Chapter 91: Chapter 91: The Fall Festival, Part Six
Chapter 91: The Fall Festival, Part Six
Cyrus washed the clothes he had bought at the mall as soon as he got home.
The new sweater, overshirt, and hoodie hung from the small rack on his balcony, shifting slightly in the sea breeze. Until now, the space had mostly held an empty drying stand and a few things he had no reason to throw away. Seeing clean clothes hanging there made the apartment feel less temporary.
It looked like someone actually lived there.
After dealing with the laundry, Cyrus stretched out across his bed and let the morning settle in his body.
The shopping trip had been more tiring than expected, but it had not been unpleasant. The haunted-house supplies were handled, the noodle bowl had been excellent, and his closet no longer looked as though he owned only a school uniform and one work outfit.
The Fall Festival was coming soon.
He still did not understand what it would be like, but people had been talking about it for days with the kind of energy they usually reserved for food or free time. That had to mean something.
Cyrus reached toward the handheld console on his nightstand.
A knock interrupted him.
He stared at the door.
Only one person ever knocked on his apartment door with that particular amount of confidence.
Cyrus pushed himself up, checked that his personal alarm was in reach, and opened the door.
Daphne Whitlock stood outside with a covered dinner container in both hands.
Before she could say anything, Cyrus asked, "When are you refunding the rent?"
Daphne held the container out to him without answering.
Cyrus looked from the food to her face.
"Why are you not answering me?"
"I made that offer to Cory," Daphne said. "I did not make it to you."
Cyrus blinked.
For a few seconds, he only stood there with one hand on the doorframe.
Then he understood what she meant.
Daphne was still trying to separate Cory from him. She wanted the smaller form, the white hair, the oversized clothes, and the version of him who had less strength and fewer options. She wanted him to treat it as though Cory were someone she could bargain for.
His expression flattened.
"Then I will move out."
Daphne’s mouth tightened.
"If you leave this building," she said, "you will not find another apartment this affordable."
Cyrus had no answer for that.
She was probably right.
The rent had been painful before Daphne started making promises, but the apartment itself was still better than anything he could afford in a decent part of Grayhaven. It was close enough to school, close enough to work, and far enough from the black room that he could breathe without expecting a locked door behind him.
He took the dinner container from her.
Then he shut the door.
Daphne stood outside for a moment, staring at the wood paneling.
Cyrus had not yelled at her. He had not pulled the alarm. He had not told her to leave the building. He had simply taken the food and closed the door in her face.
That was somehow worse.
Back inside her own apartment, Daphne lay across her bed and stared at the ceiling.
She could not return the rent.
Not while Cyrus kept refusing to let Cory spend time with her. The thought made perfect sense in her head, even though she knew it sounded terrible if she said it aloud. She had offered food, clothing, rides, and help. Cyrus had accepted the food, but he treated everything else like a trap.
He was not entirely wrong.
Daphne pressed a hand over her face.
Keeping him fed was not getting her anywhere. If this were a game, she should have been gaining points every time she brought him dinner, every time she left the apartment door unlocked, every time she made herself useful instead of forcing the issue.
Instead, Cyrus had armed himself with a yellow personal alarm and started acting like he had finally found a way to fight back.
Daphne rolled onto her side.
It did not matter.
She could keep bringing meals. She could keep showing up. Sooner or later, Cyrus would have to see that she was trying.
At least, that was what she told herself.
The next weekend, Cyrus returned Faye’s manga volumes.
Miles and Lena greeted him at the door before Faye had fully stepped into the hallway. Miles immediately wanted to know whether Cyrus had finished the story, while Lena took her usual place at Cyrus’s side with the quiet dedication of someone assigned to guard an important secret.
She had not forgotten the glimpse of his face.
Cyrus had not forgotten the pinky promise.
Lena stayed close without making a fuss. When Miles pulled Cyrus toward the living room to argue about games, she followed. When Cyrus sat on the couch, she climbed beside him. When he picked up a controller, she settled against his arm and watched the screen with serious concentration.
Faye spent most of the afternoon nearby.
She sat with a book open in her lap, occasionally looking up when Miles complained about losing or when Lena asked for a snack. Every so often, she disappeared into the kitchen and returned with tea, cookies, sliced fruit, or something else she had prepared without announcing it.
Cyrus liked being at Faye’s house.
The time passed faster there.
Nobody demanded explanations. Nobody monitored his room. Nobody treated every quiet moment as an invitation to press closer. Faye’s home had its own noise, mostly from Miles and Lena, but it was the kind that filled a room without making it feel crowded.
By Sunday night, Cyrus was back in his apartment with the next manga volume resting on his desk.
Monday brought the final stretch of Fall Festival preparations.
Classroom Three had changed quickly.
The cardboard panels from the shopping trip had been cut and taped into narrow corridors. Heavy black fabric covered the windows and sections of the walls. White gauze hung in loose strips from the ceiling, and a few students had painted cheap balloons to resemble bloodshot eyes before filling them with a small amount of water.
Other props sat in boxes near the front of the room.
Fake fingers.
Plastic hands.
Rubber limbs.
A tray of painted bones.
The haunted house was beginning to look convincing.
Cyrus did not volunteer to test it.
He had helped carry supplies, organize boxes, move tables, and tape down pieces of fabric when someone asked. Beyond that, he stayed near the back of the classroom and watched the others work.
His low-profile existence had advantages.
He was present. He could not be accused of skipping out. Yet nobody chased him down for every task that came up because louder people kept volunteering first.
Faye worked on small decorations with a few classmates near the windows. Owen handled scheduling and supply lists. Iris checked names against a chart taped to the wall. Audra moved through the classroom with a pair of scissors and a roll of black tape, speaking only when someone asked her something.
Cyrus kept out of everyone’s way.
Every so often, he felt someone watching him.
The sensation came without warning.
He would glance up from a cardboard box, turn toward the hall, or look across the classroom, and find nothing unusual. Students talked. Someone tested a lantern. A strip of fabric slipped from its tape and had to be fixed again. No one stood nearby with an obvious reason to be watching him.
After it happened several times, Cyrus began wondering whether he had simply stayed tense for too long.
He had escaped captivity, survived people trying to control him, and learned that even a quiet apartment could become unsafe when the wrong person lived next door. His nerves had plenty of reasons to stay sharp.
That did not mean he should ignore them.
The ring on his hand remained a steady weight.
It reminded him that the past had not disappeared simply because the room around him was full of cardboard ghosts.
As the week went on, the haunted house took shape.
By Wednesday afternoon, the classroom had become almost unrecognizable. The windows had been completely covered, and the black fabric blocked enough light that the interior stayed dark even before sunset. Purple string lights cast a dim glow across the fake walls. The painted props looked more unsettling in the colored light than they had on the classroom tables.
Someone had arranged the balloon eyes so they seemed to peer through gaps in the curtains.
Another student had added thin fishing wire to several plastic hands, making them twitch when someone pulled from behind a divider.
The result was impressive.
Cyrus had no interest in walking through it.
He could appreciate the effort from the doorway.
Thursday morning arrived with a burst of sound somewhere beyond the school buildings.
Fireworks cracked above the campus.
The noise rolled across the windows, followed by cheers from students who had already gathered outside. The Fall Festival had begun.
Cyrus arrived late enough that the morning instructions were already ending.
He had slept through his first alarm, rushed through breakfast, and made it to campus while most students were spilling into the hallway from homeroom. The usual uniform colors had been replaced by costumes, bright jackets, masks, makeup, capes, and enough mismatched fabric to make Classroom Three look like it had released a crowd of monsters into the building.
Red, yellow, purple, white, and black passed through the hall in every direction.
Cyrus paused near the door.
It looked less like school and more like someone had opened a box labeled "Do Not Wake."
Owen spotted him and crossed the hallway.
"You know when your shift starts, right?" he asked.
Cyrus looked past him.
Two classmates were already stationed near the haunted-house entrance, checking the sign and waiting for the first group of visitors. A schedule had been posted beside the door. Students rotated through different jobs, with some taking tickets, some running props, and some hiding inside to scare people as they moved through.
"I saw the schedule," Cyrus said. "My shift is this afternoon."
"Then you are free until then," Owen said. "Try not to disappear completely."
"I will stay nearby."
The plan was organized better than Cyrus expected.
Everyone had about an hour assigned somewhere during the festival. The rest of the day belonged to them. They could visit other classes, eat, watch performances, and do whatever people normally did at a school event this large.
Cyrus did not need additional encouragement.
He headed outside.
The athletic field had been divided into two main sections.
Near the track, a stage had been set up with speakers, lights, and a large backdrop covered in the school colors. Students were already gathering in front of it, waiting for performances to start.
Farther across the field, rows of tents and folding tables had turned the grass into a festival food market.
The air carried the smell of fried dough, grilled meat, popcorn, cinnamon, and sugar.
Cyrus stopped walking.
There were too many choices.
The October weather had cooled enough that he did not need to worry about heat building in his body. A breeze moved across the field, carrying the sounds of music, laughter, and people calling to friends across the crowd.
For once, the cold worked in his favor.
Cyrus bought a soft-serve cone first.
Then he found a stand selling small fried snack bites in paper cups and bought those too. The prices were low enough to make him suspiciously happy. Festival food should not have been this affordable.
He wandered between the stalls with a cone in one hand and the snack cup in the other.
A student-run bakery table offered cupcakes and brownies. Another booth sold fries covered in cheese and herbs. Someone had set up a kettle corn stand beside a cooler full of bottled drinks. A group from another class shouted about homemade cookies until their voices became impossible to ignore.
Cyrus bought a small paper cup of sweet cider.
By the time he had walked the length of the food area, he was full enough that moving quickly seemed like a bad decision.
The festival only lasted three days.
That was a waste.
It should last a month.
He carried the cider toward the stage.
Music had started by then. Several students in bright costumes were dancing beneath the lights, moving in time with the bass while the crowd clapped and shouted from the grass. The performance was loud, chaotic, and far more entertaining than Cyrus expected.
He stayed near the edge of the audience and watched until the song ended.
Then he wandered back toward the main building.
Every floor had something different going on.
The first floor had game booths and photo backdrops. The second floor held classrooms with food, crafts, and small competitions. The third floor was crowded with students selling handmade items, costume pieces, and festival decorations.
One classroom had been turned into a mask shop.
A younger student sat behind a desk covered in fox masks, painted skull masks, paper crowns, plastic horns, and several styles of handmade face coverings. She looked bored enough to fall asleep between customers.
Cyrus stepped inside.
"How much is the fox mask?" he asked.
"Five dollars," the girl said.
She glanced up.
Cyrus had already put the mask on.
It sat slightly crooked across his face, covering most of his eyes while leaving part of his mouth and jaw visible beneath the edge. The angle should have looked awkward. Instead, it made the half of his face that showed seem more noticeable.
The student behind the desk stared.
Cyrus paid, adjusted the mask without correcting it, and left before she remembered to say anything else.
Outside, he wandered along the third-floor corridor at an unhurried pace.
The mask gave him enough cover that the extra attention around him did not bother him. Students passed in costumes ranging from elaborate to ridiculous. Someone dressed as a knight argued with a student wearing a giant frog head. A group in matching ghost makeup posed for pictures beside the stairwell.
Cyrus watched them all with mild interest.
Then he saw white.
At the far end of the crowded hallway, a pale figure slipped between the moving students and vanished around the corner.
The cold that ran down Cyrus’s spine had nothing to do with the October air.
Frostborn were built for winter.
That did not stop him from nearly shivering.
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