Chapter 47.

I’ve already been burned more than enough times and I’m tired of it all. Why did my boss even approach me to begin with?

“Hey, Dio, you like to doubt yourself too much. You should really stop doing that or life will always look dreary and bleak.”

Why does it feel like she always knows everything I’m thinking about?

“Hey, Dio.”

“What?”

“If I said I have a secret I’ve never told anyone before, would you want to know what it was.”

“Oh a secret? What is it? Are you suddenly coming out of the closet or something?”

She rolled her eyes in my direction.

“Well, if it’s a secret you’ve never told anyone before, please don’t make me the first one to know. I’ve had enough crazy secrets for a lifetime.”

“Dio, I’m actually-“

“A guy? I knew it!”

Swish.

I was petrified, I definitely never expected a knife to come flying my way.

“Are you crazy?! Your secret is actually that you want to kill me?!”

“Well, you kind of deserved to die a few times over for that one.”

“Just because you’re actually a dude doesn’t mean you have the right to throw knives at me!”

“I’m a full fledged woman! Can you not see these?”

“They’re too good to be true though. Aren’t they just silicone implants?”

“Dio, are you trying to pick a fight?”

“Eh? So… by coming out of the closet you were really just talking about being a lesbian then?”

“If I was not interested in men, would you be here right now while I’m making you hot chocolate? Look, just shut your trap and listen to me.”

“I don’t wanna know.”

“Stop acting like a kid and listen to me.”

“Can’t you just tell your neighbor or something? It’s probably going to be something insane anyways! Any woman that has ever told me, ‘I have a secret’ with a serious face like that has always been a psychopath!”

“Well… I admit my secret might make some people think I’m unusual.”

“See?! It’s better off not telling me then!”

“I’m really not crazy though.”

“Said every psychopath in existence.”

“Haaah. Whatever, just sit there and listen. I can tell you don’t know much about me and are secretly curious, so I’ll do you a favor that way you don’t need to think about snooping through my phone to find out about me.”

“Eh?”

“That’s right. I know about your intent to snoop. I also vaguely know about what you refrained from telling me when we were back at McDonald’s.”

“Are you a stalker?”

“Shouldn’t your first guess be a psychic?”

“Peh. I had a psychotic ex who pulled the psychic card before, but she turned out to just be an insane stalker who knew every single detail about whoever became the target of her misguided love instead.”

“Oh that’s right, you did, didn’t you? That was your third ex; if I’m not mistaken, it was Anna Thena, wasn’t it? The girl who’d drive her love interests to the point of committing suicide from her over intrusive nature?”

“Yeah... that’s her.” Just the thought of her sent shivers down my back.

“It’s rather impressive you managed to safely escape her clutches, isn’t it?”

“That would only be thanks to my second ex’s reputation. She got scared off when she dug too deep and discovered who my second ex was.”

“Oh, you mean the woman who turned out to be a wanted contract killer? The same one that used you to infiltrate the company you worked for so she could fulfill one of the contracts she’d taken up? Yet by some strange twist of fate, she fell madly in love with you and nearly got caught by the cops, right?”

Her questions really struck at all my sore spots.

“Haha, you really dug quite a bit, didn’t you? I don’t even know her real name in all honesty. The name you wrote down back when you interrogated me about Rick was just an alias she went by when we were together. In the end, she never told me her real name before she abruptly disappeared on me one day.”

“You really did get the short end of the stick. Sorry.”

“Haaaaah. You don’t need to apologize, it’s completely unrelated to you after all. But tell me about it. The cops busting into my room that one time to apprehend her, only to find the innocent me, peacefully asleep, definitely gave me a heart attack.”

“Haha. I’m sure it was an interesting twist in its own way. Anyways, we got a bit off track there. You had another hallucination while we were at McDonald’s, right?”

“You realized that?”

“I not only realized it, I more or less have the gist of what happened.”

“How is that even possible?”

“The world you and I see probably looks very different, that would be why.”

“Different?”

“Yes, different.”

“As you’ve assumed previously, my family is rich.”

“Is this a difference in the world in terms of social status you’re talking about here?”

“No.”

“What is it then?”

“I hate my family.”

“That’s pretty random. You hate them when they let you grow up living a lavish life of luxury?”

“No. The reason I hate them is because of what I can see and they can not.”

“You’re not going to tell me you can see ghosts, right?”

“No, I cannot see ghosts. Nor have I ever actually seen one.”

“Then... what is it you can see?”

“Colors.”

“Hah? Colors? Uh… by the way I’m not color blind-.”

“Not colors like a normal person sees when looking at the world around them. Colors that allow me to see through people’s state of mind. Any person I look at, what I see is a mass of different colors. Sometimes it’s one individual color, while often times it’s a mixture of many. These colors can either radiate from the person or fill up their internal body. Through observations over the years I’ve come to be able to determine what these colors represent and I’m able to read people like open books thanks to it. Color emission from people reveals what they are experiencing at a given point in time. Colors that fill the body represent the kind of person they are overall.”

“What does this have to do with me? Why tell me about something like this?”

“It has everything to do with you. Before I met you I thought I knew everything and I could see through anyone’s intentions at any time. Everyone I look at has some sort of color to them. Whether it be pitch black like my family, who I cut ties with, or the pure white of a new born baby.”