Chapter 259.


    <strong>Chapter 259. Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect. (2/5)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Do you think you’re a terrible person? Like this is going too far?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s not going too far. All’s fair in love and war. In fact, this can hardly be considered anything much. To win the affection of the guy you like, you’re willing to do... <b>anything</b><span style="font-weight:400">… are you not?” I leaned in closer over the table, with my hands cupped together in front of my mouth, and looked her deep in the eyes, unblinkingly.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She flinched back, caught off guard.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What’s wrong? Are you afraid of what he’ll think if he really does fall for you and finds out you’re actually the vice president he knows so well? Why didn’t you think about that when you were disguising as Alicia?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She opened her mouth, her lips quivered, but her words were stuck in her throat and didn’te out.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You never thought about it? No, you did think about it, but you always ran away whenever that thought came to mind. Deep down, you never believed he would fall for you even while you were disguised as Alicia.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Izora’s eyes rippled with aplex plethora of different emotions. Sadness, despair, rage, frustration, resignation, all sorts of negative feelings.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“This is yourst chance, it is your final gambit, do or die. If you can’t pull it off here, it is game over, you lose. If you fail to give an award-winning performance on stage in your role as the hidden underdog, the dark horse, the true star of this show, you’ll have to pick up the broken pieces of your shattered heart and start all over from scratch. Are you going to just idly pass yourst few days together with him doing nothing different and give up without even putting up a fight? Or will you give it everything you have while not caring for how much dirt you have to smear your body with?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She lowered her gaze to the table, visibly struggling while holding back tears.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Her lips trembled as she fought through her frown and said, “It hurts. Why does it have to hurt? People say love is supposed to be this fluffy happy sort of feeling that makes you feel good, but I can’t even remember it ever feeling that way. Why did I have to fall in love if it was going to hurt so much?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Love isn’t all fun and games. There will be times where love hurts and you want to rip your heart out of your chest to make the pain go away. But that pain you feel now is valuable, precious even. When you finally get to experience the happiness that requited love provides, you will appreciate it far more because of the hardships you endured to acquire it. Once you grab hold of that happiness after all the pain, never let it go. Keep it near and dear to your heart.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">In the end, she buried her head on the table and broke down into tears in front of me for the second time since we met. There were quite a few odd gazes directed toward us from our sparsely popted surroundings. The sight of a scary-looking girl breaking down into tears in front of a gloomy guy in the middle of the university center was certainly eye-catching, to say the least.


    <span style="font-weight:400">It looked like I’d dumped her or something.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Unwilling to put up with the reproachful res, I stood up and said, “I’ll be going now. The next time we meet will be at thearium.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Right when I tried to walk off and mercilessly abandon the embarrassing goth chick bawling her eyes out, her hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Wait!”


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


    <span style="font-weight:400">She didn’t respond immediately. She was still sniffling and trying to get her chaotic emotions under control. I had a bad feeling so I tried to forcibly shake her hand off. Unfortunately, she’d firmlytched on with a vice grip. I couldn’t even pry her hand off.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Did women gain inhuman grip strength when they were crying? What’s with this absurd superpower?


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Let go.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No!”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Suddenly, it looked like we really had just broken up. The res from our surroundings toward me intensified. I want to cry. We were never in that sort of rtionship damn it!


    <span style="font-weight:400">Why do I have to suffer this injustice and be treated like the bad guy? I’m helping this stupid chick get with the guy she likes, not breaking up with her!


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What do you want?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She sniffled and fumbled out her words, “If… if I’m going through with this… I need to be prepared.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Prepared? Look, I’m not going on a practice date with you if that’s what you mean by that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m not asking you for a practice date, I just need to be prepared to put on the perfect performance as your pretend girlfriend when the timees. The same way you faked it in such a convincing fashion with Alicia, we also need to be able to fake it too. I’m not confident I can fake a kiss as convincing as the one you did with Alicia. If it’s to deceive him, it needs to be at that level.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Huh? But… that’s impossible. It was actually a genuine kiss after all.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No way. Absolutely not. That’s not going to happen. It’s impossible.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If you don’t ept I’ll make a scene and forcefully practice with you right here while everyone is looking rather than somewhere private.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I broke out into sweat when she made that threat. That would be the worst-case scenario.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s just how to fake it to make it look genuine, right? That’s all you want to practice?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah… that’s it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I internally struggled to decide whether this was something I should help her practice. It sounded like it’d be a huge pain in the ass.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Can’t you just use a pillow and a mirror or something?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That won’t give me nearly enough experience. Unless it’s practice with another person, there’s no way it will look convincing. We practice such scenes in the theatre club with the person we’ll be performing the act with to make sure everything looks perfect.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Just dress someone else in your theatre club up to look like me and practice with them.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Even if they look like you, they won’t act the same way you would. If I look unustomed to your actions we’ll be seen through in an instant. It can only be you.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Stop right there with that, ‘it can only be you’ bullshit. Those are some bad gs you’re raising. If I agree to this practice session, it better not somehow devolve into a real make-out scene, you got that?” It was best to crush those gs by stomping them out into the ground immediately.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hmph! Who would seriously want to make out with you?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“My real girlfriend.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Ugh. I can’t even say anything back to that after what I saw at the school dance. Anyway, please help me practice. I promise nothing like that will happen.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Damn it, fine. I get it. Just a bit and we’re absolutely not practicing somewhere out in the open like this. That being said, where can we even practice in private though?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Uh… now that you mention it… mmm… how about... my room?” When she realized the problem of privacy, she awkwardly made that suggestion with one brow raised troublingly.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No - way! I’m definitely not going over to your ce, that sounds like a death g metropolis in the making.” I outright refused as soon as she offered.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then… what if we find an open lecture room here?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“And risk someone walking in on us? No thank you.” It was still pretty early in the day and that was still a concern even with it being Sunday.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then… uh… a washroom?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“A public washroom where anyone can walk in at any moment is just asking for trouble.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Should we go looking around for somewhere suitable then?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I guess. You should probably clean up your eyeliner first. It’s gotten smeared again and looks terrifying. I’d rather not be up close in your face with such a scary-looking monster.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She touched her upper cheek, looked at her fingertips, and mumbled, “Oh… you’re right. Why does this happen whenever I’m with you? This is the worst. Good thing I came prepared this time.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She pulled out some tissues from her ck gothic-styled purse and a small foldable hand mirror. She wiped off the thick smeared eyeliner from around her eyes and reapplied a fresh set. She kept me waiting for five minutes.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Are you done?” I asked impatiently.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It takes time.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Too much time. You could have just done without the eyeliner. You look just fine without it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I like wearing it.”


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


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Because I like how it looks.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That’s it?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. Does there need to be some sort of overlyplicated reason for me to like what I like?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No, I guess not. It just feels like such a waste of money.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“A guy like you wouldn’t understand.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Maybe.”