Chapter |2|

“Hey, watch where you’re going with that brush you moron- I’m pretty sure you insisted on dying my hair and not blinding me while at it.”, a voice broke out pretty harshly in the silence of the apartment that pretty pleasant to the eye. This person was Claude, and the now welcoming apartment was indeed Claude’s, which was pretty unconvincing because according to his manner the apartment would be a mess with the nose-hurting stench of alcohol and broken bottles all over the place.

“Please keep calm, I can’t be dying your hair if you keep being so all over the place.”, a new, more calming voice followed his sharp complaint. Behind Claude stood a man who was pretty identical from him, except he seemed well more mannered than Claude and a better person in general. He hovered above the chair Claude was in rather uncomfortably because of his height, and every few moments was blowing his own hair away, which even being tied up kept flowing out of the bun and flowing down to disrupt his work, his hair was a dirty blonde shade, the same shade Claude’s hair was before he decided to dye it the dark red shade it was now. His eyes were practically almost matching his hair but were a bit darker and his clothes weren’t as old and dark as Claude’s were.

“Maybe I would stop being so over the place if I wasn’t so scared for my life, you’re the guy who just walked into my life all of a sudden out of a mirror a week or two ago with ‘no murderous intentions’ which seemed suspicious enough and now two weeks later after pulling me around the stores that were ridden of your brothers and sisters causing havoc you are dyeing my hair which makes me pretty vulnerable and you can blind me at any moment and slit my throat or whatever.”, Claude said with a frown on his face.

“You could literally just close your eyes and the paint wouldn’t have the chance on blinding you, but off that if I was planning to kill you I wouldn’t be wasting so much money on you in the first place.”

“I’m pretty sure that was stealing and not wasting money, Clem.”, Claude said, with a slight grin creeping onto his face.

“What did you just call me?”, the other asked, not really catching the name very well and if he was hearing it correctly.

“Clem.”, Claude repeated, almost breaking into laughter.

“Why did you even call me that?”

“Because you won’t give me your real name.”

“I’m telling you, we both have the same name, we are counterparts after all.”

“Yeah sure tell me that when I’m on my deathbed.”

“You’re well stubborn, Claude”

“You too”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”, Clem muttered and then the room turned silent, the only audible thing being the loud honking of the cars outside which was the result of the troublemakers that were the counterparts going loose. This noise though was muffled by the thick walls of the apartment which were coloured in a beige colour which was still fairly fresh on the wall. The rest of the space was fairly empty with a table and few chairs in one corner and the TV in the other, in front of which was a glass coffee table and a pale yellowish couch. In the other corner was the old rusty mirror out of which Clem did come out in the first place, and in front of that mirror were Claude and Clem, Claude sitting on one of the chairs borrowed from the table from the other corner and Claude was just finishing with dyeing his hair properly, something what Claude couldn’t do himself apparently. Minutes passed in silence before Clem took a step back looking at Claude in the mirror, “Yeah you’re done, buddy.”, he said with a silent giggle as he watched Claude sigh with annoyance.

“Don’t call me ‘buddy’, I’m not that close to you, you might think that I am but I’m really just getting annoyed by debating with you.”, Claude said harshly.

“Don’t be like that, I took care of your home and your looks and now you’re saying you don’t love me-”

“We are literally the same person why would I love you.”, Claude cut Clem off even though he was basically at the end of his sentence anyways, “And really it’s just really wrong. .”

“And now you’re telling me we are the same person,”, Clem sighed and shook his head, “choose a side man, either you’re thinking we are not the same or we are the same. You can’t keep changing sides to your advantage.”

This left Claude thinking, he did want to believe that they weren’t the same, Clem really was from an another universe and was just him from the past, a completely other person from him. On the other end he believed that they were the same because he is practically his reflection and him from the past, and loving him would basically be over-dimensional narcissism, but it’s not like Claude loves him, he just likes his attitude, well that’s at least what he thought at the moment.

“So?”, Clem broke the silence tapping his foot onto the floor as he stared into Claude’s face through the reflection, but as soon as Claude noticed he looked away.

“I’m going for ‘We are literally the same person so I’d rather not commit over-dimensional narcissism.’.”, Claude snorted as Clem looked at his wrist-watch, which was non-ironically a pastel pink colour, which was his favourite colour after all.

“Looks like it’s time to go rinse the rest off, you took a great lot to think about that, go back there, I suppose you at least know how to rinse your hair off.”

Claude murmured an ‘okay’ as he dragged himself over to the bathroom, his legs aching from sitting there for almost, what is it? 3 hours? Yeah, he spent a good lot sitting there that his legs got all cramped up. He closed the door behind him and furiously started washing his hair watching the excess dye go down the drain.

On the other end was Clem, who sat on the couch, closed his eyes as he thought about it, it’s not like he was joking with Claude earlier about how could he not love him, but he was joking about it at the same time. It made his head hurt thinking about it so he decided to switch his attention to something else. He turned on the television and was immediately blasted with the troublemaker counterparts, as he switched around and came around a weird looking channel, on it displayed a number. Clem looked around for Claude before snatching his phone off the table and dialling the number shown as he quickly picked up the ‘3 knocks’, words that appeared on the screen for almost a split second. He held the phone to his ear as he heard a string of numbers play over and over again, he took a scrap paper and wrote down what he could decipher out of them and hung up. He listened over to the bathroom for a moment to hear if the water is still going as he dashed across the room to the laptop, opening it rather aggressively as he typed furiously onto the keyboard, tracing the numbers as a sort of coordinates that led to the nearby park. He closed the laptop as he sighed, hearing the shower still working as he lightly knocked onto the door.

“What do you want, Clem?”, Claude yelled as the water stopped flowing.

“Hurry up, we are going to the park.”