The X-men run missions and work together with the NYPD, striving to maintain a peaceful balance between humans and mutants. When it comes to a fight, they won't back down from protecting those who need their help.
Haven presents itself as a humanitarian organization for activists, leaders, and high society, yet mutants are the secret leaders working to protect and serve their kind. Behind the scenes they bring their goals into reality.
From the time when mutants became known to the world, SUPER was founded as a black-ops division of the CIA in an attempt to classify, observe, and learn more about this new and rising threat.
The Syndicate works to help bring mutantkind to the forefront of the world. They work from the shadows, a beacon of hope for mutants, but a bane to mankind. With their guiding hand, humanity will finally find extinction.
Since the existence of mutants was first revealed in the nineties, the world has become a changed place. Whether they're genetic misfits or the next stage in humanity's evolution, there's no denying their growing numbers, especially in hubs like New York City. The NYPD has a division devoted to mutant related crimes. Super-powered vigilantes help to maintain the peace. Those who style themselves as Homo Superior work to tear society apart for rebuilding in their own image.
MRO is an intermediate to advanced writing level original character, original plot X-Men RPG. We've been open and active since October of 2005. You can play as a mutant, human, or Adapted— one of the rare humans who nullify mutant powers by their very existence. Goodies, baddies, and neutrals are all welcome.
Short Term Plots:Are They Coming for You?
There have been whispers on the streets lately of a boogeyman... mutant and humans, young and old, all have been targets of trafficking.
The Fountain of Youth
A chemical serum has been released that's shaving a few years off of the population. In some cases, found to be temporary, and in others...?
MRO MOVES WITH CURRENT TIME: What month and year it is now in real life, it's the same for MRO, too.
Fuegogrande: "Fuegogrande" player of The Ranger, Ion, Rhia, and Null
Neopolitan: "Aly" player of Rebecca Grey, Stephanie Graves, Marisol Cervantes, Vanessa Bookman, Chrysanthemum Van Hart, Sabine Sang, Eupraxia
Ongoing Plots
Magic and Mystics
After the events of the 2020 Harvest Moon and the following Winter Solstice, magic has started manifesting in the MROvere! With the efforts of the Welldrinker Cult, people are being converted into Mystics, a species of people genetically disposed to be great conduits for magical energy.
The Welldrinker Cult
A shadowy group is gaining power, drawing in people who are curious, vulnerable, or malicious, and turning them into Mystics. They are recruiting people into their ranks to spread the influence of magic in the world, but for what end goal?
Are They Coming for You?
There have been whispers on the streets lately of a boogeyman... mutant and humans, young and old, all have been targets of trafficking.
Adapteds
What if the human race began to adapt to the mutant threat? What if the human race changed ever so subtly... without the x-gene.
Atlanteans
The lost city of Atlantis has been found! Refugees from this undersea mutant dystopia have started to filter in to New York as citizens and businessfolk. You may make one as a player character of run into one on the street.
Got a plot in mind?
MRO plots are player-created the Mods facilitate and organize the big ones, but we get the ideas from you. Do you have a plot in mind, and want to know whether it needs Mod approval? Check out our plot guidelines.
Posted by Kealey Shinbo on May 29, 2010 20:50:54 GMT -6
X-Men
Team Leader of the X-Men
[color=deeppink]
Straight
Married (Tetsuya Shinbo)
1,652
4
Dec 31, 2019 21:55:08 GMT -6
Jules
Were an empath’s dreams really ever her own? It was something Kealey had pondered many times and something she had plenty of evidence to support. The problem was, the evidence supported both sides. Sometimes her dreams were normal, bits and pieces of the things she experienced every day mixed with her hopes, dreams, fantasies, and sometimes her fears. Other times, they were different. Like the night she’d met Venus, and the first night she’d stayed in the guest room at Jacen’s apartment. They changed, changes forced by the emotions of the people around her. Kealey was convinced of it, but she didn’t know any way to stop it. So every night, she simply went to sleep, and hoped for the best.
This particular night, a thunderstorm raged outside the windows of the mansion. Not a problem for Kealey. In fact, the extra noise had always made it easier to sleep. As Kealey slept, a boy re-entered the mansion after a night of dark work. As Kealey dreamed, he tried and failed to hold in the emotions that he’d so carefully bottled up on his way in. The dream changed.
They were jumping on the bed, up and down, up and down, up and down. The pillow rained feathers down on the two of them, but Kealey didn’t stop. Her Ma might be angry at first, but she and Maire would clean up the mess and put the feathers back in the pillow. Right now they looked like snow, only warm and soft instead of cold and wet. They were singing, Disney songs and Maire’s hair whipped around her face, like Ariel’s. Kealey smiled, both in the dream and in her dark mansion room.
Then. Everything changed.
They were in the church, standing on the risers. Kealey had never felt so proud in her life as she did in that moment, watching Maire climb down to sing her solo. All the sisters said she sang like an angel and Kealey agreed wholeheartedly. This was the moment they’d waited for, practiced for. Maybe it would be the start of the music career she and Maire always daydreamed about when they made up dances to their favorite songs.
The dream changed again.
Kealey was in the audience, staring at the risers full of little children as they sang their Catholic hymns. It didn’t matter that they were children. This was something she had to do. Something that had to be done. For the cause. In order to make them understand…
The blond head on the pillow jerked to one side, then the other, and a small whimper escaped Kealey’s lips. She’d had this dream before…but not like this…
It was almost time. They were going into the third song. Nobody else would be coming into the large sanctuary. They were all going to die. Each and every one of them were going to die. They had to die. This wasn’t something she wanted to do, it was something she’d been forced into doing. The redhead by herself opened her mouth and started to sing. This was what had to happen. She stood, yelling her message, reaching inside the coat she wore. She screamed as her thumb found the button and the world exploded in flames. The last thing she saw was the red head.
”NOOOOO” Kealey screamed, shooting bolt upright in her bed. Thunder crashed outside and she fell back against the pillow, turning her face into it and yelling again and again into the muffling confines of the fabric. Nightmares were nightmares, but just like dreams, an empath's nightmares didn’t ever really belong to her either.
Posted by Kealey Shinbo on May 29, 2010 21:30:01 GMT -6
X-Men
Team Leader of the X-Men
[color=deeppink]
Straight
Married (Tetsuya Shinbo)
1,652
4
Dec 31, 2019 21:55:08 GMT -6
Jules
Slowly the screams stopped, dissolving into tortured sobs that soaked her pillow with tears. She’d had the dream before, she’d had that dream many times before. Never like that though, never from the audience, never sure of what that man had to have been thinking. It was still there, lingering from the dream. That same intensity, the same…something clicked and Kealey pushed up from her pillow, scrubbing an arm across her eyes and face.
The emotions. They were still there. Someone was feeling all those same things as the man…as the murdering bastard who had blown up a church full of parents and their children. Motivation didn’t matter. Reasons didn’t matter. Nothing excused killing like that. Nothing.
Up she sat, concentrating harder on the emotions than she probably should have, letting them flow through her. The pain, the guilt, the need. Her breath came in heavy gasps, threatening hyperventilation and Kealey clapped hands to the sides of her face, trying to pull her emotions back, trying to gain some modicum of control over what was happening inside her head.
Up she got, staggering slightly towards the door. There was a murderer in the mansion. Somebody had done something very, very wrong. It was the only explanation. She was going to find them. Find them before they could unleash the actions associated with those emotions on anyone.
The blond reached her door, pulled it open, and prepared to leave her room to find the source of madness.
The emotions changed.
It took a moment for the full impact of what she was feeling to hit Kealey, and when it did she gasped, stopping dead in her tracks. Kealey’s legs turned to jelly and the full impact of what it all meant slammed into the blond. It was too much. She crumpled on the spot, mind retreating somewhere it could simply shut down for a while. Until it could deal.
There was only so long he and Cafas could both pretend to sleep, in their separate beds. Only so long the blank wall could keep the thoughts away. The blue paint was new. There weren’t even any cracks in it yet, or any spots; nothing to draw his eye more than any other place. Nothing to hold him.
Calley slipped from the bed, leaving as quietly as he’d come in. He’d go back to his own room. Maybe take his old clothes out to the forest while most people were still asleep, and burn them. He could take another shower after that, and watch the morning news for any traces of unidentified bodies turning up. He had little doubt she’d stay unidentified, even if her body emerged from the sewers. He’d—
He needed to not think about that for awhile. His head hurt, and he was tired. Sleep was just a very, very bad idea. That was thinking that he couldn’t wake up from. He was already hallucinating corpses collapsed in doorways; the last thing he needed was to get trapped in a dream world full of them. He needed to find something to—
That corpse was breathing. Calley came to a tentative halt, looking back over his shoulder. She was blonde, and slight, and young. This was all true. But she wasn’t Ellie. There really was a person collapsed in that doorway.
Calley hurried back to her side, kneeling down. “Hey,” he said softly. He started reaching for her shoulder, but thought better of it. Not just because she was a mutant with an unknown power—because even if she wasn’t Ellie, she was... disturbingly similar. He shouldn’t touch her. He’d lost that right. He probably never had it to begin with.
“Hey,” he said again, “wake up.” It was very important that she was all right. She had to be. He hadn’t even touched her. “Please wake up.”
Posted by Kealey Shinbo on May 30, 2010 0:06:42 GMT -6
X-Men
Team Leader of the X-Men
[color=deeppink]
Straight
Married (Tetsuya Shinbo)
1,652
4
Dec 31, 2019 21:55:08 GMT -6
Jules
There were no dreams this time, and later Kealey wouldn’t even be sure if she’d really lost consciousness. She laid on the floor, trying again and again to sort through the jumble of confused and intense emotions that were rolling through her head. It was just too much to handle. The guilt, the near panic, the disgust, desperation, the…other feelings. There had to be more than one person, there was no way that a single human or mutant could feel all those emotions.
A voice broke through the filmy haze over her thoughts and Kealey latched on to it, forcing her eyes open and finding herself staring up at a young brunette who hovered over her. ”I’m…I’m fine.” she whispered. She was relieved. Kealey didn’t know this young man, but he was someone, someone she could tell, even if he was alone.
Suddenly, the implications of that fact hit the blond and she forced herself up so fast her head spun a little.
A hand braced her on the floor and she stared at the young man, eyes pleading, ”What are you doing out here alone?! she breathed, looking up and down the hall for the owner of the feelings that still threatened to overwhelm her even if they were more tempered than before. ”I’m fine…but someone else isn’t…I can feel it. Something horrible happened tonight....”
“Easy, easy.” Sitting up didn’t seem to agree with her, just yet. Calley’s hands hovered in front of him, ready to catch her but not quite ready to touch her. “What happened?”
She didn’t just looked dazed, or sick—she looked scared. Her eyes raked over the hallway as if it were a dark back alley, rather than a carpeted Mansion hall. In the face of her panic, his own T-shirt and pajama pants felt as out of place as the cheerful morning sunlight. Her alarm was contagious: he found himself looking around for some attacker, subtly moving his own body between hers and the open hall. No one else should get hurt today. Yesterday. What time was it, when she’d finally—?
He didn’t need to think about that. He didn’t need to think about that, because there was another young woman right here, whose words were commanding his attention.
>> “I’m fine…but someone else isn’t…I can feel it. Something horrible happened tonight....”
Something horrible. “Like what?” The young man asked, his blue eyes focusing back on her. Goosebumps stood up all down the lengths of his bare arms. He felt cold, suddenly. His skin, his breath: it all felt as numb as it had back in the sewers.
“Who?” He asked, even though he didn’t want to know the answer.
Posted by Kealey Shinbo on May 30, 2010 0:30:40 GMT -6
X-Men
Team Leader of the X-Men
[color=deeppink]
Straight
Married (Tetsuya Shinbo)
1,652
4
Dec 31, 2019 21:55:08 GMT -6
Jules
>>“Like What?”
Blue eyes met blue, and Kealey shook her head, trying to take a deep breath but finding it caught in the back of her throat. She hiccupped slightly and tried again as tears welled up in her eyes, ”I don’t know…something horrible. He…he thought he had to do it…and the feelings are the same…but they were innocent. We never did anything to anyone…” She was babbling, some of it was gibberish, but Kealey didn’t know how else to get her point across, the hand not bracing her on the floor rose to her chest, like it was trying to force air inside. She had to calm down.
>>“Who?”
Kealey shook her head again, wiping her face on the sleeve of her shirt as she focused on the question, trying to figure out how to answer it.
”I don’t know…” she managed to croak out, ”But they’re dead…people don’t feel that way if someone isn’t dead.”
Kealey took another deep breath, it was finally starting to get a little easier, she met the blue eyes again, ”Who would do something like that?”
She wasn’t making much sense. She was making too much sense. He didn’t know how she could do both at the same time.
Something horrible that he thought he had to do; he did have to do it. She couldn’t just—she couldn’t just judge like that, without knowing it all. And who were they? He’d only—it had only been her. Only one. The feelings were the same as what? Had she felt this before?
What had that other man been thinking, when he’d killed them? Calley wanted to know. He wanted to talk to someone who knew. If someone else had done it, too, then maybe it wasn’t wrong.
He didn’t know how it had gone so wrong.
>> ”I don’t know… But they’re dead…people don’t feel that way if someone isn’t dead.”
She didn’t know. He tried not to look as relieved as he felt, or feel as relieved as he wanted to feel. Her power... it was obviously something psychic. Just not particularly fine-tuned. “Come on—let’s get you back inside your room. Out of the hall.”
>> ”Who would do something like that?”
Blue eyes met blue. He couldn’t seem to look away.
“Maybe someone who made a mistake,” he answered, the cold pouring down his spine, holding him place. She was crying: he was making her cry.
Posted by Kealey Shinbo on May 30, 2010 1:02:15 GMT -6
X-Men
Team Leader of the X-Men
[color=deeppink]
Straight
Married (Tetsuya Shinbo)
1,652
4
Dec 31, 2019 21:55:08 GMT -6
Jules
>>“Someone who made a mistake.”
Something inside Kealey snapped, and suddenly they weren’t talking about anything in the Mansion. She shook her head emphatically, ”No…no…how is something like that a mistake?” she asked, no pleaded, with the young man, trying to understand.
”The feelings…they were so intense, so sure….so disgusted…so wrong. Why? How? God help me but I can’t imagine what would make a person do that. ” She paused and shuddered, trying to keep the tears that were welling up again at bay, ”It was like I was in his head.” she said, meaning the man who’d destroyed any semblance of a normal life Kealey could ever have hoped for.
The young man wanted her to go back into the room, but Kealey shook her head, ”I can’t…I can’t go back in there. I have to find someone, need to find someone and tell them.”
She looked up and down the hallway again, ”What if they’re still here?”
He apologized, and Kealey shook her head, "I'm not crazy....please don't apologize."
Wrong. She said he’d been wrong. She said he’d been in his head, but she still couldn’t understand why he’d done it.
Was he really that much of a monster?
“Come on,” he said, barely feeling his lips as they numbly formed the words. He stood up, offering a hand back down to her. To help her get up, if she could stand to touch someone like him. “At least... you need to get dressed. Get calmed down some. So you can tell them what you know.” He motioned to her clothes. They were... somewhat less than decent. If he had a cover up, he would have offered it to her. He should probably be blushing, now. She was attractive. He just... couldn’t match up what he was seeing with what it was normal to feel.
Maybe something was broken with him. Maybe that’s why he’d been able to do what he’d done.
>> "I'm not crazy....please don't apologize."
“I know you’re not,” he said. “It’s your power to know this stuff, right? So... it must be true.” It was. “Just get changed. I’ll wait out here. We can... find someone. Tell them.”
He swallowed thickly. “When they find him. What will they do to him?”
Maybe it was for the better, whatever they did. Maybe he should run before she told. Maybe he was going to wake up soon. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, if he never woke up again.
Maybe she could tell him what he was supposed to feel.
Posted by Kealey Shinbo on May 30, 2010 1:38:15 GMT -6
X-Men
Team Leader of the X-Men
[color=deeppink]
Straight
Married (Tetsuya Shinbo)
1,652
4
Dec 31, 2019 21:55:08 GMT -6
Jules
He stood, and Kealey watched, wondering if she could get up now if she tried. It seemed such a monumental task when so much energy was going to trying to figure out what was happening inside her head. Shouldn’t the echo of the emotions have gone by now?
Reaching out, she took the offered hand and stood. He pointed out that she needed more clothes before she went and found someone, and Kealey looked down. He was probably right, though at this point speed was the far more obvious concern. She was in shorts though, she never wore shorts around the mansion. She couldn’t handle the questions that the sight of her legs might bring, so she nodded and turned, moving into the room she’d left. Clothes first…
He spoke again, and Kealey digested the words as she made her way to her closet for a pair of sweat pants. Her powers were usually right, if she could puzzle out the intent of the emotions she was feeling. These had been distinct emotions with no other possible intents...and they simply weren’t going away and Kealey shuddered again, they had to have been strong to have stuck around this long.
The question was strange…what would they do in America if a murderer was caught? What was the policy, how did the courts work…why did he care?
Kealey turned back around and stared at the blue-eyed man who was still in the hallway. She hadn’t felt his emotions since she’d opened her eyes. If he was an adapted, then she shouldn’t have been able to still feel the emotions of the murderer. She could…
Suddenly, two and two added up to a horrifying four. The emotions, the horrible, terrifying emotions were coming from the very same person who’d just convinced her to walk out of the very public hallway and back into her single, solitary bedroom.
The sweats she’d had in her hand were on the floor now and she continued to stare.
”I….don’t know.” she said, ”If it really was an accident…..I just don’t know.”
Now that she was focused on his emotions, she could feel them all. There was so much more than what she’d initially thought. The guilt was incredible, nearly overwhelming, and the absolute and utter despair. If she hadn't known the rest, she'd have felt deeply sorry for the young man. Maybe she did anyway and words were spilling from her mouth before she knew what was happening.
”It’s not my place to judge, or any man’s. Ultimately, their talk will be with God.” She said, ”And it’s up to them to reconcile that.”
He hadn’t meant to follow her into the room; he really hadn’t. But she’d still been talking when she went in; her words drew him in her wake. Then they were inside, and he was shutting the door softly behind them, and averting his gaze. A lady needed her privacy.
He hadn’t given Ellie that consideration. Not at all, unless you counted where he’d done it: out of sight, down where no one could even hear her. It had just been him and her. Privacy.
He didn’t like the shut door, suddenly. He wanted to open it, but he didn’t think she was done changing yet. A sneaked glance at the floor showed that she seemed to have fumbled the pants. He couldn’t really blame her: he knew what she was feeling, after all. He moved his gaze back to the safety of the wall. Walls had been a good friend of his, recently.
>> ”I….don’t know. If it really was an accident…..I just don’t know.”
An accident.
It hadn’t been. It had been a mistake, but not an accident. He’d known exactly what he was doing. He’d planned it for days. He’d set things up, set them in motion, and watched everything fall into place. It had all happened exactly as he’d imagined it.
Except that the woman had been innocent. She’d just been some blonde Antonescu had pulled in off of the street; he hadn’t told her anything. Hadn’t gotten around to it yet, more likely: last time, his staff had been well aware that their employer wasn’t a saint. That had to be it. He’d just acted too soon. Another week or two, another month, and Ellie would have been just like the rest of them. If he’d waited, she would have told him what he needed to know. He wouldn’t feel like this, then.
>> ”It’s not my place to judge, or any man’s. Ultimately, their talk will be with God. And it’s up to them to reconcile that.”
She was staring at him; he could feel it. Why was she doing that? Why all this talk of God? She’d certainly been willing to judge, a moment ago. Why wasn’t she dressed yet? She was the one who was in a hurry—
Oh.
She knew.
He didn’t know why he felt so grateful for that. Relief washed over him. She knew. She knew, and she was going to turn him in.
“Don’t be scared,” he said, still facing the wall. “Let’s just go find Sam. Or Shin. Someone.”
She was going to turn him in. The relief was short lived.
Posted by Kealey Shinbo on May 30, 2010 2:22:54 GMT -6
X-Men
Team Leader of the X-Men
[color=deeppink]
Straight
Married (Tetsuya Shinbo)
1,652
4
Dec 31, 2019 21:55:08 GMT -6
Jules
Confusion, stark and cold against everything else that had been rolling around in Kealey’s head like dice in a cup. The door shut and she was terrified. Absolutely terrified. After everything in Ireland, everything in New York, all the encounters with Roland, was it all going to end here. In the mansion, at the hands of someone who couldn’t possibly even be her same age?
Confusion flowed into realization, realization to relief. That was strange, and Kealey felt numb from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. He….was….relieved?
The young man had asked about mistakes, about what was going to happen next.
He told her not to be scared. He said they should go get Sam, or Shin.
He wasn’t going to hurt her? He was a murderer, he’d all but admitted it, but he wasn’t going to hurt her. It didn’t make any sense. He wanted to be turned in.
The regret was as stark as the confusion had been and played against the relief in such away that Kealey stood rooted to her spot, unable to even bend and pick up the sweats she’d been planning on wearing out of the room.
”Go…” she said, finally pulling her eyes away from the young man. Words flowing without her even knowing what they really were, ”I’ll give you five minutes. I don’t know what you did, or who you did it to, but you have five minutes. You can run, you can sit in the hall, or stand on the steps and wait….but you need to leave. Now.”
Kealey could feel it, her own terror and all the pent up emotions that were being battered down by the proximity of the killer in her room. She knew they’d come back, and come back in force when he left, but for now, she stood calmly, looking into the eyes of a killer and finding it impossible to hate him.
Slowly, Calley nodded. He was still nodding as his hand felt along the door to the handle; wrapped around it, and turned it. He almost forgot to close it again on his way out. There was a brief pause as he all but bolted out into the hallway; he back tracked, shutting it politely. Then he ran.
He took what he needed from his room. It wasn’t much: just the clothes he’d worn last night, and the purse. He dumped his backpack out on the bed, tumbling history books and half-finished assignments onto sheets that hadn’t been slept in. He shoved the clothes and the handbag inside. Then he was taking his familiar route out of the Mansion: he opened the door, and went straight out the window. It was a quick hop into the branches of the tree below. He’d picked this room because of that tree. He usually wasn’t in human form when he did this, but it wasn’t that much harder. The tree was old and solid. Calley skittered down its sturdy limbs, and took off at a run towards the woods behind the school. They wouldn’t find him in there; not unless he wanted them to. He didn’t want them to. Not right now. He still... needed to think. As hard as it was, he needed to think.
Posted by Kealey Shinbo on May 30, 2010 2:52:31 GMT -6
X-Men
Team Leader of the X-Men
[color=deeppink]
Straight
Married (Tetsuya Shinbo)
1,652
4
Dec 31, 2019 21:55:08 GMT -6
Jules
He left. He left and Kealey kept her word, even though the further away he got the more the wall around her own emotions crumbled. Soon that wall would break and they would all burst forth, but Kealey kept her word, staring at the digital clock on her nightstand and praying for the numbers to change faster. Five minutes was an eternity, an absolute eternity. Something dripped onto he chest and Kealey realized she was crying again.
Why had she let him go? Why had she let him go? He was a killer, he’d all but admitted it, and then he’d ran. She’d told him to run, let him run. What if nobody caught him? What if he killed again. It would be on her hands, the blood would be on her hands.
The numbers changed and Kealey found herself running before she even knew what she was doing. It took a second to fumble and open the door and she didn’t waste any time looking up and down the hall for the killer. He was gone and she didn’t have very far to go.
When he’d given her a room, Shin had made sure it was close to his so he could help Kealey out while she got to know the mansion….in case she needed any help. She needed help. She needed help more than she’d probably ever needed it in her life.
She was beating on the door with her fist before she even stopped moving.
”Shin…open up! Please.” she yelled, leaning against the cool surface of the door, tears streaming down her face as she continued to pound. ”Please….”
Team Leader of the X-Men Mansion Math Teacher Japanese Language Teacher
Married to Kealey Shinbo
2,684
36
Apr 6, 2024 13:08:30 GMT -6
Mugen
He'd been studying.
One of the late, great, bonuses of insomnia was stellar study habits (if only you could remember what you'd studied, after the fact). His textbook was open. Complex mathematical problems were spelled out on the page. To the right of the college textbook, a lined paper notebook had captured scribbles. In one of the margins, an endless doodle of triangles blocked off the corner of the page.
He'd been distracted.
The first few weeks of college courses had been slightly overwhelming, with his work schedule balancing act. He'd spent time at Full Circle, time in the mansion greeter's office, time with Thor... he hadn't managed to find time for training, and the classes he was in disfavored brawns over brains... and literature, it seemed.
He'd meant to be reading a different book, but he'd been distracted. The math text had called him, some time before midnight. He'd slid Atlas Shrugged back into his bookcase. He'd shrugged his reading duties to the siren call of complex mathematics. But even then, he couldn't seem to focus.
His desk light was on, the only light in the room. Thor was sleeping uneasily. Shin was bundled up in a pink polka-dotted hoodie and duck-patterned pajama pants. He was mismatched from the very topic he was meant to be studying, down to the ducks on his seat. He was tapping his pencil against the notebook page when she first knocked.
A new distraction came rapping at his door. Shin rose, and stepped out of the light, socked foot shuffling over carpet. His hand gripped the handle, and pulled open the door. Triangular pupils locked on Kealey, instantly setting her right in his vision grid.
She'd been crying, was crying. Something dropped in the pit of Shin's stomach. He stepped aside, as if on instinct, and invited her in with a gesture. She'd been crying. Why had she been crying? What had caused it, and how could he make it stop?
"Come in," Shin requested.
Before, he'd been tired and distracted, but unable to sleep. Now, he was wide awake.
