside. Ashes floated, mixing themselves with Levi’s tears on his face.
All of a sudden, Janet felt like being caught by the throat. She instinctively put her hand in the bucket. There were pieces of papers, more specifically, from a notebook. There wrote some city sceneries in the future world.
Electricity stroke her spine. Her eyes became warm and teary. She felt cold, but her back was sweating.
Pieces by pieces did she take out from the weakening flame. Most of them were burned black. But she was too familiar with the papers, the handwriting, every single word she had written down in these three years with excitement.
“Who did this? Who did this to you Levi? Who did this…… to me?”
“Matt……Matt Turing.” Levi said with trembling lips. That was the name of the Devil King, the Judge.
******
Janet exhaled deeply to dump the bad feelings haunting her the whole day.
It was the day that she went to the bookstore to help her father. He retired from the police office early for the injuries, then opened a bookstore downtown when she was 10. She had been reluctant to show up there in her puberty. But as her growing up, she found it might be the most comforting place in the world.
On the way to the bookstore, Janet felt someone was following her. But nobody was there when she looked back. It was a busy street as usual. Weird……
Unsurprisingly, there was her father Jack alone in the bookstore. He laid behind the register and was reading a book – sci-fi stuff, of course.
Jack was bad at operating a bookstore. He only sold books from his own choice, most of which were unpopular sci-fi stories. He was always reading, or just staring at the passers-by outside and doing profiling of them.
It was his pension and God’s mercy to prevent the family from starving to death. Janet always thought.
“Hi, long time no see.”
Jack waved at her……back. When she was confused why Jack greeted to her, the voice came up from behind. ”Hi. It had been years Jack. Do you have the new release of PJ David?”
“Who are you asking man? Look at this. He even sent me a copy with his signature on the cover. You can Envy me now.” He shook the book in his hand to show off his friendship with the bestseller author.
Dad and Matt were talking about…… a sci-fi author? Wait why do they know each other?
Jack introduced Matt to his utterly confused daughter:” Janet, Matt; Matt, Janet. "
……You call this “introduction”?
“Jack forced me to read PJ David.” Matt smiled.
“Recommend. Mind your language. You love him so basically I HELPED you to know a good author.”
“By the way Jack, I’ll stay here for a longer time. I became a teacher in this town.”
“Teacher? You don’t coincidentally teach at my daughter’s school, do you? Don’t you go to New York?”
“Yes, I do, coincidentally. My mom is very sick. I can’t leave her alone, so I came back.”
“She was too tired. She is a great mother.” Jack nodded, “You made the right decision.”
Janet couldn’t believe her eyes. The man in front of her looked so innocent and easy to get along with. He was attractive with his hazel eyes, soft smile and casual suit. From Jack’s words, Matt was even a filial son.
But who is this guy?
Is he the Matt Turing she knows from high school? Or did she have the fake memory of the coldest eyes on the planet?
Jack realized the unnatural air around the two youngsters:” Ah and Janet, how was your high school? Did you two get along well?” He winked at Janet.
Jack’s question was nearly ironic to his daughter. He didn’t know Matt was the reason for her depression and transferring to another school 8 years ago.
“We didn’t talk at all. He was not a good student in school.” She replied coldly.
“You mean like drinking and smoking piece of sh*t?”
How could she explain to his father? Matt looked as if he was the nicest guy and she was the villain.
Astonished, Janet speechlessly walked out of the bookstore. She didn’t want to see Matt. Why did he appear in front of her over and over again?
Matt followed her.
“Janet...... want to talk?”
His voice stopped her. She felt uncomfortable when he was approaching her step by step.
“No, don’t……”
“There must be some misunderstandings between us……”
He was just a step away from her. Why did he come so near? She felt disgusted.
She had no friends in high school. She was insignificant. All she had was a small dream and those notebooks.
“You ruined everything I had……”
His Hazel eyes darkened with the sunset. Will he take off his façade before her? Janet was instinctively terrified.
“I wanted to make friends with you.”
Why is he still approaching her? Too close, too suffocating……
Janet slapped him in the face with full strength. He was almost deaf for a second.
“Leave me alone and say nothing about the past, you bastard!!!”
- Writer
