Chapter 90.


    <b>Chapter 90. Christmas Eve, Operation: To Kill A Mockingbird’s Love (2/8)</b>


    <span style="font-weight:400">Today, my first target was lunch. Rosa helped Alicia to cook again, but it was still ultimately Alicia that did the strenuous work.


    <span style="font-weight:400">As for Irene, she’d requested long in advance to use her paid vacation at her workces to have Christmas Eve and Christmas off. I was the only one in the house that had to work today and tomorrow.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Nevertheless, it didn’t change the fact that I’dpletely destroy Rosa’s n to have Alicia confess.


    <span style="font-weight:400">While sitting together at the dinner table having lunch together in their dining room area, everybody was chatting amicably. I maintained my silence and patiently awaited my first opportunity to strike.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Rosa, did you listen to the song I rmended to you before? The new one that came out recently? Bad habits. What did you think about it?” Alicia suddenly asked about the song the two of us had listened to before. She really did like that song though. I’d seen her listening to it recently. She always looked quite happy when she did. Her head would often be bobbing around with her eyes closed and a wide smile on her face.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh, now that you mention it. That’s the song you’ve been listening to a lot recently, isn’t it?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. Yeah. It’s really good.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet. I’ll listen to it now.”


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


    <span style="font-weight:400">“EHEM! EHEM!” I rudely cleared my throat loud enough to interrupt their conversation before I said, “Irene.” I looked her in the eyes then rolled my eyes.


    <span style="font-weight:400">It was… embarrassing as hell to do that! I want to die. Please let me crawl into a hole and die. I didn’t even think of what to say. I’d just barely worked up the courage to strike off the one I viewed as the most troublesome one first.


    <span style="font-weight:400">When I saw Irene’s reaction, she was flustered and confused.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? What? Eh?” Her eyes were visibly confused. ‘What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was that a signal for something? I’m so confused! Be more clear! Why the hell can’t I understand your intent!’


    <span style="font-weight:400">I felt those were the sorts of questions she had swirling about in her head right now.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Honestly, the room had turned dead silent and awkward with my random action that made little to no sense. Even Rosa didn’t understand. She was asking me with her eyes, ‘Was that part of your n to fulfill my request? I’m so confused! I don’t get it at all!’


    <span style="font-weight:400">As for Irene’s little brother. His reaction was one of wariness, ‘What is he trying to do here? Is he plotting something?’


    <span style="font-weight:400">Andstly Alicia. Ah, yes, the one who I was trying to make dislike me. She simply maintained an innocent look on her face. What I’d done, looked like it hadn’t bothered her in the slightest. She simply stared at me curiously a bit before she opened her mouth and asked, “Did you dislike the song?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">A bit caught off guard by her blunt question, I ran through my list of things to make her hate me in my head. Be a bore who can’t read the mood. “That song is terrible. Utter rubbish.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hahaha. Oh please, you’re just embarrassed because of what happened that one time and you wanted to change the topic, right? It was the first song we heard together and even danced to, right?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">When she brought that up I wanted to die. One of my greatest weaknesses.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh~! So it was about that? I did walk in to see you two dancing that night after all. It does seem he is pretty bad at dancing.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“B-Bad at dancing? Who, me? N-Never.” With this opportunity, I decided to invoke the card I’dbeled as a banned forbidden move. With this trump card, I was sure I could make Alicia lose all interest in me all in one go. Though it required a huge sacrifice, an offering in blood so great that even Gods would tremble when confronted by my overwhelming conviction, I resolved myself.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I stood up with my phone in hand while I sported a look so serious one might mistake me for a man headed off to war on a blood-stained battlefield. I yed the song she’d just spoken of and broke out into a dance.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Yes, my ultimate forbidden move, ‘<i><span style="font-weight:400">Dance with enthusiasm when nobody else is dancing.’</i>


    <span style="font-weight:400">Everyone sat there for a moment as they watched me stupified. Everyone except… Alicia.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She stood up and started dancing on her own when she heard the song.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Don’t! Please! Stop! This is too much for me! Don’t actually get up and dance too! It was embarrassing enough for me to do this. I was ready to bash my head against a wall.


    <span style="font-weight:400">In the end, after only a minute I stopped from the overwhelming sense of shame and defeat I felt.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I copsed onto my hands and knees and clutched my heart. The pain. It hurts. It hurts so bad. All the muscles in my body were convulsing and trembling. Why is this girl so weird! Why would you just get up and randomly start dancing when you hear a song? Do you have no shame, woman! Do you not know what the word embarrassing is?


    <span style="font-weight:400">Unable to take it I copsed onto my side and started to twitch. That single minute of using my forbidden technique had taken a much greater toll on me than expected. I could only use that technique once per lifetime. Yet she’d deflected it effortlessly. Who was this monster? She was a foe I could not take lightly.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hey, Ran, why’d you randomly start dancing on your own?” Rosa squatted down beside me and asked.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s all part of my n to defeat you, Rosa. All… part of the n…”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It looks like Alicia thought it was fun though.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Kill me. Just end my pathetic existence right now, Rosa.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If it’s that embarrassing for you, then don’t do it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If I’m not allowed to run away and keep my distance from her, the only way I can ensure she doesn’t confess to me is to make myself look asme as possible. Topletely kill off the idea in her mind entirely, and cut it off by the roots, I will need to suffer greatly.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hmmmm… well, do your best, I guess. I’ll naturally be working against you though.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Ran, are you okay?” Alicia who had her eyes closed while dancing and enjoying the song only now realized I was copsed on the ground.


    <span style="font-weight:400">As for Irene, she just watched quietly in amusement as I suffered on the ground.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Alicia’s little brother… his right eye simply twitched, unable to process the situation. ‘Is this also part of some nefarious plot that is umpteenyers deep? Just how deep does this rabbit hole go?’ Perhaps that was what he was asking himself right now. He really was convinced I was the devil. But no, this wasn’t anything deep. It was not 4D chess or anything of the sort, this was just a pitiful man trying to make a girl not be romantically interested in him.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Yet… somehow I felt like I was failing to do so.


    <span style="font-weight:400">What was next?


    <span style="font-weight:400">I rose to my feet unsteadily and made my next move. “Alicia, don’t you think your outfit is a bit nd and boring?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She looked down at what she had on before she looked back up and said, “You’re right! I should change into something more in the holiday spirit! Good catch, Ran!”


    <span style="font-weight:400">What! No! No no no! That’s not it! That’s not it at all! That was my move, ‘<i><span style="font-weight:400">Tell her how nd and boring her outfits are.’</i>


    <span style="font-weight:400">When she ran off I knelt down onto one knee while I held onto the side of the chair to avoid copsing again. This was damaging me not physically, but mentally. Every single move I made had been wlessly defended against. This girl had no weaknesses. She was too strong a foe.


    <span style="font-weight:400">When Alicia got back she’d changed into a Santa girl outfit with a short revealing red skirt. I’m dead, was my first thought when I saw it. Of course an attractive popr girl would have one of these. Why did I even try? Am I an idiot?


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh! That’s really cute, Alicia!” Rosa cried out when she saw it.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Kill me. Please, just end me now. How am I supposed to say that looks nd and boring when she looks so good in it?


    <span style="font-weight:400">Irene gave me a ‘How’s that?’ sort of look. Alicia’s little brother, ‘So that’s what you were after all along!’


    <span style="font-weight:400">No! No it’s not, damn it!


    <span style="font-weight:400">Well, I never smiled when I saw it. Rather I put on a disgusted face and maintained my silence.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Jeez, Ran, acting like you’re disgusted when you secretly think she looks really good in it. I get you don’t want to make me jealous by ogling her, but it’s fine you know.” Rosa loudly interpreted my expression in whatever fashion she wanted. My card, ‘<i><span style="font-weight:400">Never smile at her</i><span style="font-weight:400">’ was effortlessly countered by Rosa’s remark iming I was being mindful of her.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa simrly ended up changing into her own Santa girl outfit that Irene had from when she was younger.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I was ready to just jump off a cliff and die. Christmas just wasn’t my battlefield, it was like ying an away game and I was severely disadvantaged by my social ineptitude.