Chapter 17: Rice Trails

Salih was pouring over some maps, marking points with some toy cars, and drawing on trails with grains of rice. He looked up as he heard a knock on the door. No one entered. “Yes? Do you need something?” He called out. After a few more seconds of silence, Hudhayfah entered the room, jumping onto his back and almost knocking him onto the ground. Salih tried shrugging the guy off, but Hudhayfah clung onto him tighter, laughing as he squirmed. Just when he finally let go, and Salih was able to turn around, Hudhayfah was overcome by another bout of laughter as the toy cars and rice model on the table caught his eye. Salih followed his line of vision and shot him a glare as he realised what Hudhayfah was laughing at. “Rice acts as a natural paperweight you know!!! And it has the additional benefit of representing footprints,” he said with a slight grin, as Hudhayfah, who had just been about to recover from his laughter, collapsed into yet another round of giggles.

Five minutes later, the boys were seated at the table and looking over Salih’s plan. Hudhayfah looked up, and over to Salih, “So, you plan to execute this by the end of next week?”. The boy nodded firmly in affirmation, then tilted his head to the side in thought. Sailh’s eyes scanned over the scene of rice granules again, shifting a few a couple of millimetres before speaking, “actually, maybe even by the end of this week!”. Hudhayfah flashed him an overly enthusiastic smile before dropping it just as fast. “No. There’s no way I’m letting you do that.”. Salih’s mouth dropped open, about to protest, when Hudhayfah spoke again. “Not that I don’t want you taking down our enemies, but I can’t let you act so fast. We don’t have the time nor resources to take on such a task at this point in time, the school year just started! Furthermore, that sister of yours has gotten herself benched, and Zaki is currently injured, so we don’t really have the hands for it either!”Salih sat up straighter in his chair, “What do you mean Aisha and Zaki are both unavailable! How did they manage… wait, forget that, it’s those two, of course they’re messing about again.”. Hudhayfah was quick to respond, “you gotta give it to them though, we weren’t much better when we…”. When we were their age - that’s what Hudhayfah had been about to say. When they were Aisha and Zaki’s age, Hudhayfah and Salih would find as many opportunities as possible to take breaks from their work, because although they were driven by their childhood to make the school as safe as possible, they had still been children afterall, and had revelled in every chance to have fun and lighten up their days. Hudhayfah shook his head, as if trying to shake out his thoughts, and stood up, letting Salih know he’d discuss their plans further after dinner, and left in search of Zaki.

It didn’t take Lucy long to get accustomed to being followed around outside of learning hours, and neither did it take her long to realise that she was being observed during those hours too, thanks to the school’s extensive surveillance system with cameras not only in all the corridors, but in selective classrooms too. Her adventures would have to be put on standby for the time being, but that didn’t mean ending her plans entirely. Every doorway she passed, every building she entered, and every alley she walked down she had been carefully making note of in the self curated map she had hidden between her mattress and bed sheets at the foot end of her bed. She had also noted down any colours she’d seen in different areas of the school, and had picked up on a pattern that everywhere students from her boarding house went appeared to be labelled by the same two shades of purple that adorned their common room, and all of their uniforms, and some classrooms also had a third colour, perhaps attributing a subject or specific year group which that room was used for most. This too had been noted on her map of course, but it led her to wonder why there was so much purple, if it was everywhere why was there a need to colour code it? It also did not explain the navy uniform of Hana who had been shadowing her since that first excursion. Her questions were soon to be answered though, as the weekend had finally reached her, and it was time to explore the market Natalya had mentioned, which famously would occur in the centre of the school, with every single occupant in attendance at some point or another.