THAT EVENING WHILE STELLA was sweeping the floor for the final preparation before closing the shop, she caught sight of a figure passed in front of the shop. His hair was black and he was tall. Both of his arms were hugging his shopping bags filled with fresh produce. She was thinking whether or not she should approach him and at last, she decided that because that boy was her best friend, there is no need to hesitate.
"Gitt!" she called. Her voice was really loud and to add because the bazaar was build in a dome-like shape, her voice had echoed throughout the hall. It would be a lie if her friend did not hear her especially now that visitors of the bazaar had thinned.
Her friend heard her. He stopped walking and her friend twirled to face her. It was just that the one she thought was her best friend turned out to be someone else entirely.
He had a smile on his lips but his brows were knitted. "Sorry," he apologized. "I'm not your Gitt."
If what people called her situation at that moment was a surprise, then she really wanted to express that kind of emotion in her words. Yet all that can be heard was her usual monotonic voice. "Sir Knight," she said.
"Wrong!" he chided. He walked closer to her. "I told you in our class before, miss."
"Yes?"
He stopped in front of her. "It's EFFAN. EFF-ANN," he pronounced one by one.
"Anything's wrong dear?" Her father stepped out of the shop noticing that she had stood still out there. She was sure that her father heard her loud voice from the back shop. Now, how would he react to this man in front of her?
"Oh!"
Classic Mr. Ghotham.
"Good evening sir," the instructor offered. He put down both of his shopping bag beside him and extended his right hand. "I'm Effan, miss's instructor at the institute. Nice meeting you, sir," he said that made her father looked a bit surprised by his formalities.
Her father shook Effan's hand. "Sullivan, Stella's father. There's no need for formalities, Effan."
Stella could felt her father staring at her. He was asking for clarity as to this person in front of them. He may say that he was her instructor but the way he carries his demeanor moreover the way he speaks was entirely on another level. Maybe because it was his previous occupation? The one time he said that to her that his way of speaking was because of the force of habit.
"He used to be a knight," she said under her breath. Effan said so when they had class together for the first time yesterday.
"You are?" Mr. Ghotham looked back at Effan. This time her father was giving an approving nod, understanding his outward appearance.
"I'm now just a humble instructor," Effan said humbly. He was smiling but his smile was not as bright as someone she knew. Guess she found another difference between Effan and Gitto.
As her mind drifted thinking about her best friend and their possible rendezvous later tonight, her father was the one who did all the talking and interacting. She wanted to meet Gitto as fast as the earth could spin. She wanted to talk and ask and listen to him. To feel his warmth.
"Stella, could you bring Effan to our home first? I need to make one last round before closing the shop," her father suddenly asked.
It took her about half a minute to understand her father's words. "Why?"
Mr. Ghotham laughed. He then muffled her front hair. "I thought so that you were daydreaming. I am inviting your instructor to have dinner with us. So can you please, dear?"
"Alright," she replied. Her hand was busied rearranging her hair back to its position. Yet it got disheveled again by her evil father's hand.
STELLA STOLE A GLANCED inside Effan shopping bag. She was helping him carrying one of his shopping bags and the contents merely consisted of meats wrapped in brown paper and a few vegetables. Everyone could tell that this man diet was heavy on protein or that he was a picky eater, to begin with, just like Gitto.
"You have a very loving father, miss," Effan spoke while walking on her left side, making sure that she was on the inner side of the road.
"I guess," she said nonchalantly.
Effan smiled. Again she could not help herself to compare his and Gitto's. They were different people. They did not look the same. Yet, here she was kept on comparing non-stop. And his smile... she knew it somewhere that she had seen it before. Was that why she compared these two people?
"I'm an orphan, miss. I never know what it feels to have a father. You're very lucky," he told her so casually.
Was not this kind of topic a sensitive issue? And for them who barely met inside the institute other than the class, to share this kind of conversation. For him to speak casually, she wondered if she was the right person to talk to. Gitto too was an orphan but he never talks about things like this and she does not have any kind of guide to handle this delicate situation.
"Don't you have someone as your father figure?" she asked as she remembered that Gitto once told her that her father was like a father figure to him.
Effan smiled. "I used to. But it wasn't mine, for me to think like that."
"Can I ask why?"
"It's a long story."
"Oh."
"But you'll know later," he quickly said it.
"I will?" And why? She wanted to ask that too but she did not want to sound like a busy body person. But since he said that she will know it sometimes later in the future, her need for questioning stopped there.
"Yes, maybe not so suddenly like now but you'll eventually... I think it's better I stop talking, miss," he laughed at his own mistake.
Their walk to her house accompanied by several other idle talks though she mostly heard him talking about his messy room back in the institute or how several other boxes of his belonging got sent to a wrong address or that he cannot really understand why Miss Pendragon kept on being weird around him. It made her think that she was actually walking with her best friend instead of her instructor.
Effan had a nice voice. Smooth and polite. He was kind too. He always made sure that their paces were even and he never pried much on her privacy. Though he did try to make the whole conversation was not about him only but because she did not have anything to talk about, he made the conversation as light as possible that she can relate to. To her, Effan was a person she newly and barely knew. She did not compel to talk about everything in her mind like she did to Gitto. It took him a year to discover her 'true' self.
"We're here," she said. She opened the small gate and led him along the stone path to their front door.
"You had a lovely house, miss," he complimented.
She looked at her family's small house. It was a two-story bungalow with an attic painted in white milk and dark red roofs. It was an ordinary house similar to any other houses within the area. But they had a small patch of a flower bed, bloomed in pastel colour and rows upon rows of small greenhouse housing herbs and their seedlings. Some even grew outside of the greenhouse. To make it short, her house was filled with greenery even though in the middle of the winter season.
"Thank you," she replied.
"I heard that you lived near your best friend house."
"Gitto lives at the apartment complex in front," she showed him the building adjacent of her house, to the room that its windows were lighted up behind the cream curtain. "He rents a room on the second floor."
"Ah. An independent man," he said.
Yes, he is.
"Shall we?"