"Wow, I feel like a dictator looking out of here…" I and Sadim stood beside each other, both looking out the giant window that quickly greeted one as you entered this apartment. It was obviously a familiar sight to me, one I had grown apathetic to even, but my friend appeared awed.
"Is that something good?"
"Obviously, I mean, I feel like some evil mastermind glancing over all these human ants. It's great", as he responded to my question, his view remained transfixed at the city outside. A small devious smile made its home on his face and at least appearance-wise he did fill the role of a villain.
The time was around 5 P.M, an orange light washed over the city and drowned the apartment. We moved away from the window as I began showing him around.
"This is the bathroom", I just pointed at the door but he went straight for the handle.
After having thrown open the door Sadim stood silently glancing inside for a moment, then with a voice strangled by mad laughter, he uttered: "Grey, I think this is bigger than my room…"
"O-okay, well, anyways, moving on…" I decided there was no correct way to respond to that.
Then I showed him what I called the guest room, a spacious room with a king-sized bed in the middle and with two tables on each side. A big flat TV was set up on the wall in front of the bed and a small white table stood between the two, rectangular in form. This table stood on a gray square mat.
This room had never been used, but it was still kept tidy by the cleaner.
There was also the Kitchen, but that had already been in full view when we entered. The kitchen and living room shared the same giant space, which is why I nearly always ate by the counter or on the sofa. There was of course also a dining table, but since it was rather long and big, it made me feel uncomfortable sitting alone there.
Only one last place remained to show now (not counting the laundry since I had no desire to show it) and that was my room.
"So this is the place…" After I had opened the door Sadim immediately stepped inside.
There was a regular bed inside, pushed against the left corner of the room. Two white pillows with the same decorative pattern of a gray spurt growing across them were my cushions as I slept. The blanket also shared the same pattern, but it was hard to see since it still remained in the same tossed aside position I had left it in this morning.
There was also a black desk on the opposite end of the room, where school papers and books decorated the table. But my friend appeared to not even have noticed the mess, instead he stood glancing at my closet.
Then, without warning, he suddenly grabbed at both handles and spread the closet doors, exposing its contents for him to see.
But before he got the chance to observe anything, a single item fell to the floor and landed straight on Sadim's foot. "Oow!"
"What are you doing?" I asked calmly yet confused as the man jumped around on one foot while clutching the other.
"What the hell kinda skeletons do you keep in your closet dude?! That felt like a knife!", While trying to keep his balance, my friend still managed a response.
"What's it matter to you? I mean, why'd you even open a private place like that in the first place?"
"I was just looking around for any dirt I could find, I mean isn't that what friends do to each other?"
"Not any friends I've heard of"
"Well, anyways…" He finally let go of the limb he'd been treating like his firstborn child and regained the function of both legs. "...What is this?", And so he bent over and picked up the item which had given him all this pain. He held it in front of him, glancing at various angles. "The Eiffel tower?"
After ascertaining this scale figure, his glance immediately went to the rest of the contents within the closet. "Is that the tilting tower in Pisa? And is that a pyramid? And there beside it, that's the Rio statue, isn't it?" Sadim was now freely digging around in the private contents which had been put behind closed doors as if he'd found some kind of secret vault.
"What is all this stuff?" I could only see his legs as he asked since the rest of him was obscured by the open door of the closet.
"They're souvenirs"
"What?! All of them?" In his shock, he submerged from the depths of these supposed keepsakes and I could once again see him in his entirety. "There's like fifty of them here! How come you've never talked about this?"
I shrugged my shoulders and gave him a detached look. "I haven't bought any of them myself, they're all just gifts from my father"
"Oh, I see…" I could tell he felt bad about having asked, but I didn't mind so I just acted like I hadn't noticed.
"Anyway, are you hungry?", I asked as I was feeling some small hunger starting to creep in and also because I didn't feel like spending much more time in here.
"Uh... yeah, I'm pretty hungry…" His attention once more seemed to have been taken by my vault of replacements. He reached inside, but this time much deeper than before - almost being swallowed entirely by the closet. Then eventually he seemed to have managed to get whatever it was that had caught his eye. "What's this?"
He held two pieces of thick paper. "This one's really colorful, but this one… it's really cool. Like, this skull with one eye hanging out is awesome. Did you do this Gre-" Before I could think or listen to what he had said I'd already pulled the two drawings out of his hand.
As he stood looking at me with wide eyes I threw both of them back into the depths of the closet and closed it quickly. After closing the doors, I held both iron handles for some time in silence; noting how instead of their usual metal coldness, they were now a little warm. Then I turned around, hoping what had just transpired was somehow forgotten. "Let's eat, okay?"
"Why'd you do that for? If you didn't want me touching them you could've just told me", It seemed my hopes had been crushed.
"You just barged in here and started searching through something clearly private, maybe you're the one who should've asked first?"
"Well, you didn't seem to mind much… And what's even with those paintings? Were you embarrassed that I saw them?"
"No!" I yelled with genuine anger, then immediately realized how stupid it was to take it out on him. "... they're nothing to be embarrassed about…" I mumbled, but Sadim most likely didn't hear.
A silence manifested in the room, but I barely took notice because of those two paintings filling my mind. "Should we go back to the kitchen?" Scratching the back of his head my friend spoke and suddenly I was aware of the awkwardness.
"... sounds good..." I mumbled once again, but this I was heard and the two of us walked towards the exit to this room of mine. He went out first, but before I stepped over the threshold a brooding thought filled my mind: "How could I have forgotten?"
***
"Fuck! Ow! These stupid fucking potatoes, why the hell are they so slippery?" After having assumably cut himself while peeling these root vegetables, for the third time, Sadim yelled out basically the same thing he had during the previous two accidents.
"You know, that's almost impressive", I told him while rolling around the meatballs in the frying pan.
He picked up the potato which had fallen into the sink during his sudden spasm and continued peeling, but at the same time, he complained, "Why am I even helping you? I'm supposed to be the guest here"
"You're the one who offered to help"
"Ehm, well, I couldn't just sit by and watch", He truly was a dualistic being.
"Anyways, what happened to your swimming goggles? I thought you used them when cutting onions, but you seemed fine when you cut it now"
I turned my head away from the pan and looked at the friend standing beside me. I was shocked, not so much by the sudden change in subject, but because of what he'd said. "How do you know about the swimming goggles?" As I asked he didn't answer and instead started peeling at a much more rapid rate. "It was Dawn, wasn't it?"
He suddenly stopped his hands. "Grey, you know I'm not one to out my sources"
"That's bull-shit"
"What do you mean by that?!" He raised the peeler in the air, almost as if ready to strike me.
"I mean, I think you know. But more importantly - I don't use any swimming goggles"
Sadim smiled mockingly, "Yeah, I'm sure you don't"
"It's true!" In my irritation I shifted my entire body in his direction, letting go of the spatula without thinking and almost making a catapult incident occur with the meatballs. "I've only used them once, that's all"
"I'm sure you have" He clearly didn't believe me.
"You know, you're really starting to irritate me - Mr. Dragon" I smiled wryly.
But what I thought would be an effective counterattack didn't seem to have faced him. "What Grey? Did you think that would embarrass me? Did you really think I would be so weak? A breath that sets whatever it touches ablaze, wings that carry the weight of a mountain through the skies, forever spreading fear into the hearts of men; that is the dragon. Why would I ever be embarrassed about wishing to be reborn as the creatural apex of this world? Why would I ever be embarrassed about speaking the tru-"
"Okay, I get it." I felt an interruption had been necessary, otherwise, I feared just how long I would've had to listen to this deranged speech of his. "Can you please continue with the potatoes now?"
He gave me a cold lock and mumbled something, which I didn't hear, but was clearly spiteful. Then he resumed his peeling duty in silence.
We were finished with the food at around half seven; meatballs with potatoes and peppercorn sauce joined together on our plates.
"Mmh, t's i gr'et" Sadim gabbled as he gobbled down the food. Both his hands rested at the table, each in a fist surrounding the cutlery they were gripping, this meant I could see the bandaids masking the tip of three fingers on his left hand (Thumb, index finger, and little finger). It made me feel a little nostalgic about my own past mistakes in the kitchen.
This was the first time in a long while that I'd been eating by the regular dinner table, but even more so it was the first time in a long while that I was eating with someone else here in this apartment.
We were both very hungry so we ate mostly in silence and were quickly finished. "The time's about seven, so we've got an hour before we're supposed to rendezvous", I said. "Got anything special you wanna do until then?"
"I dunno, not really", Sadim was tilting his head back and resting it on the back of the chair, glaring aloofly at the ceiling.
"Oh, ok" Being in the role of the host I felt a bit stressed in trying to find something to do now.
"What countries have you been to?" Sadim suddenly asked.
"Huh? Oh, well, I've been to England once, for about a week."
"Did you see the big ben?"
"Well, yeah, I did. I was there with my dad, step-mom, and step-siblings. We rode the London eye and went to that madame-something wax museum as well"
"Ah. Madame Tuttass" My friend spoke as if he knew, but even I could tell he wasn't quite right…
"Yeah, well, anyways, that's about as much sightseeing as we did."
"Wait what? Weren't you there for a week?"
"In actuality, we were there because of my dad's job that masked as a vacation for us kids. I think I was about nine when I went there and I spent most of my time by myself at the hotel"
"Don't get along well with your step-siblings?" He asked me.
"I guess you could say that…"
"Oh, that's sad to hear. You know, watching those step-sister stuck-in-the-washing-machine videos, I've got to admit that I've sometimes fantasized about having one, but I guess reality is often disappointing…"
"Y-yeah, well, I guess… Oh God, that's really not a picture I needed in my head. Why'd you say that!?" Ugh, now I really just wanna bleach my brain…
"Look dude, I'm sorry, but I was just being honest. I promise you, there's not a single guy who hasn't at least thought about it once"
"Well, I haven't!"
"I'm obviously not counting you since you've got the real deal! But as a fellow dreamer, that's the truth."
"Don't patronize me! You don't even know if I've got a step-sister or not", I never thought that would be a sentence escaping my mouth…
"Huh, that doesn't matter, it could be step-brother too", he remained undaunted.
"I mean, yeah, I suppose, but not in my case you know because, well, you know. And that would still be a step-sibling so it's just the same in the end and… Oh my God, what are you making me say?!"
Sadim had dropped his unfaced persona and was now laughing maniacally. "S-sorry Grey, it's just…" He couldn't stop the underlying laughter and had to pause to take a deep breath. "Whew, well, do you have a step-sister then?"
The fact that he still wished to continue in this line of questioning left me drained, but I still somehow felt inclined to answer. "Yeah, I've got one. She's the same age as me, but you know, she absolutely despises me."
Sadim was stroking an imaginary beard. "Hmm, I see. So you haven't played your cards right then."
After saying that, our eyes met and I looked at him as if cursing his generation for the rest of time. It appears that he got the message.
"Then I've also got a half-brother who's six years younger than me."
"I see, that's interesting…" It sounded like even he was done with the subject now. "But you know Grey, all this talk about step-siblings have reminded me about something."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yes, my family trip to France"
I don't know what I had been expecting but it certainly wasn't this.
"As you know Grey, the French are famous for being a romantic people - open and loving to everyone, right?" I didn't answer, but he continued anyway: "Yet I'm here to tell you: it's all lies! The French are nothing but traitors!"
We remained by this dinner table, discussing hectically all kinds of things and before we knew it, the time had arrived. However, we had been a little too immersed in our conversing and had completely forgotten the dishes. I decided to do them later and so the first-ever guest to my apartment and I left it in a hurry, heading towards the ruins where Dawn awaited.