“First,” Darcy sat next to him, “I need you to tell me as much as possible about this Karl. All the details you know, anything can be helpful.”
Quinn nodded in comprehension, and then began: “Well, it’s pretty hard to define a person, but I’ll try my best.” He looked up, as though trying to envisage a complete image of his missing friend. “Karl is... a pretty cool guy. I mean, he was the type of person you’d look up to, you know? Very academically respected. Socially too, actually. Besides me, he had a dozen of friends. Whenever we hung out as a group, it would always feel like he was our leader somehow, you know? That kind of vibe. He always cracked out the best jokes, and would fix any misunderstandings. Lots of girls were crushing on him, too, not that he cared about them.” Quinn turned to Darcy with a strange expression on his face. “He had a particular someone in mind, someone you’d never expect a guy like Karl to like this much.” Quinn smiled at Darcy, and she felt a little awkward. Was he talking about a person they both know, or? “She’s a pretty weird person, the loner type, you know?” Oh, Darcy thought to herself, finally someone she could relate to. Quinn’s ocean-blue eyes scanned her attire with a slight frown. “Not very fashionable either. But she’s pretty cute, I mean, in her own way.”
“Huh?” Was he implying what she thought he was implying? But there was no way, was there? An apparently really popular guy like Karl liking someone like her?
“Yeah, it’s you, Darcy. Karl has a big fat crush on you.” Darcy stared at him blankly, mouth agape. “I guess it’s pretty surprising.” Quinn chuckled. “You’d think Karl would be able to get any girl he wanted, but he doesn’t have enough balls to even greet the girl he’s been crushing on for a whole year.”
Darcy blinked. “Are you fucking serious?” She had a faint blush on her face, but only Quinn noticed it. “One hundred percent. He’s actually the real stalker in the story, not me. I know all the stuff about you from him. I mean, he even read all of your novels and stuff. I don’t know how he found out about them, though. But he’d always come telling me about how well you write, and how inspiring you were to him. He told me about all your stories, too, but I’ve never been a books-guy, so I don’t remember much of those, sorry.” He chuckled again, and amidst her bewilderment, Darcy noticed how perfect his teeth were. “Though I do remember that you’re working on a new one, called Egg right?”
“It’s E.G.G! Not Egg! Excessive, Great, and Glamorous!” Darcy instinctively protested. “But yes, it’s a play on the word ‘egg.’ No wait, how does he even know about that? I haven’t published anything about it! I didn’t even start writing it yet!”
“Beats me. I guess even Karl can be pretty creepy. Anyway, despite his cool appearance and shit, he’s actually your typical virgin, you know?” Quinn smiled nostalgically. “Like the type to blush like crazy if anything remotely related to you was mentioned. I used to tease him a lot about it.” Although he wouldn’t say it, Quinn realized at that moment that Darcy and Karl would be the perfect match for one another, especially with Darcy blushing so hard just at the idea of being liked by someone. “Besides his obsession with you,” he continued, “Karl was also pretty fond of writing, which was weird cuz he was majoring in Computer Sciences like me. I once asked him why he didn’t go for Literature. He told me that he never knew how much he liked reading or writing till he saw you, and by then it was already too late to change majors.”
“D-do you know anything else about him that has nothing to do with me?” Quinn found it funny how embarrassed Darcy was. He placed his index finger on his lips as he thought about other facts he knew. “Well, he was also a bit weird. Weird as in he had this strange habit of secrecy. Like sometimes he would appear out of nowhere, other times he would disappear out of nowhere. Whenever I asked him about it, he would either shrug it off or change the topic altogether. I didn’t think of it much back then. But thinking about it now, maybe it has something to do with his disappearance.”
“Maybe those were the times where he went to spy on me or something...” Quinn cracked up laughing at this remark. “You have a point there, actually.” Then it was suddenly silent. While Darcy was running her head over this amount of information, Quinn was deep in thought about his friend and about the whole situation. He never would have thought that a day would come where he would ask Karl’s crush to help him find Karl himself.
“I’ll help you as much as I can.” The sudden sound of her voice made the pair of ocean blue eyes turn towards her. “But I will go no further than reading those documents.”
“Yeah, thanks a lot.” Quinn stood up with a satisfied smile on his face. “Really, thank you, Darcy.” The latter nodded at him with a conflicted expression. They exchanged goodbyes, and Quinn left. Almost immediately after, Darcy let out an overwhelmed sigh. She pulled her hoodie and took a sniff at her body. She stuck out her tongue in disgust, wishing that Quinn did not smell anything, then started preparing for a shower.
As the hot water ran down her body, Darcy found herself excited. A popular guy like Karl liked her enough to start writing, enough to blabber about her this much to Quinn. Someone actually liked her... someone deemed socially important too. This someone has gone missing, and she could help find him. She couldn’t wait to see what kind of stuff he wrote, and whether or not there would be a mention of her. Darcy unconsciously blushed at that thought. Covered in towels, she rushed back to her room. Once inside, she knelt to the floor and began looking at the papers.
Quinn smoothly slipped back into the party. It was as rowdy as ever, and he was no longer in the mood for it. Thinking about Karl always made him sour, and now he wanted everyone out of his room. Knowing it was impossible, he threw himself on his couch, on which also sat a couple of girls making out. They did not seem to notice him at all, all the better for him. He leaned his head back, and tried to push all this noise to the background of his head.
“... bro.” A sound woke him up from his 3-minute uncomfortable nap. “Wake up, bro.”
He opened his eyes to an aching neck, numb arms, and his friend Adam who was looking down at him with a beer in his hand.
“What is it, man?”
“Aren’t you coming? Everyone’s heading out to the pool. We were waiting for you to come back.”
Quinn really didn’t feel like swimming right now. But they were waiting for him; it wouldn’t be cool to stand them up. With a groan, he stood up and followed Adam out of the room. Now outside the dorms, his group walked cheerfully and loudly towards the college pool, which was off-limits at this time of the day. Nothing was off-limits if you bribed someone enough, though. As they marched on, Quinn unconsciously looked behind him at the girls’ dorm. There it was, her window. He wondered if she had begun reading the papers. Seeing how interested she seemed in the whole thing, she probably had read through half of them already. His heart leaped in surprise when the window opened.
“Keep it down! Some people have work to do!” There she was, wrapped in a flower-patterned towel. He couldn’t see her expression as it was pretty dark, but he could guess she was angry. He chuckled audibly. How cute, he thought.
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