Chapter 45. A Date? (9/13)

When I turned left around the corner to head back to the living room, I’d simultaneously peeked around the right corner. Alicia had her back to the wall, squatted down on the ground, her arms wrapped under her bent legs while looking at my back. She’d been secretly listening to everything from the very beginning. I was naturally aware of that. She would have easily heard her brother skeltering across the thin floors to answer his door and also heard his outburst.

I just pretended I hadn’t seen her and returned to the living room where there was a cup of tea waiting for me.

My face gradually returned to its usual neutral resting state of indifference. Everything just now had been a facade, my speech, faked expressions, and even mannerisms. It was all to lure her little brother in. Children were quite easily influenced by such grandiose spectacles after all. I was a master of deception, after all, a straight-faced liar. I was simply putting such skills to use for once.

I calmly sat down on the couch as if I’d never even left. I picked up the cup of tea and brought it up to my mouth and took a sip. I closed my eyes and savored it. It was rare for me to drink tea. As an adult, I drank it, but since I returned to this state in high school, I hadn’t touched it since.

“It’s quite good,” I said with my eyes still shut.

Without a single word, I felt two arms wrap around me from behind the couch before the top of someone’s head pressed up against my back.

“Thank you.” It was Alicia’s voice.

“No problem, the tea is really quite good, it’s only natural I compliment your skills.” I played it off like her thanks were for the compliment directed toward the tea she’d brewed for me.

After she exhaled a deep breath out she pulled her head back and removed her arms from around me. She took a seat beside me and put the same old smile back on her face. There was something different about her though. The air about her had changed. As if a great burden plaguing her heart had eased up. It was like she felt she could entrust her little brother to my care.

While the two of us talked, Bad Habits which had played earlier while I was talking to her little brother started to play again. It seems she’d been listening to the song on the TV while I’d talked to her little brother and she’d taken a liking to it so she searched it up online and started playing it through the speakers on the TV.

I looked over to her but she averted her eyes and said, “It was playing just now and I really liked it. It’s a pretty new song and I haven’t heard it before.”

New? For me, that wasn’t the case. The song was quite old from my perspective. But something suddenly hit me. It was old… but it definitely wasn’t this old. I was definitely older the first time I heard this song. I didn’t know the exact years though. However… it seemed to me like this song had actually been released much earlier than it should have. I gulped nervously when I thought about it.

The butterfly effect. The slightest changes in the past could yield big variations such as this.

“What’s wrong?” Alicia asked when she realized I’d frozen up.

“It’s nothing. I just thought this song was a bit fitting in a sense.”

“Hmm… now that you mention it. It kind of does.” She seemed to agree. “‘Conversations with a stranger I barely know.’ Certainly, I barely know you despite everything. You’re a complete mystery to me in a sense.”

She turned her eyes to the music video on the screen and started to hum to the rhythm of the song while tapping her foot in sync with the beat. She had a mesmerizing smile on. One that you’d find yourself staring at for hours as you gradually lost your senses if you weren’t careful. Her head moved about ever so slightly like she couldn’t sit still and wanted to get up and dance.

It was a shame I was a man with two left feet. It was one of my greatest weaknesses in fact. I’m sorry but you’ll have to forget about me asking you to dance. No matter how badly you look like you want to dance I’m not going to ask something that embarrassing.

“Hey. Want to dance?” And right as I was thinking that, as if she’d read my mind she came out and asked.

With a somewhat stiffened expression, I said, “I’ll have to humbly decline that offer?”

“What? Why not? Oh, wait… could it be? Could it really be?” She stood up, bent forward in front of me with that lovely smile of hers at eye level, and asked, “A weakness of yours? It couldn’t really be possible that you’ve got two left feet or something, right?”

“Nothing of the sort.” I did my best to remain composed. Why this? Why this of all things! The one thing that can make me fall to my knees and despair. My only kryptonite. Anytime there was any sort of event like a school dance, I’d be glued to the wall refusing at all costs to dance. I intentionally avoided them like the plague this time around and didn’t even enter the gym. I’d just stay on the roof and hide in a corner terrified that Rosa would ask me to dance with her.

Alicia stood back up straight and started to move her arms about while stepping about in place in front of me. She grabbed one of my hands and pulled it up moving it around with hers against my will as I remained seated.

“Come on, just a little won’t hurt or anything.” That carefree smile of hers was cheating.

I mumbled extremely quietly, “I seriously can’t dance, just treat me like air and enjoy yourself.”

She grabbed my other hand and raised it while continuing to move her around pulling mine in tow. She was completely ignoring my refusal.

“I’ll reveal your secret~”

“Go right ahead. I’d rather die than dance.”

“Hahaha. Come on, it's not so bad, just move with me.”

She forcefully pulled me up and continued moving my hands with hers.

“Just move your legs a bit and let yourself unwind. Move however the music makes you want to.”

Seeing how this humiliation session wouldn’t end so easily, with an extremely troubled expression on my face, while looking down I did as she instructed and tried to match how she was moving her feet. This was completely foreign territory to me so I was extremely awkward. The most I knew how to do was the box step waltz which I was forced to learn in elementary school for P.E.

This sort of humiliation, I’d remember this.

“Hahaha. Look, you’re not anywhere near as bad as you’re making yourself out to be.”

“Then why are you laughing?”

“Because you’re just a bit stiff. Loosen up a bit and… stop looking down.” She placed her hands on my cheeks and raised my head to look directly into her eyes with a beaming smile directed my way.

“That’s better.”

She took hold of my hands again and continued to move them until my body started to remember them and moved along with hers on their own.

Somehow… it started to look like she was actually having… fun? Fun… dancing with me? That was a first. The feeling that was bogging down my heart at the beginning started to gradually dissipate as I watched her... having fun.

Slowly I matched her pace. I hadn’t expected a development like this at all. I was by no means willing to say I was anywhere near good; but unknown to me, I’d gotten caught up in her pace at some point in time.

It felt like I was sinking into something unknown. A place where my inability to dance didn’t bother me. She didn’t care at all whether I was good or bad. She just wanted someone to dance with her, that was it. Nothing more, nothing less. To engross herself in the song with the person standing across from her.

When the song eventually ended, another started to immediately play. Savage Love by Jason Derulo. The sudden change in pace completely threw me for a loop and it felt like I was starting from scratch to my embarrassment. Her own movements immediately adjusted to match the rhythm and beat of the new song effortlessly like it came completely natural to her.

She didn’t laugh at my awkwardness though. She just took a hold of my hands and started to move it about in a way that matched with the new song. My body eventually grew accustomed to it once again.

Before I knew it, I had a slight smile on my face, an extremely rare one.

When she saw that she started to laugh. But I knew she wasn’t laughing at me, she was laughing joyfully, purely because she was having fun.

Deep down, somewhere inside me, I had an urge to lean forward and kiss her, but I didn’t do so. I couldn’t. She was my enemy.

Right as this song came to an end, we heard something drop to the ground from our side. When the two of us snapped back to reality, we discovered a woman with light orange-tinted hair and sparkling bluish-green eyes staring at us with one hand over her mouth.