LOGINShare
Chapter 163: Under the Spotlight
Last Updated:
2024-10-29 19:42:56Emmet listened out as Lila left the floor, going downstairs to complete whatever work that she needed to do that day to support both of them, and let out a sigh in relief after counting to ten and confirming that yes, she really would be downstairs and wouldn't be returning back up, leaving him safe.
He had worked out that she worked from before sunrise to after sunset, significantly longer after sunset than before sunrise, and would only come upstairs again to pick up her lunch and a snack later on, to keep her going through the day, before she would return one final time where she wouldn't leave to go back down.
That schedule would persist for six days at a time, with the seventh day lasting to approximatly sunset, where Lila would return upstairs early and would sequester herself away in her room to be completely alone, not at all particularly interested in interracting with Emmet.
It was easy enough to move around the floor without actually tipping her of
Related chapters
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 164: The Second Day of Christmas
On the Second Day of ChristmasMy True Love Sent to meTwo Turtle Dovesand a Partridge in a Pear TreeLila waited until her mother went silent, after the sun had set, to move away the makeshift barricade that she had set up to keep her bedroom door shut.Glancing at the clock that hung on her wall, Lila surmised that she would need to make supper within twenty minutes, considering her mother was a little bit incapacitated, before her father came home to see what exactly had happened while he had been away.When Lila was moving into high school and the selections were coming up, he had not been interested in attending any kind of open evening events, leaving her alone to submit her own options after hearing what other people at her primary school had said about where would be best to go, easily deciding to go for the top high school in the area and then moving down the list of Ofsted rankings.
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 165: The First Therapy
Emmet had quickly found that, in the absence of a zimmerframe or some kind of real or proper physiotherapy equipment, he would have to make do with the window sill and the walls of the bedroom, that he had been willingly confining himself in, to do as best as he could to try and build up some of the strength that he had before he had sustained all his injuries and then handcuffed into lying down. It had belatedly occurred to him that at some point, the catheter inside him had been removed, allowing him to move around once more freely, but that he had no memory of the event, whether it be for his own good or not. No matter what, it was still suspect, and it would simply be absolutely terrible if Lila was the one to do it so, having no idea how catheters were inserted and removed from the human body, not that he particularly wanted to know anyway. The fact that Lila knew details about something so private him felt like an insult, a condescention, and an imbalan
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 166: The Third Day of Christmas
On the third day of ChristmasMy True Love Sent to meThree French Hens,Two Turtle Doves,And a Partridge in a Pear Tree. Standing in the dark kitchen, wet upto her elbows from doing the dishes, Lila waved her hands through the murkey, dirty water inside the sink and wondered where exactly her parents had gone wrong, picking out each and every memory where they had explictly told her what exactly their damage was. Beginning with her father, she turned over and examined one of the long lost statements that he had carelessly given away when he was younger and still invested in the fact that he had a child that he really ought to at least be present for, even if he was still somewhat useless, and more damningly not interested in particularly helping mch in rasing it. In one absently given statement, her father had once relinquished the little tidbit that Lila's very own, and still to this d
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 167: My Sight
Emmet had begun standing at the window of the guest room that Lila had set him up, watching the street below and seeing the goings on that happened outside the little room that had encompassed the entirety of his world. The windows on the other side of the street reflected back the sign of Lila’s café. ‘Church Street Coffee’ was what she had apparently decided to name it. In his opinion, it was a terrible name and uncreative to name it after the street it was on. It seemed that her creativity only extended to finding ways to torture him, leaving nothing else to apply to other facets of her life. The café seemed to be the shortest building in the area as well. The building on the other side of the street, exactly opposite to the cafe, stood much higher and looked to be four floors tall, the walls dark tinted glass and surrounded by shiny metal frames. There was a school at the end of the street which stuck out like a sore thumb. It was guarded by tall
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 168: On the Fourth Day of Christmas
On the Fourth Day of ChristmasMy True Love sent to me, Four Calling Birds,Three French Hens,Two Turtle Doves,and a Partridge in a Pear Tree. Lila balanced precariously on the edge of her window sill. The cold night air whipped up her hairs and the ruffles of her clothes, slapping her chilled face with the loose strands that managed to escape the scrunchie that she had used. It almost felt like nature itself was berating her for her course of action. She ignored the feeling of wrongness and simply swung her backpack over her shoulders, making sure that it was trapping her ponytail down to press on her back and that it would be secure enough to not jostle about if she needed to run in an emergency. Lila swivelled her body around to face her room window again and reached inside to pull her suitcase through and out into the night. She held it across her chest and
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 169: On the Fifth Day of Christmas
On the Fifth Day of ChristmasMy True Love gave to meFive Golden RingsFour Calling BirdsThree French HensTwo Turtle Doves And a Partridge in a Pear Tree The sky was covered in a thick cover of black clouds, stretching out far and wide to prevent even the slightest slivers of silver light to pass through, obscuring the moon and all the constellations of the stars that Lila had always been able to look up at as she had grown up. On some particularly bad days, Lila climbed out of her blankets, opened the curtains and then had simply stared out at the sky, trying to find and point out all the stars that she had memorised off from the star maps that had been in her primary school library, all of them read, traced over time and time again, and fully engrained in her mind by the time she had left primary school. At High School, her interest had waned further
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 170: On the Sixth Day of Christmas
On the Sixth Day of ChristmasMy True Love gave to me Six Geese A LayingFive Golden RingsFour Calling BirdsThree French HensTwo Turtle Doves And a Partridge in a Pear Tree The bus, for once in its life, came at a timely manner, arriving within the minute that it had been scheduled to trundle up to the bus stop. That was if the faded and scratched out bus time table was correct and not an old version that hadn’t been updated. Thinking about it, the time table probably didn’t even matter because the bus came around often enough anyway to not particularly need a time table, what with the limited number of routes that it could possibly take in this middle of nowhere town. Lila gave the bus driver, an old, usually jovial man who she had seen every single day of college, the name of the same of the same bus stop that she had disembarked at every sin
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 171: On the Seventh Day of Christmas
On the Seventh Day of ChristmasMy True Love gave to me Seven Swans a SwimmingSix Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling BirdsThree French HensTwo Turtle DovesAnd a Partridge in a Pear Tree. Lila finished the rest of the journey scowling to herself on her bus seat, wondering why the town, despite knowing all about her situation, despite how hard she had worked to hide it to prevent extra ostracism, still did nothing to help her or her family. She wondered how dis attached someone had to be to excuse those acts of violence, terror, and abuse that were happening right underneath their noses and then still go on with their day as if nothing bad had been going on. Dimly, she wondered what would've happened if she had killed her parents in a fit of violent rage and anger and whether she would be able to get away with murder, considering the apathy of all the individuals around her, in light of all she had learned just then. It was then she decided that she really have ough
Latest chapter
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 371: Schematics
“Why’re you sleeping on the floor like that? Come on, get up. You’ll hurt your back doing that,” Doctor Marigold chided, dragging all her bits of heavy machinery around the office space to prepare for her demonstration.Behind her, Lila remained still.“I know that you’re not dead. Come, get up already,” she called out, stepping over a few sheets of paper that she had laid out to grab Lila by the shoulder and heave her up into sitting.The stubborn girl just flopped down again, not opening her eyes.“If you get the fuck up, we can move the flight a week forward so you can stop worrying about it,” Lucy Marigold shouted across the room.Like a rubber band, Lila snapped back up and finally opened her eyes.It had been harder to see the bags below them when they had been closed and Doctor Marigold wondered if she should buy the girl some sleep tablets.“I’m awake,” Li
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 370: EXTRA GRETEL
Yolanda seemed to understand that she needed to back off and stop teasing Gretel, when the other woman's eyes suddenly misted over, and it was if she was no longer a part of this world.She kept the bubbling annoyance within her away from her face, putting on instead a mask of concern as she reached out and poked Gretel's arms, trying to maybe prod her out of her stupor and bring her back from the recesses of her mind.Yolanda had never actually seen somebody collapse inwards to a catatonic state over her own actions.It was interesting to see it all happen and fold out in front of her.She poked Gretel again, touching her in the face lightly to see if that would possibly work to pull the other woman out of her mind and back into the world where she was needed proper.It wouldn't reflect well on her if Gretel didn't wake up within the hour.It didn't feel as
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 369: Thanatos
When she awoke, she was sat ready to eat and was dressed just like her mother, in a pastel blouse and a lungi down to the floor.Lila looked down at herself and jumped when she heard rattling, noticing the ten, or so, bangles on each arm and the lines of mehndi that ran down all the way to the hems of her sleeves, resting halfway between her shoulders and elbows. A pin held her blouse shut at the top and a quick once over of her hair, with one of her hands, revealed that it had been styled in a simple bun and adorned with flowers.“This is weirdly romantic,” Lila commented, staring at the lit candles nestled in the variously sized candelabrums set around the circular room.There was no door, but a giant window which led to a balcony outside. There was no ceiling but the walls reaching upwards, all the way up, until they formed a dome in the same shade of dull brown that coated the floor and the giant, round table in the centre.The only dishes
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 368: Sleep
“So, is she finally asleep?” Emmet asked the boy stood behind the counter. He was exceedingly slim for someone surrounded by sugar all day and Emmet could make out the outlines of his spindly elbows through his shirt. His face held a no nonsense, blunt, and almost bored expression. “Yeah, she is. She’s been knocked out on the sofa since I sent her back there,” Kai answered the long haired man in front of him, his hair pulled back by a ribbon matching his eyes before being pulled over his shoulder once more. He looked vain. “Oh good. Don’t tell her that I was involved,” the man asked, putting both his palms up to face Kai. “I’m telling her that you’re a fucking weirdo for that,” was the scowled answer. “No. Seriously, don’t tell her. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. She’s known my partner for longer that I’ve known him. She doesn’t trust me with him. Why’re you making that face?” Emmet tried to justify himself before giving up
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 367: Tired
“Are you sure that you’re getting enough sleep?” Kai asked Lila, watching her sway on her feet and clutching the front counter.“Yes,” she gasped, dropping her head into her hands, elbows on the table.“Go and lie down on the sofa. Go to sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you up when I have to leave for college,” Kai instructed her, tapping her on the shoulders and shepherding her towards the office.“… fine,” she conceded, letting Kai move her along towards the back.“You know that this just proves my point,” Kai pointed out, pushing her through the boundary of the door and closing it behind her.“Fine,” she whispered back to him, talking into the silence of the office.She let herself fall over the sofa, draping her upper body over the arm rest and letting her head be cushioned by the pillows. Shuffling a bit over to put her body entirely on the sofa, Lila f
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 366: Punching Bag
“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now again!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now keep on going!”Lila landed each punch, timing her breaths to the count as she moved her fists, dodging underneath the swing that came towards her head, before blocking the second hit that came to her and moving along with the force of the fist that hit her arm.The swinging punching bag forced distance between Lila and Tweedle Dum, and she stepped back to where she was stood before, within the path of the moving bad, to put more distance between him and her.“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!”Lila punched the bag once more, landing all of her hits.“Okay, time for a break,” Tweedle Dum announced, grabbing the punching bag and pulling it back to him as Lila moved away from the centre of the room, sitting down on one of the rickety plastic chairs at the side of the room.She took of
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 365: Much Older Nephew
“Bitch! Why’d you run off and abandon me like that!?” Lila shouted from behind the counter when Kai finally walked back into the store.She was waving her hands about and wore an apron covered in flour as the single customer in the store, an old man precariously balancing on his cane, slept whilst leaning on the radiator.“I thought that you wanted some bonding time with your family so I left you to do that it private!” Kai answered her, tiptoeing past their unconscious patron, in a combination of whispering and shouting.“They’re hardly my family and you left us in the middle of a public café!” Lila cried, not modulating her voice at all.In the background, the old man began to snore.“But you still talk to them a lot like you do to me, so I let you, and besides, I got about fifty more pages of Good Omens done in Waterstones,” Kai appealed, finally at the counter and opening up the
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 364 EXTRA GRETEL
Gretel and Silver had their fun as he continued to teach her how the interface worked and how he had managed to figure out that the system was an older model from the lack of integration between the screen and the touch pad, and explaining how easily it would potentially be to do so once the technology, as displayed in this device, had been demonstrated and established to work in a functional product."We were working on something like this as well, back in the workshops back home for the company that I was in the research and development department for. We were trying to get our motion sensors to be as small as possible for more commercial and personal use of technology that we could sell to the public and those who couldn't afford the contact computers.We had no idea on how their tech worked, because of trade and company secrets and all, but we managed to piece together a few things by looking at the patents and when we bought a few and m
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 363: Alcohol and Sleep
“Alright, the shop’s free. Why are you actually here?” Lila questioned, crossing her arms and staring down at the tablecloth of Jasper and Emmet’s table.“I’ve got lesson now. I’ll be back in a few hours,” the teenage boy behind Lila announced, picking up a bag that had been hidden behind the counter the entire time and rushing outside.Lila continued to stand there, waiting for a reply.Jasper couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t meeting either his or Emmet’s eyes.“Are you planning to leave us?” he asked her back.Lila’s fingers dug into the creases of her shirt,” I’m going to be leaving for a trip soon, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Kai’ll be running the shop and will be looking after things, broadly. He lives here now and I scheduled my leave for when his school term ends so he can take care of things.”“On thi
