Just great... was all that Paul thought when the boy revealed himself to be his new roommate. He looked down on the boy, Paul probably was a couple of inches taller than him, and quietly analyzed him as the boy gave Paul a bow.
"Um, well, It's ok really, you don't have to go to such lengths..." Paul said, trying to make him stop bowing.
"My name's Paolo Ray but you can call me Paul. So, what happened to you? Why were you at the infirmary?"Cheol stood upright once more, but didn't make direct eye-contact with Paul.
'Now that's the question, isn't it?' a familiar voice sneered in the back of Cheol's mind. He ignored it.
"Erm, it's, err... nothing," Cheol said vaguely, still not looking Paul in the eye.
"I just felt a little dizzy. That's all." He smiled nervously.
"You know... first day nerves and all." He gave a small, unconvincing laugh.
"Just a little dizzy? One wouldn't come to that conclusion when they saw all the fuss that happened back there. The Doc shoved aside a bunch of student and came to ur rescue, Ms. Nina started barking out orders to teachers and students alike. It was all one big mess..." Paul said, sighing. By now he had already started walking back to his, no, their room.
Yeah, now he had a roommate. Gone were the days when he had the whole room for himself, his own little personal paradise. Paul sulked on that thought but quickly cast it aside. He stopped and turned his head back to see if Cheol was following him,
"C'mon man, we don't have all day to stand here and talk! I bet there are probably hundreds of hungry students downstairs at the cafeteria right now. Do you think they will happily give you their place in the line when you eventually decide to go get something to eat?""Firstly though, we have to get our stuff to our room. Fortunately, I already have the key" Paul said, a small smirk forming on his face.
When Paul voiced his doubts, Cheol looked down at his feet, struggling to come up with some sort of excuse. However, he quickly realised that Paul had started moving away and looked up at Paul's retreating back.
"O-okay!" Cheol said, and started following after the older boy, trying his best to keep up while also listening to Paul's words.
"I, erm, I'm not sure... I mean, I have met some nice people. They might..." He trailed off, unsure of what else to say.
With the boy following him, Paul started walking again towards their room. Since they were already close to the student dorms, within ten minutes they had arrive to their room.
"Well, here we are" Paul said and stopped in front of one of the many doors in the hallway they were in.
Paul grabbed the door handle and tried to open the door, only to see that it was locked shut, Good, this means that no one has entered since last year Paul thought, smiling. He then pointed his index finger at the door and drew some metal from it, creating a makeshift key, using his memory of the original key as a guide. He grabbed the key and put it in the lock, unlocking the door and opening it.
"Well, after you" he told Cheol.
Inside, the room was unlike any other room in the whole building. In the years before, Paul had made some modifications to the room to fit his liking. Firstly, in the place of two plain, single beds was one king size bed. The window behind it had been widened so that more light would enter the room in the morning, something Paul desperately needed if he wanted to wake up and get to class in time...
Next to the bed, on the right, was a small, wooden nightstand and on top of it where a dozen or more alarm clocks.
On the left of the bed was a workdesk, where Paul usually ended up doing most of his class-related work and if you walked further, there was a small hallway that lead to the toilet.
"Well, I guess It will need some modifications now that two people will be staying here but I am sure we can do something about that. For the time, make yourself at home" he told Cheol and walked towards the toilet, entering it and closing the door behind him.
Cheol followed Paul into the room, glancing at his surroundings in slight awe. Paul really knew how to make himself comfortable, it seemed.
"Err, nice place," Cheol muttered, awkwardly just standing at the side. Since there only seemed to be one bed, Cheol wondered whether he would have to sleep on the floor.
I should have brought a sleeping bag, he thought to himself.
When Paul left the room, Cheol stood there dumbly, unsure of what to do or where he should put his stuff. Despite the fact he was now Paul's roommate, he felt as if he was intruding, as if he shouldn't be there, and was afraid to do anything that would ruin the 'feng shui', as it were, of Paul's room.
'Hey, kid,' the Mask's voice perked up.
'Hey!'"What do you want?" Cheol muttered, glancing towards the direction Paul had exited. Even though they were alone, he kept his voice down.
'Let's look through his stuff,' the Mask said.
'See what kind of secrets this guy has.'Cheol looked down at his shoulder bag.
"Why would I do that?" he said.
'Well, the guy SAID you should make yourself at home,' the Mask continued.
'And this is YOUR room now.' He paused.
'Plus, I'm bored.'Cheol rolled his eyes.
"You know," he said.
"I'm sick of listening to you today." With that, he removed his shoulder bag.
'Hey! What are you doing?' the Mask called as Cheol marched over to the wardrobe, stuffing the bag inside.
'Hey, stop! C'mon, kid, think about what you're doing!' Cheol opened the wardrobe, stuffed the bag in the bottom before slamming the doors shut.
"Don't worry," he muttered.
"I'll come back for you later. For now, I want you to think about your actions." He took a step back from the wardrobe. He almost imagined the doors moving slightly and the wardrobe shaking, like the Mask would suddenly spring to life and come after him. Of course, it didn't. The Mask was powerless without him.
Cheol felt his head stinging slightly, but he didn't care. He knew once left the room and was at a certain distance, the Mask would have no connection to him anymore, and he could spent the next hour or so without having to listen to that insufferable thing.
In the ten or so minutes Paul was inside the toilet, he took a shower, put on some clothes and came back out to the bedroom.
"Hey" he told Cheol as he sat down on the bed and grabbed a new pair of shoes from underneath it to wear.
"So what's your power anyway? Why did they invite you here?" Paul casually asked his new roommate.
Cheol gave a shy smile as Paul re-entered the room, though that smile faltered slightly when Paul asked his question.
"Erm..." Cheol shifted his weight awkwardly from foot to foot.
"This is going to sound kind of weird, but I don't... actually have a power."As these words left his mouth, Cheol thought he could hear a wheezing laugh in the back of his mind, but tried his best to ignore it.
"I mean, I have a power, but it's not really... mine," Cheol explained. He paused, trying to think of the best way to explain it.
"I have this object that gives me my powers," he said slowly, wondering whether he would have to open the wardrobe and get out his mask again, though he didn't really want to. He wanted the Mask to have a 'time out' of sorts.
"Huh, so you are one of those 'equip-said-item' sort of hero" Paul said after Cheol finished explaining.
"Well, between you and me, you guys have it good. You have no idea how annoying is to have contractors, geo-scientists, heck even goverment officials, to flood your phone with calls and messages about 'how useful your power is' or 'think of your country' or 'for the sake of humanity!' Bah, bunch of crap. These people see me as a walking metal detector/welder/crane/everything!" he shouted in frustration.
He turned to Cheol;
"Let me give you some advice: Never give out your number to suit-wearing, suspicious-looking people, don't reveal your powers to people you can't trust - you can trust me - and last but probably the most important of all, always wear a condom" he told his roommate with a smirk.
Cheol gave a nervous laugh at that last sentence, his face reddening slightly.
"Err, thanks," he said. However, that first thing Paul had said had got him curious.
"Erm, what is your power, may I ask? Do you have like, magnetic, metal-controlling powers or something?" he asked, glad that the subject was finally off of his own abilities.
"My power?" Paul raised his eyebrow at the question.
"Well, my power encases pretty much everything you see around you. Metal, Gems, Minerals, Magnetism. Basically anything that has to do with the Earth I can manipulate and control to my pleasure. Although, I don't have much power over organic materials, I'm working on it. For the moment though, anything inorganic that has to do with the Earth, I can control" he said. It might sound powerful but don't let it fool you. Messing with the Earth is never good for anyone and the power saps my stamina like a desert traveler drinks water" he finished.
"I could do a small demonstration if you want..." Paul added and thought about what he should do.
At this offer, Cheol nodded.
"Sure!" he said. As of yet, he had seen very few demonstrations of superpowers and was interested to see one from his roommate. However, remembering what Paul had said before, he quickly added,
"Erm, but only if it's not too much stress on you, of course.""Nah, something small won't do much to me. It's the really big things that get to me, you know?" Paul said.
"Well, how about this" he mumbled as he looked around the room for a minute. He saw that there was a empty glass on his workdesk. He stood up from the bed and maneuvered around the bed to get to his desk. He grabbed the empty glass and showed it to Cheol.
"Pick an animal. Any animal" he told him.
Cheol blinked at the request before hastily trying to think of something. The first animal that came to his mind was, almost predictably...
"A crow," he said without a second thought. When those words left his mouth, he once again heard the laughing in the back of his mind.
Damn Mask...
"Hmm, interesting choice" he said. Paul then put the glass between two palms, one on the top and the other on the bottom, and concentrated.
"I usually do these things pretty fast, but I'll do the slow version this time, so you can see what exactly happens" he told Cheol. After that, he turned his gaze back to the glass, which slowly started melting between his hands, until it had completely turned into a semi-transparent, liquid blob.
"Now I'll start forming it" he explained as the blob started expanding. First the body, then the wings, then the legs and last but not least, the head.
"And now for the details," ridges and lines started appearing on the bird figure, outlining the details on the crows' body. The feathers, the talons, the eyes, beak e.t.c.
"It's almost finished now. Just needs some 'paint'," Paul said and reached under the bed and drew on the metal supporting it. The metal 'flowed' to Pauls palm and concentrated into a pitch-black ball.
"Lead huh? It will do just fine..." he mumbled and put the ball on top of the glass crow figurine.
"Now, this is the best part" he told Cheol.
"Watch carefully" he added and after a second, the metal ball too started melting. The liquid metal fell on the glass figurine but it wouldn't melt it. Actually, it was exactly the opposite, the figurine started absorbing the metal in all the right places.
After a couple of minutes, his work was finished.
"Here it is" he presented the figurine to Cheol.
"This is glass reinforced with lead in its purest form. It tougher than regular glass and will not shatter or scratch by simple methods but a professional metal cutting machine will be able to cut it. If this was hand-made by a professional sculptor, with all the detail and effort that it would take to make it, if you were to sell it you would get over 100.000 dollars the least," he told Cheol, handing the crow over to him.
"Was that enough of a demonstration?" he asked with a smug on his face.
Cheol hadn't take his eyes off the glass the whole time and didn't say a word so as not to disturb Paul's process. When it was finished and Paul handed him the sculpture, Cheol took at it and just stared at it for a minute before looking up at Paul.
"Wow," he breathed.
"That was awesome."'Eh, it wasn't that great,' the Mask commented in the back of Cheol's mind. Cheol ignored him.
"Erm, you don't mind if I keep this?" Cheol asked, gesturing to the crow.
"Sure, go ahead" Paul said before a deep growl came from his stomach.
"Seems someone is hungry..." Paul said and laughed awkwardly.
"We should get going because I'm afraid there won't be much food left for us...." He added and walked towards the door.
"I'll go ahead on my own, since you will probably want to meet with your friends. Oh, and before I forget, Catch!" he told Cheol and threw him an extra copy of the key to the room.
Cheol reached out for the key, only for it to fall onto the ground at his feet.
"Sorry," he muttered and quickly kneeled down, grabbing it and place it in his pocket. He then stood up again, carefully cradling the glass crow in his arms before placing it on the desk.
"Erm, I guess I'll see you!" he called after Paul.
