Chapter 97.


    <strong>Chapter 97. Christmas Day (1/6)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">After a long day yesterday, Christmas had finally arrived. It was a day to be jolly and full of cheer. At least… that’s what I’ve been told.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I never understood why this was the case though. It was just some random dude’s birthday who may or may not have even existed, right? What was there to be jolly and full of cheer over if it was just some random dude’s birthday across the globe and you didn’t personally know or care about him?


    <span style="font-weight:400">As such, it was illogical to me why it was a day to be jolly and full of cheer. It was even unreasonable to expect me to disy such positive emotions. To go around all happy-go-lucky with a stupid smile on my face was an impossible task for one like me who couldn’t genuinely smile.


    <span style="font-weight:400">My face would cramp up if I seriously tried to. The only smile I had was a business one. Fake. Shallow. Hollow. That was the best way to describe it. Not an ounce of sincerity.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I couldn’t put on a radiant pure smile like the natural one Alicia always wore.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Haaaaah. Forget it. None of it matters. I’d like to just get today over with. I still had to work on my operation, To Kill A Mockingbird’s Love.


    <span style="font-weight:400">What sort of approach do I take today though? Yesterday was aplete and utter disaster that seemingly scored points with Alicia rather than losing them. It would have been better if I’d done nothing at all.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Simr to the day before, we’d all gathered together to eat a meal. It was a Christmas meal though, or rather, a feast. There was far more food than the day before. Arge variety of different dishes lined the kitchen countertops and tables.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa had mostly gotten over her sprain after the two full days she’d taken it easy. She healed at an abnormally fast pace, I could only imagine that was thanks to whatever training regime her parents had put her through since young.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She’d teamed up with Irene today and they went all out. It was quite the sight to see. To see two women I had intimate rtions with both getting along so well that is. It made little to no sense to me. It went against all the naturalws of nature I understood. Even now they were together side by side in the kitchen finishing up thest dishes harmoniously. Theck of conflict actually scared me deep down. Was it the calm before the storm? I ended up constantly on edge about whether this was all just to give me a false sense of security before shit hit the fan.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Everything looks so good, don’t you think, Ran?” Alicia asked from beside me at the dining table. The two of us were no help in such matters so we’d paired up as the useless duo. Though, it was mainly me that was useless here as Alicia had still at least contributed something by baking a Christmas cake the day before.


    <span style="font-weight:400">As she said, she really was only good with sweets. The cake she made was impressive, delicious, and worthy to be in a bakery. Rosa hadn’t specialized in sweets so she’d left matters of the cake all to Alicia.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. It does look really good.” I couldn’t help but agree. They’d gone and splurged for Christmas. It was apparently a family tradition for them.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Can’t you at least smile a bit more on Christmas Day?” Currently seated to my side I faced Alicia as she used her index fingers to push up the corner of my lips.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Just once I want to see a genuine smile from you.” No can do. Not just because I can’t, but because it’s part of the operation.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I remained silent. It was my card, ‘<i><span style="font-weight:400">Never start a conversation</i><span style="font-weight:400">.’ I’d do my best to not start or keep a single conversation going with her today. Every conversation would end in abrupt silence.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Strangely enough, she just kept staring at me with her fingers on the corner of my lips in a daze. Even after several minutes passed, she was still nkly staring at my face.


    <span style="font-weight:400">What the hell is wrong with her? Was there something on my face? When I couldn’t take it anymore I raised my hands then wrapped them around her index fingers and moved them down.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Even now, she was still dazed and hadn’t responded. I looked over to the kitchen and realized two sets of eyes were staring at us excitedly.


    <span style="font-weight:400">What? Wait. Did I screw up again?


    <span style="font-weight:400">No. It isn’t that. Right? She didn’t lose herself while staring at my face or eyes or something, right? Isn’t that the ssic sign of someone who’s fallen? Especially for an innocent girl like Alicia. Isn’t this… like… really really bad?


    <span style="font-weight:400">How? When? Just when did it develop to this stage? She’d never done this until today. Then… yesterday? Yesterday pushed her over the edge?


    <span style="font-weight:400">Why! Nothing I did should have resulted in this!


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Uh… Alicia.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">When she heard me call her name her body jolted in ce as she froze up.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? Ran? Uh. Sorry, what was that?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well… you sort of zoned out while you forced me to smile just now.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I did? Wait, how long has it been?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“About… five minutes.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“F-Five minutes? Hah! Really! Uh, that is… I didn’t notice at all. I was busy thinking about something. Something suddenly came to mind. Yeah! That’s it! That’s all it was!”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I see…” I released her hands.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Only now did she notice I’d been holding them. She quickly pulled them back and asked, “I… didn’t even notice you were holding my hands. How long were you holding them exactly?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“About… a minute… or two?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh. I see. Sorry about that. I don’t know what happened. I’ll be more careful in the future to avoid that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She held her hands on top of the table while she stared at them with a slightly perplexed look, she seeminglycked an understanding of why she’d zoned out the way she had.


    <span style="font-weight:400">This was… bad. She was giving off major clueless maiden-in-love vibes. It might have even been a first-time experience for her. But even then… I couldn’t imagine she’d confess when she knew I was her friend’s boyfriend. She was definitely the type to never even realize how she felt and just let those unknown feelings of hers remain unrequited. With that said, in the first ce, how did Rosa n to get such a girl to confess to a boy who was taken? Not just taken by some random girl, but her at that?


    <span style="font-weight:400">I had no clue what sort of freaky assassin voodoo magic she might pull.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Since it was already toote for me to stop her from falling over the edge, anything I did would only be seen in a positive light under Alicia’s maiden vision. As they say, love is blind. I could kick a dog, not that I would, and she’d interpret it as me saving a random child nearby from being attacked. That was just how unreasonable that thing called love was.


    <span style="font-weight:400">This was truly troublesome.


    <span style="font-weight:400">What sort of twisted game is this anyway? Where the guy was the one proactively trying to make the popr girl not like him? This was irrational. It hurt my brain. This isn’t the real world, this is rigged. Shit like this does not happen. But when you have a girlfriend who’s an assassin, I guess normal logic no longer works.


    <span style="font-weight:400">The abnormal existence of Rosa in my life is the cause of this anomalous phenomenon. She’s the gue. The gue that invites other women to cause trouble for me.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Instead of focusing on Alicia at this point, should I maybe redirect my angle of attack toward the root of all evil? At thiste stage in the game, it would be the equivalent of throwing a changeup in baseball. An unexpected breaking ball when in a pinch with runners on second and third. Irene was currently on second, Alicia was on third, while Rosa was up to bat. She was trying to bring her girls home with a grand m home run.


    <span style="font-weight:400">There were two outs, with no counts against this batter.


    <span style="font-weight:400">A bead of sweat trickled down the side of my cheek as I imagined her intimidating presence ready to return my pitch with full power.


    <span style="font-weight:400">What ball do I throw for my first pitch?


    <span style="font-weight:400">I needed to be especially careful when I threw my hidden changeup, it had to be when she least expected it.


    <span style="font-weight:400">My eyes raised up to the kitchen where I locked eyes with Rosa. Imaginary electric sparks shed between our eyes as we confronted each other.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She would not back down. Her eyes were those of conviction. The conviction to get her girls stranded out on the field home.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Rosa,” I called out her name.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What is it, Ran?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I love you.” My first pitch was a fastball straight down the middle.