Frost Direshard was looking terrible lately. He decided this as he stared himself in the face through the mirror which seemed to reflect only his worst qualities. His cheekbones were sunken like permanent dimples, and his eyes sagged with bags like mounds of squishy dough. Those eyes stared back at him, black as the night itself, portals into a different world just beyond his perception. On the bright side, his stark white hair made it impossible to detect the grease that was most definitely present there. He was born with hair that colour but never knew why, just knew that he was different and bound to stick out like a sore thumb.
This was the reality of the White-haired Fox, a criminal of growing notoriety in the region. Frost loved that kind of thing. He loved seeing his name in the headlines garnering attention, and he loved it even more when he found out he'd gotten away with it yet again. The victims never saw anything other than a flash of white, and the gang members were too clever to snitch. The authorities – only knowing about the white hair – had been busy searching for an elderly suspect for months now. Really, it was like a comedy.
Despite all of this, his eyes looked kind and full of light. He'd always hated that. What would Vera think if she saw him now?
Frost rubbed the corners of his eyes with his thumb and middle finger until it hurt, then stepped out of the bathroom while flicking the light with an instinctive motion. His hair was still damp from his morning shower, his mouth tasting of mint and the tiniest trace of blood from an unexpectedly hard punch he'd taken the night before. I got carried away, he thought to himself, never again. Somewhere deep inside he knew that his carelessness was chronic, and it most definitely would happen again. Still, internal damage was preferable since it meant he wouldn't have to come up with any excuses. He put his glasses on and closed the door to the bathroom behind himself while thinking this.
He was told that having his own private bathroom in a university dormitory was quite the luxury. That was just about the only thing luxurious about this place. Other than that, it was like living in a hospital room or perhaps a pillbox. The bed took up most of the room and was utterly unmade, destroyed by the intense tossing and turning from the night before. There was a desk that had a few pages strung about carelessly and a pen calling to him in a neglected voice. Later, he thought. And then there was the nicest bit, which was the window that sported a surprisingly lavish view over the campus that spanned something like five kilometres and was not entirely unlike a small town. Frost was positive they'd charged him extra for it.
The room wasn't decorated like a normal university student's room. Sure, there was the textbook disorderliness, but that was where the similarities stopped. Where some might post a picture of friends and family, Frost found nothing at all. An empty cork board on his wall was set there by a university that was expecting someone to post something, anything. The sight didn't bring him sadness, since this was all he'd ever known.
He'd lived in an orphanage since his parents so kindly gave him up immediately after birth. From there, it was a combination of his strange hair and bad attitude that made sure he was never adopted. He had no family, and the only person who had ever loved him had left. He'd never taken any pictures of or with her, and he wasn't sure if that was for the better or the worse. Hell, her face was nearly faded from his memory, like the remnants of a dream struggling to hang on. This, more than anything, made him sad.
Sometimes Frost hated the way he looked. Sometimes he didn't. It was a coin toss that tended to lean towards the former. A very biased coin toss indeed.
Frost walked out of his room into the common area. He and his roommate Krista shared a modest kitchen with everything one might need to cook a lavish meal, despite this, Frost lived off of instant noodles and energy drinks most days. There was also a half-decent sized living room, with a TV, Xbox, Nintendo, and two near-flattened bean-bag seats. He'd only been here for two months, but luckily had found that he and his roommate shared a lot of common interests. They'd spend days off watching television, or getting heated playing each other in different games. Considering horror stories he'd heard so often, Frost considered himself lucky. It was the first time in a long time he'd felt fortunate in life.
As he exited the room, an aroma immediately struck his nose. He saw Krista standing by the counter in the kitchen stirring something quite intensely. It was coffee – according to Frost's nose at least – but it smelled far too extravagant to be just regular old coffee. Krista turned his head and lit up as Frost approached with his groggy countenance.
"Ah! Morning–" He shot a quick glance at the clock on the stove. "Nope, afternoon!"
"You're in a good mood," Frost noted, taking a seat lazily at the kitchen table.
Krista shrugged. "Is there a reason not to be?"
Frost looked him up and down and was envious of his attitude. Some people came from abroad and lived without thankfulness to their new country. Not Krista. He'd come from Agra, a city often lovingly referred to as the "asshole of India" and that's assuming you're in the nice parts of the city. Krista told Frost that he'd grown up in a decent financial situation, but was nonetheless still certain that he wanted to escape. Since meeting him, Frost had never seen him unhappy even once. For Krista's sake, he hoped the novelty of the Americas never wore off.
Frost glanced down at the newspaper on the table, almost hesitant to see the headline. It wasn't about him today, though. Instead, they were talking about someone who'd apparently fallen off of the bridge and gone missing in the bay. What the hell? Frost thought. That's not nearly as interesting as a white-haired criminal stalking the night!
Krista brought two plain white mugs and set one down on the table for each of them, oblivious to Frost's reaction against the newspaper. He sat across from Frost, simply gazing at him with a sheepish grin. He had short black hair and black eyes. His skin was not of the proper tone to be considered a one-hundred-percent Indian, so it could've been that one of his parents were from elsewhere. Frost never asked about it. He preferred to let people tell him things when they felt like it, rather than prying.
"For me?" Frost asked him, eying the coffee. It was diluted in colour with a white swirl of cream on top like the eye of a hurricane.
"My parents owned a coffee shop back home," Krista said. "It was never particularly successful, but man could they make a cup…" He cocked his head upward in reminiscence. "Try it. I want to know if I've gotten rusty."
Frost gave a half-grin. "Compared to the coffee I usually drink, I'm sure it's heavenly." He lifted it up and took a sip, entirely scorching his mouth in the process but largely ignoring that fact since the rest of his body was in far more pain. It was indeed masterful by Frost's standards. He set the cup down and gave a gentle nod of approval. "Mm."
"So?" Krista asked.
"If this is the work of the apprentice, then the work of the masters is surely beyond my comprehension," Frost said.
Krista scowled. "Can't you ever just compliment someone normally?"
"No." Frost touched the cup to his lips again to cover his stupid grin. The cup went by far too quickly, and he set it down – empty – with a frown. "You've just opened an unfortunate doorway for yourself, my friend."
"I almost hesitate to ask."
"Coffee slave," Frost said. He put the mug in the sink and made a mental note to wash it later. "How'd you time that so perfectly, by the way?"
Krista, instead of letting it sit, set about washing both of the cups. "I could smell you coming."
Frost sighed as he threw his sweater on. "I walked into that. I'll take responsibility."
Krista just grinned, scrubbing away on Frost's cup like he couldn't fathom the idea of a single germ being left on it. "Hopefully my coffee will mean you stay awake through a whole class this time."
"That's not happening. What about you? Three whole hours. You gonna have all of the ladies over or something?" Frost's hand stagnated on the door handle.
Krista put both of the cups away in the cupboard. "At twelve-thirty? Nah. I've got the Nintendo to myself. I'm going to finally beat the Pokémon league."
"They're all pushovers except for the champion."
Krista finally turned his head at that. "So what? Next, are you gonna tell me water is wet?"
Frost just gave him a blank stare. "Water makes things wet." He swiped his hand to dismiss the conversation. "I have to go."
"Frost" Krista grabbed his attention one last time. "Are you alright? I wasn't going to say anything but… You kind of look like shit, man."
Frost ran his tongue over the bloody cut inside of his mouth and tasted the metal. "I'm fine. Just haven't been getting enough sleep." He lied as easily as he breathed. Frost hadn't grown up socially, so he didn't understand certain normal human behaviours such as feeling bad about lying to a friend.
"You sure?"
Frost lamented briefly how it truly was a pain in the ass to live a double life, and then replied, "I'm positive. Wouldn't it be far more suspicious if an engineering student was looking good?"
Krista locked eyes with him for a moment, searching for the truth in his eyes. Just as quickly he gave up. "Sure," he sighed out. "Enjoy class."
"I won't."