Stranded

~

"Getting anything, Raine?" Zen could hear Kai shouting in the background. He finally put his phone to rest and stood up. The yellow flash of light ventured towards them till it shone directly at Kai's face.

Raine shut his phone's flashlight. "This is ridiculous." He plopped down on the chair and exhaled sharply. "First, the bus had gotten so far when we got through. Then second, because of the typhoon, the district police decided it was the perfect time to play roadblocks and keep our bus on the wrong side of the disaster zone, so it can't even return to pick us up," Raine narrated. "And the news from university says they're preparing to send a ride but we have to wait till morning. To sum it all up, we are stuck here," he finished.

"You know, the old man from the store said we could stay in the inn for tonight," Kai said. "We should be able to get two rooms. What do you think, Zen?"

"I'm down with the idea," Zen agreed. It wasn't like she had anything to lose. Besides, sleeping inside was ten times better than sleeping outside waiting for the typhoon to sweep them off their feet like love at first sight.

Taking a moment to glance at her phone, Zen recalled her message to Kate. She'd informed Kate of her situation, even made her swear not a word of it should reach her father. With that assurance in place, she could finally be at peace. She could now make decisions on her own without fearing for the outcome.

"We don't have a choice, do we?" Raine responded.

"Nope," Kai replied. "By the way, we have to pay them if we're staying in the inn."

"Money's not the issue."

~-~

"Yes? How may I help you?" The spooky old lady behind the front desk welcomed them as they entered the inn.

"Rooms," All three of them said in unison.

"Certainly. We have plenty of empty rooms. How many would you like?"

Zen felt relief wash over her soul at those words. For a moment, she'd disturbingly thought the whole getting a room thing would be like a scene in those movies where the characters were forced to share a room due to all others being fully booked except for that one room. It was a very common chichè trope many writers used to develop chemistry between the characters. Zen would never put something as stupid as that in her stories. Real life is always different. And the old lady saying she had enough rooms to facilitate all of us proves it, Zen said in her mind.

"Two, please," Kai said. "Raine and I will share one," he added, flashing a small reassuring smile at Zen.

"Fourteen hundred for two rooms."

"Great." Raine, who was standing in between them, didn't look like he minded the arrangement as Zen found him pulling out his wallet from his pocket.

"We don't accept credit cards. Only cash," the old lady specified.

"Why not?" Raine asked. The credit card remained intact on his outstretched hand as the old lady refused to accept it.

"Young man, do I look like the type of person who knows how those things even work?" the old lady remarked, her spit flying everywhere as a result of a few missing teeth.

"Now what, Mr. Money's not the issue?" Kai said to Raine mockingly.

"I have five hundred in my wallet. Cash," Zen offered.

"Two hundred here," Raine replied, slumping in defeat. He turned to Kai, his eyes brimming with hope.

Kai brought out his wallet and shook it upside down on the desk. A jiggling noise was heard as some coins made contact with the wood. "That's all I have."

"Really?" Raine spat sarcastically.

"Who made me buy all those drinks for you, Sean and the others earlier? Yes, you," Kai shot back, causing Raine to shut up immediately.

"Altogether, we have seven hundred, minus your worthless coins, Kai, so we can afford one room," Zen heard Raine say. She glanced to her left and found him slumping over the reception desk with his arms folded and head sunk in between.

"So you'll take it?" the old lady beamed.

"Wait, please. You'll have to provide us with two rooms," Kai tried to reason with the old lady.

"No money, no rooms."

"But-"

Zen gently shook her head and placed a hand on Kai's shoulder. It was useless to argue. The moment she noticed the old lady staring at them with a face that screamed I don't give a shit unless you have money, Zen's inner self was on the ground and ready to raise the white flag of defeat. Why are old people so greedy? She couldn't get it. Maybe she would understand when she became of their age.

"Will you take one or not?" the old lady asked.

"Yes, we'll take it," Raine answered, holding out his hand for the key without looking up.

"Great. One room. Here's the key."

~-~

The room turned out just as Zen had pictured, and she was not disappointed. It was quite spacious and tidy, though not the type of place one would want to stay in comfortably for more than a week. The entire setup felt rather dated. What looked to be a century-old cupboard occupied the space opposite to a door which she figured was the restroom. The wooden floor creaked as they ventured further into the living room. In the centre of the room, right in front of a timeworn couch, sat a worn-out coffee table with an unsealed water bottle atop it. The only bed was positioned beneath the nearby window. One of them would be sleeping on the floors tonight.

"Stuck in the middle of nowhere in a very underdeveloped area. A typhoon's coming. Phone signals dead. And no credit cards accepted. If this is not ill luck, I don't know what to call this," Raine grumbled, collapsing onto the couch as he succumbed to the exhaustion.

"Pretty soon this will be over, so suck it up," Kai said, striding over and playfully swatting away Raine's legs to make space as he settled at the far end of the couch. "No one prayed for this to happen," he added.

Well, about that... Zen smiled weakly. No one prayed, but she did. Only her wish was granted a day late. If only the typhoon came yesterday, their trip would've been cancelled which was exactly what she prayed for but what's the point of complaining now? But who would've thought she'd be stuck with not one, but two extraordinary guys, who both seemed almost mythical, like descendants of werewolves from ancient stories? So much for the common clichè trope. It wasn't surprising, knowing she'd always had this terrible luck of getting thrown into situations or with people she didn't like ever since she was a kid.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, defined her lifestyle pretty accurately. It was similar to that time she met a classmate she didn't like at school, then a second later, boom, permanent sitting arrangement till the end of the year with said classmate. Whatever or whoever she voiced her hatred on, the Almighty God made sure she had an episode with that subject sooner or later. Why should her current situation be any different?

"Zen, you can take the bed. I'll sleep on the floor. Raine can have the couch," Kai said, snapping her to reality.

"I can take the floor," Zen insisted.

"You paid the most, so you take the bed," Raine ordered. "I'm fine on the floor."

"When did you get so generous?" Kai teased. "Take the couch."

"No."

"Come on."

"Shut up," Raine growled, immediately getting up to reach for the spare blanket on the bed. He playfully pushed Kai onto the sofa, then wrapped the entire blanket around Kai's slender frame, making him look like he was cocooned.

Zen was seeing another new side of Raine. The more she spent time with him, the more she was seeing him in a positive light. She'd had her doubts about Raine and Kai being close, as her friends had often declared, and seeing the two males bicker with each other for the entire duration of the day had her questioning the authenticity of her friends' statements, but it was a different case now. Upon closer look, she noticed that both Raine and Kai got along pretty well, better than she'd imagined. Kai was a big bubbly ball of light, and Raine, the brooding bat making sure the ball didn't hit the wrong target. From what she witnessed, Raine only listened to Kai, even if it looked like he was lashing out at him while doing so; they had a friendship that was rare to see.

"I'd like to see you get out of it," Raine teased, playfully kicking Kai as he groaned and struggled within the blanket.

"I have been trapped by a big bull. Someone help me," Kai said in a tone that sounded like a six-year-old kid reciting a poem at the school assembly, tuneless and purely robotic. Zen couldn't help but chuckle at their antics as she moved toward the bed.

A sudden flash of lightning followed by a loud thunderclap put them on edge. Zen climbed onto the bed and reached out to secure the window latch, but her fingers slipped, and the window burst open with such force that she stumbled backwards until the unrelenting outside wind that came through it knocked her off the bed.

"Are you okay?" Raine hurried over and helped her up, with Kai close behind. Eventually, they managed to close the window and draw the curtains to shield themselves from the fierce weather.

"The storm is only going to get worse," Raine commented as he went back to sitting on the couch.

"This building looks pretty old too. Do you think we'll be blown away after some time?" Kai joked.

"If I toss you out the window, you might just get your answer," Raine replied, picking up the water bottle from the table and taking a sip.

"I'm sure nothing will happen," Zen assured, but as she said that, she couldn't shake the small pricking sensation at the pit of her stomach. The typhoon never promised a harmless, bearable storm. It was a monstrous downpour of intensity, unlike anything she had seen before. And this was just the beginning.

Her thoughts were interrupted by another roll of thunder, the sound echoing through the skies. The room plunged into darkness as the lights went out simultaneously.

"I'll find something to light up the room," Zen exclaimed in a panicked rush, momentarily forgetting about the flashlight on her phone. She rushed forward in the dark, and accidentally collided with a solid figure amidst the havoc. Two bodies tumbled to the ground. Zen felt something cold and wet trickle down the insides of her clothes. Sweat? Blood? Her thoughts ran wild.

"What just happened?" Kai's voice broke the silence, his flashlight casting light from above.

"We crashed," Raine replied flatly, getting up.

"Zen, your shirt's soaked," Kai said, helping her up.

"Shit," Raine swore aloud.

Zen turned her gaze to Raine, who was staring blankly at his right hand, which held an empty, crushed bottle. As Kai lowered his phone to the ground, Zen was finally able to see the pool of spilt liquid spreading aimlessly under the table and couch.

"Zen, you should get yourself cleaned up. I'll go ask the old lady for a mop." With that, Kai did a quick search in the room, picked up Zen's phone that had been lying undisturbed on top of the pillow above the bed, handed it over and left the room.

"I'll be in the bathroom," Zen informed Raine, then quickly made her way to the bathroom.

Zen sharply exhaled once her back hit the bathroom door. You need to get your shit together, Zen. She clapped her face with both her hands as she willed her mind to calm down. There was no denying the fact that she was a lone girl in the company of two male classmates whom she barely even knew, so when the room went dark all of a sudden, the fear and panic rising from the pit of her stomach and the precarious images flashing in her mind weren't something she could've easily put under control. Damn it! She should never have watched Shutter, Zen thought as she positioned her phone against the wall near the basin, making sure its flashlight was illuminating the closed space. Then she opened the tap to let the water flow.

...

He's taking forever in the bathroom, Raine thought as he examined his wet hand under his phone's light. He'd remembered only now how his wet hand came in contact with the floor after he accidentally spilt water over Zen. Now his hand was partly brown and he couldn't find a single towel to wipe the dirt off. If he recalled correctly, the old lady had mentioned having some clean towels inside the bathroom; he might as well ask Zen to throw one out for him.

He tapped the bathroom door once—no response. A second tap—still no answer. Was something wrong?

...

Zen closed the tap after allowing the cool water to rinse away the fear that had stained her face earlier. She thought she'd heard something while the tap was on, but she wasn't hearing anything now. Either the bathroom was haunted or she was just imagining things. Zen shook off those thoughts as she took off her jacket and put it aside. Thankfully, it wasn't wet since she wore it unbuttoned. The water mostly attacked the shirt she wore underneath. Her pants were also safe so she didn't need to take it off and hang it dry which would be very unfortunate given the position she was in.

Zen sighed in relief as she rolled up the edges of her shirt and squeezed out the excess fluid before taking it off completely. Apart from the nude bra she was wearing, the upper portion of her body was left exposed.

"Hey, are you done? I need a towel."

Zen jumped in surprise. Raine was right outside the bathroom door. Shit! She forgot to lock the door.

"I knocked twice. Are you okay in there? If you don't say anything, I'm coming in," she heard him say.

Zen turned around and locked her eyes to the door, her hands trembling uncontrollably. Saying she was startled by his sudden intrusive words would be an understatement. She was not wearing a shirt at the moment. Her voice didn't surface. It was as if a large fishbone was stuck at the base of her throat. How could she respond to him without a voice? Zen was on the verge of hyperventilating.

"I'm coming in," Raine said. Then a soft click was heard as he twisted the door handle.