"Not going down at all?"
Catrina put a fresh wet towel on Cale's hot forehead. All while looking at the number the thermometer showed.
It was at a steady 40.1 °C, not increasing, nor decreasing.
Seeing it stay there, steady and unchanging made her slightly uneasy.
She couldn't simply shove cold medicine on the unconscious Cale either. Many things could go horribly wrong if she did that.
"Should I wait when he wakes up? Or wait until a family member comes?"
It seemed like no family would come anytime soon, so waiting for Cale waking appeared to be the most likely answer.
'Still, him saying that....'
Didn't make it any better. Gabriel and Catrina had noticed this past month that there was something different about Cale altogether. Now that he said it himself, it only heightened this sense of dissonance more.
"I wonder what's up with him?"
For context, both Gabriel and Catrina didn't voice it out, they just thought of it as a strange change, they didn't really think anything of it.
But Cale's words just now made it seem like he was aware of the change himself. So it wasn't the famous 'the times are changing' type crap.
Tipping her head to Cale, she could feel the slurred breaths coming in and out of his mouth.
This was the first strange thing.
Cale's breathing, no matter how close they both got, could never be even faintly audible like this, it was an accidental discovery after some people crashed into Gabriel and Cale's backs, making them fall on top of each other, all while Catrina hung out with her new friends she had made.
Gabriel, centimeters away from his friend's face, found his lack of breathing strange.
But that was only seen as strange, not proof of something.
Hans, a very pathetic man, added this sense of strangeness.
One day, suddenly, he looked utterly drained. Gabriel and Catrina weren't in his class to find out what happened, but each time he passed Cale, he would always quake.
The both thought of it as guilt, nothing more, nothing lesser than that.
But the de facto was this, Hans was getting bullied by his classmates.
Not much of a surprise in all honesty.
What did surprise the both however was the sudden shift.
All of a sudden, Hans had grown detached, his classmates stopped bothering him and a connection between him and Cale suddenly formed, a faint colleague-like connection.
Nothing about it seemed strange of course. People do change, even if it is a little. But an instant, immense change was bound to make it seem more than strange enough.
One day. Gabriel once said to her.
Cale's heart.
'It didn't beat at all'
Tracing delicate fingers to his chest, Catrina felt a soft thump, thudding against bone and flesh.
"Well, I guess he was wrong, obviously"
She didn't know what to expect, obviously a heart would be beating.
Turning the towel to its other side, Catrina stood up and stretched. Stretching so much, it almost gave her leg a cramp.
'When is he waking up?'
Already being 5 PM, she felt frightened at the fact of seriously staying here till 10 PM.
"I mean, it won't be much of a problem, will it?"
Reassuring herself, she reached for the remote and turned on the TV, then, she glided her feet through the marble floor and passed by the rooms to reach the kitchen, filling a glass bowl with ice cold water.
Setting the bowl down back at the living room, she raised his head and twisted it to the side.
"....Maybe it's too much"
Returning the head to its original position, the towel was peeled away from his head, doused in the bowl, then twisted a few times before resting on his forehead again, Catrina sat on the very edge of the sofa. Propping her chin with a palm, occasionally checking Cale every 15 minutes or so.
Time passed like that, the TV showed multiple reality shows, a poorly made live-action was also there on one of the channels, truly, nothing worthwhile to watch.
A door creaked open as she watched the TV.
"My oh my~"
A woman with small wrinkles on her face entered the house. Gaze falling on Catrina and Cale.
"Is that you Catrina?"
Feet still dangling, she looked at Cale's mother.
"Yes"
Saying that, Cale's mother took to the side of Cale.
"He has a high fever"
Brushing against his slightly pale skin, she turned to the petite girl.
"Did you bring him here?"
Leaning back, she almost slipped from the couch.
"Yeah"
There was no reason to lie, no matter how embarrassing it felt to say it.
"I see...."
'She doesn't seem shocked'
More so, it felt like she knew this would have happened.
"Was he sick beforehand?"
Throwing the question out, Cale's mother only narrowed her eyes into a deep frown.
"It'd be surprising if he didn't get sick"
Tilting her head, she nudged her to continue.
"Would you mind explaining what happened before?"
Cale's mother asked, clearly asking her to tell her story first.
Catrina calmly revealed it all, except the conversations she had and engaged with Cale.
And holding her own end of the bargain, she said only a few words.
"These days I haven't really seen him sleep"
A bombshell reveal.
"For how long?"
Instinctively, Catrina probed for more.
The mother wondered if she should say this. She was quite sensitive on topics regarding the wellbeing and safety of her family after all.
'They're really close friends, so it's more than fine....I think...'
"Around a month and a half ago"
She didn't reveal more than that.
The information made Catrina click together what was faintly going on, though it still made zero sense when one really thought about it.
I mean, a heart stopping its beats just because of a little sleep deprivation? Of course, she thought Gabriel was exaggerating, but still gave the benefit of doubt.
'Square 1 all over again'
Sighing, she decided to let the matter go and fade in her maidenly mind.
But, what Cale's mother failed to tell her was several anomalies in his personality.
Before waking up for work, she would often not see Cale either go into the restroom, the kitchen or idling around at night, mostly at 4 or 5 AM deep in the night.
Of course, she always told him to go to sleep, but the next day, the outcome still remained unchanged.
In fact, she didn't even know if he truly randomly woke up, for all she knew, Cale could very well have never slept.
But that wasn't what made it weirder.
Every time she would wake up for work and see the still awake Cale and shout out to him to go to sleep.
Dry red stains remained visible in every place he walked, she probed to Cale what it was.
Yet, even though she was his mother, the answer deafeningly remained steady.
"I don't know"
No matter how she phrased it, she got the same answer.
However, as the days passed, the anomalies grew more and more pronounced.
Eating habits at first changed, but then, he stopped using his dominant hand and became ambidextrous, only after Nephyl voiced it out did he shrug it off with an excuse and start using it again.
As if forgetting most facts of even himself.
But the cherry on top, that even her mother thought it to be an eerie experience.
KaaaahgaaghaHgaGa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A grating scream, painting pain and misery came from the restroom. Nephyl and Cale's mother woke straight up and rushed to the restroom.
Entering it, swatting the door away, they saw dry stains close to the mirror that was cracked and shattered.
In the next fleeting moment. Hearing a step sharply come from behind, they looked at the figure, his gaze detached, and one of his eyes twitched erratically, his other pupil shaking uncontrollably.
"Were...you"
"No, I wasn't, I merely slept"
A lie, such an obvious one that they couldn't help but realize that something was severely wrong, but for some reason, they both believed it.
They even forgot the eeriness that permeated through every passing word.
Walking forward, the doppelganger brushed aside their frozen figures and looked at the words the stains painted.
HE'S DEAD
At the corner of the mirror, the phrase stretched and repeated.
HE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEADHE'S DEAD
With a slow motion of his hand, it brushed the cracked mirror, gently. As his hand passed, the mirror became unnaturally clean and smooth, any stain that defiled it before vanished like an eraser on paper.
Crack!
A brittle crack came, followed by the sound of small shards falling and dissipating on the ground.
'Cale' looked at his shattered hand, for a split second, an unknown emotion flashed across his eyes.
Walking past the frozen figures, he blinked once.
His face cracked like glass ready to shatter, but in the next moment, his hand and face 'patched' themselves back to their original state.
"Huh...?"
Nephyl snapped out of it, Cale's mother also snapped out of it rather quickly.
Twisting behind, they saw the neatly clean restroom, not the ruined exterior.
"Was it....perhaps from a neighbor?"
The next day however, the neighbors claimed they had not heard anything that remotely sounded like a scream.