It was ten past nine when we left the apartment building, and now we'd been walking for almost twenty minutes already. I don't know what's the reason why Laikyn brings me here, but if there's any, I'm starting to hate it.
We walk into this narrow street where there's no space for an apple to fall. It's very crowded that I can't even spread my arms or take a minute to fix my shoelace.
Both sides of the route are packed with bookshops. If not bookshops, cafeterias. That's why I don't have to wonder why most of the people visiting here are young adults obsessed with books, and oldsters who can't live a day without a cup of coffee.
"Okay. A little trivia about me, Laikyn. I'm neither a bookworm nor a coffee person. To be honest, I hate both," I say, letting go an invisible raging steam out of my nose not because of frustration to Laikyn, but because of being walled by four towering tough-looking hombre in uniform blocking our way.
Laikyn throws her shoulders down to the floor, her eyes fluttering from one bloke to the others. It takes her a while, but when she's done looking at all four men in uniform, she sighs. "Such giants." She thrusts her right hand into her brassiere and searches for something. After a few seconds, she pulls her hand out holding two golden tickets. "Anyways, we are not here to read books. We're both dumb, and dumb people don't do that. We're not here to drink coffee either. It's already 9:00 o'clock and it's too late for that."
"Okay?" I replied, cringing at the fact that she was keeping something on her breasts. "Why are we here then?"
She smirks. "We are here for these!" She flaunts the tickets straight in front of my eyes. "These are free trial tickets from one of the best American restaurants that will be having a grand opening of their first branch here in France today."
"I assume that's the reason why it's crowded in here," I say, taking off her hand that's blocking my face.
"That could be." She draws the tickets back to where they came from inside her bra.
"You're gross." I shake my head.
"I know," she replies straight away.
To have a stroll around a busy street is okay for me. But to have a stroll around a busy street full of giants-and if not giants, let's say book nerds and coffeeholics– then it's already a different thing. I fear being crushed by giants as much as I fear palpitations. It's never okay for people with CHD to drink coffee, because it may lead them to a heart attack which is caused by palpitation itself. Yes, it happens, though rarely.
It's hard to describe the struggle of walking without seeing what's in front of you. We're not even sure if we're really moving away from our spot or not. Walking like babies on their baby steps is the worst part of this jaunt. I want to push these four towers in front of me so bad because they're getting into my nerves already, but it's impossible because frankly saying, my face is only as the size as their palms. It only means that in one wrong move, I'll be picking up my head somewhere in this neck of the woods. Horrendous.
Minutes later, these four towers in front of us start to ask for a way from the massive flooding of people, which I consider so unfair because they are not that important to deserve a special passage.
One of them says, "laisser passer," and the idiot people begin to divide themselves into halves just to make a free space for these four men to pass through.
"Just look at how easy-to-talk-to these people are," I whisper into Laikyn's ear, eyes still not getting over about how they managed to please people that easy.
"Shut up. As if I couldn't tell," she says.
"We're in a hurry, right?" I face her with a sailing smirk on my face trying to hook her attention.
"Not really." She snorts in disapproval.
I roll my eyes. "Yes, we are!" I grip her hand and pull her as I walk next to the four men.
"Callie, what are you doing?" She jerks her hand to free me from my grip.
I pause for a while and look at her face while tittering. "Freedom is selfish, Laikyn. That's why if you have it, grab it before it's too late."
That's a perfect timing for throwing back the words she once told me when we were at our apartment.
"Stop being so extra! You're embarrassing," she shouts, brows crinkling like a wet toilet paper, eyes growing abnormally, and face blushing like red velvet.
"Why? What's the matter?" I ask, confused. Confused about what's with her face, confused about what's going on, and confused about how off-kilter everything is.
"Can't you see? They're giving way because it's the King who's passing."
"King?" I answer higgledy-piggledy.
"Yes, the King! King of France! And these four men are his bodyguards!"
A moment of truth brought by the brushing of wind cleanses all the damn out of me. I cover my mouth with my left hand and twist my head as slowly as possible toward the so-called bodyguards. And according to what I see, they really look like bodyguards. Why didn't I notice this before?
"Bite the bullet. Everyone's looking at us now." She warns while keeping her hands on her tutu dress.
"Oh, yeah. They are looking at us now." I sought.
After that most embarrassing three minutes of my life, we keep walking and acting like nothing really happened. Our confidence oozes like a lava as we follow the tracks of the king. It turns out that people's attention is more focused on us than on the king himself, which makes me doubt if it's something to be proud of or something to be ashamed of.
"I never thought you could be this reckless," she scowls. "Ugh! So birdbrained." Laikyn shakes her head while keeping a grin on her face. I know why she's doing it. It's because of the cameras everywhere.
"It's okay, don't think about it. Let's just wait to see our faces on the news with the headline, 'Two girls rain on King's parade." I touch my loose bracelet.
"I like that. Good thing we're both strangers and no one knows who we are," she answers back. This time, waving her hand to the people around.
"That's valid only for now. Later on, the whole of France will know our names, address, and everything," I reply, chin up.
"I reckon that raining on King's parade isn't a crime after all." She licks her upper lip.
"Gonna ask Papà for that."
When we reach the crossing at the end of the street where there's a black limousine parking by, the four brawny men line in two facing each other, and wait for the chauffeur to open the limo's door.
The next thing that happens, of course, is the king enters his limo and that's it! He and his car and his four bodyguards are finally out of the street, and the street has never been this wide since we got here. In conclusion, it wasn't the coffeeholics and the bookworms who filled the venue. It was the limousine that occupied almost half of the way, it was the four bodyguards equal to ten persons who caused the overcrowding, and it was the media and the followers who flooded the space just to see the king of France.
Time check, ten o'clock. It's nearly an hour of being drowned by the ocean of people, and being able to survive that was a new level of forbearance.
Making it through that scene without getting collapsed or heart attacked remained questionable for me. If I have to assume I'm a cat with nine lives, I'm so certain I only have seven left. The first one which almost killed me was the horror caused by the elevator of the apartment building, and the second one, no wonder, was this.
"Hey!" Laikyn pokes my cheek when she notices I am mute for a while. "What makes you so silent? Is there something bothering you?"
I shudder my head side by side. "I'm just thinking how the hell did I survive that situation without being suffocated, for real. No fast heartbeats. No sweating. No tightening of the chest. Nothing."
"CHD is not a monster like what you think it is." She laughs, and I don't blame her for that.
It takes us another brief walk before we finally set foot in front of the American restaurant Laikyn was talking about earlier. It is twice or thrice as big as any other restaurants around the street, or should I say around Paris as well. It stands like a towering leviathan with more than five floors, which makes it odd even more because I never thought that a restaurant could also be this high.