Chapter Text
A deep bass rattled the bedroom of Evbo's former Pro neighbor. The house vibrated as the sound rebounded off its walls causing the windows to chitter and the floorboards to creak. Despite the cacophony, Evbo's neighbor remained lying in bed. His eyes were closed and he even braced himself for the onset of a headache should the noise continue, but, as luck may have it, the noise suddenly stopped, and he slowly allowed himself to return to sleep.
"Thank the parkour god," the neighbor groaned as he tossed a pillow over his head, shifting in his bed to regain some comfort, "just five more minutes and I promise I'll wake up."
Sleep enticingly wrapped its arms around the edges of the neighbor's consciousness. He could feel himself returning to the blissful state he had been in before the noise disrupted his slumber. His heart rate slowed down, and his breathing evened out. He had almost succeeded, had it not been for a singular thought that raced toward the forefront of his mind.
Those are Parkour Master horns!
As if prodded by a hot iron, the neighbor jumped out of bed and immediately fell to the floor as his foot caught itself on the edge of his comforter. He twisted his body as he fell, his shoulder and side breaking most of his fall, but a dull pain spread throughout his body as he hoisted himself with his bedside table and rose to his feet. Bending over and clutching his ribs, he walked toward his closet desperately searching for something to wear.
Something grave must've happened. The last time a Parkour Master visited was because Evbo…
His mind raced with thoughts of the green-striped man. He could hear his own heartbeat mocking him.
No, he couldn't have…
When Evbo completed his training and ranked up to become a Parkour Master, the reigning Parkour Champion decreed a ban on any future traveling or communication between parkour levels. For the first time in living memory, Noobs, Pros, and Masters were effectively put under house arrest. Many objected to the Champion's demands, even challenged him to parkour duels, but it was all for naught. About a tenth of all Pros lost their lives against the Champion and even more to starvation from running away in an effort to find alternate paths to the other levels.
The neighbor's brows furrowed as his thoughts raked over the past course of events. I hope Evbo is okay.
As he buttoned his charcoal-gray dress shirt and looked for his dark, fitted jeans, thoughts of his former neighbor began to take over his mind. He didn't have the means to figure out what happened to Evbo ever since he leveled up to become a Parkour Master. Communication from the lower levels to the higher ones had always been forbidden, even before the Parkour Champion's decrees, but that didn't stop him from trying. God, did he try.
If I'd only managed to get one letter through to him.
His thoughts lingered as he donned his capelet and gloves. He caught himself staring absentmindedly at the closed door of his second-floor room. Buried in a chest, deep in his closet, were dozens of unsent, unfinished letters. The first few he had written to Evbo were done without much thought as he'd simply asked of his friend about updates on his quest to challenge the Parkour Champion.
He'd figured he would get a response in a few days, perhaps a week at most, but the reply never came. They were friends, right? It wasn't as if Evbo was ignoring him or his letters. They must've been intercepted, maybe they had never even reached the blond Parkour Master at all?
We were close. The neighbor's eyes quickly shifted from the door to his bedroom floor. Not as close as I would've liked for us to have been, but close enough. It wasn't strange for friends to check in with each other. At least, that's what he told himself.
After a few days had become a week, it was evident that all communication between levels had been halted by the Parkour Champion's enforcers. The neighbor had felt relief at the knowledge that Evbo hadn't forgotten about him. He knew he had to get in contact with the other man, so he resolved to sent more letters. He didn't know it at the time, but his efforts were done in vain.
Not a single letter managed to get through to the higher level. No Parkour Master would accept his bribes, and he was too cowardly to level up himself. He hated himself for it. He knew if Evbo had been in his place, the other man would've scaled the temple without hesitation.
You were always better at parkour than me. The ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. I guess that's why you're up there and I'm still down here.
He remembered how he became obsessed with getting a message through to Evbo. After his attempts bore no fruit, he decided that if he did manage to get a letter to the other man, he didn't know if Evbo could read parkour, not everyone could. So he sat down and rewrote the contents of his letter, with a little more urgency, in the common tongue. At least now his message could be read, and he could expect a response back.
Nonetheless, weeks passed by and nothing changed. After each failed attempt he decided to rewrite each letter again, and again, and again, and again. His fingers clenched as he recalled how each new letter seemed to unravel more and more of his control. He remembered how his words became frantic and scattered, as though he could pour his impatience onto the page and force a reply out of thin air. He remembered feeling every emotion pouring onto the page, but the one he could most vividly recall was anger. Anger at the fact that no matter what he tried he could never reach Evbo. By the time he had written his most recent letters, they had become almost incomprehensible. Sometimes, he would stay up for days without rest, the lack of sleep eating away at his sanity. He had scrawled nonsense, thoughts that didn't even make sense to him, because he could no longer stand the silence. The void that Evbo had left. Each day without hearing from the other man left him with nothing but frustration and fear.
He had never tried to send the last few letters. He couldn't bring himself to let anyone, especially Evbo, witness the extent of his unraveling. They served as a reminder, a constant shame, to control his focus and steel his resolve, lest his mind betray him once again and lose control when he needs it most.
Shaking off the memory, he tightened his gloves and tried to refocus, but the weight of those letters lingered, pulling at him as if they were staring at him through the closet.
That wasn't my proudest moment.
He didn't know why Evbo had such an effect on him. Why did he wake up most mornings thinking about his goofy smile or his ridiculous, green headband?
Rubbing at his temples, he tried to force his oncoming headache to dissipate. Joy, confusion, anger, grief, relief, abandonment, disillusionment, yearning, hope—every emotion he'd been dragged through or tried to suppress over the past few weeks surged through him all because of a man who he didn't even know was dead or alive.
He recalled the times he'd interacted with Evbo. How eager the newly arrived Parkour Pro had been when they had first met, and how quickly his wide-eyed enthusiasm dulled as he witnessed the grueling reality of Pro society. How the struggle for daily tasks, politics, and constant grind for one's daily meal eventually wore most people out. One memory stood out from the rest, and it was the first time he took Evbo to the practice arena.
The memory held a fond place in his heart. On that day, Evbo's excitement radiated off him in waves as they approached the arena for the first time. Despite getting a taste of life at the Pro level, Evbo's eyes never fully lost their shine, and no more so was that evident when they spent the entire day practicing their parkour. It was in that moment that the neighbor knew Evbo was different than the others, special.
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The neighbor knew the other man was joking. The suggestion itself was ridiculous and dripped in playful sarcasm, but that didn't stop a traitorous heat beginning to creep up from his neck. "I know you're teasing me, but that won't stop me from smoking your ass at parkour."
Evbo rolled his eyes and laughed at his neighbor's answer. "Yeah, yeah, being so far ahead of me has ya thinking about my ass to pass the time, huh?" He made his way around some fence posts and got closer to his neighbor, only a few jumps away from the dark-haired man. "A hungry man thinks of bread and such."
The setting sun and it's vibrant, red hues could not compete with the sheer blushing mess that Evbo's neighbor had become. "I-I, uh… you?" He tried to hit Evbo with a snarky comeback, but all that came from his mouth were stutters and half-finished sentences.
Evbo looked up from his jumps, and almost fell onto the ground as he broke into a fit of laughter at his neighbor's appearance. "Oh my god, dude!" The blond-haired man choked out, doubling over at the sight before him. "Your face is red like an apple!"
The neighbor simply turned his face away and finally muttered something unintelligible. He didn't seek to dignify Evbo's teasing with a response, much less his attention, but that didn't stop a smile spreading across his face.
Maybe, just maybe, they were more than friends.
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He cringed at the memory. Oh my god, I was such a hopeless romantic. His heart gave a flutter, but he quickly tried to quash the feeling down. What did I even see in him to make me fall so hard? The thought felt both confusing and embarrassing. He could lie and say he had no clue on why this particular blond-haired, green-headband, striped-sweater wearing Parkour Master had such an effect on him, but he knew deep down why he latched onto Evbo so fiercely.
He had never met anyone like Evbo before. There was a gentleness to him. When he first ranked up, he stood out from the other Parkour Pros. They were hardened by competition, and walked around with an unearned sense of superiority by virtue of being born into Pro society, but not Evbo. He was a breath of fresh air in a society that choked your lungs with smoke and tar. He looked at everything with child-like wonder and enthusiasm. He wasn't the most ruthless, or even the most experienced, but he was determined. He wanted to become a Master and wasn't afraid to make mistakes along the way. Being around Evbo made him feel lighter, unburdened, and all around happier.
Anyone could see Evbo's kindness, his sincerity, as he meshed himself into Pro society. It was never a wonder why I fell for him.
As he finished gathering his thoughts, a second horn blew in the distance as he was finishing tying up his shoes, no doubt a final warning for those that had yet to appear before the Parkour Master. I better get going, no point in prolonging the inevitable.
Before the neighbor left his house, he gave a cursory glance at his second-floor closet and came to a hasty decision. Parkouring up fences and gates, he reached his second floor and unlocked the closet. Reaching inside, he opened his chest and pulled out a letter from somewhere in the middle of the pile, before they had become the rantings of a madman and after he had stopped writing them in Parkour.
Hopefully this Parkour Master is more amenable to a bribe than the last one.
He still had nightmares on occasion about his failure to bribe the last Parkour Master. He had found him at the Parkour Temple, no doubt guarding the entrance from any passerby attempting to reach the Master level. He wasn't even halfway through his sentence when the guard had pulled out two brewing stands and parkouring before him. He fell ill for days on account of the brewing stand parkour he had been challenged subjected to. He avoided going to the temple on account of how badly he started shaking whenever he approached it. He hated how the Parkour Master had toyed with him, applying poison and regeneration effects in tandem to prolong his suffering. He probably would've died right then and there had the Parkour Master not received an immediate summons from the Parkour Champion himself.
I hope he doesn't show up today.
The neighbor took a deep breath and steeled himself as he walked out of his house and into the crisp morning air. The streets were eerily quiet, save for the distant murmur of Parkour Pros at the designated meeting area. He started walking towards the sound. His feet moving swiftly as he parkoured over blocks with ease, capelet trailing behind him. The weight of the letter pressed against his chest. A reminder to keep searching for Evbo, even if—
No, don't think about that right now!
He shook his head, clearing his mind of the intrusive thought and approached the open courtyard where the Parkour Master had arrived. He scanned the crowd, a few familiar faces in emerged, but none had—he had to do a double take when his eyes caught on a black silhouette.
It's him! He couldn't believe it. That's the Parkour Master that confronted Evbo when he neglected his daily tasks!
The Parkour Master stood on the platform, his all-black attire commanding everyone's attention. His golden boots matched with the crown fixed atop his head, a single circlet polished to a glistening finish. The glare it gave off made his eyes hard to read, that and the fact that they were hidden behind white slits of fabric. The Parkour Master's head turned in his direction before darting to other faces in the crowd. A chill ran up the neighbor's spine. He could've sworn his gaze lingered longer on him than the rest of the crowd. What could he—?
His thoughts were interrupted as the Parkour Master's voice cut through the commotion, and silenced all others.
"Parkour Pros! I have gathered you here to usher in a new era." He paused for effect. "One of change, of hope!" His arms opened wide, palms raised to the sky as if he were praying. "I present to you, your new Parkour Champion!"
The crowd collectively gasped as a hooded figure was spotted falling from the sky. His descent appeared to be doomed until he pulled out a water bucket and clutched his landing at the last possible second.
Wait a minute…?
Moving forward, the hooded figure pulled down his black and green stripped hoodie, it having ridden up his chest and torso during the fall, and revealed his face. More gasps and even some awes were heard from the crowd. The neighbor remained silent, his body beginning to shake in anticipation.
The Parkour Master's voice echoed through the crowd once more. "Behold, your new Parkour Champion—Evbo!"
For a brief moment, time seemed to pause, the whole world around him became a blur. No, it can't be him! He thought, denial washing over him. His memories with Evbo flooded his mind. His smile, his voice, their time in the practice arena, but now here he was, standing before a crowd of Parkour Pros as the new Parkour Champion.
His thoughts scattered as Evbo suddenly locked eyes with him. A wide grin spread across the champion's face. "Hey it's you!" The other man shouted, ignoring the crowd gathering around him. "You're him, my old neighbor!" Without hesitation, Evbo parted through the crowd, and his arms quickly wrapped around the neighbor's smaller frame.
The neighbor's heart pounded, disbelief mingling with a sense of relief. After all this time, it's really him!
Evbo pulled back slightly, his hand now resting on the neighbor's shoulder. His face flushed a soft pink, the color spreading from the tip of his ears to his cheeks. "I don't know if you ever told me your name."He said softly. "What was it?"
Being so close to Evbo allowed the neighbor to appreciate certain details he had missed before. How Evbo's bright, blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight, or how his tousled, blond hair fell down his face in carefree waves, giving him an overall ethereal appearance. Even the way his freckles danced across his cheeks and how they worked in tandem with his cracked, toothy grin to add to his boyish charm.
He could see the flush of excitement on Evbo's face, his lips curling into an inviting smile that only made the neighbor's heart beat faster.
"My name Michael, Michael Ambrose." He stammered, his voice unsteady. "But my friends call me Micah."
Evbo's grin widened. "It's great to see you again, Micah." His grip tightened on Micah's shoulders. "My name's Everett… Everett Boyd."