Eva shrugged. She didn’t mind helping Raina on something else with her raven haired fri-companion. She pretty much had nothing to do even if she returned back to the hotel. Her manager was probably out with his friends and she didn’t want to associate more than she already did with some other models that, like her, haven’t vacated their hotel rooms yet. Eva also noticed that since they started testing the waters early in the morning, there was still a lot more time left for the day to end. So, she had nodded after thinking for a bit and didn’t fail in giving them one of her graceful smiles at the end. Although smiling sweetly at everyone was starting to hurt Eva’s jaws.

Curiously enough, Eva also had this strange, distant recognition that Alisa was starting to try and unravel the 21 year old mysterious blonde. It was only a slight inkling feeling at the deepest part of Eva’s mind in the beginning. After all, Eva was more than confident, and almost haughty, in her ability to reign her emotions in and keep a tight leash on it. She had been doing it for a very long time, too. But the suspicion kept growing in her when she would just so ever catch a curious glance Alisa threw at her.

Oh, she would never say that she had never caught people staring at her before. In fact, she was quite used to several pairs of eyes on her every single day if she was in a crowd. What she wasn’t very familiar with, however, was those eyes with an intelligent tint to them. They seemed to tend to look through her as if they were carefully pulling back thin veils around Eva’s true self. It made her squirm uncomfortably and watered a sprouting fear in her mind that she will be exposed. Eva would never like that idea. People could even preach to her all they like about how she was a good person even behind everything and she would never listen. Her mask was not something she put there to be known as a good two shoes. It was a protection, something that she would feel naked without.

“If you are done daydreaming, can we just go out and get the fish food already?” Raina’s voice pulled her out into reality and Eva immediately straightened her slightly lax posture. “Of course. My apologies, Raina san,” Eva gave the woman a wonderful smile in return for the scowl and was already out the door the next minute. She slipped a hand inside her pocket to fish out her phone while waiting for the other two and once they were out, too, with Raina locking her lab behind, Eva started walking with her head hidden behind the small, slim rectangular device.

“The warehouse is this way,” Raina pointed to a direction that Eva automatically turned to with her phone still on hand. She replied to a few messages, checked the time, and gave her manager a call before slipping it back into the pocket. Eva had been right when she guessed her manager to be with his friends. If his slurred voice and a poor excuse of an act to sound sober wasn’t enough proof, she didn’t know what else was.

550/1000

Eva was confused. She hadn’t felt so lost in so long that Eva was partly scared and partly shocked about herself. She couldn’t explain this feeling that kept knocking in her mind. For as long as she could remember, Eva was required to control her feelings and despite failing many times, she forced herself to create a perfect mask that for more than ten years now, haven’t broken at all. But now, she feared that it was close to cracking, so very close to showing her vulnerabilities. Eva was terrified. She wanted to escape the feeling that it brought and without a second thought, hid behind things she normally wouldn’t to avoid letting her eyes meet another pair of ruby red ones.

For the rest of the day, Eva found herself having as little conversation with Alisa as possible. She helped Raina carry the fish food and spent the rest of the day feeding fishes. They swam around the water surface. The fishes were always together, she noticed, when a bunch of them swam close to the boat. She didn’t see a single one swimming alone and even the slightly bigger fishes were not without companions. She found that looking at them suddenly dulled her mood much further. For once, Eva wanted to throw everything away and just sulk like a child. She wanted to be somewhere alone where she could just sort these feelings out without raising suspicion.

“Be careful when you’re feeding the fishes,” she vaguely registered Raina’s voice through the cloud of thoughts that hung around her. But she only moved like a robot with her back turned towards the other two, hiding, yet again, from everything. Maybe she was a coward, or maybe she had lost herself partially in her quest to create the perfect mask that would never break. Maybe, she didn’t know who she was anymore and didn’t trust anything, even herself. She contradicted herself many times than she ever did in her life during the few hours of that day.

But before she could really pull herself back together, everything was over. Feeding the fishes didn’t take too long at all or maybe Eva just didn’t notice the time flying with her head up in thoughts. Anyhow, they were back on land before Eva knew it with Raina feeling absolutely ecstatic about finding two helpers that didn’t annoy her for once. And, Eva was just about to stick the scattered pieces of her mask back up when Alisa approached her.

She didn’t dare move or speak a word when the woman gave her a disarming smile. Instead, Eva was lost once more until she felt something warm and heavy drop on one of her hands that she had raised reflexively to accept whatever that was offered to her. Even as the crystal mage thanked her, Eva found herself voiceless, shocked and almost emotional. Even as Raina and Alisa left, she couldn’t move an inch. Sitting on the palm of her hand, the beautiful ribbon tailed bird seemed to cast a disappointed glance at the wind contractor that was now even more confused than before.

1071/1000