One More Fucking Time! Part 1

They had nothing but ill will toward each other.

Entangled together, the two of them rush toward the end of this bad blood and toward catastrophe in the middle of the desert...

"I’ve been thinking."

"...What?"

As the sun slowly set in the middle of the desert, Raven whispered softly with a creepy smile. To a flustered and silent Nicholas, he said in a low voice:

"No one knows that you and I came to the desert alone."

Nicholas’s eyes widened as if he had heard something unbelievable.

"You probably didn’t even tell anyone where we were going, since you knew you had to bury me in secret."

And that was true.

Nicholas had hidden today’s desert picnic from even Jerry. Raven, who was more than half a head taller than him and hard as muscle all over, was far too heavy. Straddling his waist and driving a knee into his thigh, Raven fiddled with Nicholas’s shoulder. It was a gentle touch that didn’t seem to use much force. But Nicholas knew exactly what that hand could do.

"So it sounds like I could bury you here instead of the medicine, and no one would ever know... What do you think?"

Raven whispered that in the sweetest voice imaginable. He looked like someone feeling a tremendous temptation. That licking gaze fixed directly on Nicholas’s eyes. It was the look of an omnipotent demon clutching someone’s lifeline in his hand.

All the blood drained from Nicholas’s face. Pale with fear, he swallowed hard and barely managed to move his lips.

"Suddenly... why...?"

He didn’t know why Raven had suddenly turned on him and attacked him. Of course, Raven had threatened his life several times before. But ever since the time he’d first burst into the office drugged out of his mind and holding a photo, Raven had never really tried to kill him.

* * *

"What exactly do you want me to do?"

Staring coldly at Raven, Nicholas blurted that out. Everyone has their own circumstances anyway. It’s impossible for others to fully understand them. Raven couldn’t understand him, and he couldn’t understand Raven.

Then he could only say what he wanted to say.

"If you really won’t be satisfied unless you kill me, then go ahead and try it. I can’t accept dying over a single movie. Snatching the lead role by threatening you wasn’t a crime big enough to deserve death, was it? But I was the one who was wrong, and you’re the one who’s angry. I know I have no right to say something like that."

Raven fell silent for a moment.

Nicholas, with fear written all over his eyes, found it absurd to be told to try whatever he wanted. He didn’t even feel like laughing at such a self-righteous attitude.

What the hell was wrong with this junkie that he was offering his life like some great act of mercy?

He no longer had even a shred of patience for this nonsense. Raven’s large hand closed around Nicholas’s neck. Little by little, more and more force entered that brutal grip.

Nicholas, eyes wide, instinctively grabbed Raven’s forearm. But he didn’t stop him...