After that, they went back to the main square, entered a strange shop filled with strange things and picked out a so-called ‘phone’. Sam assured Kreig that George would teach him how to properly use it once they got home. But just as Kreig was about to accept that this was it for daily excursions, George gave a timid proposition.

“Hey, uh, Sam. Couldn’t we bring him to… You know?”

Now, Sam knew exactly what he was talking about. The school. Frederick High School, just down the street to the right. Where Kreig had last been seen before his… Before whatever happened to him took place. To him and four others. It… Well, by all means, it wasn’t a terrible idea. The school hadn’t shut down or anything, though since it was a normal workday there might be kids about, but…

Sam turned to look at Kreig where he stood in that damn ‘I <3 IOCRO’ shirt, lumbering like a bear in human form… Those damn kids wouldn’t dare approach him like that. No way.

But that wasn’t the issue here, and it certainly wasn’t why she hesitated. She had two reasons.

Firstly, would it be good for Kreig? She was far from psychologically learnt, George knew a whole lot more on that, but she was pretty sure that, all things considered, going back to the place where all the trauma that Kreig (must have) experienced might be… Bad? Somehow. ‘Don’t do or show him anything that might trigger any sort of emotional outburst’, that doctor dude had said. Then again, if he hadn’t responded as badly as she and George had thought he would to seeing mother and father’s obituaries… It might be fine?

The real defining factor here was that George had suggested it. He probably had his reasons.

Then, the thing that really made her hesitate was the second point. She knew there were people trailing them. After all, she had noticed them pretty quickly. It wasn’t just in the here and now, they’d been hovering around their apartment yesterday, too. But that was fine. She had accepted it.

...Even so, these weren’t just nameless officers of the law. These were people she knew. People who were trained to stand guard outside portals in case something happened, people who were just working in the portal division until they could move to a less monster-heavy division… All these fantastic workers who all collectively agreed that tailing a bunch of siblings out shopping was probably the most boring thing of all, no matter who Kreig was.

Would she really accept that these people would have to go on working even more just for her and George to show Kreig his old school-?

“George, I’m not-,” And while she’d been grumbling about all that stuff, George had already begun walking in that direction, with Kreig sending forlorn gazes at her where she stood. “H-, hey! Wait up!”

“Watching you think is like watching a penguin try to fly.”

Sam pouted. “No need to be mean about it! Sometimes things need a good think to clear it all up!” For some reason, George didn’t seem much impressed, scoffing at the mere idea. “Geez. You sure this is a good idea? With the-, with our friends far back, that is. Won’t they be mad we took a detour instead of just doing, like, exactly what we needed to do? We got him a phone, we got him clothes… do we really need to give him a look at what he lost, too?”

“Sometimes, you need to see what’s behind you to truly move ahead, Sam. Like with the obituaries,” George whispered to the wind. “What’s happening to Kreig isn’t anything easy, but we can’t coddle him and pretend everything is the same as how he left it. He can’t reintegrate into the world of the past, it doesn’t exist.”

He was right. He was completely right. She knew he was right, and yet-,

Sam glanced over her shoulder.

Kreig was walking there, towering above them, hulking and huge and silent. Could he seriously not hear them? Not a word they were saying-? Or had he just decided to keep quiet for some reason? Whatever the reason was, it must’ve been a stupid one. She had heard him speak. He had a quiet, thundering kind of voice that was very unlike how she remembered his voice to be. But the words he spoke were nothing but the truth, his truth, and she respected that.

If anything, she wanted to hear him speak more. Let it all out. But she’d let him take his time, and if he just wanted to listen to them speaking, that was okay.

They reached the Frederick High School. Dreary name, really. Named after the founder who thought his first name was unique enough for the school to avoid any plagiarism. Surprise surprise, it actually was. It didn’t make the school any more interesting, though. Filled with jocks who tried their best and nerds who were too lazy to do anything with their knowledge. Kreig had, at the time, been a part of the former.

Man, he’d been… Quite something. Charismatic. Yeah, that was the right word. Big and brass and when he talked everyone listened.

Not as good at joking as one might have expected from such a popular boy, but he made do.

The living proof that you don’t need to be an expert at studying to be a success in life. She’d always loved that about him. How he seemed to grapple life by the horns and never let go, grinning all the while as if just the act of living was a competition. He made do. Whatever life threw at him, be it a spin ball or a bad test score, he always bounced back. A true optimist.

He was different now, in almost every way, but… She was sure that he still had that golden heart. He had to.

Nobody had told her exactly what he did in the otherworld yet. She didn’t know, and her optimism was choking.

They entered the school.