Chapter 19.
<strong>Chapter 19. Midterms (4/7)</strong>
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hey, is it fine if we skip?” She asked me.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Are you okay with missing ss?” I asked.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.” She nodded.
<span style="font-weight:400">I extended my left hand out and grabbed her right hand, interlocking our fingers together.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t you think it’s a bit cold out here?” She asked.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Want to head back inside?” I teased despite picking up on her cue.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t y dumb all of a sudden.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I am dumb so I’m not ying at all.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You’re really making me say it?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I’m not understanding.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Is it fine?” She asked, pouting her lips.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Sure.”
<span style="font-weight:400">She moved in closer to me and curled herself up a bit.
<span style="font-weight:400">I wrapped my arms around her, cing my right hand behind her head to hold it close to my chest, tucked under my chin, then my left arm behind her waist to keep our bodies glued together.
<span style="font-weight:400">She wanted to ask if I could hug her like this but was embarrassed to outright ask.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Jeez, if you knew don’t y dumb. Girls aren’t going to like you if you do that you know.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“It seems I have a girl who likes me even though I just did it though.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Shut up. I said, like. If it’s a girl who loves you it might be fine.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Oh? Love you say? And where is that girl?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I love you, okay? You got that? I’m not saying it again.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Sorry, I didn’t quite hear you. I love you. Is that what you said?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t try to sneak in yours in such an underhanded way.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“And here I thought it would fly.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Are you going to say it or not?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I love you too, Rosa.”
<span style="font-weight:400">I kind of just went along with it. I didn’t really know what love entailed. It wasn’t something I really understood very well.
<span style="font-weight:400">“It’s warm. Is this what love feels like?” She asked me.
<span style="font-weight:400">“You’re really asking the wrong person. Your guess is as good as mine.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I’ve never been in love before so I don’t really get it. What I’m feeling right now is a first for me.” She whispered quietly in my arms.
<span style="font-weight:400">Am I really in love? As an adult, I tend to lie a lot. Am I just lying to her? Or am I lying to myself?
<span style="font-weight:400">I don’t really want to think that I’m lying to anyone right now though, so I’ll believe it’s the truth.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hey Rosa, by the way… I have a question about something you said before. I’d like to clear this up right now.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Sure, what is it?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Earlier you mentioned you intended to end things after you graduated from high school, is that still the case?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Now, I don’t think I want it to end. No, let me correct myself, I wouldn’t let it end now even if you wanted it to end.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I see. And one more question…”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What is it?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“About your family, are they assassins?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“So you did figure it out.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You’re not even going tough it off?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Did you consider that I’m just messing with you by ying along?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“That possibility certainly does exist. But really though.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You know, if you asked me this before you were my boyfriend, I might have had to kill you.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“For real?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Who knows? Maybe, maybe not.”
<span style="font-weight:400">It was impossible to tell whether she was just ying with me. She neither confirmed nor denied it definitively.
<span style="font-weight:400">She pouted, twirled her index finger around in a circle on my chest then said, “Jeez, it’s really not fair when you know my greatest secret and I still don’t know yours.” Without warning, out of nowhere, she dropped that sort of bomb after making me y guessing games with me.
<span style="font-weight:400">She’s got to be messing with me again. Maybe her greatest secret is that she loves me. She didn’t specifically rify. No, actually, I should only believe it if I see it.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Anyway, would anyone really believe it if someone said they’re an assassin?” She asked.
<span style="font-weight:400">“That would be a definite no.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Exactly. Unless you see that person kill someone, you definitely wouldn’t believe them.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Right.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“But let’s say in a theoretical situation, on the off chance your girlfriend was an assassin, would you still love her the same?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, I would.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Really? You’re not just saying that, are you? Like, let’s say you saw some crazy stuff because of her? Say, dead bodies and rotting corpses?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I honestly wouldn’t care. I’m pretty indifferent to those sorts of things. I’d love my girlfriend just the same no matter what. Even if my girlfriend assassinated me I’d still love her.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You really are my Mr. Perfect.” She hugged me tight, pressing her cheek up against my chest.
<span style="font-weight:400">“By any chance, are you nning to assassinate me in the future?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Only if you want me to~”
<span style="font-weight:400">Honestly, this conversation is just too out there to take seriously.
<span style="font-weight:400">I half want to believe it, and half just can’t believe it.
<span style="font-weight:400">“I kind of feel like you don’t believe it. Would you like me to prove it?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“And how would you do that exactly?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Can you give me your hand for a second?”
<span style="font-weight:400">I held it out to her.
<span style="font-weight:400">She held it with her left hand and then stuck out her index finger on her right hand. She then lowered it and drew something on the back of my hand with her fingernail. I didn’t feel anything but when she finished blood came out revealing what she’d drawn on the back of my hand. A heart with our names inside.
<span style="font-weight:400">I wasn’t freaked out by it, rather I just raised a brow when I saw it. I didn’t even feel like I was cut when she did that.
<span style="font-weight:400">“The nail polish on my nails can numb skin so you don’t feel it if you get cut. The reason I’m always filing my nails is to keep them sharp. They’re actually as sharp as a knife. I’m just skillful enough with it that I can control whether I cut something with it or not.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I see.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You don’t seem that surprised about it.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I’m more surprised by how pretty your nails are than their sharpness.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You’re just a sweet talker, aren’t you?”
<span style="font-weight:400">She lowered her lips to the back of my palm and kissed it.
<span style="font-weight:400">“What are you doing?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Making the cut I gave you get better with love~”
<span style="font-weight:400">She’d gotten my blood on her lips but she didn’t seem bothered. Rather, she took her finger and wiped it over her lips dying her lips a dangerous crimson.
<span style="font-weight:400">She gave me a peck on my neck and left behind a kiss imprint in my blood.
<span style="font-weight:400">“What are you doing?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Making the mark on what’s mine visible.” She licked away the remaining blood on her lips and said, “It’s unexpectedly sweet.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Like that, the two of us remained cuddled close together, idly passing the time while whispering sweet nothings back and forth on top of the roof.
<span style="font-weight:400">Time seemed to fly when we were together like this and before we knew it the bell rang signaling the end of the day.
<span style="font-weight:400">As I had to head to work, unfortunately, we had to return to the ssroom.
<span style="font-weight:400">I held her hand and we walked down the stairs together all the way back until we arrived at the ssroom.
<span style="font-weight:400">With how midterms had just finished, there wasn’t anyone who stuck around in the ss after the bell had rung. Everyone was probably excited to be free and be able to go outside so no one stuck around. The two of us collected our bags from the room before we headed out.
<span style="font-weight:400">Before I headed off on my bike alone I looked back at her and told her, “Text me your address. I’ll head over to your ce after 9:00 PM today and start helping you study.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? Uh… yeah. That’s right… I have your number now, don’t I? I almost forgot, haha. I can contact you whenever I want now that I have it, can’t I?” Despite us parting ways, she didn’t seem too sad when she remembered she had my number now.
<span style="font-weight:400">She pulled out her phone then saved my number from the first text I sent her. Immediately after I heard her take a screenshot of something but since I had to get to work I couldn’t stick around for much longer so I didn’t bother to ask her about it.
<span style="font-weight:400">“See you tonight.” I kicked down on the pedal and headed off without hearing her reply but a few secondster my phone vibrated in my pocket.
<span style="font-weight:400">I stopped for a second and pulled out my phone. I received a text from her. I’d expected her address but my phone indicated it was an image she sent. I unlocked it and opened it up. It was a screenshot of our text conversation. The first text read ‘Follow me to the roof.’ Written in the text box where she would type was her address. I didn’t understand why she hadn’t just sent that through text message but when my eyes focused toward the top of the image I figured it out.
<span style="font-weight:400">‘???MY BOYFRIEND???’
<span style="font-weight:400">I couldn’t help but find it funny.
<span style="font-weight:400">I sent her a text back right away, ‘Don’t copy me.’
<span style="font-weight:400">I received an immediate response with an emoji sticking their tongue out yfully.
<span style="font-weight:400">After that cute little exchange, I slid my phone back into my pocket.