“Boring! It didn’t have a good ending!”

As I finished telling my story I heard the girl’s voice cry out to me. She had been talking throughout the story and irritating me by asking for more each time I wanted to finish it.

I felt a little annoyed.

“I told you a story. Now tell me why you’re still here?!”

I looked at the girl in front of me. She was sitting on my favourite chair, my only chair, and twirling a lock of her blonde hair in her hands as she gazed at me. She shook her head a little as though she was waking from a dream and trying to clear it.

“I have decided. From today onwards you will be my companion!”

I stared at her in confusion. Her words weren’t making much sense.

“You should be honoured by this opportunity I have given you. Now then-”

She looked around and sniffed the air.

“What’s for dinner?”

I was both shocked and awed at this girl’s ability to disregard my problems and simultaneously order me around. Besides, she had been eating as I talked to her. I had served her some food and I could see the empty bowl in front of her.

‘She’s a messy eater.’

I sighed as I saw that her white top –which she had borrowed from me– had somehow become stained with dark brown colours while I had been talking.

She had a neglected expression on her face as she gazed at me.

“A good companion should always be able to tell me a story while cooking at the same time. This is just common sense.”

I’m not sure where she was coming from but what she wanted from me sounded suspiciously like the work of a slave rather than a companion.

“Aren’t you acting a little stuck up for someone that turned up at my door half dead? Not to mention you’re wearing my clothes.” The girl blushed at my words and stared down at the now stained shirt I had lent her.

“I was not ‘half dead’! From the moment I saw you I could tell that you were a man whose stories were worth hearing! And so I came back and I was indeed correct.” She nodded her head as though to confirm what she was saying and looked up at him with defiant eyes.

“It didn’t look that way to me. The floor and my window are still broken by the way, when were you planning on fixing that?”

I pointed to the wooden floorboards that lay at her feet and then moved my hands towards the broken living room window and she blushed harder.

There was a huge hole in the floor next to her and when I saw it I couldn’t help but remember the events from a few days before.

~~~~

-(Flashback time)-

“Who the hell are you?!”

I couldn’t help but gaze in shock at the blonde girl that had just appeared from under my floorboards.

One second I was sitting on my chair eating some instant noodles and the next moment I and my dinner had gone flying as the floor exploded and a girl flew out from underneath me shouting something about being happy.

I picked myself up off the ground and looked around. My entire living room was covered in debris from the broken floorboards. The cause of the mess was standing in the middle of the room and watching me with her blue eyes.

I didn’t quite know what to make of her or her appearance. She was covered completely in black except for her arms where the fabric was torn and she seemed to be dropping pieces of metal onto the floor.

As I looked at her she hit one of her fists into her other hands palm.

“Oh that’s right. I need a name.”

If this had been a cartoon I would have fallen on the floor with my legs hanging in the air but this was real life, and she had just broken my floor.

*Fwoop* a strange sound came out of my chest.

I looked down and realised that the girl had punched her hand into it. She was pretty strong. My body takes in most attack without me feeling a thing but it was still a shock to me that this girl was attacking me.

I grabbed her shoulder.

“Listen I don-“

“Hohoho~ it appears you are no ordinary human!”

She took her hand out and punched me again. I grunted at the impact. She was clearly a lot stronger than she looked. She probably had a power that enhanced her strength judging from the feel of her punch.

A strange blue glow began to arc through her arm towards her fist, “ELECTRIC PUNCH!”

My eyes widened as agonising pain shot through my body and I could feel my body collapse onto the ground, twitching out of control.

“Hohohohohoho~ you’ll never take me back!” *Squish* the girls annoying laugh rung in my ears as she stepped on my head and ran out the door.

It took two hours for the body spasms to fully stop. I waited another hour without moving just to make sure that I was really okay and brushed myself off as I got up. It wasn’t my first time being floored by a punch but it didn’t make the pain any less real.

I gazed miserably at the pieces of broken wood lying around the room as I lifted my chair off the ground, ‘As if getting punched by a girl with powers wasn’t bad enough she had to come in through my living room floor.’

I definitely didn’t have enough money to pay for the floorboard repairs.

This had been a really strange day.

~~~~

-Three days later- -approximately three hours before the flashback begun-

*Knock*

‘Who could that be?’

I wasn’t expecting any visitors. Maybe one of my friends had come to visit me.

Wait, I don’t have any friends.

*Knock Knock*

I groaned. It was raining outside and I had planned to spend the entire day curled up under my bed sheets.

*Bang* *Shatter*

‘What the hell!’

I jumped out of my bed and ran into the living room. Half of the window next to the entrance had been broken and a familiar head of blonde hair was poking through the newly created opening.

I watched in silence as the girl that had punched me a few days ago and run out of the door laughing dragged herself inside the house through the window and plopped herself on the floor.

“I’m back!”

She smiled at me and I could tell from the expression on her face that she expected me to break out into applause or something. Her smile wavered and I saw that she was struggling to maintain it. Her black apparel was completely soaked and her hair was also dripping wet. I couldn’t really tell because her clothes covered most of her body but from the looks of things she hadn’t eaten in days.

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the girl.

“Come on in. Although I think you already took care of that.”

I took a white shirt and a pair of pants from my room and walked back into the living room where the girl was watching the rain come in through the broken window.

“Here-” I threw the clothes at her “I can’t do anything about your underwear but for now go take a shower or you’ll catch a cold.”

About half an hour later she exited the shower looking extremely refreshed and had a genuine smile on her face. She had been in there an incredibly long time and her pale skin was red from the heat of the water. I got up and pulled back my chair and so that she could sit in front of me. She looked extremely comfortable and brought her gaze to reach mine.

‘Blonde with blue eyes, that’s rare.” I couldn’t help but think to myself.

She looked around and twiddled her thumbs as she sat. She was acting as though nothing strange had happened. Now that she was bathed and relaxed I felt free to send her a glare.

She avoided my eyes, “I-I am guessing that you wish to know why I am here!”

“That would be nice”

“But first… do you have any food?”

The girl looked up at me beseechingly and I sighed. I walked to the kitchen and began boiling water in the kettle. I heard the girl talking to my back as I moved.

“To-to repay you for the food how about I tell you how I got here?”

I figured it was better to have her talking while the water boiled rather than standing in awkward silence so I agreed.

~~~~

-Present time-

I’m not sure how it had happened but after that I had ended up cooking food for her and telling her a story while she ate.

“I’m sorry” She stared unashamedly at her feet. She was clearly not regretting her actions at all. Not only that but she seemed to have reverted back to informal speech at some point.

‘She’s definitely gotten too comfortable here.’

I tapped my foot impatiently and she looked up at me with a pleading expression.

“But how was I meant to know that the organisations exit only appeared in random places! It’s totally not my fault that your floor was in the way of my escape.”*

This girl was spouting nonsense every time I saw her. I was still reeling from her unbelievable story.

I wasn’t sure how the perfectly gallant and noble girl from the story could possibly be this unkempt and rude girl in front of me.

‘Wait a second Luke, if you begin to wonder about that then it would mean that you’re taking her story seriously.’ I couldn’t help but agree with my brain.

I wouldn’t let her get out of this so easily. One way or another I would need to get those floorboards repaired and it would cost time or money, maybe both.

“And the electric punch?”

She flippantly waved her hand in the air, “I thought you were one of the organisations men. You took the first punch after all and no ordinary human can take that.”

“Right…” For a while now this girl had been talking about an ‘organisation’ that she had ‘escaped’ from.

I don’t know how she got under my floorboards but according to her she had climbed up a ladder and the exit just happened to be directly underneath my house. I had checked and there was clearly no ladder or hole under the floor like she had described. Even the insulation directly underneath the wooden boards was undisturbed.

“I think I would definitely have noticed if a giant criminal organisation was operating under my house.”

“They’re not a criminal organisation. All they want is to rule the world!”

I looked all around the living room as though I was expecting someone to come along and explain to this girl what the words she was saying meant. Instead I was just greeted by the howling of the wind outside and the pattering of rain on my broken window.

“That sounds pretty criminal to me.”

The girl began pouting and placed the empty bowl on the living room table so that she could cross her arms over her chest. Even without the bra it was pretty small.

“And I already told you their exits move randomly from place to place. The exit I came from obviously wouldn’t be there now!”

I sighed.

“Then why hasn’t this ‘organisation’ come back to get you?”

If she wasn’t going to let go of this story then I would play along with her. Maybe she would slip up and admit that she was wrong.

Preferably this apology would also come with a check written to the exact amount it would cost to fix the floor and the window.

She averted her eyes from mine, “I-I sort of broke a lot of their stuff before I left. I had to make sure that they couldn’t try and find me for a while.” She uncrossed her arms and began fiddling her thumbs again as though she was feeling guilty.

She’s a good actress I’ll give her that.

“And if this ‘Director’ fed you luxurious foods and read you stories before bedtime everyday then why did you want to escape? It sounds like you were living the life of a princess-”

She began to answer but I cut her off and continued.

“There is no possible way a criminal organisations leader would also be the kind of man to read a girl bed time stories.”

‘Everybody knew that criminal organisations were run by men that would cut you down for simply looking at them wrongly.’

I couldn’t help but worry a little about my health as my brain started to think in a way that considered her story as really happening.

“I wanted to be free. If I had stayed then the organisation would keep me chained to them for the rest of my life.” She replied immediately. She said it so quickly and without hesitation that if her story wasn’t so outrageous I would have been convinced right then and there.

“Fair enough.”

She smiled and I quickly took the opportunity to attack another point in her story.

“Then why did you run out as soon as you punched me? Surely you should have known that this wasn’t an ‘organisation’ hideout? That punch hurt a lot! Not to mention you also stepped on my head!”

I found myself raising my voice after remember the pain I felt at that punch.

*sniffle*

I heard a sound and looked around. Then I realised that it was coming from the girl.

“I-I didn’t remember that the exit was random. And I keep telling you that it was a mistake!”

*sniffle*

The girls head slumped down until her blonde hair fell over her eyes.

*Waaa*

‘Oh crap’

*Waaaaaaa*

‘Oh crap, oh crap.’

I had made her cry. I couldn’t handle crying girls… or crying people in general. I wasn’t really the comforting sort of guy.

“Alright, alright I said! I believe you!”

The girl raised her head with a smile and her blue eyes locked onto mine. There wasn’t any sign of tears or water in them. It was kind of suspicious how quickly she recovered.

“Do you really?”

I smiled and put my arm around her shoulder. I looked at her closely. When she had first come in through the floorboards I hadn’t had much time to concentrate on her. I had assumed she was a child since she acted like one.

‘Correction, she’s still acting like a child. But now that I look at her closely she’s around my age.’

Although this talk of ‘organisations’ and ‘experiments’ was obviously a lie, as I thought about her story closely I began to piece together what had really happened to her.

‘It’s obvious if I think about it’

This girl had run away from her home and I couldn’t feel anything but sympathy for her.

It was all clear when I looked at the story closely.

‘Okay so she said that she was fighting this ‘experiment’. It was probably a sibling, her sister? Did she run away from home?’

Slowly her story started to make more sense to me.

‘All kids feel like they’re trapped at some point.’

It was a common in most people to feel like they were trapped by their parents or perhaps society at some point in their lives.

‘She clearly loved her father. That much is certain.’

Maybe this sister of hers simply took advantage of her time of weakness to make her run away.’ I hadn’t encountered many people in real life that were that mean but I watched the news. There were some evil people out there.

‘I wonder if I would have gone through that phase, if my mum had still been alive.’ I felt a pang of compassion for the poor girl. If my thoughts were correct she had been through a lot.

“Of course I believe you. How could I not? I was just testing you before.”

I lightly punched her shoulder in a gesture of playfulness. It would be better to be a friend for her, rather than just another enemy.

If she ran away again there was no telling what would happen to her. She clearly wasn’t equipped for outdoor survival, considering she had been borderline dead after her first attempt at running away from this house.

‘So how did she get under my floorboards?’

Judging from what had happened after I met her she clearly had enhanced strength based powers and could create electricity.

‘Perhaps she has another power that I haven’t seen yet and she used it to get under the house. Either way, I should really find out who she is.’

I reached my hand out to her to get her attention but she suddenly stiffened and moved her head to look around.

“Good. Then we better prepare.”

She spoke as she moved her head to look outside the window next to the entrance and frowned.

“Prepare for what?”

I followed her gaze and looked outside but the cracks in the glass and rain made it hard to see anything through the window.

*Scree*

I winced as I heard a screeching sound. The girl had pushed my chair back suddenly and the metal legs scraped against the wooden floor. I moved to push the chair back against the table.

By the time I put my chair back she had already reached my door.

“Hey!”

She grabbed the handle of the door and looked at me.

“What are you doing?”

“They-“

*BOOM*

Just as she opened her mouth to talk the door exploded and she went flying across the room.

I watched in horror as she crashed against the back wall and looked to where my entrance had previously been.

The rain had begun to blow inside from the big hole which now stood where my door had been. The pieces of wood that were once my front wall where scattered on the floor alongside shattered glass and my table had been knocked over by the impact.

“What was that?!”

I heard a cough from behind me and I felt the girl grab onto my shirt. I could feel her hands trembling underneath the cotton. I turned around to check on her and realised that she was her entire body was shivering and I could see the fright in her eyes.

“Hey you!”

I heard a voice calling out behind me and I looked to see who was talking. As soon as I turned around my whole body froze

I was looking straight into the barrel of a gun.

I could feel the girl’s breath brushing against my ear as she looked at the gun.

“They’re here.”

She whispered to me.

I continued to stare at the barrel of the gun.

‘Well no shit.’

I could only watch helplessly as the gun fired and my vision turned dark.

That was my first time experiencing death.

*Read the prologue to know what her story was.