Months went by and the Intercultural Festival came. It was held during between October and November. The Intercultural Festival was a festival for celebrating the cultures of each countries. Our department was assigned to portray the Japanese culture so at this moment were planning on what booth to go with. As there would be a contest for booth selection and the criteria would be famous and good quality booths.
"It would be good if we do the Maid Cafe!" A girl classmate of mine suggested. Some boys agreed profusely that made me easily read their thoughts through their perverted minds.
Short skirts. Maid uniforms. Cute maids.
The fantasies of all boys.
I rolled my eyes at their lewdness as our class mayor wrote the 'Maid Cafe' under the two suggested spot which was a horror booth and a cosplay booth.
Aria beside me who was observing the discussions suddenly raised her hand that the class mayor acknowledge immediately. Signs of favoritism.
"What is it, Aria?"
"What if we just sell Japanese food like onigiri, teriyaki, sushi, and others. Give them a free service massage from our maids if they purchase one of each kind of our goods and the maids will be wearing the traditional clothing of Japanese in order to have the cuture-feeling," Aria stated as she smiled at the class mayor. The class mayor, even our classmates were dazzled by her charm.
With no voting happened, majority wins. Aria's suggestion was chosen as our booth. It would be called 'Ninth Heaven'.
Yes… literally ninth heaven.
Aria chuckled like a maniac as I looked at her with a weird gaze. The witch was staring at me as she smiled sweetly that made me feel an ill omen from it.
"Did Nilan already ask you?" She suddenly asked.
Even without her detailing what she was talking about, I knew already what she meant.
"No. He just kept giving me things and fetched me in and out."
Aria frowned and said, "Is he not planning to take your hand already? Such a dunce."
"Isn't it good that he take time to court me?" I defended.
"That's not good my dear bestfriend. The important thing in establishing an intimate relationship is not how long he take time but how will he seize the opportunity. You're pretty and smart, it will not be good if he is slow as there might be guys out there to take you."
"Oh."
"Like me. If I could be a boy, I already swept you off your feet," my bestfriend commented that made me hit her arm. She laughed at me, "But sorry! I'm a girl and I only like handsome boys… like that one."
I followed where she was staring and it was just the vice president of the Student Council. Clark waved as he jogged near us.
"Hi! Rain. Oh, you're Aria, the artist right?"
The heart-eyed girl nodded automatically as I sighed. The young man then turned his attention to me as he asked, "What is your class booth?"
"It's like a Japanese food stall," I replied.
"Cool! Here's our flyers. Visit us, too."
Clark handed us a brochure that was designed like a ticket. They decided to do a movie theatre by looking on it. The business and management department was assigned to do the Korean culture so it would not be surprising if they put famous Korean movies in the list.
"Okay! We will surely visit!" Aria without no hesitation agreed as she dragged me away while smiling at the young man. Clark with a wry smile waved goodbye to the both of us.
"You know, let's visit your beloved suitor," Aria said as she pushed me to the engineering department. The engineering department was assigned to do the Filipino culture which was an advantage to them as it was our own country but somewhat a bit difficult due to the pressure, knowing that it was your home country, it should be well-executed.
"What are we doing here?" I asked the evil-looking witch who was pushing me to the door of the first classroom insight.
"Duh. This is your beloved's department."
"Oh. He's in engineering?"
Unexpectedly, Aria hit me in the arm. So this was a revenge?
"Why didn't you know? Are you that dense to the people around you? Maybe you should get to know first Nilan."
Realization dawned at me as I looked back to the past days. Nilan was trying to get to know me while I was not even giving effort to know him more.
As if deciding to that, I said, "Then what do you know about him?"
Aria smiled and responded, "Let's go and see."
We arrived at the engineering department and saw their booth, engineering students were truly up to their course as they started now building their own booth. Literally, they were all making a building of some sort. I spotted the twin of Clark, what was his name again?
"Caric!" Aria called the boy.
Right. Caric, a friend of Nilan.
The young man jogged to us as he recognized Aria and me. He waved at me as he responded to my bestfriend, "What is it, missy?"
"You're so cute like your twin brother!" Aria pinched the cheeks of the smiling puppy as it obediently let my bestfriend butcher his poor cheeks. Is this boy being duped by my bestfriend? And they were surely close.
I shrugged at their play and looked around. I didn't see any shadow of that jerk as I frowned. I turned to Aria and told her that I would be on my way. She didn't forget to remind me on what we talk about as I left.
Trees rustled as the wind blew hard and I prevented my skirt to be blown away by the wind. I looked at the greying clouds as it was about to rain.
I passed on the student study corner when something caught my attention. The pair of dirty white sneakers. I didn't get close to him as I decided to observe Nilan.
They say that the best thing to get to know a person is to observe him closely without them knowing. Let's see.
The person that I was observing was not reading nor studying in this 'study' corner as he was busy playing on his phone. He didn't even help his department there on their booth as he was just playing here. I frowned at him and unconsciously listed up his bad points.
First was he is lazy, next, not helpful, third, unapproachable unless to the people he knew, then unfriendly but annoying (to me), fourth, sarcastic, fifth, conceited...
The list goes on and only his bad points were filling up while his good sides... Handsome, attractive, good-looking.
Literally, he's only good on his face and nothing more. Is he smart? I don't know, let's confirm that next time.
As if he decided to stop playing, he stood up from his seat and started to walk. I secretly followed him like a stalker--- no I was getting to know him so it's not called stalking.
Some girls would try to approach him but he would just dodged their advances and sometimes glared at them that made the females frightened from it as they backed off. I continued to follow him as he strode to the familiar shop again. It was the antique shop which had a name Memoir etched up in the entrance of the store that I accidentally get myself in trouble, weeks ago.
Like an invisible tail, I went in as well, a minute later after him. He did not noticed me as he took something on the shelf and paid on the counter. The shopkeeper that I remembered who was called Alex, smiled as he received the payment.
The Alex dude smiled as he looked at my direction as I instinctively hide myself further. Nilan suddenly passed on the shelves that I was hiding as he went out. I thought I was almost got caught there, I sighed in relief as I followed the jerk.
I heard a chuckle from the shop as I exited. Looking sideways, I did not see the jerk. Where was he?
I was about to panic because I lost my target when unexpectedly I heard his voice in a narrow alley near the shop.
"There, there. No fighting, it's enough for all of you."
It surprised me to see that the unfeeling him likes kittens as it surrounded him. He was feeding them with cat food that I did not know where it came from as obviously the shop that he visited earlier wasn't selling those. He might prepared this beforehand for these cute kittens.
I like kittens too but I didn't like cats like my brother's cat.
Finished feeding them, he played a bit with them as he got up, I immediately saw a newspaper sprawled on the ground as I picked it up for my disguise. Peeking up from the newspaper, a pair of inquisitive eyes stunned me. Those familiar silver gray color, a dull yet magnetic ones.
"Why are you here?" Nilan asked with curiosity as he stared at me.
Pitter-patter! Pitter-patter!
Suddenly it began to rain before I could answer him. Due to my misfortune--- I mean our misfortune, we didn't brought any umbrella. I started to looked around for any covering when he grabbed my hand to the antique shop that was nearby.
The sudden heavy drizzle of the rain drenched both of us as he laughed at my sorry-look. I glared at him as he wasn't looking good himself as well.
"Oh, the two love birds went in hand in hand while they took shelter in my humble shop," a familiar voice commented as the shopkeeper appeared with two white towels.
Alex handed us the towels as he looked outside while saying in a serious tone, "A storm might be coming. Tsk. I would be trouble if I let the two of you stay here."
I was about to say that I would just call my brother to fetch me when Nilan stopped me.
"He's just joking, Rain."
The serious man smiled as he winked in a joking manner at me. From what it looks, he's not good for humor.
"By the way, I'm Alex, a close acquaintance of your boyfriend--- I mean soon-to-be boyfriend," he chuckled as he walked to somewhere while asking us if we would like to have some hot chocolate.
I rolled my eyes at the shopkeeper.
"One hot chocolate. I'll just take hot water for me," Nilan responded.
Right, he doesn't like sweets. As we find ourselves some available seat near the counter, I intently observed Nilan as he wiped his hair dry. I usually noticed that black wristband on his wrist instead of a watch, he was wearing that.
"What are you looking at?" He followed my sight and saw where I was staring.
"Oh, you're curious to this? It's been with me since high school."
He took it off his wrist as he presented it to me. He turned it in and out for me to see the inside of the band. It has a white small compartment there that you could able to put a little piece of paper as there was a paper stucked on it with a written word.
'Her.'
"What's the meaning of this word?" I curiously asked. Judging from the color of the ink, it was just written, recently because of the slight smudge of ink that I got on my finger when I touched the word.
He shrugged as he replied, "It's some random entertainment of mine. I usually put garbled words there out of boredom."