CHAPTER 9: SPLIT-SECOND EVENT
***
The three hours they had spent together felt like a fleeting heartbeat, yet paradoxically, it seemed to stretch into an eternal summer in their collective memory.
It was the kind of time that flowed like honey—thick, sweet, and slow—until it was suddenly gone.
They were so deeply immersed in the rhythm of their shared joy that even if someone had physically smacked their faces with a grandfather clock, they wouldn't have registered the passage of the day.
Now, as the sun began its final descent, painting the Japanese-themed park in hues of bruised purple and burnt orange, the trio found themselves running along a wide, cobblestone path.
Their laughter echoed off the traditional wooden facades of the stalls, a bright and musical sound that contrasted with the lengthening shadows.
They were still buzzing from their last stop: a goldfish scooping stand.
Wyne, usually the most composed, had suffered a humiliating defeat when a particularly feisty comet goldfish had flicked a tail-full of water directly into her eye, causing her to shriek and drop her paper scooper in a panic.
"Hahaha! Wyne, you should've definitely seen your face earlier!" Trizha shouted between gasps of air, her sides aching from laughter as she nearly doubled over while running. "You looked so absolutely ugly! Your eyes were bugging out like you'd just seen a ghost, not a tiny orange fish!"
"Oh, look who's talking!" Wyne fired back, her voice dripping with playful sarcasm despite her damp bangs.
She wiped a stray droplet from her cheek and threw Trizha a teasing, smug smirk.
"This is coming from the girl who nearly had a heart attack over a Sadako prank the second we stepped foot into the hotel. At least the fish was real, Trizha. You were fighting for your life against a paid actor in a wig."
Wyne paused for a moment, her eyes glinting with a mischievous light as she remembered an even better moment—the face Trizha had made when Margaret pulled her own scare tactic back at the bus.
Wyne quickly covered her mouth with her hand, trying and failing to suppress a fresh wave of giggles.
"Hehe... I'm just glad I managed to catch that expression on camera before I started laughing my head off," Wyne added, her voice muffled by her palm but radiating triumph.
"Wyne, I am dead serious," Trizha said, her tone shifting into a defensive, mock-threatening growl.
She stopped running for a second to point a finger at her friend, pouting her lips in a way that she clearly thought looked intimidating.
"Post that video online and I will personally make sure that you never get to move your face again. I'll glue your expressions in place."
Margaret, who had been drifting alongside them like a quiet shadow, tilted her head as she observed Trizha's pout.
She recognized the impression immediately; Trizha was trying to mimic Margaret's own flat, unreadable stare, though she was failing miserably due to the sheer amount of expressive energy radiating from her.
Wyne, however, remained entirely unfazed by the threat.
She crossed her arms over her chest and arched an eyebrow, looking down at Trizha with the supreme confidence of someone holding all the leverage.
"Oooo! Wow, look at me, I'm actually very scared of your 'Margaret' impression," Wyne teased, her voice dripping with mock-terror.
She leaned in closer to Trizha, her smirk widening. "But seriously, Trizha, that was a terrible attempt. You have way too much personality to pull off a 'creepy and vacant' persona."
"B-but still...!" Trizha stammered, her face turning a light shade of pink as her defense crumbled.
She lowered her hand and looked at Wyne with pleading eyes. "Just... promise me you won't post that, okay? I have a very, very big reputation to maintain!"
"Okay, okay. I get it," Wyne relented, though the smugness didn't entirely leave her face. "I understand the trauma of getting embarrassed for the second time in the same day. Your secret is safe with me... for now." She teased.
As the two girls continued their banter—a rare stretch of time where no genuine arguments broke out—Margaret remained in her usual state of silent observation.
She watched the back-and-forth like a spectator at a tennis match, her mind already cataloging the social cues and preparing a fresh, unsettling sentence to drop into the conversation should the peace start to fray.
However, her focus was suddenly yanked away.
Out of the corner of her right eye, through the gaps in the passing crowd and the fluttering festival banners, she caught a glimpse of something familiar.
A shock of vibrant red hair moved through the throng of people several yards away.
Accompanying the red-haired figure was a man who stood out like a cold streak in a warm room.
He had stark white hair and was dressed with a severe, funereal elegance—a black suit topped with a heavy black trench coat that seemed too warm for the Malaysian climate.
The two of them were moving with a strange, purposeful synchronization, turning off the main thoroughfare and entering a narrow side-path that led toward the more secluded areas of the park.
Margaret recognized the red hair instantly, but the man in black was a total enigma.
"...Was that Zack?" Margaret asked.
Her usual muted mutter had unintentionally sharpened into a casual tone loud enough to pierce through Wyne and Trizha's bickering.
Both girls stopped instantly, their heads snapping in the direction Margaret was facing.
They were just in time to see a final, fleeting fraction of Zack's red hair disappear behind the corner of a stone wall.
Because of the angle and the speed of their disappearance, neither Wyne nor Trizha caught sight of the tall man in the black trench coat.
"Wait... Yeah... that was definitely Zack just now," Wyne confirmed, her brow furrowing. "What is he doing way over there?"
Trizha's eyes lit up instantly.
Her earlier exhaustion and the embarrassment of the goldfish incident were forgotten, replaced by a surge of sheer, bubbly excitement at the mention of her boyfriend.
"Zack! Hey, Zack!" Trizha began to shout, her cheerfulness returning in full force as she started to move.
She didn't wait for the others, her legs already carrying her toward the alleyway where they had seen him.
The trio began to head for the path, their pace quickening as they prepared to reunite with the missing piece of their group.
But then, the world broke.
For a terrifying, inexplicable split second, the 'screen' of reality turned pitch 'Black.'
It was instantaneous and absolute, identical to the way a television screen dies when the power is abruptly cut. In that micro-moment, there was no light, no sound, and no sensation—only a void that shouldn't have existed.
Then, just as quickly as it had vanished, everything returned to normal.
The sun was still setting, the lanterns were still glowing, and the distant music of the park resumed its melody.
There was no lingering trace of the darkness.
To any outside observer, nothing had gone wrong.
However, Trizha felt the impact of it in her very marrow.
She froze mid-stride, her feet skidding slightly on the cobblestones as she came to a dead halt.
Her mind was reeling, a sense of profound disorientation washing over her.
During that blacked-out second, she had seen something—or someone.
A fleeting, ghostly glimpse of a person had flashed across her vision, someone she recognized from the fragmented, hazy dream she'd had back at the aquarium.
The image had been sharp, vivid, and laden with a heavy, crushing emotion.
But as she stood there, paralyzed and dumbfounded, the memory began to dissolve.
It was like trying to hold water in a sieve; the harder she tried to grasp the details of the person she'd seen, the faster the information slipped away.
The stockpiled memory failed to take root, and within seconds, she had forgotten the face entirely.
She was left only with a lingering, cold hollow in her chest and the confusing sensation of having missed a beat in the music of the universe.
Trizha stood trembling, her hand slowly rising to her heart as she stared at the alleyway where Zack had vanished.
"Trizha? What's wrong?" Wyne asked, coming up behind her and placing a hand on her shoulder.
Trizha blinked, the fog in her brain clearing just enough for her to find her voice, though it sounded distant even to her.
"I... I don't know. I thought I saw... something."
That 'something'... was straight out of a fantasy.