Chapter 13 (2/2)

It can’t be Dea either, because even if Dea agrees Feisha himself would be too scared to stay. It’d be like adding fuel to the fire if Gin finds out.

Antonio… Feisha gets a strong urge to bolt whenever the rabies thing comes to mind.

Asa’s great and all, but his snores make Feisha want to kill himself. Once, he happened to walk past Asa’s room at night and fell over in fright when the sound of a bulldozer came from behind the door.

Therefore, the target was rather clear. Feisha knocked on the door.

The door swung open to reveal Isefel, wearing only a towel around his hips and a completely blank expression. There was still some soap lather on his torso.

“I suddenly remembered a very very very important question I need to ask you,” Feisha asked seriously.

“What question?”

He looked from side to side. “Let’s talk inside,” said Feisha, slipping into Isefel’s room. The bathroom door was open, steam still escaping outside and diffusing a fresh aroma into the air.

“You were taking a shower?”

“Mm. You said you had a question to ask…?”

“Oh no, you go take your shower. Take your time.” Feisha sensibly draped his spare clothes over the back of a chair. Despite pretending to be disgruntled, Isefel’s searching gaze sent shivers up his back that only ceased when the bathroom door clicked closed.

Isefel was very quick with his shower. When he emerged from the bathroom, the sight that greeted him was:

The spare blanket in the closet, spread out on the floor. On top of it, the culprit who apparently had a very very very important question to ask, snoozing the night away.

He hid for a night, but he couldn’t hide forever. Even if Isefel slept with one eye open, Feisha’d die of hunger before long.

Isefel lightly threw down some words before leaving: “Three minutes.”

Could this be the last three minutes of his comfortable life? Feisha watched the second hand on his watch tick by with rapt attention, savouring the feeling of his life passing by. He had never realised just how fast time flows. Damn it, he shouldn’t have slept so deeply last night; there had been a lot of missed opportunities that will never come back.

When Feisha finally shuffled reluctantly out of Isefel’s room, he discovered that Gin had been squatting outside for quite a while now. It’s only been one night, but Gin looked like he had wandered around homeless in Ethiopia for a year.

“I just need to put this out there: I am very deeply sympathetic to your situation. However. You can’t put all the blame on me.” Feisha scrutinised Gin’s expression before continuing softly: “At the end of the day, I’m only human. And in my twenty five years of being a human, I’ve never met a single person capable of letting light pass through their body. Even glass has edges, you know?”

Gin’s face was haggard. “Hughes is ignoring me.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Have you ever heard of the saying, couples who fight often are most likely stronger than couples who do not?”

“He’s never ignored me before no matter how angry he was.”

“Er, there’s a first for everything. They wouldn’t call it virginity otherwise.”

Gin looked at him with bloodshot eyes. Feisha could almost see a bloody battlefield within it, himself being one of the corpses.

“Actually, I have an idea. It might take a while though.” Feisha sighed. An extra day he spends alive is still an extra day.

Gin’s eyes gained a thread of livelihood. “What idea?”

“I reckon that Hughes shouldn’t actually be angry.”

A blank stare.

“No- Think about it for a moment,” Feisha hurriedly continued. “Hughes hasn’t even arrived yet when you hooked up with Dea. Who can predict the future?”

“I said that at least three hundred times last night.”

“You need to emphasise that Dea was just a fling, whereas Hughes is your one true love.”

“I said that five hundred times.”

“Well, what good’s just saying it? You gotta make him believe. You sounded pretty serious and all last night when you told me, who’d believe that you guys just ended it like that?”

Gin gave Feisha a look that chilled him to the bone.

“Of course, I believe you wholeheartedly,” Feisha quickly said, raising his hands.

“How do I make Hughes believe?”

Feisha stroked his chin. “Let the truth do the talking for you.”

“Don’t tell me that time will solve everything.”

Goddamn it, his plan was foiled. Despite the void of disappointment and panic that had opened up within him, Feisha maintained an air of incredulity. “How could a person of my intelligence come up with such a ludicrous idea? What I meant to say is, if Dea got together with someone else, Hughes would naturally work out his problems, right?”

Gin brought his hands together. “That’s a good idea.”

Seeing the expectant gaze coming his way, Feisha promptly shook his head. “Not me. Definitely not me.”

“Don’t forget who got me into this situation in the first place.” Gin’s words held a trace of hostility.

Licking his dry lips, Feisha explained: “It’s not that I don’t want to help you, oh no. It’s just that Dea really doesn’t like me.”

“Looks like he has pretty good taste.”

“…”

“Then who do you think could do it?”

Feisha was about to suggest Isefel; anyone at all would agree that the image of Isefel and Dea is truly a sight for sore eyes. Before the words could make their way out of his mouth, however, an idea struck him. “Antonio.”

A pause.

“Reason?”

“His appearance is more convincing than Asa, and his intelligence makes him easier to trick than Isefel.”

“…Antonio it is. But how are you going to convince them?”

A razor-sharp smirk slid onto Feisha’s face. “Oh, you’ll see.”