Ares waited for the answer with a frown and worry. After some seconds, he looked down again to check the amount of blood seeping through.
As he cautiously touched the surroundings, he could feel a piece of clothing wrapped around tightly, as if she was trying to manually amputate her arm.
It was evident that the clothing around the arm couldn't have been placed unintentionally or a part of the clothing she was wearing at the moment. Considering how it was under the top, and she didn't tell him beforehand. He knew this meant that she knew about her injuries and was trying to hide them.
It had been a full minute since he asked his question, and Eirene still didn't give an answer.
Ares looked up, slightly with anger that she wasn't caring about her injury that could be infected. But he froze when he found her awkwardly looking away from him and her own body.
"Ms Queen?"
"..."
"Ms Queen?..."
"..."
"Eirene," As if it was her first time hearing her name, the woman, first, moved her eyes and then her whole face to him. Fear was written on her face, along with anxiety and agitation.
Ares had never seen anyone have that kind of expression. Unknowingly, his expressions softened. Eyebrows were no longer furrowed, and eyes filled with kindness were back.
"Eirene..." He called her name again. She was still looking back with the same fear. "Please... I'm not going to get mad at you or anything. I just want to take care of you. I will not get mad." His words were genuine.
Perhaps, his feelings were delivered and understood. The actress replied, after taking a very long time. "Can you pretend as if I'm just talking about myself alone?" She was no louder than a refrigerator buzzing in the middle of the night but as clear as an owl howling in the wee hours.
Her eyes were watery with fear brimming but as beautiful as the sea waves on the horizon at night. In the middle of those eyes, the full moon was swimming. The moon was the reflection of Ares, himself, wearing a white shirt.
The sudden question made the boy freeze with confusion. He didn't know what she was about to open up to and what was her intention. Plus, as much as she tried to make it somehow casual, he could feel something heavy lurking in the shadows behind those words.
Ares knew that those shadows were the ones wholly responsible, if not partially, for the experience she was about to tell him, and he was not happy with that. In his head, he could even imagine himself giving a piece of his mind to the darkness.
"Yes..." Ares answered after thinking for a hot second. Yes, all of that flashed before his eyes in a second.
As soon as he said that, Eirene was visibly relieved and relaxed.
Wordlessly, she slowly removed her arms from his touch, not with disgust but with a gaze of 'trust me'. So, Ares watched her do that.
He waited with a smile. His mind was at ease until that happened...
It all started with Eirene removing the blanket from the top half of her body. Ares saw nothing wrong with that. He even helped her do that because he thought she may have been feeling hot, and he failed to notice those signs.
He first felt his brain stop functioning properly when she placed a hand at the edge of her top and grabbed it as if to remove it.
His heartbeats halted and raced like a broken radio when her hands began to go north WITH the clothes.
Ares was so off-guard that he couldn't even cover his eyes or stop her from doing that. His arms were at his sides, and his jaw seemed to have failed in going against gravity as it dropped.
The actress had a pale, spotless, smooth, flat stomach like a white peach. But unlike peaches, she had curves and a faint line of her six-pack abs on that skin.
Immediately, Ares touched his belly without averting his eyes from her and confirmed that he didn't have what she had as he expected. The only thing common between their belly was the line in the middle that led down south.
By the time Ares snapped out of the thoughts of his tummy and re-focused on the person in front of him, his sight was filled with a pair of breasts. Not the usual chicken breasts he saw in TV advertisements but a human female's held up by a black bra.
"HAH?!" He shouted from the bombshell. He didn't know what was going on.
The shout did not stop the actress from stripping. She continued as if she did not hear a thing.
With one hand, Ares covered his eyes, and the other went to put an end to Eirene's actions. "Eirene!" The scene playing right in front of him was too sensual for a twenty-one-year-old boy-man.
His hand was firmly placed over his tightly shut eyes. He was like a child witnessing an intimate scene in a movie.
"No!! No!!" Ares kept repeating while trying to find the woman's wrist and put back the clothes on. His hand was chasing whatever that was moving.
All of a sudden, something hefty landed in his palm. He thought it was her arm and applied pressure only to have a question pop up. Why was it soft and boneless? Surely, Eirene couldn't have been made out of tofu as tofu was unable to possess abs. Then why did it feel like that?
Ares squeezed it again. This time, he felt that he was hugging a baby through a layer of clothing.
From there, it didn't take long for blood to be drained from his face and uncontrollable shivers to run every centimetre of his body. There was no need to mention that he f*cked up.
Ares was mustering up the courage with his over-heating brain when he felt a hand removing his from the breast and another hand, gently tapping on the hand that covered the eyes.
At that point, he was in the 'i'm-dead-and-i-don't-have-any-excuse' state.
So when Eirene's delicate hand reached his closed eyelids, he let his sins sink into him.
Ares opened his eyes, but he was looking anywhere but the actress. His hand was on the sofa, and next to it was the blacktop that the actress had just removed. He felt guilty, confused, angry, shame, and so many unexplainable emotions storming his brain and mind.
"Don't worry. I've hidden it." A cool, collected voice with a hint of amusement told him moments after.
The boy carefully raised his head with eyes like he was in the middle of cutting onions.
From the thin space between the eyelids, Ares confirmed that Eirene had the blanket wrapped around her from the breast down, and the sight became a little more children-friendly.
"It's okay," Eirene reassured him with a soft smile, but that smile soon dimmed away as she took a deep breath and prepared for the upcoming unveiling.
Ares remained silent when his crush bravely stretched out her left arm wordlessly and showed him the scars cleverly hidden at first sight. But he didn't know what those cut scars came from.
In the beginning, he thought those were severe scratches from cats just to realise that all those scar lines were in the same direction and there was no way that could be the case.
The more he looked at it, an old memory hazily appeared in Ares's mind. It was from back in his freshman year when he and Eric were in the city library studying on their own but sharing a table.
He was reading through the economics textbooks when Eric reached out to him from the other side and abruptly rolled up his sleeves only to sigh.
Seeing his friend's reaction, Ares asked while his exposed wrists were still in Eric's grasp. "What's wrong?"
Eric shrugged, "I was just reading through self-inflicted injuries and had a wild thought about you having wrist cuts since I've never seen from your hand up." He then nonchalantly proceeded to show one of the bloodiest pictures Ares had ever seen. "But you are good. Keep going." Said with a thumbs up and carried on nodding at the screen.
Those pictures were traumatising that they tattooed themselves onto Ares's unconscious mind to resurface when the time came.
As cognisance sank into the boy, the actress unfastened the black handkerchief tied around the arm that hid the three long healing cuts.
-----
'Why would you do that?!' Eirene fancied Ares telling her.
She waited for criticism from him as many other people did when they found the ugly marks.
The actress demonetised the skin one would kill for.
From people's point of view, she had everything. Yet, she destroyed it just to prove that scars did nothing to her beauty. Those gestures were considered arrogant and too full of one's self.
When she couldn't bear the silence, she faced down. Goosebumps formed on her skin. She felt as if the hot spring she was in, slowly turned into the icy, winter pool.
One moment she blinked. When she opened her eyes again, she couldn't find Ares in front of her. Instead, she could feel his presence next to her, sharing his warmth through a gentle embrace.
"I," said Ares from next to her ear. "I honestly don't know the right words to say... I'm sorry. There is nothing I say can ease your pain, but I want you to know that you are still lovely and I'm here for you. It's okay to cry. Let it flow."
Eirene's smile turned upside down as salty water fell from the puffy eyes onto the white shirt, making imperfect circle stains.
She gradually broke down as the tears she had thought that had died, chose to revive, making sure that her eyes would be swelling for the next day and she has to wear sunglasses for the rest of the day.
"It's okay. It's okay. You are brave. You're strong."