After Lin Que agreed to participate in the Anime Convention, Alan thanked him by offering to treat for his lunch. While walking across campus, Lin Que's sharp instincts redirected his full attention towards the second floor where a girl was holding an object that reflected sunlight, facing at his direction.
He frowned as the light had interrupted with his sight, so he blocked his face using his hand and fast walked off the campus.
At the same time, on the second floor, a girl was holding her camera looking like a professional. She snapped several shots of a rare sighting of a pair of bird lovers on one of the tree branches. Squeezing one of her eyes closed to get a better view of the beautiful day out, she took a few more photographs.
As she concentrated in her own world of music and nature, sudden taps on her shoulder startled her. She jumped slightly from the invasion of personal space and turned around quickly to find the President of the Yearbook Club standing right there.
"Oh, it's you." Her indifferent tone made his polite smile tilt downwards. Although he didn't expect a smile from her, he did at least imagine a more welcoming reaction. Meeting the following minutes of silence and hearing the clicking sounds of the fast mode shots from her camera made him purposely clear his throat to catch her attention.
"Anthony Den, if you have something you want to say, then spit it out like a man. But I can guarantee you that if what you want from me is for me to stalk that guy with zero mentions and nonexistent photos, then too bad." Her voice was clear and determined to the point where he was swirled back into the whirlpool of awkwardness from before.
Sensing that his over had been blown away, he faked a few coughs and said, "Lily Jiang, Who said I'm here for that?"
"Oh? Then I don't see why such a busybody like yourself would come looking for me in this perfect weather day to act as a stalker." Her sarcastic tone put him back on the spotlight as she took more pictures. Once the birds flew away from sight, she sighed from disappointment.
While viewing the photos that she took, Anthony did not stop pestering her. He followed her around the room and circled around the desk that she was sitting calmly in. Finally, a wild thought floated in his mind and he slapped two concert tickets to the desk's surface.
"Here!" He crossed his arms arrogantly and straightened up his back for once.
After taking a glance, her eyes went back to her camera. "What's this?"
"Can't you see? These are tickets to the BTS concert! It's one of the best seats with incredible view! Let's go on a date!" He said enthusiastically.
"No." She didn't even consider for a second before rejecting him.
"Why not? I overheard your conversation from the other day that you liked BTS." He looked at the expensive tickets that took him forever to get his sister to give to him.
"First of all, I do not appreciate it when people aren't honest enough to spit out their motives and are wasting our time like this. Second of all, I already have a boyfriend and even if I didn't, I wouldn't have gone out with you because I don't like you. Third of all, when someone rejects you multiple times for the same request, you should respect their choices and not use lame excuses. Even if I was your girlfriend, which would never happen, my response to your request wouldn't have changed because of a different title."
She smiled when she came across a few perfect photographs that she could use for her blog. When she looked up, she could see smoke coming out of the top of his head as if he was an erupting volcano.
He tried to play it off cool by asking her out to show her his sincerity, but she totally dismissed his efforts with a big fat no. Seemingly annoyed by her cold attitude, he said "These two tickets... I'll give them to you for free if you help me take pictures of Lin Que! The principal wants every single student's evidence of social interaction on campus to be in the yearbook. Please!"
"That's your problem, not mine. This is just a regular camera for my personal interest use. I'm not following some stranger around for your selfish use. If you are comfortable with doing that, then you keep the tickets and enjoy the concert." She stood up and placed her camera carefully back in her camera bag.
On her way out of the room, she gave him a warning glare, "By the way, when you eavesdrop next time, you should try to hide yourself from any reflective surfaces. If you want to take secret pictures of someone, learn to use the camera yourself. Just saying."
Once she was gone from sight, he kicked the wall and shoved the desk away to vent out his anger. He couldn't believe that she saw through all his plans. It was as if her eyes were X-ray scanners.
Lily turned the corner of the hallway and reached another room where loud chatters could be heard from the outside of the room. She naturally curved a bright smile as her hand reached the knob of the door.
Buzz
Her phone's vibration halted her action. Her screen lit up and it was a notification from her boyfriend, Hawk Ng. She decided to respond to him before joining her girls in a group meeting for the Anime Convention.
When she read the message that he had sent, her expression froze on the spot. He wrote, "I can't make it to the convention tomorrow with your friends. I am actually not interested in cosplaying and was just going along with your friends the other time. I didn't think that they meant it. Anyways, I have better stuff to do, so you guys look for someone else to replace me."
Though she had already seen it coming; a part of her had expected him to try and get to know her friends more. "Babe, you could have told me much earlier on. The convention is in two days, and we already purchased the tickets. No refunds are available and the outfit is in your size. Where could we find another person in this short notice?"
Hawk replied two minutes later, "You should have known me well enough by now that I don't like hang outs like those. I thought I didn't need to say these words clearly for you to understand it."
Her eyes turned darker and slightly pink, as his words had hurt her feelings. She typed, "What do you mean by that? We've been going out since senior year of high school and now we are almost graduating college. I never pressured you to hang out with my girls, yet you're acting like this is an everyday thing."
Seeing that her message was left on seen, she knew that he wasn't going to respond anymore. Almost every time that they had conversations about hanging out, he would end up avoiding the subject entirely. She didn't bother trying to persuade him to go either.
The last text she sent to him: "Forget it. I'll look for someone else, but we need to talk about this later. I hope you're going to be an adult when we have this talk and not avoid me like you always do."
After the sound of the delivered text message rung in her ears through the earphones, she took them off and switched her phone to the silent mode. She patted her cheeks and forced a smile, as she had to break this news to her girlfriends.