Young Writers Society

They found the body in the female toilet. It belonged to a boy, which added more to the confusion. Serena had seen him with her own eyes - naked senior lying on the floor with his back against it - and couldn’t believe it. First of all, his skin was still tan. His eyes were bright green and his hair was deep black. He was full of colours. He couldn’t die. Even if he was wounded, his colour would fade a bit.

That was the problem - there was no wound either.

What triggered his death, then? Did someone murder him? Serena couldn’t tell - she was just a student, unlucky to be the first witness after all. How could she have known about this kind of thing? How could she know it could happen? But this was the first. As long as you had colours, you should still be alive. She hoped the death of the boy named Travis could be solved.

This was probably because she was asked relentlessly by the police. She was interrogated for a full six hours just because of this boy’s death. She tried to answer it as best as she could but the more answers she gave them, the more questions they shot at her. After an hour, it became tiring. Not to mention she could see from their eyes the glimmer of suspicion on them. She, a murderer.

Laughable. She was smarter than that.

After the painful, exhausting six hours, she was released out of the room and straight to her worried parents. They waited for her, her father walking back and forth without stopping, and her mother sitting and clutching her hands, trembling. They waited for her and when she finally appeared, they quickly brought her home. No doubt they thought this incident was too much for a sixteen years-old girl like her.

But it wasn’t too much. The boy’s death looked like he was sleeping if she was to be honest. In fact, the real reason she screamed when she opened the door of the toilet and saw the guy lying near the sink was because he was naked. The realization that he was dead came to her like a breeze after a few minutes. He wasn’t sleeping - he wasn’t breathing. It took her two fingers to check whether he was still breathing or not.

After a couple of days, she could get pass the event and assumed her role as a student. She continued studying, reading boring reference books about the foundation of enchanted colours and their roles in prolonging lives. How they reduced the number of murder cases and deaths, and helped those who couldn’t afford to buy food and water.

It didn’t last long though. Travis’ girlfriend, Doris, confronted her one day. She entered the very toilet Travis died when Serena was putting on her lipstick. Serena inspected her and with the hard frown, gritted teeth, and red cheeks - boy, she didn’t look good. Doesn’t feel good either, Serena thought. She ended the brief glance and resumed her activity.

Doris grabbed Serena’s shoulder and turned Serena to face her. She didn’t let the shoulder go. She clutched it like she didn’t want it to go - it was so firm Serena had to resist the urge to flinch. She stared at Serena, sending daggers with her deep brown eyes. She allowed silence to tense things up, and didn’t bulge, didn’t tear her gaze away from Serena.

These people with their love and actions bored and annoyed Serena.

“What did you to Travis?” Doris asked loudly. She almost sounded barking. Maybe she was.

Serena used her arm to sweep Doris’ holding hand away. “I didn’t do anything,” she said calmly, adjusting her uniform clothes.

“No, I know you did something. Something you didn’t tell the polices,” Doris said, the low threatening voice coming from her mouth. She fished out a small notebook from her pocket. She held it up to Serena. “This is Travis’ notebook. I got it from his bag. He wrote things about you.”

Serena raised her eyebrow. She didn’t know Travis - she didn’t know what was in his mind. She folded her arms. “And what does it say in there?” she said. “Whatever it is, it must be nothing major.”

“He had a crush on you!” Doris said loudly, screaming accusation to Serena. Her hands started to tremble and her eyes were in the brink of tears. “He wrote countless pages about his crush on you and how you never noticed her. I thought - I thought maybe he did it on purpose, committing suicide just before you entered here.”

Is this girl for real? Serena thought, disbelief showed in her gasp. “You’re jumping into conclusion here. There’s nothing indicates his want of suicide. He didn’t say anything about me being the cause of his death - you even heard it, his death is unnatural. No reduction of colours.”

Serena thought back of the first time she came into the toilet and saw Travis. He didn’t lose any colours but his breath sure stopped. Maybe... maybe he didn’t commit suicide after all. Maybe this was all a rebellion.

“Then how?” Doris said, shaking her head, now crying silently. Her mouth quivered, and she used her had to cover it. “How did he die?

”Serena saw, then, the anguish of a girl who lost her lover. The frail state she put herself in. All for a boy’s death - a boyfriend’s death. Could this be the extent of love? Serena never understood love. She understood affection and liking but love, it seemed, stood in an entire different level. Following her instinct, she pulled Doris to her and hugged her tightly. They fell to the floor on their knees.

“It isn’t my fault, Doris. It’s not yours, not any of us,” Serena said, whispering to Doris’ ear. “Travis must had knew it. He must had realized he was a glitch in the system. Whenever he was hurt, did you see his colour faded?”

There was a brief silence before Doris said quietly, “No.”

Serena smiled faintly. “See? This was all planned. This was fate’s doing,” she said. “Doris, in our progress to make death a less occurring process by resorting to the magic system, we couldn’t escape that death would eventually strike us at one time. We could always buy colours and inject them to ourselves to prolong our lives but we are not born like that, Doris. We have been enhanced by magic. I don’t know what happened to Travis, but he died with a natural cause. His time had arrived.”

Doris’ crying got heavier, her body trembling more vigorously. “But why him? Why did he the one defying the system? Why did fate do this to me?” she said. “Travis was the light of my life. He was the reason I could get through this high school. He was my protector, my guide. Now he was gone.”

The question they always have in their minds, Serena thought. Why him? Why her? Why did fate choose him or her? Why did this happen to me? “The answer is simple, Doris. Sometimes we cannot control everything. Sometimes everything happens against our calculation to remind us we’re humans and have flaws - to remind us that we stick to the ground and follow its rules. It isn’t fair, but we are built to overcome it by the strength of our will.”

Serena looked at the pristine white toilet, the smooth ground already cleaned from Travis’ remaining. At the end, they were humans, and they needed to face faults to know that they were. There was only one thing she didn't understand - what was Travis doing in a female toilet? What she didn't know was that the part about her in Travis' diary wasn't written by him. He never liked girls. No natural death ended with a naked body. Never.