Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 429. Bribes and Drawings

"Fucking unbreakable by nature..." Henry repeated quietly as if he liked the taste of it.

Talking while having my hands busy made it easier for me to think, letting this blind and crazy optimism Henry had infected me with long ago take over.

"Mhm. I don’t want to fight against that power anymore, given how often it has saved our asses. We need that power sometimes."

Not only that, but when I killed Ponytail in that gang house, I felt the giant’s power as well but didn’t use it, as it would kill him too fast.

Yet, the price I paid wasn’t that my mind shattered, but that I felt the traumatizing pain and injuries from my past, which were glazed over by my counterpart because they were FUCKING TRAUMATIZING—important things need to be said twice.

That would be a better way to use the giant’s power; surely Henry would be against it, so I won’t mention it to him for now.

But bodily pain, like feeling around fifteen stab wounds slicing my insides out, a leg that had been ripped off, and a fire wrecking and DEVOURING my flesh and organs—this pain would be much better than losing my mind completely and attacking everything around me.

"Maybe it’s that good rest I had, or the fact that I didn’t really kill anyone and hadn’t been confronted with a bunch of life-destroying consequences, but I don’t think it’s as hopeless or scary anymore." Or it was my crystalline counterpart.

I looked at Henry.

"You get it? Maybe I should start meditating or sometimes use the violet coin—the part of the giant’s power I can use anyway without losing it—but as a last resort, you have to be ready to stop me. If this power is too much for me, it will destroy me anyway, so it’s useless to be scared. And if taking a look at the others and seeing that they are alright, or getting them out of a peculiar situation, gives me peace of mind, why not?" I laughed at him.

"I have you. And I just love that the necklace brothers fight for justice together. Though we really don’t have to." I shrugged again, feeling the cringe coming after me after that heartfelt speech.

But I meant it, and Henry lunged at me, nearly throwing me off my stool, which meant he liked the cringy shit too.

"Okay, I will stop you next time, much sooner and more efficiently." He hummed before saying in a singsong voice,

"You are my leash~"

I interrupted, finishing what he wanted to say.

"And you are my leash too." I laughed while hugging him back, without letting the potato in my hand touch him.

Two crazy people holding each other on a leash—what the fuck could go wrong?

"Now let’s get these potatoes done. Tell me something; it’s your turn." I patted his back until he backed up and kissed my cheek for a suitable amount of time.

"I think the kid had foretold something that frightened the shit out of the Lawrence family. More than monsters, more than otherworlders, more than anything." He said, still staring at me while his hands picked up the task of peeling potatoes.

"Don’t look at me while handling sharp things." I scolded him while thinking about what he had said.

"I already told you, I am good with my hands." He picked up a potato peel that bounced into the shape of a heart.

"Ah, today we both are way too cringy..." I told him, but still touched the peel so that I could conjure it up at a time I was in desperate need of it.

Then I looked at Henry.

"Come here."

He understood and lowered his head for a treat, pecking my lips and licking over them before distancing himself.

"What do you say? Talented, right?"

"Perfect craftsmanship." I nodded and concentrated on what I was doing, trying to peel one as well, but it didn’t turn out good enough for me to present it.

Can’t believe I had turned into such a lovesick motherfucker.

"Even if the kid doesn’t know how to write, we can ask him to draw his prediction. Speculating won’t help regarding that." Finally coming back to the topic, I threw a way smaller potato into the respective barrel.

Henry nodded.

"I am meanwhile curious myself; let’s ask him later."

I hummed when the door was nearly ripped out of the wall, as an old face peered into the small room.

This time I nearly threw the potato in my hand at her face but managed to stop myself before feigning coolness.

"Looking at how your slaves are doing?"

Fuck. This shitty wall door was better insulated than it looked, and turning off my super hearing would have nearly gotten us caught red-handed.

My grandma looked at me, at Henry, at the close proximity between us, and at the overall dark and small room before turning to Ethan and giving him a death glare.

Ethan pushed his glasses up.

"I prepared a small dark room with potatoes."

"Why are they doing their punishment together? Now they giggle and laugh like schoolgirls; how is that a punishment?"

"We did not." I cleared my throat.

My grandmother looked at me with disgust and disregard before again looking around the small room with a bunch of barrels.

"WHY DON’T YOU JUST GET THEM A ROOM??" She eventually yelled at Ethan.

"Well, this is a room, and we have a bedroom as well." I shrugged and played half dumb.

Ethan nodded thankfully at me while the old demon queen’s full wrath was unleashed at me.

Just that she really didn’t know what to do; she couldn’t be more direct than she had already been, and while she gripped her walking stick, she didn’t draw it, which was probably because of the deep assurance that Henry would acidify it if it came in my direction.

I saw her boiling and boiling, looking around to find fault, before she yelled,

"WHAT IS THIS? IS THIS HOW YOU TREAT MY FOOD?!" She grabbed into the barrel with frightening precision and took a potato out.

One that was way smaller than the others, because I just tried to get a heart-shaped peel from it, but instead peeled it into ugliness.

Seeing her nitpick so desperately, I laughed, which made her angrier, prompting her to throw the potato at me in a childish fit.

Henry caught it, and to all our surprise, he bit into it like it was an apple.

I got goosebumps, being reminded of another incident with a similar look and sound effect, while Henry chewed on most of the little potato with a cocky deliberateness.

My grandmother pointed at him with her trembling long violet-painted finger, livid, before she turned around and fled.

Ethan again closed the door, doing his best not to grimace himself, to then go after her.

"Spit it out." I held my empty hand before Henry’s mouth, and like a dog that had picked up something from the street, my puppy looked super reluctant to give it back.

"Do it." After another command, he spat his own version of mashed potato into my palm so that I could get rid of it in my trash bag for peels.

Then I conjured up hand sanitizer and disinfected my hands because I was too lazy to go outside and wash them.

"Don’t misunderstand; I am doing this because we are dealing with food."

My puppy lightened up because of my explanation.

"You don’t find the insides of my mouth disgusting...?"

"A bit too late for that talk." I picked up another potato and started peeling it, while Henry bumped his shoulder into me, laughing happily.

Would you look at that? He is way too easy to please... though if I think about the very long bath from before, I’ll take that back again.

We were finished sooner than I thought we would be, and looking at the barrel filled with our handiwork, I was somehow proud.

Henry went even further and snapped a picture.

"New homescreen picture?" I chuckled while squeezing myself through the barrels and opening the door to outside.

Henry grinned, showing me his locked phone before pressing the button on the side again, lighting up the screen.

The homescreen picture displayed had been changed to one of the really dark, creepy stalker pictures he had taken of me during my sleep.

At first glance, it seemed just like a black background, but when looked closer, there was a clear lip and nose outline.

"What do you say? Better than potatoes, although the ones you peeled were handsome and tasty as well."

"Pffft, sure. You do what you want after being caught taking sneak shots, huh?" When Henry stepped out, I closed the door behind him.

The kitchen was empty, and the dragon was back in her throne room, so this was a good opportunity for bribing one of my past victims.

Henry hung on me while I steered him out of the house.

"Yes. Why are we going outside?"

"I am conducting a bribe," I told him while opening the entrance door for us to step outside before closing it again.

The sun was awfully bright, although it was late afternoon, and it would soon turn dark.

I took Henry to the back garden, around the house where the Hollywood swing was, together with the laundry lines.

I stepped into the middle of the backyard and started to conjure up the best way to apologize to a cat.

Fish.

And regarding this cat, it was a thirteen-year-old carp.

I conjured up a pile, about a hundred, and instantly heard a bang from inside the house, as if a big dumb cat had run into a wall on his way toward the ’enticing’ smell.

Henry chuckled and pulled me to the Hollywood swing; the wooden swing creaked when we took a seat but seemed steady enough to carry us.

Henry leaned against me, waiting with me, but it didn’t take long until Kitty sprinted from the way we had just come, directly into the pile.

After coming into contact with the carp pile, the tiger would have sped through it because of the momentum, but with his claws in the lawn, he managed a U-turn to then eat and roll himself in the fish hill.

"Bribe success," I commented with a smirk.

Now only the kid was left, and as if on cue, he also ran around the corner, his eyes wide, as he laughed happily in silence about the commotion he was seeing while slowing his steps and coming to me.

I patted his head.

"For your bribe I need empty paper and a pen, not crayons, though it would be good if we had them as well," I told him, and upon hearing my words he was gone again.

Henry sighed unhappily, as if he had seen that coming.

"You know what I will draw for him?" I asked.

"No, just that you would... Although I have an idea now," he noted.

I hummed and watched Kitty getting all bloody while continuing to roll and stuff himself.

It smelled awfully like fish, and that was the reason why I chose to do this outside, or someone would already start yelling.

Feeling a piercing glare, I looked up and saw my grandmother looking down at us from out of her window, Ethan beside her.

When she saw me looking at her, she pulled a curtain I hadn’t noticed was there, and I could feel her harrumphing, even though I didn’t hear it.

The kid came back, carrying a load of paper and books, together with a bunch of colors.

When he arrived by our side, I took over what he had brought and told him to take a seat on the Hollywood swing.

He brought empty papers and books to use as a support for drawing. Maybe it was the already setting sun, but Ren sparkled much more than usual while looking at me.

I chose a book, a paper, and a pen, and pulled my legs up to draw against them.

The Hollywood swing provided enough space for that, along with all the stuff he had brought, and the kid imitated me.

But before I started to draw, I pushed the crayons in his direction.

"Can you draw something for us as well?" I asked him, and he nodded obediently.

Amidst contemplating left and right if I was traumatizing the kid any further, I forced myself to ask him.

"You could have predicted something for the Lawrence family, something that scared the f–hell out of them, probably a prediction from when you were very young." Seeing his eyes lighten up further, I asked,

"You know what I am talking about?"

Ren nodded vigorously, his smile never diminishing.

"...Can you draw for us what you told them?"

Ren shook his head but took paper and a book as well as a black crayon nevertheless.

I thought for a moment.

"You haven’t ’told’ them anything? Did you draw it for them as well?"

I saw him looking at me happily with a big nod again, relieved that I understood him.

"Okay, we’ll draw together and then exchange, alright? No peeking."

The kid laughed silently and shuffled more into his corner at the Hollywood swing, while I leaned onto Henry’s shoulder.

He pecked my head and put an arm around me while looking at what I was drawing.

My eyes snapped at the window, relieved when I found the curtain still drawn in place.

Maybe this whole exchange thing was the false approach because now it was messing with my head, the paranoia showing a bunch of gruesome shit of what I could see when the kid finished his drawing.

But I still had a bribe to make, and I already knew what it would contain.

A face I had seen in the mirror at the beginning, multiple times brushing her hair as she stared at a happy and excited face that would slightly change through cosmetic interventions, to then age at a fast speed.

Just brushing her hair at the beginning, as she soon had stopped taking care of herself, her one and only priority taking over.

I drew her how I had seen her inside the mirror at the beginning of my visions, not the changed and wretched appearance she had turned into later.

In her arms, I put the current Ren; this was a meeting that was never possible to happen in reality.

She hugged him while beaming at the viewer, the same smile Ren constantly showed.

While I was drawing, I noted that the kid only used the black crayon, although he soon reached for the red one, which creeped the hell out of me.

When I was finished, the kid finally put the red crayon back and looked at me expectantly.

"Okay, first mine." I conjured up a few wet tissues and gave them to the kid’s hands stained with red and black.

"This is..." I looked at the paper, remembering the kid’s lukewarm response when I had asked about his mother.

I don’t even know if he understood the concept of family because, as far as I know, his admiration of me came from constant dreaming about his blood donor.

"This is your guardian angel. You are named after her, and she always watches over you." I showed him the paper, and Ren marveled at it while still hurrying up to clean his hands.

The kid made absolutely sure that his hands were spotless before taking the picture and staring at it, spellbound.

He seemed to like his bribe as well.

While the kid was distracted, I took the book with the paper supported by his pulled-up legs and took a look at it with Henry.

First, I didn’t even know what I was looking at, besides the rapid black and red lines.

But then I could make out a stick figure. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"HA!" Henry exclaimed, seeming to interpret much more into the drawing than I could.

"Are these wings?" I pointed at the black lines beside the figure.

A bloody butterfly figure?

No.

"They aren’t scared of monsters..." Henry started, his tone dripping with mockery.

It seemed Ren and I both drew something that could be interpreted as an angel.

Henry continued, confirming my suspicion.

"It’s the final judgment they are so scared of."