13. Towel

After that, Awkward Boy was called by the others, so he asked for him to stay in there if he wasn’t feeling ready to go and talk with the rest. Now he was alone, with his almost gone soda and too much to think about.

He had complicated feelings for what the Awkward Boy said before about his past because, when he decided to come to this place, he didn’t want to meddle in anyone affairs and traumas, he was simply curious. He neither was looking for friends to talk because what does he could tell them? “Hi, I’m the protector but I never wanted to be one” or “yeah I got his problem where I’m scared about people being scared of me being too powerful or different”, maybe about “I feel I’m doing something wrong, that I’m not doing something I want but I don’t know which part.”

Of course he couldn’t tell them openly who he was, and he wasn’t even comfortable with all the clothes he had over him to cover his true identity. “I’ll need a wig… maybe some contact lenses too…” he mumbled, then remembering that he was not entirely alone, looking around if someone might had listened to him.

Even so, he knew he had many reasons to be with them because he, too, had gave up a dream. Maybe not so much as a dream because he used to work as a chemist in a pharmaceutical enterprise, not that it was his dream job but was what made him feel comfortable at the moment. What pained the most to him was that he used to have a normal and simple life, with his family and few friends, with whom he used to talk to them like every four months or so, before everything.

And then, all his life changed completely without a way to go back. He knew, that as long as he lived, he wouldn’t be back to that life never again. If successors were to be born, he knew he had to train them and be their mentor for the rest of his life, when his body become useless to training, he would maybe be able to live somewhere far and quiet. Only then he could maybe go out without being recognized by every pedestrian that saw him.

The worst-case scenario came when no successors were born. If that happened, he would be the protector until his body became useless, and even then he could imagine how the doctors and scientist would try to maintain his body in the best conditions, he even would force himself to keep being useful so the fear of being unprotected would never return to the islanders.

So what he had to talk with them? Nothing that wasn’t too depressing or too impossible to say. And he wasn’t particularly good in listening to other’s problems, he never knew how to give advices without feeling those were too obvious or useless. Does he should stay or come back any other time?

“Hey, look out!” the Awkward Boy’s voice took him out of his thoughts, making him realizes he was crushing the soda’s can until it started to come out from the hole. Luckily, everything fell on his hand and not the floor, still, his sleeve and hand were a bit soaked. “Come to the bathroom.”

“I’m sorry, I was distracted” he said while following him, he hated the stickiness the soda left, so he was glad there was a restroom where to clean himself, even if his sleeve would remain the same.

“Oh! Go ahead, let me look for the towel, I don’t know who took it”. The boy went back to the other rooms while the protector started to wash his hands.  If it weren’t because it was a soda’s can, he could had given away his identity if they discovered his abnormal strength. It had happened before, so he better starts to have his hands empty every time he was about to dwell in his own sorrows.

“Here,” the boy came back to give him the towel. “Are you ok? You looked really deep in thoughts, and I bet those weren’t good thoughts for the can to suffer from it.”

“Yeah, sorry” he said once more.

“No need to be.” The Awkward Boy looked like he wanted to ask more, but he didn’t dare, so just stayed there in silence.

“We all lost something; didn’t you say?” Teshal finally said, hanging up the towel. “I lost something I won’t ever get back, not a person but a future…” he wasn’t looking at him anymore, he needed to choose wisely his words, it was not a common occurrence to lost normality in your life. “And I’m trying to live with that fact. So don’t worry, you didn’t open old wounds with your reasons to be here”. At the end, the protector smiled to him, a smile a bit sad but bright.