Chapter 415.


    <strong>Chapter 415. We Encounter a Strange Spaced-out Girl Stranded on the Highway. (8/10)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Do you work with cars a lot?” Dawn asked curiously.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No, hardly ever. But batteries and electrical systems are another story altogether.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“So you’re good with electronics?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I wish I understood electronics, but they’repletely beyond me.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“A lot of people in the city also don’t understand how most of their electrical devices really work so you’re not alone. Electronic devices be more and moreplex with time, rather than knowing how they work, as long as you know how to use them, that’s typically enough to get by in the city.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Doesn’t everyone in the city know how they work?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No. Not even close.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I never knew that… I always thought people from the city were all super-geniuses who knew everything.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’re really idealizing people from the city too much. There isn’t anything particrly special about people from the city. If anything, the only special thing about people from the city is how psychotic they are.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’re saying people in the city are crazy?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. They’vepletely lost their minds.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why do yuh say that?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Just forget I said that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’re the one who brought it up an’ made me curious. Now I want to know. Why do yuh say they’re all crazy?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Because nobody thinks for themselves anymore. People have be socent in the city they just want everyone else to do the thinking for them. They’ve given up on freedom of thought and mindlessly go along blindly believing whatever they’re told like a hive mind. If you don’t think the same way as them, you’re ostracized. They’lle for you like they’re some sort of cult if you refuse to go along with their insanity.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Rosa, he’s exaggerating, right?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa took a seat and bnced on my motorcycle with her left foot pushing on the front tire of Dawn’s pickup truck and said, “I wouldn’t say he’s necessarily exaggerating.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She swung her right leg back and forth above the ground as she exined, “Well, I can see what he means. When ites to school in the city, we’re typically taught to think the same way. We’re expected to do as we’re told and follow a standard pre-established path to sess in life which is considered the norm. They pretend to encourage us to question things, but they only do so so they can lead us to the conclusion they want us to reach. There’s no neutrality in it, there’s a certain agenda and narrative they try to push and they don’t even try to hide it. It’s basically a clockwork factory pumping out a bunch of robots who’ve been methodically programmed to obey their superiors.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That sounds pretty… dystopian.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa agreed with a nod, “It is. But nobody likes to think of it that way. We’re led to believe we have freedom when we don’t. We’re no better than cattle and livestock raised on a farm for wealthy elites to ughter and make use of. Being a girl who’s lived your whole life out on a farm, you’ve actually got a lot more freedom than people born and raised in the city. You should appreciate and value the freedom you have out here.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Yes, I felt a bit jealous of the freedom Dawn had. But I understood freedom came with a price, that price was stability. There was a trade-off for everything. I wasn’t naive enough to not understand that.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Mmm. Right...” Dawn nodded, a bit absentmindedly, as she fell into silence and nkly stared into the distance in the direction of the golden field along the side of the road.


    <span style="font-weight:400">When we initially arrived her gaze had been simr, only it was directed to the road. I couldn’t help but wonder what this girl with horrible luck was thinking about.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I tossed the jumper cables in the back of her pickup truck’s trunk and said, “Dawn, I’m going to drop Rosa off nearer to the thicket of trees over there. I’ll be right back, okay?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? Yeah.” She didn’t seem to be paying much attention and responded on autopilot.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I put the battery down in the trunk for the time being and closed the hood.


    <span style="font-weight:400">With that done, I hopped on my motorcycle with Rosa and dropped her off close to the thicket of trees not too far away.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa removed our stuff from the back of my motorcycle and said, “I’ll set up camp here for the night. We can just head to the city tomorrow.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You sure? It’s not toote yet.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haha, my gut feeling tells me that girl’s streak of bad luck isn’t going to end.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Should we just ditch her then?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t be a jerk.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I don’t want coteral damage from her bad luck. You should know my luck isn’t that great either.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“When you multiply two negatives, don’t you get a positive? So if two people with bad luck are together, won’t the result be good luck? I like to think I’ve got pretty good luck. If I went with her, a negative and a positive multiplied together would still yield a negative result.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Just admit the truth, you just want to watch the world burn on the sidelines for some entertainment.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa hopped off the back, removed her helmet, and brushed her hand through her hair. Her hair fell down behind her back as she looked back at me over her shoulder andughed with a wide smile that didn’t even try to hide her intentions, “Hahaha, of course. I’m sure I’ll get a goodugh out of whatever happens, I’ll be looking forward to an amusing campfire story when you get back. I’ll cook up and have some good food waiting for you.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Do I look like a horse who’s going to chase after a carrot on a stick?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa removed our stuff tied down to the back of my motorcycle while humming in a good mood.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why do you sound so happy to send your boyfriend off to help another girl?” I couldn’t help but ask disgruntledly.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m just in a good mood after making a new girl friend. You know how hard it is for me to befriend other girls. You better be nice to her or I’ll get mad, okay?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Is it really something to be so happy about?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It is. It’s the first time I was the one who took the initiative to make contact and it end in us bing friends. It usually doesn’t go well when I try to make a friend myself. It only worked with Alicia because she was so pushy in trying to be friends. As for Izora, it wasn’t because I made the attempt to befriend her myself either, it just happened because we got to know each other through Alicia before inadvertently getting closer to her through you. So right now I’m actually over the moon and want to zip myself up inside a sleeping bag and roll around on the ground in the tent after I set it up.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That was probably the most embarrassing confession I’ve ever heard in my life.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, it was pretty embarrassing. But... I don’t mind if you know my embarrassing secrets since... I love you.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“And if you didn’t love me?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She pushed my helmet’s visor up, tapped on my lips with her right index finger, and teased, “I’d have to kill you before killing myself.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What a scary thing to say to the person you supposedly love.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What are you doing?” She pouted, seemingly dissatisfied about something.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What do you mean?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You know…”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I was genuinely confused. What did I do?


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I really don’t know.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You aren’t going to... say it back?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Say what back? ‘I’d have to kill you before killing myself?’”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No, dummy. What I said right before that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Right before that?” Oh, that’s what she meant.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.” She nodded cutely.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I decided to continue ying dumb despite knowing what she wanted me to say. “You mean you want me to say, ‘I don’t mind if you know my embarrassing secrets?’”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No! After that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh, before ‘I’d have to kill you before killing myself’ and after ‘I don’t mind if you know my embarrassing secrets?’”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, yeah. That’s right. Between those two things.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hmm… I’m drawing a nk. I don’t remember what it was at all. I think I was too traumatized by your scary response.”