The Black Swan Behind

79 A Discovery

“A night with you, how much do I have to pay?” asked a man with whistling when Poppy passed him.

“Wow.. Poppy Castonia! I love your moan! Would you look like that if you did it with me?” Exclaimed one of the guys standing in the middle of his guys’ group. They instantly laughed together as they continued to tease Poppy who could only keep walking without raising her face a bit.

Poppy suddenly stopped her footsteps because a pair of shiny black loafers blocked her way.

‘You can deal with it, Poppy. Don’t waste Roger’s sacrifice. You’re not a loser anymore.’ Poppy said in her heart, be prepared to deal with men who were more likely to insult her than people who teased her verbally.

Slowly, she lifted her face.

“Ca.. Calvin Lee?” Her fearful face turned to surprise.

Calvin smiled kindly, “Emma and Kathy are waiting for you in the cafeteria.” he said with a wink.

Poppy was stunned before nodding once and following Calvin. As he turned around, Calvin gave a warning look at the group of guys who had been insulting Poppy. They all fell silent with awkward faces.

“Poppy!” Kathy waved her arms wide. Beside her, Emma sat with a warm smile.

.....

“Come, sit over here.. Have you had breakfast? The first class will start in about half an hour now.” Emma said.

Poppy nodded and sat a little awkwardly on the chair Emma offered, “T-thanks,”

“Poppy.. From now on, we will gather together during free hours. What do you think?” Kathy asked before devouring her large hot dog.

Poppy was stunned and looked straight at Emma. The girl with the two beautiful brown eyes smiled and nodded. Apart from Roger, only Emma knew the story of her past. Poppy’s eyes began to warm. Then, she wiped the corners of her wet eyes before nodding briskly.

“I will. Of course, I will. Thank you.. girls,” She said.

Calvin, who was still standing beside their table, smiled happily. Everyone already knew about Poppy’s vulgar videos, including him. He was relieved that there were still people like Emma and Kathy who would accept Poppy when everyone was cornering the girl.

On the other hand, there were several pairs of eyes watching the four people from a distance. They smiled faintly. They were Jita Kyoei members. They didn’t expect such a horrible thing to happen to a girl as innocent as Poppy Castonia. Now, they know why Poppy looked so scared of Donny. And it fueled their intention to destroy the gangsters.

***

The most effective medicine for diverting sadness was to do what you love. For Emma Hilland, it was ballet.

By practising ballet, she could forget her feelings of sadness and anger for a moment. After fighting a few days ago, Emma’s whole body ached from being hit several times. Perhaps, because it had been too long since she had fought, her body had become somewhat spoiled. Luckily, Emma had an efficacious way to speed up the healing of her wounds. That was by soaking in ice water. She got the method when she used to follow her teacher to study agility in the Tibetan mountains.

Emma stood on one leg that was on tiptoe and rested only on her toes. Her other leg lifted like a crane. She spread her arms that kept moving following the kicks of her foot in the air.

Why could a ballerina keep spinning on one leg without stopping or lowering the other? That’s because they used the pushing force of one leg to keep the body spinning. To be able to do this, of course, a ballerina must have a good balance and leg strength. That’s what made Emma admire ballet dance.

Ballet. Although it performed in gentle moves, it required very strong muscles to be able to do it. It was the power behind the beauty.

By closing he eyes, Emma was so deep in the basic techniques of the dance. The ballet principles in Emma’s fighting style have one thing in common. Both utilize gravity and thrust. Emma wanted to deepen her balance and mastery of every inch of her own body.

Emma had been spinning like that for so long. Then, she stopped the movement slowly like a snowflake falling from the sky. One foot that had been kicking the air finally touched the classroom’s wooden floor gracefully.

She opened her eyes and was a little surprised when she saw a girl staring at her intently from the mirror reflection. At first, Emma was almost wondering, but she finally realized that the girl was also surprised by her own behaviour. She seemed to jump a little when she woke up from her stunned.

Emma smiled and turned her back to face the big tall girl, “Hi..” she greeted, trying not to be awkward.

The girl was Rachel Markway who was famous as a mysterious and scary girl in ballet class. Emma often noticed that she was always alone without a friend.

After all the things Emma had seen, heard, and lived through, she no longer dared to judge people so easily. No one was born with a bad personality. Everyone had a past that shaped their character and mindset.

“You.. Rachel.. Um.. Markway, right?” Emma asked by remembering, when the big girl was about to run away.

Rachel turned to Emma and nodded. Emma smiled kindly and stuck out her hand, “I’m Emma Hilland.”

Rachel stared at the soft hand for a moment then shook it awkwardly, “Nice to meet you, Emma.”

“You like to practice until this late too, didn’t you? When I bumped into you that time, it was already very late and alone like this.” Emma asked, trying to start a conversation.

“That’s kind of,” Rachel said curtly.

“Oh, I see.” Emma nodded. She immediately thought hard about what other questions she should ask to keep the conversation going. But Emma admitted that she was not as good as Kathy in socializing. She still had a lot to learn.

“The way you trained earlier.. That was really cool.” Rachel said suddenly.

Emma immediately smiled broadly, “What are you talking about? It’s just spinning. All ballerinas should be able to do it, right?”

“But when you did it, it looked different. Your feet... they were not like ordinary ballet dancers’ feet.”

“W-was that so?” Emma answered by rubbing the trunk of her neck while giving an awkward laugh.

Rachel realized what she just said that seemed to make Emma feel uncomfortable, “Ouh.. I’m sorry if I’m being too presumptuous to you. I’ll just go.”

“W-wait! I don’t mind at all. You don’t need to apologize, Rachel.” Emma said uncomfortably.

Rachel smiled faintly at her, “Okay then. See you later.”

“See you in the next class!” Emma answered in a slightly raised voice.

“She’s been the person I’ve had the most trouble to get close with. Rachel is like the female version of Roger. I hope she doesn’t have the same fate.” Emma muttered to herself.

Suddenly, Emma’s phone rang. It was a short message. She checked it and found the message was from Kathy.

‘Emma. I’ve found information from Donny’s social media account. He is associated with a group that seems to be called Hell Gate and The North Vikings. I found quite a lot of things. If you have time, you can come to my house any time.’ -Kathy

Emma locked the phone screen and lowered her hands with a face that seemed to be deep in thought, “The North Vikings? Donny is also related to the group that arrested and ganged up on Calvin at that time? Who was that bastard anyway?” Emma muttered.

***

“I worked for days to dismantle his internet trace history. He has several email addresses. I heard he was hospitalized because of a gang fight huh?” Kathy sipped her hot chocolate. Her eyes were framed by glasses that she only wore when her eyes were too tired to stare at the computer screen.

Emma who was sitting on the chair next to Kathy nodded once, “He is a very troubled guy. Luckily, Poppy could escape from that person. We have to keep her from getting caught by that bastard.”

Kathy raised an eyebrow, then, returned to her computer after putting the mug back on the table.

“You’re right, Emma. Donny is a very problematic shit. The proof is, he hides all his activities very well. Maybe if it were not me, then no one could find his internet trace.” The girl said in an arrogant tone. But Emma didn’t seem bothered at all by the girl’s character.

“But.. Even so, there’s bad news, Emma. All the clues that I found look like a very complicated puzzle. But I’m still collecting them anyway. Who knows if you’re curious, right? Even though it seems that Poppy is safe now..” She continued.

Then Kathy took out some paper with all the instructions she had printed out and handed it to Emma, ??”Look...”

Emma took at the messy papers and arranged them neatly before checking the contents. Then, Kathy began to explain.

“Donny, Larry, and Brian aren’t your usual bunch of jerks, Emma. They work for two gangster groups called Hell Gate and The North Vikings. Actually, I don’t really know what kind of group they are. But, this.. on this paper is Donny’s activities a few months ago now. At that time, there was a direct message from one of the men accounts who belonged to the locked club The North Vikings. It said that they were going to take over Jen Marie street. But, it was just one piece of evidence. After that, I couldn’t find out what happened. But not long from that day, Donny seemed to post some photos of him together with the guys from the Hell Gate group. The man looked very proud to be joining the group because he often posted disgusting selfies with them. And what’s even worse.. It turns out that the catlanguagedictionary.com, which is lately going viral on campus because of Poppy, has been linked with the Hell Gate group! This means, everything is connected, right?” Kathy explained at length as she grabbed her own curly hair.