Red Princess

60. Once in a Lifetime

I felt disgusted by people like her and their holier-than-thou attitude. They think they are better than the lot, that their actions would save the world as if they are higher beings than us. Fucking arrogant b-

She sighed as she continued, "I would rather help it wait for the right person to come and adopt it. I am not the one. I can't put it through the torture of living with me. The best I can do is make sure its wait is comfortable."

The words got stuck in my throat. As if, like magic, I forgot what I had intended to say. I was dumbfounded, and my eyes froze on her. I watched as her gaze never faltered. She never once looked up at me. It was as if she understood why I said that, what I had suffered through to become what I was, and she was telling me, challenging me, that she was a worse person to be with. She accepted her flaws- she didn't justify them and waited for someone to do the right thing. All my earlier thoughts of disgust suddenly convoluted into an alien feeling. It was as if someone had shattered the very core of my beliefs. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, the feeling of....

Guilt.

Her words weren't a challenge- they were a warning, and like every rebel that had always ignored the dangers of an adventure, I was sucked to her flame.

One...

She picked herself up and stepped away from the abandoned creature. Her drenched figure walked past me without batting an eye, and something took over me when I reached out and held onto her hand.

Two...

"Would you believe me if I told you I was the President?"

She looked at me as if I was some lunatic. She tried to pull her hand away from my grip, but I yanked her closer to me and looked into her ocean-hued eyes as I said, "I am the President."

Yes, this was a test. I knew already what had just happened to me, but I was determined to test those old beliefs.

Three...

"And I am the Goddess of calamity."

Three seconds. It took me exactly three seconds to fall in love with her.

***

I grazed my index finger over the contours of the piano and tapped on a random white key. The classroom had a cosy environment, very much like what you would expect of her. The doorknob clicked, and she entered inside but halted in her steps when she took note of me.

"You are here again, Mr Hunt. I thought I requested you to stop doing that."

The last rays of the setting sun penetrated the window glass and fell right on her figure, giving her hair a golden look like that of an angel. My curious gaze made her uncomfortable as she shifted her weight on her other leg and pushed a strand of her golden locks behind her ear.

One would call me insane for having fallen in love with this woman by happenstance on the road over a matter of three seconds, but my life so far had been anything but ordinary. Her confidence in her flaws made me want to break her and then pick her pieces up so she could see she was wrong about herself. That I was worse than her, and someone like her was the only person who could fit in with me. Someone who wouldn't try to fix me, who wouldn't lecture me, but just make sure to make my miserable life comfortable.

"Do I seem like a person who would heed to requests, Suana?"

Suana Clives worked as a music teacher in this private school where "incidentally" I had acquired a recent stake. For starters, I knew that wasn't her real name, and she did a damn well job hiding her information. She was running away from her past, and as much as the better part of me kept screaming to steer clear of her, the mystery drew me in.