Chapter 46: Eyes
"Percy, Percy, Percy let's go to the game!" Tiara wailed from her sofa. She rocked back and forth, enjoying the new mobility of her body. She cried louder and louder every time until Percy shot her a dirty look.
"I'm taking a break."
"We need to find a teacher! We only have 1 year, remember? Let's go!"
"Prince Hao died, remember?" Tiara flinched. "The time limit was for him, and now that he is gone, it's not there anymore."
"But the Projecttttt. And you're not injured either, so it's all a farce. Your weird powers work fine too." Tiara whined.
Percy's mind turned at that line. He hadn't tried out his weird abnormality ever since he came back. "God, Tiara, I'm not abandoning it. Just taking a break. We'll just dive in next week."
"PERCY!!" she screeched. "I'M SORRY, I WON'T KILL YOU AGAIN! COME BACK!"
Percy sighed. "You didn't kill me Tiara. And I understand that you're just a kid. It's fine."
"I'm not a kid, not anymore." Tiara said slowly, looking at the TV screen that showed a volleyball match. She looked at Percy who was eagerly watching the game. He seemed to be ignoring her.
"You like volleyball?"
Percy shrugged and then continued watching.
"Where did you learn to make meat omelettes from?"
He shrugged again. "Nowhere."
Tiara continued observing him, solely because she had nothing else to do. And what could be better than getting to know her Partner for the Connection to improve?
"Where's your mother now?"
Percy sighed and put his remote down. He shuffled in his position and turned to face Tiara with serious eyes. The volleyball match continued on the telly, but at a low volume.
Tiara leaned back slightly. 'He's intimidating,' she thought immediately. His hair had grown a bit and light brown strands scattered over his forehead uneasily. The sunlight through the curtains hit his face, making one side shine and one side fall under shadow. She got a sense of dejavu from back in the prison cell when she was about to be executed as a beggar. Her heart clenched and Percy opened his mouth to speak.
"What are you trying to do?" he asked quietly.
Tiara looked into his eyes and remembered what her first grade teacher told her once. That if you look into a person's eyes and study its color, you can see their lives before you. Now, Tiara thought that was probably not true, but she studied his eyes anyway.
"I think it's black," she blurted out.
Percy frowned and Tiara took in a breath as she saw the color of his eyes slightly change. "Woah…" His face now fully turned to the light and Tiara's jaw dropped as more light entered his eyes. He smirked and looked down at her. "Look again."
"Woah…" she lifted her hands to touch them but then dropped it. "It's blue… and slightly green… it's oceany, but the deep end of the ocean, like a stormy ocean."
Percy snorted. "Tiara. It's just eyes."
Tiara leaned back and looked at him. "And it's pretty."
Percy froze for a second, for only a fraction of it, and then looked the other way again. "You do not call a boy pretty."
"Oh then what am I supposed to call them then?" Tiara asked innocently. "Do tell, you said you'll teach me."
"Ah? When did I?"
"Pleez," she tilted her head and pulled on his sleeve like a puppy asking for food.
He sighed and glanced at the match before looking back at her. "I don't know… I have heard girls use words like hot, hotstuff, and handsome I guess? Charming, fine, attractive. But not pretty."
Tiara hummed in thought. "So what do I call your eyes then?"
Percy's cheeks turned hot without him realising and he shook his head, trying to change the subject. "You don't have to call it anything."
"Hotstuff," she picked one out of random. "Your eyes are hotstuff…" She frowned, "No that doesn't seem right…" She tilted her head and crossed that out of her mental list. "Fine eyes? Hmm, no that doesn't sit close." She glanced back up at Percy's eyes to check, only to see him staring right at her.
Tiara froze under his stare that seemed to stop everything she was doing, even breathing. "Percy?"
"Forest," Percy breathed.
"What?"
"Your eyes are like the forest," he blurted, instantly regretting what he said. Why did he have to say meaningless stuff like that? Now Tiara might think he was stupid.
"Really?" Her tiny voice rose with sparkles. "What kind of forest?"
Percy hesitated and looked harder. "Turn your face towards the sun."
Tiara did as he told her to.
Percy motioned with his hand, "No, a bit to the left."
Tiara turned her face again, but too much. "Ah, I need to do coordination exercises," she said frustratedly. Percy sighed and leaned forward and held her chin gently before turning it slightly more to the left. Tiara pursed her lips and let him study her eyes. "So?"
Percy looked down at her. "A tired forest. Tired of living without purpose. It has water, it has sunlight, but there are no animals to live in, so it's kinda lonely and you know…" he shrugged. "Tired."
Tiara was at a loss for words. She blinked as he sat back down as immediately as he had got up slightly to tilt her face. She saw him cough and stare at the TV a bit more intensely than before. "My teacher was right…" she mumbled.
Percy wanted to bury a hole in the corner of the studio flat and stay inside it for the next 100 years. 'What the h_ll was that dude, why do you got to say senseless stuff like that?' He chided himself. 'You're so lame.' After a while he glanced at Tiara who was sitting at the other end, watching the game with him. She pointed at a player and asked what he was doing outside the court and Percy perked up to explain the game to her.
They chit-chatted for a while, like they had been friends forever… whatever moment they had shared between them tucked away for another time. And Percy was okay with that. Tiara, on the other hand, didn't know what any of this was supposed to be.
She thought he hated her. Otherwise he would never have given her away to execution on the first day, but then he also got her out of it and helped her with the monsters. But all that was just because she was his Partner and without one, he couldn't play the game.
But today, he didn't even want to play the game, yet she knew she had felt something when he looked into her eyes. But what was that? It wasn't happiness, or sadness either. It wasn't excitement either, nor frustration. When those ocean eyes stared into her… tired forest or whatever it was… she felt everything at once yet nothing at all.
The match ended and they both sighed in disappointment.
"I thought you said the red team would win," she leaned back against the sofa, watching the highlights play.
He groaned. "I don't know! I thought so too, but that deuce in the end turned everything around. By then, how well you play the game doesn't matter, but how much more willpower you have left to carry on. Ugh, this sucks. I want to go to sleep."
"Go on, ocean eyes."
Percy turned around to look at her skeptically. "Yeah, you're not calling me that."
"Why not?" she asked in annoyance.
"You're calling me by my name."
"Why not a nickname?"
"Tiara, we are just acquaintances. Partners out of circumstance. People like us do not call each other by nicknames."
Tiara frowned at how absurd he sounded. "That sounds stupid. Why are you so obsessed about being like everyone else?"
"That's how people fit in, Tiara."
"But over here there is only you and me, where do you have to fit in?"
Percy will never know how Tiara manages to come up with these kinds of responses. He just switched off the TV and got up. "Whatever, call me Percy or call me nothing."
"Ocean eyes!" Tiara tried once more, but he expertly ignored her and walked into the room before slamming the door.
"Ugh," she slumped on the sofa and switched on the TV and changed it to a cartoon. Then she shook her head and changed it to the previous sports channel and decided to watch one more match. She grit her teeth and pressed the volume button aggressively until the TV screamed throughout the studio flat.
"TIARA, DECREASE THE FRICKIN VOLUME!" An annoyed voice blared from inside, as Tiara had expected.
"Not now, not ever!"
"ARGH!!" He just turned in his sleep and covered his ears with two pillows and tried to drown out the noise.
Five minutes into the match, Tiara's eyes closed and her head lolled back, drifting into sleep.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone