Owen’s Saturday evening odd encounter(Yerin)
Date: 2025-11-15 18:39
(Owen’s Saturday evening odd encounter(Yerin):Yerin)
[Sat Nov 15 2025]
On Atlantic Avenue/span>night, about 41F(5C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey clouds. The mist is heaviest At Church and Sidney/span> There is a waning crescent moon.
(Your target has been mind controlled by another into acting as their agent in a crime, compelled to perform a robbery or assault for this other agent. It is up to their allies to arrive and stop the crime and try to uncover the criminal.
)
It doesn’t seem Owen is up to much in particular. He looks freshly showered, and clean. Hair might be just a little damp as he walks out of the apartment buildings to embrace the cold of the early evening. Pulling his coat tight, he breathes out, probably trying to figure out whatever this text he received meant.
The street is quieter than usual at this hour. stores half-lit, the evening crowd thinning into scattered clusters of noise and passing footsteps. Near the entrance of a boutique electronics shop, a trio of figures in large jackets light up cigarettes and murmur amongst each other before heading off into an alleyway. People pass by Owen, giving him a curious glance or two. No one stops.
Owen shuffles to put his phone in his pocket, not wanting to keep it out and about in the cold. Hands are stuffed into his pocket and he just meanders easily down the sidewalk, keeping up a wary eye on the trio of figures that pass into the alley. There’s a wide berth given to that alley, careful, hurried steps that have him crossing the distance of the alley quickly. Once past, he slows again. Keeping on his evening walk.
A startled woman’s breath alights the chilly air before Owen is blindsided. An arm snakes out, taking hold of Owen before he can slip on the sidewalk. “There you are.” The voice belongs to someone that’s not familiar, yet acts familiar with Owen. “Been looking for you!” taking a few steps back is a woman – Tall, with Jet black hair that falls neatly to her back. Her eyes are a deep brown, almost black, sharp and calculating in the split second they flick around the street as though shes tracking something, or someone like Owen apparently. Shes carrying a slim leather bag, clasped close to her side, fidgeting with it nervously. “I have the stuff… like you wanted.”
There’s a startled jump as this woman takes hold of Owen. “Hey!” he exclaims, “Woah, what?” Backing up just a little bit, confusion in his face. “I don’t think I know you..” Eyes scan her features, her face, trying to discern, to remember, where it is he might have possibly seen this woman with jet black hair before.
His voice drops a little, looking around in a slight panic, “What stuff? I think you have the wrong person, Miss.”
What greets Owen is a fairly photogenic woman, the dark-haired lady peering down at him apologetically. She clasps at his hand firmly, pretending to be a good samaritan making up for a mistake. There’s something cold on the centre of her palm that sends odd tingles against Owen’s skin, which becomes more and more notable the longer their hands are in contact. “Sorry. I’m from…” the lady takes her time to assess Owen, making a bit of a gamble. “Student from Windermere. We met at that Ethics class, but I forgot to give you my number.” She glances over her shoulder. “Vivian. I wanted to like, ask you to go bowling but I lost my nerves.”
It’s a weird situation, but Owen does accept the hand, shaking it for a moment. A low, kind of shiver runs up his spine at the object – but it’s not a violent shudder. Slowly, he begins to extract his hand, nodding at Vivian. “Oh, right, Ethics..” A little shrug, “Sorry, if I ran out on you, and you didn’t get my number. That was a busy day for me. Did you still want my number?”
“Sure…” Vivian says amiably, smiling a winning smile. It’s the too white teeth that are far too straight – perfect. She doens’t relinqusih Owen’s hand just yet, intent on holding it awhile longer. A faint pulse of heat and cold play over Owen’s extremities. She steps forward, insistent on maintaining eye contact, her eyes growing wider with glee. “Yeah. What’s your number…?” It’s an odd tapering into silence, as she’s unable to address him by his name. Even so, some whisper flicks at the back of his mind, something that feels like his own thoughts but isn’t.
“Oh, um,” Owen meets her gaze, still trying to pull away from the hand – but she’s got a stronger grip it would seem. That cold seeps into his extremities, a swirling of hot and cold. Pricking his fingertips, and creep up along his arms. Another shiver through him, and it seems like he just thinks it’s from the cold. Florida Man doesn’t do too well in this weather, apparently. “It’s seven ten, one, zero, four, nine.”
Don’t make this difficult. The words that sound like Owen’s own thoughts slip into his psyche.
They don’t sound threatening. They’re encouraging.
Vivian’s eyes then shift – greenish, glassy sheen. Even though Owen might swear they were darker before. For a split-second, something inside them ripples like a reflection, it’d be like peering inside of a mirror. Then comes a suggestion…
Owen/span>Vivian, if that really is her name smiles placatingly, nodding her head in approval after she senses Owen is hers. His mind is primed to be manipulated. “Good,” Yerin the voice resounds in Owen’s psyche. Not his, but now that he’s under a lull, Vivian has no need to obscure her voice as his own. A suggestion slides into place. A simple one. An easy one. “This is the sort of thing someone insignificant, someone unnoticed, could get away with,” she tells Owen solemnly, carried about with a disarming smile. She glances over her shoulders, and in the once busy street are her and Owen. “There’s a shop there, see?”
From across the street, a small corner shop sits open, bright and cramped, with a bored clerk having abandoned his post on the counter. “A delivery driver has stepped inside not too long ago with a delivery.” She turns back to Owen. “You follow me?”
There’s a way that seems to indicate Owen is definitely hers, a light shifting of his posture, a somewhat distant far off look. But otherwise he’s here, listening. Looking around, Owen peeks over across the street, to that corner shop. “Yes.. I think so?” He says, softly. “Do you need something from that delivery?”
“Good. So…” Vivian clears her throat, which proves to be entirely unnecessary. She’s speaking directly into his mind after all. Her fingertips finally trail off his wrist, but the pressure deep in his mind lingers. “One of those boxes,” she murmurs within ‘kindly’. “Just take one. The ones the delivery guy dropped off the front. Just the one. Walk away. Bring it two blocks north, alley by the dumpsters. That’s all. Easy peasy…” Her voice coils softly through his thoughts like a ribbon tightening.
“No dramatics,” she urges softly. “No grand heist.”
Just petty, pointless theft. The kind of crime given to someone forgettable.”
“You.”
In spite of the denigration, there is a warm fuzzy feeling that builds within the heart, sending it aflutter with pride. “Now.” A brief, sharp pulse beats inside the head. A second heartbeat manifesting under his own. “Go on.”
It seemed for about maybe half a second that Owen was about to voice a question, a concern, or possibly a complaint, but no. He’s off. Beginning to step across the street, without even really paying attention to traffic.
Some car honks, loudly as it slams on the brakes, almost running poor Owen over. He turns, flashing an apologetic sort of smile to the driver and carries on with his task – hurrying the rest of the way across the street with a light jog.
Owen isn’t the most stealthy or discrete individuals, but he does attempt to be all casual, heading towards the front of the shop. Maybe he’s seen too many movies, because he starts whistling, a low kind of tune.
A few enthusiastic claps resound behind Owen, cheering him on. Each step towards his goal, the less hold the vice on his inhibitions begin to wane. But the compulsion has already been sealed. The deed ought to be done. Anyone minding the shop does not mind Owen at all. The truck driver is long gone, the clerk is reading a book, and what few customers loitering around are not ones to give Owen any attention, writing him off as being someone who should be handling those parcels and crates being left outside on the sidewalk.
The box is right there, ripe for the picking. That whistle trails off as Owen looks around just a little bit, and then, just hefts the box – the correct one of course. Lifting with his knees, in case it’s incredibly heavy. And then he’s walking off, still trying to be casual. This is just his job, what he was hired to do.
A block away now, still going on with the task.
The box isn’t particularly heavy, nor is it too light. It feels just right within Owen’s grasp, a suitable task weighed upon his arms. Filling him with some apparent purpose, the presence in his head ecstatic, and drifting, dissipating. Aside from the cold chill of winter over the street lamps, nothing and no one moves to accost him and deny him of completing this important task. That is until a sharp whistle cuts through the air, and someone clearing their throat.
“…yoohoo. Owen?” A familiar voice.
That has Owen stopping, the familiar voice. Eyes scan in front of him, then left and ride, and finally, he slowly turns. “Hello?” Blinking as he looks to figure out who it is that’s calling for him. Vivian, he assumes.
It’s not Vivian, but none other than Yerin, having rolled down the street in her silver Volkswagen hatchback. Her window is rolled down and she’s staring at him with wide eyes, lips pressed together in consideration. “Whatcha up to there, buddy?” she asks, occasionally glancing down the block where Owen pilfered one of the crates. There’s no denying she saw him swing by and just take off with one of them.
Oh no, it’s Yerin, back from her shopping trip. Owen glances towards the street, towards her Volkswagen and then downwards to the box in his hands. “Uh, oh,” he begins, “I’m delivering this.” A simple, easy answer, maybe the one that helps him explain why exactly he’s doing that. “There was someone from my Ethics class, a Vivian.” Blue eyes scan across the street, possibly to where he thinks Vivian still is. “She asked for help.”
pulls closer to the sidewalk, killing the engine to her ride. Right next to the ‘No Parking’ sign. Heedless of that, she slips out of her car and struts over to Owen, looking back in the direction Owen was heading, and then back to the boutique. “Delivery on foot? Wow. Nice…” she doesn’t put much effort to hide her skepticism, especially since it looked like Owen was headed through an alley. “Vivian… another one of these college girls that have you smitten,” she says with a dramatic sigh, shaking her head. She takes Owen by the arm, giving him a little tug, as if to dissuade him. “Let’s put that in my car. That looks heavy.”
“No, I’m supposed to bring it just a little farther,” Owen tells Yerin, kind of pulling away from the tug. That compulsion driving him to complete his task. “And, hey! I don’t think it’s smitten. I met her like.. once, in an Ethics class. Barely know who she is. She just needed help delivering this. I guess she works there?” It sounds like a lie, something that he doesn’t seem to actually know, and it’s just him hazarding a guess.
Yerin clicks her tongue, glancing back to her car. A heavy sigh mists from her lips and she nods her head with a grimace. “Okay. Let’s… take this package to where it belongs then,” she relents, though she makes it clear she’s going to tag along and snoop. Maybe intent on seeing who this Vivian lady is. Nudging him with her shoulder, she upnods towards that dark and ominous alley where she saw him headed to.
“Okay! Let’s go!” Owen exclaims, probably much too loudly for the heist he’s pulling off, and waits for Yerin to step out of her car. Once it seems she’s tagging along, he walks off. Muttering something under his breath, “Dumpsters.. Dump, oh! Aha!” There’s the spot. He’s gone two blocks north, and an alley by the dumpsters, and he turns into that alley, walking directly into the middle of it.
“Hello?” he calls out, “I’m here. I have a delivery for you?” Some light confusion in his voice, and he seems to want to set it down – but there were no further instructions given.
Yerin shoots Owen a puzzled stare before she nods just the once, then walks in stride with him, making sure to stomp more than walk. She likes to hear the snow crunch under boots. Whatever last vestiges of snow that remain, at the very least. By the time they wander into the narrow alleyway, it’s pitch black, with only the nearby streetlights providing enough lighting that they aren’t working completely in the dark. “Hello, Vivian. Come give Owen a kiss for all his hard work,” she calls out into the darkness, thinking this is all some silly game.
No one emerges. No one arrives to take the package. Only an odd silence and the rustling at their backs.
There’s a frown from Owen, looking over at Yerin. “Yerin!” he complains lightly. “I’m not getting a kiss for this.” But his eyes scan back towards the alley, waiting. And then there’s the rustling, and Owen’s frown deepens. Taking a step forward with one foot, he looks to turn, slowly, and carefully. A prey caught in the sights of a predator, wanting to make no sudden movements.
For Owen at least, something does finally emerge. There’s a gentle, feminine chuckle, and a brush across his cheek, which could have just been the wind. With that ephemeral caress that might have been a kiss, the weight upon his mind alleviates. Clarity comes bursting in his head, leaving him with the stark realization he was duped. An innocent game for a bored fae that wanted to play.
Yerin turns, having sensed that rustling from behind. “Must have been the wind,” she remarks to herself, rubbing at her face, growing more miserable the longer they dawdle in the cold.
There’s a very confused expression on Owen’s face, and he kind of just slumps, shoulders dropping a little. “What..” looking over to Yerin. “Huh. Maybe they had to go?” Eventually though, Owen lowers the box in the alley, just placing it down. “Think you can give me a lift back to your apartment?” comes his question of Yerin. “I feel weird.”
Yerin stares at the box, swallowing softly. There’s a certain look on her face, bordering between unease and longing. “Sure. Yeah…” she replies, looking back at Owen, befuddled. “No wonder you’re going to therapy,” she says a little unkindly, motioning for him to follow her back out of the alley and traverse the two blocks back to her car.
Owen follows along behind Yerin, trudging a little through the leftover snow, looking at his phone, and frowning at something. “Okay, I’m good to go!”
gestures to her car, working the key fob until the the Volkswagen chirps back at her. “Go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.” She looks as if she wants to make a call, but she gives Owen a quick, reassuring smile.
Owen settles himself into the passenger side seat, and patiently waits, looking to respond to a text on his phone.
Using some of her family contacts, Yerin has a favour done for her to retrieve that box and return it to the boutique. As far as the mysterious Vivian is concerned, she receives a few leads, but they’re not very promising. With nothing else to convince her to linger, she gets into the car and starts to drive back to Atlantic Avenue.