Hazel nods frantically at Mandy, expressing determination that everything is under control.
"So what are you waiting for!" Mandy walks right up to her. Hazel walks onto the stage. The lights shift to ambiguous purple.
The silk scarf is supposed to be translucent, and Ethan recognizes exactly where she's standing and walks right up to her. He takes her right hand, guides her to the chair and sits down, then moves the chair a hundred and eighty degrees so that her back is to the audience while he takes two steps back facing her.
Standing like this is surely an attempt to allow the audience to see his every move more clearly. But for Hazel, it is more like Ethan was performing for her exclusively.
He is about 5'9", tall and athletic, with a silk scarf that leaks light at the ends of his high nose. His full lips are slightly upturned, and his earlobes are a little larger than average. Speaking of which, Hazel's grandmother once complimented Ethan Chou, saying, "That kid living a floor above has the same family name as Hazel, and he's got a blessed appearance."
Yes, Ethan here is Ethan THERE.
However, this silk scarf of his is definitely to be taken. What if he recognizes her after he takes it. They are also acquaintances...no, they were actually friends before ...
Can he do this? Or can she?
Hazel has been in a good mood so far. She paid her money for the visual, and has been served pretty well. Now, with the luck of getting personal VIP treatment and the fact that the other person is Ethan Chou adds a hidden thrill to the mix.
But now, will that excitement turn into embarrassment? Will she be embarrassed? What about him?
She wore a ponytail every day when she shared a desk with Ethan Chou at high school. Thinking about it, she grabs an extra handful of hair to shield her cheeks. She is doing this with very mixed feelings.
…
There is a clap of thunder and it rains on the LED screen.
"Is it okay to give me your hand?" He says to her.
Hazel reaches over, and the man grabs her hand and guides it to his neck: "Untie it for me."
"Untie... untie what?"
"The tie, the shirt, wherever you want."
Hazel anticipated this part and acted calmly. But when she unbuttons the second button, Ethan leads her hands directly to her thick pecs, Hazel's hands begin to tremble uncontrollably.
Ethan wears a silent smile on his face.
Hazel only gives a shallow taste of Ethan's muscles and goes back to his undone buttons. No touching unless it's polite. She thinks she can be such a gentlewoman.
Ethan, on the other hand, is determined to ratchet the drama up at the moment, standing with his long legs spread, wrapping her joined knees between his own. And as if he thought the excitement wasn't enough, he takes her hands behind his head.
A prelude to realness.
Touch, sight, sound, even smell, all working at once, Hazel's shell of unbreakable strength cracks. She admits that she's strong on the outside, but only because she has never been stimulated enough.
"One moment! Please. " She wrenches her hands free and removes her glasses. She isn't wearing contacts today, and her nearsightedness is mild, but it's enough to blur her eyes.
He says soothingly, "No need to be nervous."
Then his scarf is removed. The screams on the floor goes like they were trying to topple the world's tightest soundproofing.
Though his face is artificially mosaiced, it's clear to her that Ethan Chou has got a lot of good looks. He has a slightly square face, but very occasionally he had this wicked demeanor that didn't match his face shape. Just like his personality, he seemed to fit in with everyone, but he gave off a vibe of "I don't care" at times.
A round and mysterious person, after being pleasantly a classmate of his for a while, Hazel developed the idea of getting to know him more deeply, only to lose the realistic ground when her family decided to relocate because of her parents' work.
Teenage dreams of a very long time ago.
She has long forgotten his full character, she only wants to focus on his full body at the moment.
The fuzziness from the eyes eases the tension slightly, and Hazel smoothly undoes the rest of Ethan's buttons, waiting for his next command. Ethan, on the other hand, falls silent and hesitates to make a move.
It is not until Hazel gets a little unnatural and begins to wonder if he recognizes this old classmate in that aged hometown that Ethan suddenly takes a step closer to her and hangs his loose tie around her neck. She could feel the heat from his body.
Hazel's hands are in fists afraid to move, and Ethan doesn't bother to grab her hands this time, fending for himself as he removes his suit and shirt one by one.
Ethan has his hands propped up on the back of the chair behind her, and they seem to be only a millimeter apart. Before her eyes are Ethan's solid chest and textbook abs. As for what's under the abs, nobody's not looking forward to it tonight.
As the audience roars in anticipation, Ethan's hands give a tug at the seam of his pants, which immediately crumble into two pieces of material, leaving behind tight black underwear. Hazel retracts her eyes as if they've been burned.
She figures she's pretty much done with her memoirs up to this point.
But Ethan apparently doesn't think it's enough. He holds her back and presses some buttons, and the back of the chair falls backward, instantly transforming it into a bed. Hazel involuntarily lies flat, and the view changes from the man to the ceiling.
And then to the man's face again.
Ethan gets on the ruby-colored bed as well, supporting his hands next to both of her arms, his legs powerfully elevated in the air. The background music changes to include tantalizing male and female panting. Ethan bends his arms, pressing his lower body against Hazel.
The tempo of the music picks up, Ethan slides up and down Hazel's breasts like a missionary, then turns her on her side, lifts one leg and squeezes it between her legs, or keeps the rest of his body hard as iron, and launches his motor under the black fabric at her with alarming frequency.
What appears to be an intimate encounter between the two, in fact, with every friction and stop, every thrust and pop, keep their private parts at a delicate and safe distance.
Hazel is like a water-starved fish with its mouth slightly open, and like a puppet, constantly receiving wave after wave of desire. The fish is tense, restless, and confused, unable to make sense of the emotions involved for the moment. But the only thing that is certain is that she is envied by everyone else in the room.
Ethan's sharp face shrinks and magnifies in her eyes, mushy as it shrinks, and his lips are about to dip into her own as it magnifies. But until the end, until Ethan gently helps her sit up, she doesn't even get any next to him while taking in all the whistles and uproar coming from all over the space.
And she was just starting to get into it a little.
Hazel feels like a refugee being carried and placed next to a pot of good food. She almost has never seen such delicious thing before... serious things, contained things, but not DELICIOUS things. She just couldn't believe that she is lucky enough to enjoy such a delicacy, that would… soon be carried away. She regrets it a little. She's all the way here, and she's acting like an unseasoned virgin, taking her glasses off before she even starts, and not daring to make a move at all on the way. Her hands are really more disciplined than a pedant, not like a normal woman, but like a patient about to undergo surgery.
She puts her glasses back on and feels a real loss as she takes in every aroused face off the stage.
If it had been anyone else ...
Words precede the brain, and in the blink of an eye, she could no longer think, and so many things flow through her head; some memories, or emotions wrapped up in precarious sanity.
All of a sudden, she asks Ethan if he could give her a hug.
Who cares whether Ethan Chou recognized her or not? She would do what she should do, or what she wants to do.
…
Ethan hears her request, reasonable enough at the moment, but a flicker of surprise drifts across his eyes.
He doesn't answer right away, short enough for Hazel to think he didn't hear her clearly, and long enough for Hazel to want to withdraw her request.
But Ethan suddenly hugs Hazel.
His body is heaving from the strenuous exercise he just unilaterally performed, and she could even hear his heartbeat at a very high sound pressure.
It is a marvelous as well as wonderful moment when Ethan releases her and proceeds to hold up the right side of her face and kiss it gently.
He asks: "Did you like that?"