The latest installment of "literally nobody is happy about Bill being the Mystery Shack's prisoner," chapter 8: Bill attempts to manipulate the humans with the only weapon he still has at his disposal: grossing them out. Also featuring: dramatic arguments with Ford, a surprise bath, and me trying my level best to convince you all that hair is the most disgusting substance in the universe, let me know how I do at that. Chapters one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven if you missed them.
A few days into summer vacation, just before dawn, Dipper and Mabel were woken by a series of thunderous crashes and pained screams, followed by Bill's piercing, maniacal laughter. They were armed and out the bedroom door in seconds.
Mabel said, "Who did he kill?!"
"I think he blew up a wall to escape—"
They skidded to a stop at the top of the attic stairs. Bill had tumbled halfway down, crashed into the wall where the stairs made a ninety degree turn, and was now sprawled upside-down on the steps, giggling.
Dipper lowered his weapon. "What."
"I ff—" Bill was interrupted by a wheeze of laughter. "I forgot how stairs work."
He spotted the kids—Dipper holding a metal claw hammer, Mabel holding a kitchen knife longer than her forearm—and abruptly stopped laughing. "Wow, you kids came ready to commit murder! Just waiting for the first excuse, huh?"
"Shut up." Dipper looked at Mabel. "Wanna go back to bed?"
"I think my blood is all adrenaline now."
Dipper sighed. "Yeah. Let's get breakfast, I guess."
They trudged down the stairs, shoulders pressed to the wall to stay as far from Bill as possible. As they passed Bill, Dipper muttered, "You could at least get out of the way."
Bill—who'd been about to gingerly sit up—lay back down and spread out across the landing. "Think I'd rather mildly inconvenience you!"
Mabel threw in, "And take a shower! You smell like an outhouse."
"That's my human-repellant forcefield."
The twins headed for the kitchen for a snack they could take out of the shack—and were blocked by Stan in the doorway. "Hold on. Don't go in there. You smell that?"
Dipper and Mabel sniffed the air, and grimaced. Mabel stuck out her tongue. Dipper said, "Ugh. We thought that was Bill, but it's worse down here."
"One of two things happened here," Stan said. "Either a squirrel and a raccoon fought to death under the fridge and started rotting; or the space demon cast some kind of stink curse. Personally, I'm hoping for dead wildlife. But until I find out, you two stay out of the kitchen."
There were several more crashes as Bill tumbled down the second half of the stairs, a groan, and a muttered, "What am I getting wrong?"
Stan rounded on Bill. "Hey! Demon. Don't suppose you happen to know why the kitchen smells..." He gestured vaguely, "like that."
Seated on the floor, Bill had been absorbed in prodding his limp left arm; but at the question, he looked up with a worryingly bright smile. "It just so happens I do!"
"Explain."
He twisted his left arm with his right, jammed it back into its proper position with a pop, and straightened himself up. "Funny thing—you know how I can't open doors? Because of the curse your brother put on me? Of course you do. Well—darnedest little quirk of human architecture—I don't know if you noticed, but it just so happens that all of the toilets in this house are behind doors!"
Stan's face blanched. "Oh no."
"At any given time, this body I'm in is freely secreting about half a dozen different bodily fluids—snot, spit, sweat, I could go on—and you humans are perfectly comfortable with that. But you think one bodily fluid is special and can only go in the special white bowl. Me, on the other hand—I'm an energy being that doesn't leak all day! Your fluids are all equal to me! I don't care about your special white bowls!"
Hotly, Stan said, "You're in my house—"
Immediately twice as angry and twice as loud as Stan, Bill said, "So if you think I'm going to lower myself to asking three times a day for permission to use a STUPID TOILET for YOUR COMFORT—"
And that was when they started screaming.
Dipper looked at Mabel. "Let's eat out."
Mabel nodded. "You know that burger place where Wendy gets breakfast—?"
"If we hurry, we can probably meet her there."
By the time they'd changed and come back downstairs, Ford had joined in the argument, Abuelita had set up a folding chair to watch it like a wrestling match, and the volume had doubled. (Bill: "BE GRATEFUL I USED THE SINK INSTEAD OF YOUR CEREAL BOXES! NEXT TIME I WON'T BE SO MERCIFUL!" Stan: "I'M GONNA INSTALL A DOOR KNOB ON THE KITCHEN FAUCET AND THEN YOU'LL NEED MY PERMISSION TO DRINK, YOU LITTLE—") Dipper and Mabel squeezed around the crowd, slid out the door, and biked into town.
They decided they'd just stay out the rest of the day.
They'd been doing that a lot lately.
####
When they made it home that evening, the first person they ran into was Soos, relocating a detached door. "Oh, hey dudes! Okay so, update on the Bill situation." Soos leaned the door against the wall. "We removed the door on the downstairs half bath and nailed up a curtain instead, so, now it's curse-accessible, but Bill can't lock himself in and do—" he wiggled his fingers, "secret Bill things. So. If you wanna use a bathroom with a real door, you've gotta go upstairs now."
Mabel considered that. "The bathroom with the tub still has a real door, right?"
"Yeah dudes, it's fine!"
Dipper said, "So... do we have a way to get him to shower...?"
Mabel said, "Yeah, whatever Bill's been doing in the kitchen sink—"
(Soos said, "And the trash can, it turns out.")
"—it hasn't included sponge baths, and it's getting obvious."
"And I'm not really comforted by his 'human-repellant forcefield' comment," Dipper added.
Mabel nodded. "I'd kinda like Bill to clean up before he gets as bad as Dipper last July."
"Hey."
Soos pointed toward the attic. "Ford's working on that right now." He whispered, "He's got a theory that Bill's just just too proud to ask for permission to use the facilities? So maybe if we ask him to take a shower, he'll go, 'oh, okay, I'm doing you guys a favor,' and then he'll agree to be let in and out of the bathroom."
Dipper grimaced. "I don't like the idea of begging him to shower."
"Uh... I'm fine with it." Soos shrugged. "Better smug than smelly."
####
"All right, Cipher."
Every time Ford came upstairs, Bill was curled up in the window seat, one side pressed against the glass. If it weren't for the crumpled jerky and granola bags and the empty energy drinks scattered beneath Bill's window seat—or the occasional downstairs argument—Ford would have suspected Bill hasn't budged in days. It made him nervous. There was an ice pack on Bill's left shoulder that had sat there so long it was completely melted.
"You got the bathroom you wanted. Now, would you take a shower?" Ford mustered up all his willpower as he prepared to mortify himself, and added, "Please."
It was important to note that Ford had spent his youth as the golden child; Stan had been disowned before his desire to please his parents had a chance to wilt and die; and Ford had barely seen Shermie's teen years. He'd spent his own adolescence isolated from his peers, and hadn't gotten to know any youths except Dipper and Mabel since then.
All of which was to say, the look Bill Cipher gave Ford, shocking in its ferocity, was utterly alien to him; but would have been familiar to millions of humans around the world.
It was the same look received by authoritarian parents whose tyranny had squeezed a little too tight, and whose offspring had realized they were grounded so severely they no longer had anything left to lose. It was the wrath of the defiant teenager.
And then the most pleasant smile snapped on Bill's face, quick as flicking a light switch. "What's in it for me?"
Ford blinked in disbelief. What needed to be in it for Bill? It was a shower. "Being... clean?"
"Eh."
Ford's shoulders sagged. "At least use deodorant?" he pled. "Change clothes? Brush your hair? Something?"
"No, no, absolutely not, aaand no. What's the matter, Stanford? I've been staying out of your way! You don't even see me up here. The stench can't be getting to you that much, so what do you care what I do to this body?" Bill's grin widened. "Guilt starting to set in? Must be hard to pretend you're a hospitable host rather than a kidnapper when your 'guest' is living in squalor—"
"Enough," Ford snapped. "So this is what, your way of protesting your own captivity? You have to realize how stupid this is."
"Buuut it's wooork-iiing," Bill said, a singsong lilt to his voice. "It's getting on your neee-eeerves."
"You're going to cause yourself problems in the long run! Diseases, infections—don't tell me I have to explain germ theory to you, you're smarter than that."
Bill scoffed. "I'm flattered you're so concerned about my health, but you can relax. I've been washing my hands and brushing my teeth like a good little potential disease vector. But you humans are so safe inside your modern fortresses with minimal carnivorous bugs and flesh-eating fungi—most of your hygiene expectations are cosmetic! I'm more willing to put up with itchy dandruff than you are to put up with the smell."
"Are you listening to yourself? This is—" Ford paused. "You've been brushing your teeth? Where did you get a toothbrush?"
"I've been using the dish brush and liquid dish soap in the kitchen." Bill laughed. "Wow, look at you—lecturing your prisoner on poor hygiene when you didn't give him any way to clean up! That's not a good look, pal."
Ford made a mental note to find a spare toothbrush for Bill. He flung his hands out in exasperation. "But—why put up with itchy dandruff at all? Why refuse to shower, of all things? And don't say to be annoying—you're cutting off your nose to spite your face!"
"Because cutting off my nose is the only bargaining chip I've got, and you know it."
Seeing expressions on Bill's face—smiles and scowls and smirks and sneers, mouth and tongue and cheeks and eyebrows—still felt wrong. No matter what expression Bill put on, it always felt to Ford like he was using his face to tell some sort of lie. But his eyes—Ford was familiar with Bill's eye, and doubling them didn't banish that familiarity. He knew this heavy, hard, emotionless look. It was the same look he'd seen just before Bill had shown him, through his own eye, the sight of his home dimension burning. Of all the looks he'd seen in Bill's eye—curved crescent with sadistic glee, literally red with fury—something about this heavy look chilled Ford the most. It was, somehow, the cruelest he'd ever seen Bill.
Bill got to his feet, wincing as he uncurled his hunched back. He stretched, spine cracking, as he sauntered lazily toward Ford. "Can I speak frankly with you, Sixer? I can't do a lot of tricks in this body. Heck, I'd try to tell you I don't have any tricks right now—but I'm sure you'd just say I'm lying to get your guard down, blah blah; so let's agree that, at least, I don't have the power to escape or kill you all, or I would have by now! This body—" he gestured grandly down at himself, "—as far as I'm concerned, is a dirty sticker stuck on the bottom of my shoe. It's trash. It's disposable. It's worth less than nothing to me. But it's all I've got at my disposal. So I'm going to be disgusting, until you start doing me favors to make me stop."
"Favors," Ford said. "And if we don't?"
Bill shrugged, hands raised. "Then I guess I'll keep being gross! But I cannot overemphasize just how little I care about your species's ideas about minimum hygiene standards, or how far I'm willing to go to irritate you all. This morning's hazmat crisis in the kitchen was just a warning shot. You will cave first."
As unnerving as that heavy look in Bill's eyes was, simply seeing it wasn't what rattled Ford. It was knowing that Bill could wear that cruel look while talking about committing quiet, passive violence on himself.
Bill stared Ford down for a moment; then apparently took Ford's silence for a small victory. "I want a drink strong enough to rot a bootlegger's guts, a hot meal that hasn't been cooked by Grandma Guilia Tofana down there, or—" Bill pointed toward the attic window that his curse prevented him from opening, "a breeze and some fresh air. I'm flexible. Let me know when you're ready to negotiate." He returned to his seat in the window. "I won't be far."
Giving Bill "a breeze" would obviously give him an escape route, and Bill was no doubt angling to accumulate tiny, "harmless" favors until he tricked the humans into doing something that would let him escape; but... Ford eyed the empty junk food bags on the floor. He tried to remember whether he'd seen Bill eat anything except for unrefrigerated factory-sealed snacks he could forage from the open kitchen shelves—or if the last fresh food Bill had tasted had been Abuelita's cyanide cooking.
Bill wanted Ford to pity him. That was what this whole charade was about. Ford hated that it was working. Not because of Bill's performative filthiness—but because Ford knew, too well, what it was like to be trapped, powerless, and hungry in an alien dimension; and because even when Bill was all but confessing he was trying to exploit Ford's pity, he was still trying so hard to pretend he wasn't afraid.
"I'll let you know what Stanley says."
Bill didn't turn away quite fast enough to hide his smile of triumph. "I'll be waiting." He settled back down into the same position he'd held for half a day and stared out at the night sky.
####
After several days in this body, Bill could definitively conclude that sleep was the worst part of being human.
Repeatedly blacking out and coming to, only to realize he couldn't remember anything for the past several hours. Usually he didn't even remember dreaming, even though he knew he must have dreamt for at least a couple hours. He hated not knowing what had been happening around his physical body for all that time, and he hated not knowing what he'd been doing in his dreams. Anything could have happened to him during those missing hours in the mindscape.
The few dreams he remembered were little comfort. Nightmares about dying, about faces and places he was galled to find out had been lodged in this human brain's subconscious—but the subject matter wasn't the important part. What mattered was that, while he was dreaming, he didn't know he was dreaming.
He didn't know how that was possible. He couldn't remember how the dreams started, what trick they must have pulled to persuade him that this was reality even though he couldn't remember what had happened five minutes earlier, or how they hypnotized him into unquestioningly playing along with their bizarre impossible Wonderland plot lines. Waking up was more terrifying than his nightmares, as he reoriented himself to reality and he had to grapple with how helplessly delusional he'd just been—and the knowledge that it would happen again, and again, and again.
Bill knew how human minds worked. He knew how humans dreamed. He'd been swimming through their dreams for millennia. This was normal for humans, and the knowledge that it was normal was the only thing keeping him from going mad with terror.
But the fact that it was normal for humans didn't mean it was normal for him. Because he was not human, and he hated blacking out for hours at a time, and he hated being so foggy-minded and vulnerable in the mindscape.
Most of his diet of the past few days consisted of energy drinks. His throat constantly blazed with heartburn. He needed a better solution—and maybe he could think of one once he got a decent meal or a drink that could help him sleep without dreaming.
He was hungry, he was tired, and he was weak.
####
But in spite of the caffeine, at some point Bill must have fallen asleep—because he woke up.
For once, he didn't wake from the searing heat of psychic fires.
He woke from the deadly chill of ice cold bath water.
"HELP!" Bill flailed, bashed both elbows and a heel against porcelain, and went under. He came up spluttering. "Mayday! Charybdis! Carpathia!"
The bathroom door slammed shut. From the other side, Stan shouted, "We considered your terms, and uh—we decided we're rejecting your demands, you get nothing, aaand you've gotta bathe."
Bill heaved himself out of the tub, flopped on the floor, and lay there wetly. Like a fish out of water, if the fish had given up the will to live. "Texq exmmbkba?"
"We dropped you in the tub," Ford said. "And we're going to do that every time your stench becomes intolerable, unless you bathe voluntarily. Is that clear?"
("What the heck language is he speaking now?" "Not a language. Caesar cipher." "You're tellin' me Cipher was Caesar, too?")
Bill coughed out a mouthful of water. "I'll drown myself."
"No you won't."
"I'd enjoy it. It'll be fun."
Ford hesitated. "Knowing you, you probably would. But you could only do it once."
"I'll slaughter you both."
Stan laughed. "Sure, if you ever reach us!" He jiggled the doorknob tauntingly.
Bill dragged himself across the floor and pounded on the door. He hollered, "I'll make meat linguine out of your skins with an orange peeler! I'll cook it in bone broth made by boiling your teeth!"
There was an awkward pause. Stan said, "I don't have teeth."
"You two are a loser who was only ever likable when you were pretending to be your brother and a puffed-up self-pitying nerd who never learned that no one's impressed by a child prodigy after age twenty-two! The biggest impact you'll ever have on each other is derailing each other's life dreams, and all your friends are worse off for knowing you! Your father died ashamed of you both and if he knew the truth about your lives he'd have been even more ashamed! Sherman has no positive memories of you, your obituaries will spell both your names wrong, and I'm going to feed your souls to an ouroboros that will repeatedly digest and defecate you for ten thousand years!"
After a couple more minutes of threats and insults, when Bill had to slow down to catch his breath, Ford calmly said, "Have you got that out of your system?"
A pause. "Think I'm good now." Bill slumped back to the floor, his cheek pressed to the cool, damp floorboards. "Okay. You win. Name your terms."
"You're not coming out of there until you've bathed," Ford said. "We'll let you out when you tell us you're clean. If you're not clean, we close the door again. If you want to sit there and sulk, then we'll leave, and once you're clean you'll have to wait until somebody feels like checking on you. Is that clear."
"Clear as crystal."
"Good. On the cabinet by the tub, you'll find a towel, washcloth, brush, comb, bar of soap, and shampoo. Are you familiar with how to use all of them."
"Sure! Course I am." Bill picked up the bar of soap, dipped it in the water, and experimentally rubbed it on his forearm. He pursed his lips dubiously at the results of this experiment. In a flash of brilliant inspiration, he peeled the cardboard box off of the soap bar. "How hard can it be?"
"Fine. There's a clean change of clothes next to the supplies. If you can get this over with in a timely manner, without wrecking the bathroom or wasting all the toiletries, we can talk about letting you choose a shampoo brand for next time."
Bill considered pointing out that that was a pretty stupid bribe to offer a creature who didn't have the slightest emotional attachment to organic toiletries; but then he remembered one of the cults he was affiliated with in New England made a shampoo line using its traumatized worshippers' tears, and he grudgingly decided he'd like to support them if he could. "You're enjoying this, aren't you."
"No." Ford was enjoying this.
"Gimme an hour. I've never done this start to finish before."
"Fine. We'll be back in sixty minutes."
Bill could hear the creak of the floorboards as the Pines left, and the fading sound of Stan's voice as he quietly asked, "Do you think what he said about Shermie..."
Yeah, Bill hoped that haunted him. He reached for the towel, and then jerked back his hand, startled, at the sight of another person in the bathroom.
"Oh." Bill experimentally waved a hand at the human, confirming that the strange alien staring at him was a mirror. "Hey, there." He stared glumly at the face he was trapped inside.
He'd never seen it before.
He was sure there used to be more mirrors in Ford's shack, but they must have been among the "potential weapons" the Pines had hidden away. Up until now, he'd kept imagining himself as a triangle. Some half-dead shape fraying golden curls around the edges, fused atop the rib cage of a humanoid puppet. Seeing the reality felt wrong, disorienting, like staring at an optical illusion but not being able to pick out how it worked.
He searched for any sign of himself in the face staring back at him. It was like trying to find something reminiscent of Chopin's piano Nocturnes in the shape of a lawnmower: a task so impossible it was unintelligible.
The only thing at all familiar was the color of the hair; not quite as bright as the dazzling electric gold of his true form, but still achingly similar.
Gold formed into lines—gold lines that bent and curled with acrobatic, contortionist flexibility.
"Well, whaddaya know," Bill sighed. "It only took a few dozen eons—but you finally grew up to look like your mother. Ha. Ha ha." The joke left a bitter taste behind his eye. (Eyes.) "Ekoj kcis a fo aedi ruoy siht si, Ltoloxa?"
The Axolotl didn't answer. Bill didn't expect him to.
He tossed the clean shirt over the mirror, discovered the bathroom had a second mirror, and took off the shirt he'd been wearing for almost a week to cover that one, too. He unpeeled the rest of his clothes, trying to avoid looking too close at the human body as he did—it seemed worse now than it had when he'd first gotten this body, with the image of that alien face seared into his memory, knowing he wasn't on this body but dissolved inside it.
Once he'd cleaned this body to the humans' satisfaction and gotten out of here, he could handle future hygiene issues by scrubbing off in the sink in his curtained bathroom downstairs. He'd only have to go through this indignity once.
So just get it over with. And use the time to think up new ways to irritate the humans into doing what he wanted.
####
He tried first bathing in the filled tub, until the cold water had him shivering so hard he couldn't properly coordinate his hands; then drained it and tried showering; and then filled it with warm water and attempted bathing again.
Most of him, he supposed, was clean enough for a human's tastes—any signs of peeling dead skin scrubbed off, no visible dirt, no noticeable smell but the smell of soap—but he doubted the hair would pass muster. It still had asphalt dust in it from almost a week ago, not to mention whatever his scalp had been shedding since then.
But, unfortunately, the hair was the worst part. He could scrub skin with no trouble; but when he was bathing, sunk down to his chin, trying to feel weightless again, the hair floated around him like a grotesque ghost, closing in. When he was showering, it dangled on his face, clinging to his skin, like it was trying to creep under his eyelid and down his throat and choke him. Just knowing it was there made his stomach turn; touching it made his throat burn as energy drink bile tried to escape his stomach.
Maybe if Bill brushed the tangles out first. That would knock out some of the dirt without him having to touch it himself. He sat on the edge of the tub, letting the growing tingling pain in his legs as his circulation was cut off distract him from the feeling of hair sticking to his cheeks and shoulders.
He tried to brush it out with his eyes shut, and his knuckles accidentally dragged across the filaments, wet, clammy, clingy. He yanked the brush free and felt hundreds of hairs jerking against their follicles. He forced himself to try again with his eyes open, holding the brush by the very tip of the handle. The bristles sank into the lumpen tangled mass of dead curling skin, and, as he tugged it down, slowly peeled the soggy strands of flesh apart—
His stomach hurt with the force of his retch. He clapped a hand over his mouth, dropped to his knees, and barely managed to get his dinner on the floor instead of on himself.
Voice a shaky, plaintive whine, he said, "Stop doing that to me." He shut his eyes, pressing his sweaty forehead to the cool rim of the bath tub. (Should he have aimed for the tub? Maybe the toilet? Were the humans going to get on his case for getting sick?) "It doesn't help," he hissed. "If I'm already neauseous, purging a load of bile does not help. It makes—it—worse. Why are humans built like this."
The Pines were tyrants. If he begged to be let out with his hair still grimy, the best he could hope for was mockery. Any pleas for mercy would cost him dearly. He wasn't getting out of here until he'd dealt with the hair.
He pulled the makeshift curtain aside on one of the mirrors. His vision was bleary from soap; the soggy hair draped in a loose, disheveled triangle shape around his head, like a mangled corpse. He shuddered and let the fabric drop.
A knock on the door. "It's been an hour, Cipher."
Ford. Bill rubbed his throat and hoped he didn't sound like he'd just been sick. "Gimme another hour."
"That's ridiculous. It takes less than ten minutes to shower, how could you possibly need two hours?"
"So I haven't had the practice at scrubbing skin folds that you have! Give me a break! How many hundreds of showers do you take a year? Do you know how hard it is to hold a bar of soap for more than half a second, or are you so used to it that you've forgotten these things are slippery?"
There was a pause. "You can't hold soap."
"My hands are small, Stanford."
"Fine. One more hour, but that's all you get."
"Fine, I don't care! If I'm not done in an hour, kick down the door and call the hygiene police on me." Bill was pretty sure you couldn't even get a call through to the hygiene police from this dimension. "Go away. I'm focusing."
Why had the Axolotl given him hair. Why hadn't he dumped Bill on Earth bald and balloon-smooth, let the patchy human fur patterns grow in over time? Why hadn't he at least given Bill less hair—why did it need to be so long—
But his hair didn't need to be long, did it? Bill didn't need to have hair at all. Hair was the easiest human body part to self-amputate, easier even than fingernails or ears. Inspired, Bill started searching the bathroom cabinet drawers—et voila. The Pines had no doubt removed any razors or scissors before leaving Bill in this bathroom, but he managed to find a bottle of hair removal cream. Probably courtesy of Question Mark's girlfriend. Cosmetic acid: one of humanity's many endearing little quirks. This would liquefy the roots of the hair, and Bill could get out of here.
It was easier to touch the hair when he was powered by rage, sliding his cream-coated fingers through the clingy filaments in service of burning it all away. The tingle on his scalp was a welcome distraction from the feeling of the hair itself, and feeling the tingle gradually blossom into a full blaze was a relief. Chemical burn. That was a luxurious pain—it tightened his lungs and squeezed rapturous tears from his eyes, so good he almost forgot there was another goal to this pain.
Maybe it would damage some of his follicles enough to prevent the hair from regrowing. Maybe he could wring some pity out of his captors—see this damage, isn't it hideous, look what you made me do—how long could he milk that? A few weeks?
He tolerated the burn as long as he thought he could get away with it without requiring hospitalization, then turned the shower on again. The ice cold water didn't wash the dead hair off fast enough. Some of it stuck to his skin; some was brittle, but not quite fully dissolved.
And that one, last, tiny inconvenience was more than he could stand.
The hair stuck to his chest, his arms, his hands as he ripped it off. Dead flesh, peeling apart and rotting, dead flesh all over him. He ran his hands over his head, fingers trembling with disgust, and tore out clumps of hair to fling to the ground. His eardrums boomed with his heartbeat. If there had been anyone else in the room he would have murdered them with his bare hands just to purge some rage. Over and over, desperate, obsessed, get it off get it off—
Until his head was so smooth that the pain of the chemical burns masked what few fibers were left. Until the icy shower left his skin so cold it hurt. He stepped out of the shower, triumphantly tore the shirt down from the mirror to see the results—and froze in horror.
When a cloud of gold hair had dangled down from his scalp, he'd looked like a triangle rotting apart—the corpse of Bill Cipher.
Now, he looked at his face, and he didn't see Bill Cipher at all. He'd destroyed the last of himself.
At his feet was a murder scene, all mangled golden gore.
####
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Beyond the Bell's Chimes | Part 3
riize ff: wonbin, eunseok, seunghan, sungchan, sohee, anton, shotaro, original characters
genre: youth, romance, teen, fluff, angst, slice of life
note: you can check my asianfanfics.com/jayxhobi for this story.
The entrance of the light brown-haired guy sent a flurry of rose petals swirling through the room, leaving the girls in awe of the sudden influx of handsome boys in their class.
"I can't believe Jung Sungchan and Song Eunseok are in this class," one girl gushed to her friend, her face flushed with excitement.
"But weren't they enemies? Did you ever think Eunseok had a chance against Sungchan?" her friend wondered.
"The brains and the brawn?" they mused.
Sungchan and Eunseok exchanged knowing glances as they settled into their seats, then turned to their classmates with a hint of annoyance.
"Seriously? Can you cut it out? It's annoying," Eunseok waved his hand dismissively, rejecting the compliments.
"Come on, Eunseok, these are the rumors the new students are spreading about you. Don't you enjoy having so many fans?" Yuri, the queen of Class 2-A, chimed in.
Eunseok rolled his eyes and turned to Yuri, his girlfriend since summer vacation, who had suddenly become famous for being his girlfriend. It was rather peculiar for everyone to know about it, especially considering that Yuri was known for attaching herself to popular guys to maintain her status. She had a reputation for not letting go of men.
It had come as a shock to everyone when Eunseok became her boyfriend. Many believed Eunseok was leagues above Yuri.
"Okay, you should really avoid touching him," Sungchan interjected, nearly glaring at Yuri's public display of affection on their first day. "And you're not supposed to wear the uniform like that," he added.
"I'll wear what I want, Jung Sungchan," Yuri retorted. "Besides, my Eunseok likes it."
Sungchan glanced at Eunseok, whose expression appeared cold and distant. Sungchan couldn't detect any affection toward Yuri at all.
Lunchtime arrived, and Sungchan couldn't help but speak his mind. "I wish I knew what's going on with you right now," he remarked after downing half of his drink in one gulp. Eunseok leaned against the wall, sipping on his orange drink. He struggled to find an explanation.
"She's pretty," Eunseok replied. "I don't date ugly girls," he added with a chilling tone that sent shivers down Sungchan's spine.
"I get that, but aren't you worried about the trouble she can cause? She has people who can make your life miserable, Eunseok," Sungchan reasoned, but his friend remained unfazed, even grinning.
"It's more fun that way," Eunseok replied. "Relax, man. Let her enjoy the moment." He tossed the can into the bin.
Eunseok was about to head back to their classroom when he noticed a girl by the window, sketching someone's face on her sketchpad. The subject seemed oddly familiar, and he found himself watching as she focused on drawing the nose.
"My nose isn't that big," he commented, startling the girl, who then dropped her belongings. Eunseok was taken aback by her reaction and moved back, clutching his chest in surprise.
"S-Sorry..." the girl stammered, her panic evident. Eunseok and Sungchan began helping her gather her things.
"Here," Eunseok said, handing her the eraser.
"Thank you," the girl smiled, looking up at him but freezing upon seeing his face.
"You."
"M-Me?" Eunseok stuttered. The girl started to search through her sketchpad, revealing numerous sketches of his face.
"I saw you the other day, and I couldn't stop thinking about you. Your... your face is incredibly handsome," she spoke rapidly as she flipped through her sketches.
"What?"
"Stop!" she yelled, cupping his cheeks. "Don't move." She stared into his eyes intently for five seconds before pulling away and running off, leaving Eunseok dumbfounded. She left some of her sketches on the floor.
"That was completely bizarre," Sungchan remarked, witnessing the entire scene.
"It's the first time I've met such an absolute weirdo," Eunseok said as he picked up the pieces of paper. He smiled when he saw a rough sketch of himself walking. "She's good."
"Wow, she drew you?" Sungchan asked, examining the drawing. "But the nose..."
Eunseok frowned as Sungchan pointed it out. "I know, my nose doesn't look like that," he admitted, crumpling the paper and slipping it into his pocket.
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