Once she found that no one was looking at her, with a couple of fast furtive glances. She knelt. With style, putting her backpack on the floor at the same time. In order to check its contents. Each action was premeditated. Showing a lot of discipline, classy. After all, she had to show who she was. The name of the Manfrella family depended on it. The girl did not want another interruption. The last one almost caused her a heart attack.
Apparently everything was there. Anyway she carefully review each item. Her beautiful black eyes found several cans of spray paint in different colors, and the stencil she created. Everything was in order.
Now a minor detail... Where was Sam's room? Foolishly, she looked up for a signal. She did not know what she was looking for. Maybe a neon sign indicating the boy´s bedroom. Celeste felt stupid.

She swallowed some of her pride. With decision she walked toward one of the children who were looking through the window, but at the last moment, she stopped. She was afraid to touch him. What if the mutant was frightened and explode in flames? Peter would be so mad.
Sighing, she breathed deeply gathering all the courage she could find. Then she managed to touch his shoulder. The boy turned away, annoyed. He would be around ten. "What? I am watching the game... " She froze. The words that came out of her mouth were confusing at first, almost babbling. The boy looked puzzled. Trying to guess what she wanted. Annoyed. Obviously he wanted to keep looking through the window.
" I want to know where is Sam's room." The boy looked even more annoyed. Obviously he did not have the slightest intention of helping. The girl put the babbling aside. How many times she had done that? She looked on her bag for money. She found "her lucky charm" and placed it between her fingers. Showing the reward. "What if Ben Franklin ask?" The reaction on the small mutant was immediate. His eyes lit up magically, shone like beacons. They were like two lanterns. The glow disappeared as quickly as it arrived. Standing next to her, he barely reached her shoulders. "I know many Sams..." He said. She thought he was trying to get more money, it was not a problem. When she was looking for more, the child quickly added. "Actually I know several Sams. For real." The girl thought for a second. "The Sam I am looking for looks like Asian, but has an accent of the old continent." Now it was the child who meditated, surfing his memories trying to find a face for the person the girl described. "Yes, I know him. Follow me. "Although she was not accustomed to follow orders, the girl walked after him willingly. Soon she would cast her long-awaited revenge.

There she stood, before the door of his room. Benjamin Franklin made another quick appearance. And the boy seemed to be made of smoke. He ran out of there as fast as he could, with instructions to forget everything.
She doubted the boy told her the truth. Everything was in perfect order. So much order for a boy. Except for some books out of place. Another fact that surprised her, were the curtains. They were of a beautiful dark color. Perhaps a very dark blue. She had to ask where he got those curtains.
She needed a test... and knew where to find it. Carefully she opened his closet trying to do not mess up anything. Then she found it. Among many other pieces, and shoes, she found the proof she needed. The clothes he had worn the day they met.
With a renewed security, she placed her backpack on the bed. Picking up a spray of red paint.
Celeste checked the room. Looking at all the details. Where would she begin? The walls needed a new decoration. The little demon smiled wickedly. She was willing to destroy the place. To teach him lesson for making her cry. For contradicting her. For not paying attention and nod when she expected him to did it. The girl felt a growing sense of expectation at every moment. With every instant she delayed her revenge she felt more need for it. But when she was ready to paint the wall with all her anger... she found that there was nothing of anger left to use. All her feelings were replaced with a giant vacuum that filled her chest. Why? She did not know. She was afraid, attempting to regain her original idea. But she could not do it. Even when it was hard to admit it openly, Sam was the closest thing to a friend she had. Not counting Estella, of course. A truth so big, it was irrefutable. She discovered that her little heart was still beating on her chest.
The little demon inside her crawled to hide somewhere. Ashamed. She changed the red paint can with a yellow spray paint. Her hands searched without any trouble inside the backpack. Then she removed the stencil that would become her signature.
A yellow crown painted on the wall. The crown of a queen. Just above his bed. She smiled. A beautiful smile without a hint of evilness, with no other hidden motive than to show her happiness. Mission accomplished.

Sam walked slowly through the corridors, smiling slightly. Today had been a good day, he had managed to get a lot of studying done and he was finding his course work interesting. Which was, for the illusion creating mutant, proof that he had picked the right university degree and through that a future career that he could find fulfilling. Add to that the fact that he had just managed to cook himself an edible meal and everything was going well today. In fact he was in such a good mood that he allowed himself to think back on the only small thing that could have ruined everything: the paintball match.

He couldn’t help but wonder who had won and what kind of speech princess Celeste had given when declaring the winner. In his mind’s eye, she was all high and mighty and the teens she would be congratulating would be covered in paint and not paying her a blind bit of attention. The whole image made him smile; it was not that he liked seeing her being humiliated; it was just that he felt that she needed to be presented with reality a little more often. It was not good to live believing that just because you come from a rich family you can do anything; especially not around mutants.

He had to admit that he had been worried that the “all mutations allowed” game would end badly, with someone scorched or mangled by mistake. But the other students he had passed on his way from the library to the kitchen had been talking quietly and showed no signs of anything shocking having happened, so he presumed that everything had ended sensibly. With that in mind, he stifled a yawn and finally turned down the corridor that led to his room.

He pushed open the door and made his way into the darkness. As he closed the door behind him, he did not bother to turn on the lights, the curtains were open and the light from the street allowed him not to bump into anything. He walked over to the desk and turned on the side light there and moved the mouse on his laptop to bring it out of sleep mode. Once this was done he walked over to close the curtains, taking a minute to look outside and feel grateful that he had a nice warm room to come back to. For a second his mind went back to all those poor homeless people he had met with Noel at the soup kitchen and he felt a pang of remorse for being so well off. Life wasn’t fair.

Making his way back to the computer he went through his usual evening ritual of surfing his favorite sites on the internet, while listening to a playlist made up almost entirely of Kpop in the background. He liked listened to Korean pop, it allowed him to keep practicing the language; even though he was bitterly away that his Korean was now pretty awful. So to try and keep it up he sang along quietly so as not to annoy the people who had rooms on either side of his.

When he finally looked at the clock again it was 23:30 and if he wanted to be up any time before 10 am he was going to have to get to bed around now. So he turned to make his way across to the bed where is pajamas were carefully folded under the pillow. It was then that something caught his attention in the half light. A kind of shape on the wall but it was kind of hard to see for his shadow obscuring it. In order to see it better he went and turned on the main light. As the light from the central bulb illuminated the fresco that now adorned the top of his bed Sam frowned. It was a large yellowy gold crown and there was no artist’s signature. He couldn’t help but wonder who would do this kind of thing and why. I could always be that the school had simply decided that they were going to decorate. But there was something about that made him wonder… After a few more minutes reflection he decided that he would achieve nothing just staring and that he could ask around for clues in the morning.