Hiiii. Hope you guys still remember this story?
And what was your reaction when you saw this update?
Sorry for ghosting and I hope you enjoy reading this update.
ALFRED
Interviewer: What's your future ambition?
Alfred: I don't think I have a future ambition, I just want to make enough money to be able to take care of my Mummy.
Interviewer: wow, not you sounding so excited when you mentioned your mummy. You must like her a lot.
Alfred: No, I don't like her, I love her so much. She's my favorite person.
Interviewer: That's really good, it's not every day that we get to see a boy child talk so openly about how much they love their parent. I hope the universe grants you your heart desires.
The universe doesn't give a shit about you.
I pushed the door open.
"Nouman, you won't believe that..." the words died in my throat when I entered the sitting room and my eyes met those of the girl I've not been able to stop thinking about since that day at the hospital.
Yeah, since that very first day at the hospital.
She had something, food stuffed in her mouth, and her eyes remained widened as the door shut behind me. She was sitting on one of the chairs in the sitting room with all sorts of chaos going on on her face.
I mean, she had everything on her face, all colors, contors, highlights, and everything. She looked like a series of make-up tutorials gone wrong.
And it was so difficult to keep my face straight when I could feel the corners of my lips already crinkling into a smile.
"Hi," I spoke up to get rid of the blooming laughter in my throat while she stared comically at me, "is Hussain at home?"
"No, he's not and good afternoon to you too," she replied before she looked away from me to the plasma screen where a drama that looked obviously Korean was showing. It was a classroom scene and a boy was slapping himself repeatedly, as if he was angry at himself for something.
I wasn't sure if that was what propelled me to enter the sitting room, the fact that I could relate to being that angry at yourself that you go overboard in hurting yourself because you can't believe that you allowed all that to happen to you.
Or if it was because even though I was trying so hard, I've not been able to get her out of my mind and I didn't want to stay away from her.
"You watch Korean dramas?" She asked just after I'd taken a seat on the farthest chair away from her and even though I wasn't paying attention to the screen again.
"Yes, I've watched Jumong, A Man Called God and City..."
"No, no no no no no," she held out her left hand to stop me, a huge amused smile plastered on her face, "don't complete that statement. You definitely don't watch Kdramas if those are the first dramas that you're mentioning."
"But... but I've watched them."
"Yeah, just like 90% of the population, watching those dramas doesn't mean you watch Kdramas. It just means you... I don't even know what it means but you definitely don't watch kdramas if that's the only ones you watched."
"If it makes it better, I've watched Boys Before Flowers, it seems that's like the standard and..." the incredulous look she gave me made me trail off completely and it also made me want to smile because that kind of serious look on her face was just all shades of odd.
Adorably odd.
Oddly adorable.
"It doesn't make it any better, in fact, it makes it worse, it makes it really horrible!"
Okay, I felt that in my core.
"And BBF is definitely not the standard, I know it's popular and it got most people into Kdramas but really, that drama is dumb, everybody there is just stupid. I couldn't even finish it and it's just really shocking to hear that a lot of people enjoyed that stupid series."
The way she was giving all her energy to talk about it, the way she was gesticulating and clapping her hands together actually made my lips stretch into a smile.
"I've never seen anyone agree with me that the series is trash, I think that series is one of the series that made me lose interest in Kdramas. I concluded that if that series is a lot of people's favorite and the most popular Kdrama, then the industry must be producing mediocre films for that series to have shone that brightly."
"You know it," she gave me a thumbs up with a smile blooming on her face, "I don't think I can ever rate anyone that thinks highly of that series. It's so bad that I automatically don't like whoever rates that series."
"I guess I'm safe then," I held her gaze, "since I don't like the series."
"Yeah, I guess," some sort of shy smile touched her lips before she looked away to the television to focus on the movie again.
The boy that was slapping himself earlier was now rising from his seat in all those slow motions-like effects with a voiceover of something about Newton's law. He grabbed a huge textbook from a desk, banged it on a student's head with so much and he brutally stabbed another student's hand with a pen. It all happened in quick succession and the boy didn't even wait before he wrapped a curtain around the first student's face, cutting off his airflow and repeatedly punching him with the textbook.
The students in the class were too stunned and terrified to react and he didn't stop until the curtain was all bloodied up and his victim dropped to the floor, barely breathing.
"I asked you. I asked you to stop," he told the student he just assaulted that brutally in a classroom in a strangely quiet and detached voice and Nazeera's loud cheers and applauses drowned the rest of the audio.
I turned to look at her and she was beaming, yes, beaming at the screen. At the assailant.
"Yes!" She clapped her hands together, "That's my Si Eun."
"Your Siyeun? Is he not like the villain?"
"My husband? No, he's not, he's the farthest thing from being a villain," she picked a huge teddy bear and hugged it to her body, "he's the good guy."
"What I just saw didn't portray him as a good guy."
"That's because they provoked him. He has warned them over and over again to leave him alone but they think he's a pushover because he's a loner and has no friends so they continued to bully him so he just had to show them what he's really made up of."
Ohhh ohhh
"He's a kind of psychopathic guy, you know," she continued, "he could be very unhinged when he's provoked and I think he made me fall in love with psychopaths."
"Uhhhh?" I answered half-mindedly because I was sure I couldn't have heard her right. Fall in love with who? Psychopaths?
"I'm serious," she turned to me and she actually looked serious, "now, I think my type of guy is someone with a little psychopathic tendency. Someone who's quiet and detached on a normal day but can be very unhinged and dark when provoked. I want to be the only one that'd be able to calm him.-
And no, I'm not joking," she added before I could say a word and I couldn't help but just nod slowly. And here I was, thinking she was a normal person.
"Movies often romanticize a lot of things, I'm sure you'll bolt in the opposite direction if you should even see the kind of guys you think you like in real life."
"I'm sure I won't bolt. I'm not talking about actual psychopaths like the guy in Mouse so I'm sure it can't be that bad."
"Trust me, it's that bad."
She eyed me, she actually eyed me scornfully as if I was a bad person standing in the way of her actualizing her dreams.
"And how do you know that? Have you encountered one before?"
A beat or two of total silence passed before I chuckled, "I'm not sure, maybe I have."
She eyed me again before a glint lit her eyes and she leaned forward on her chair, "Is he your friend? Can you link us up? Hope he's not too old? I'm not going to get into a relationship until I'm 18 and I can't date anyone that's older than 21. So will you link us up?"
What kind of...
"Hmm? Hmmm? Will you link us up? And you have to keep it away from my brother. He already said I'm not allowed to get into a relationship until I'm 21 so I already made up my mind to date without his knowledge even though I'll probably let it slip during one of my non-stop talks but regardless, will you link us up?"
"No."
"Why?"
Geez! Is this what Nouman is always dealing with? No wonder my guy always looks tired.
"Because we don't talk anymore so I have no way of contacting him again."
She practically deflated, eyed me again before she grabbed the remote to change it to the next episode. A minute or two passed before she turned to look at me again.
"But how did you know he wasn't normal though? How did you he had psychopathic tendencies?"
Did she just say psychopathic tendencies with so much awe and glee? And what's her obsession with psychopaths? Well, I blame her Siyeun. If it wasn't for dramas romanticizing villains, she'd not find that cute or likable.
"Hmm hmm? Was he like Si Eun?"
"No."
"So what was he like and how did you find out?"
"Hmm, how should I describe this?" I thought about it for a while, "he was just really deranged and unhinged."
"How was he deranged!?"
"Hmmm, he got rid of what he couldn't do without on a normal day because he felt someone else was taking it away from him."
"Got rid as in how?"
"Made it disappear," my fingers flexed so they wouldn't do that one thing they were inching to do, "completely."
"Ewww," her face looked like she just tasted the most disgusting thing, "that sounds like an actual psychopath. I don't want, I want someone like my Si Eun.-
-My Si Eun is not like that, he's a very good friend. He was just a loner by choice and from the way he was raised. He became a literal ball of sunshine when he experienced real friendship but too bad those bastards took away his only friend. Geez!"
Was that sniffing sound I just heard? I turned to look at her and I was right. She was sniffing and blinking repeatedly, probably to stop herself from crying over Siyeun and his friend.
Was it too late to bolt?
"The directors better bring him back in season 2. If not, I'll... They even have to bring him back, abeg. I'll be sad if they don't." the room was plunged into sudden darkness and the place was only illuminated by a faint automated bulb.
"Ohh, they took the light?" she picked up her phone and the screen lit up her face, "the backup will come on very soon."
Silence that was only interrupted by the click-click sounds her fingers were making on her phone screen and I should get busy too, probably use Instagram or something on my phone since they were taking too long to restore the light but for the life of me, I could not look away from her face.
Hers was an expressive face and I didn't even need to see what was on her screen to guess what it was just from the faces she was making.
She looked like someone love-stricken when she read something swoon-worthy, had the biggest smile and made those little giggles when she read something funny, wore a look of complete nonchalance when she read something that didn't interest her - and she looked absolutely mortified when she read something disturbing.
"Aaaah!" She screamed as she looked up and I instinctively looked away because it felt like I'd be caught doing something I shouldn't be doing if I didn't look away.
"I'd never wrap my head around why some people just choose to be absolutely wicked."
"Why?" I looked back at her hands, "did something happen?"
"Yeah," she sounded subdued, pained even, "there's this man trending on Twitter, "apparently, he goes around under the guise of running an NGO that raises funds for sick people by crowdfunding but then, it's a lie."
That started to hit way too close to home and it suddenly felt like the room was closing in on me, trapping air in my chest and making it near impossible to breathe.
The hope of Mom going abroad and getting a better treatment with higher chances of recovery when the bastard started crowdfunding for us.
The relief.
The happiness that ended up becoming short-lived when we raised more than the needed amount and the bastard just disappeared. Like that. Into thin air. Without a single trace.
The despair, hopelessness, the pain, the emotional pain that felt so physical that it rendered me absolutely useless, and the turmoil that followed.
Then, the relapse. Something that probably wouldn't have happened if he hadn't run off with the money.
"After raising money for people, he'd disappear with the money," she continued, oblivious to my distress, "he was just using them. He just used them for his greedy and selfish interests. How? Of all people to do that to, why would he do that to sick people? It's... Subhannallah!" She visibly shuddered.
"I can't imagine the number of people that must have died because of him. I can't wrap my head around this level of wickedness.-
-ohh, they even posted his pictures. Ewww, it's the fact that people like him always look normal and you can't tell that they're this evil when you see them. These are days when I wish that I had supernatural powers. See him."
I didn't even know that she was already beside me until she shoved her phone at my face.
And the picture of a man I know all too well was staring right back at him.
A small choked chuckle escaped from my mouth.
"I know him."
"What?" She turned to look at me with the most shocked expression I've ever seen, "Hmm? How? Wait, is the psychopath you talked about earlier? How did you... Where did you even find someone like him?"
My lips stretched into a smile, a rather genuine one because her outburst was so alarming and dramatic that it was amusing.
"No, the psychopath story was just a joke. This man..." I glanced at the screen again and memories lodged themselves in my throat, cutting off my airflow, "he did something similar to us too, to my Mom and me. He crowdfunded for us to raise money for her treatment abroad and he disappeared with the money."
"Oh my God! How? I'm... God! I'm so sorry, what? I don't even know... how could he? What in... Subhannallah!" She clamped her palm over her mouth.
"It happened a long time ago so it really doesn't matter anymore. I'm over it now."
"That doesn't matter, it's... that was a very terrible thing to do to you. It's... I don't even know what to say.-
-I'm sorry, hmm? You don't deserve to go through that,"
No, I don't but a certain supreme being felt it was okay for me to go through all that and even so much more.
"How was he caught again?" I asked her when she was busy glaring at the phone and looking at his picture like she's give anything to see him and annihilate him.
"Hmmm, he wanted to do the same thing to some people, he already transferred the money from the account they used to raise the money and he bailed but one of the family of the person he did that to didn't relent. I'm not sure how but they were able to trace the transaction and they got his address.-
Initially, he denied it that someone hacked the account and stole the money but now, almost 10 people have recognized him and they have evidence of him doing the same thing to them. I hope they kill him or he rot in hell forever. Mad man!" She sounded so angry that it was almost amusing to see her getting that angry over something that has to do with me, over something at all.
"But at least, this is some kind of closure, I know it's not going to rectify what he already did to you but then, knowing that he's already caught and there'd be no more victims will probably make you feel better," she trailed off only to pick up almost immediately again, "I don't even know what I'm saying," she slumped against the backrest of the chair, "I just wanted you to feel better."
"I feel just fine, trust me, it's one of those memories that I've suppressed. I'd not even have remembered if it didn't come up," I looked at her, "I'm really okay."
She nodded slowly and suddenly, the lights came on again, illuminating the whole place, illuminating her whole face.
I swallowed, an instinctive reaction to seeing her up close like this and I couldn't help it, I couldn't stop my eyes from roaming all over her face, from drinking her in, from memorizing and tucking away the details of her ethereal face into the deepest and untainted part of my being.
I held my breath because it was suddenly a herculean task to breathe, to make a sound, to look away. Even something as minute as blinking felt as monumental as going bungee jumping.
"Do you have any friends?"
She said something, her lips moved and formed words but I was so lost, so carried away, that I didn't hear anything.
I couldn't hear anything. We were sitting so close and she looked so divine and unreal and how? How could someone possibly look like this?
"What?"
Fuck! Why did I sound like a dying chicken?
"I asked if you have any friends."
I asked if you have any friends. What does that mean? Friends? If I have any friends? Friends?
My brain was suddenly all to jumbled up, liquified, unable to process a thing because friends sounded so alien that her words felt like a string of something incomprehensible.
"Hello!" She snapped two fingers at her face and that seemed to do the work, it jolted me back to reality.
"Yeah, friends, of course, I do. Nouman is the only friend I have though."
"Why!?" She sounded alarmed and she actually looked at me from head to toe as if to appraise what could possibly be wrong with me.
"Why what?"
"What would you have only one friend?"
Because all the people I befriended before life turned upside down all moved on with their respective lives. They were getting their degrees, and doing something worthwhile for themselves.
They were not stuck.
"I've never heard of anyone with just one friend. Like me, I have like 50 friends or even more so how?" She shook her head dramatically, "anyway, I think you need new friends."
"I don't..."
"Or to be more specific, a new friend and that'd be me. I'm volunteering myself."
I opened my mouth to talk but she beat me to it, "you're welcome in advance."
"But why?"
"Why what?"
"Why would you want to be my friend?"
"Because you need sunshine in your life and I'm literal sunshine," she beamed. She literally beamed and it felt like something switched on the brightest light under her skin. It transformed her, lit up her face in a way that shouldn't be possible but here I was, watching her look so fucking unreal.
"Give me your phone," she commanded and I handed my phone to her without thinking.
"Unlock it," another command, another prompt compliance without thinking.
"So I'm saving my contact on your phone. I'm saving it as..." she looked up at me and I could swear that my heart skipped a beat or two, "what should I save it as?"
"Your name?"
"Nah, that's not how friendship works. I'm going to save it as... hmmm? Sunshine! Yes!" She beamed again, "Sunshine, that's just me."
Sun... sunshine? What?
"And I'm going to save yours with..." she returned my phone and picked up hers and I could see that she had already called her number from my phone.
"What should I save yours as?"
Moonshine?
I was seriously going insane.
"I'm going to save it as Alfred," she continued when I didn't reply, "no no, that's too generic. I think I should just go with something that has Oppa in it. Alfred Oppa. Hmm? That sounds nice. Alfred Oppa."
Oppa? Wasn't that the weird name that she calls Nouman?
"Do you like it?" She asked even though she was already typing it.
"What's the meaning?"
"Boyfriend."
Hmm? I sat upright.
"Older brother or older male friend. It could mean any of those three things and since you're older than me, that means you're an older male friend or wait..." she looked up suddenly, "are we even sure that you're older than me, you look younger. How old are you?"
"It's rude to ask for a stranger's age unprovoked."
"We're hardly strangers," she started counting her fingers, "we know each other's names, we've exchanged contacts, we've had a lengthy conversation, we've even hugged so we're not strangers at all. Left to me, we're already in our way to being best friends."
We've even hugged... That wasn't a hug, it was a consolation at best. The day was the worst day of my life and that's something because I've been having a series of terrible days nonstop for a while now. It was the day Mummy's doctor had told me the inevitable, my mom was going to die very soon, and nothing was going to change that. They wanted to take her off life support because patients with chances to live needed the machines and because we were just prolonging her suffering and pain.
I've always known it was going to come to that but then, I've always thought we'd have more time too, that I'd be more prepared, more ready but hearing it from the Doctor's lips, hearing the certainty in his words, I couldn't have been more unprepared.
How could some people have always been at the receiving end of everything bad and some people would believe in the existence of a fair and just supreme being?
It was the first time I broke down too, even with all the things that had come before Mom's diagnosis, her diagnosis, how our life spiraled to the lowest of the low, I've never broken down like that.
There were the lone tears in the middle of nowhere, the damp pillows whenever I woke up from drug-induced nights of sleep, the numbness and bleakness that I was now used to but I've never broken down like that... I never thought I could break down like that.
But my legs felt wobbly after I left the doctor's office, my vision had blurred and my chest had felt like something was compressing it, everything had felt painful, excruciatingly painful, so painful it hurt to breathe, to move, to be alive.
In the end, it wasn't the finality of her impending death that made me cry, it was because we were happy once, because we had everything once, the days of cooking together, of laughing into the nights together, of her slapping my head at the slightest provocation, of her looking at me with that inikinni expression, it was the fact that we shared all those things once and now, we'd never have them again.
And so, I broke down, in that hospital lobby, back to the wall, knees drawn to my chin, head buried in between my knees, I broke down.
It was unfair, it was unjust and so fucking painful that the only outlet to what I had always kept carefully wrapped underneath was through crying. I couldn't stop, not even if I wanted to, everything felt so raw and painful, and breaking down seemed to be the only way to soothe it.
I thought I heard footsteps that seemed to slow down but I couldn't be so sure until I heard someone ease into the space beside me on the floor, a feminine hand patting my shoulder and repeating over and over again that it was going to be fine, that everything was going to fine.
Maybe I'd cried harder because I knew nothing was going to be alright, that it was only going to get worse but when my tears finally subsided, my head was on her shoulders, and my tears had soaked her hijab. No one said anything, I couldn't even bring myself to thank her. I knew I should, she had sat with me at my lowest and had given me a shoulder to cry on but I couldn't bring myself to, not when my thoughts were all jumbled up and my whole body was still vibrating in a tell-tale sigh of an intending panic attack or another breakdown.
Finally, she was the one who spoke first. She had offered to go and get me drinking water and before I could even find my voice to stop her, she was already off. I bolted almost immediately.
I didn't want to see her again, didn't want to indulge in any conversation whatsoever with the stranger that had seen me at my lowest because I was embarrassed and I thought that was going to be the end of it.
But it wasn't. Even though I had only gotten a glimpse of her face, it didn't leave my mind for once, it'd creep into my thoughts at intervals but back then, before I knew she was Nouman's sister, it was easier to distract myself, to force myself to relegate her face to the back of my mind, to get lost in cooking and trying out new recipes and putting smiles on everybody's faces.
But after I saw her again, in this house, dressed in that pink gown and black scarf, I didn't have to try because there was no need, I couldn't get her out of my mind. It was like my mind was her new permanent residence.
She was the embodiment of everything I hated and I couldn't, for the life of me, tell why she was so different, why my mind was subconsciously making an exception for her.
"Thank you," my voice was hoarse so I had to clear to my throat and she turned to look at me with her all-expressive eyes. I looked away, suddenly feeling awkward and vulnerable.
"I didn't get to thank you that day, thank you for... for staying and..." I cleared my throat again, "just thank you."
"You're welcome even though it's no biggie, that's what friends are for."
Okay, she isn't going to stop on this friendship thing.
"And I'm sure everything is going to be alright, your mom will be fine."
"No, she won't be," I don't know why I said that, I could have just nodded or said Amen to her prayers that no one was going to answer, anything to end the conversation there and then but for reasons that were lost to me, I continued, "she's going to die, it's certain."
"Don't say that, you can never tell with God and a miracle can always happen."
Miracles? The word nearly made me laugh out loud. Miracles don't exist, just like God. Those two were just concepts that were made up to give false hope to humans, to make them wallow in their despair much longer.
I've been hopeful once and the only thing I got was a deeper abyss and a brighter hell.
"I believe in miracles and hoping so I'm sure everything will be alright."
She clamped her hand over mine, intertwined our fingers, and just like that, my problems took a totally different form. It became one that made it harder, nearly impossible to breathe because there was suddenly a lump in my throat and something unexplainable was happening to my heart. It wasn't beating and then, it was beating all too fast, then sporadically. My head felt dizzy and I could swear I was shaking... maybe not shaking but I wasn't still, I couldn't be still.
She was still talking but I was so uncomfortable... not uncomfortable but I was so unwell that I wasn't capable of focusing on anything but her hand on mine, on the feelings it was invoking, on the goosebumps it was evoking.
I removed my hand, I had to.
She stopped mid-sentence and she looked up at me with her brows raised.
"Sorry," I apologized, "I'm just not good with physical touches like..."
The way she eyed me made me trail off. She just eyed distastefully but in a playful way, one that was exchanged between friends. It made me wonder how she could be so carefree, so open, so alive.
"Anyway, I think I might have a perfect remedy to put you in a better mood and it's..."
"I'm not in a bad mood."
"And it's making food and eating it!" She didn't even act as if I just spoke, "I've been trying to make this Korean food since yesterday but I'm not getting it. I've nearly exhausted all the ingredients that I went all the way to Epe to get and I'm really good to be pained if I waste all of them."
She went all the way from here to Epe to get ingredients to make a Korean food? Was she for real?
"Why don't you try it?" She nudged me with her elbow and she beamed at me and even if I was going to say, even if the thoughts of saying no had crossed my mind, it evaporated with that action of hers.
"It's called Gimbap and it's like hmmm, it's like... I'm not even sure what it's like but I've always loved how they talk about it in kdramas and how they eat it with chopsticks. I've watched lots of videos on YouTube but every single one I did never turned out right, I don't know why. Maybe you should watch the video and try it?"
I didn't even get to disoblige or anything because her phone was already in my hands and a video recipe of the Kimbab or whatever was already playing on it.
"I already have cooked rice," she told me when I started paying attention to what was going on in the video and I could see cooked rice, veggies, eggs, seaweed leaves, and all that.
"And all the other ingredients too," she paused for a beat as she waited for me to finish watching the video and it had hardly finished before she clamped her hands together and she is looked up at me pleadingly.
"So what do you think? Will you try it? You can watch the video as many times as you like before we start."
"I don't need to, I'm just going to get started like this."
She looked at me from head to toe, eyed me from head to toe as if I just said the most obscene thing.
"No, you have to watch the video at least twice. I have limited ingredients and if you waste them, I won't..."
"I won't, trust me, you're in safe hands."
She flashed me her idea of a venoumous smile which was amusing because she should look nothing but innocent and angelic at all times.
"Like I said earlier, I won't forgive you if you waste my already small ingredients. I might even take back my friendship offer."
Half an hour later, I-we were halfway done with it and she has been the assistant of the decade because she kept passing the next ingredient without me having to ask.
And even though I wasn't looking at her, I could tell that she was looking at me with hawk's eyes, she was monitoring all my movements, skeptically at first because she didn't trust that I'd be able to pull it off when I watched the tutorial only once. But soon, her skepticism morphed into awe and grudging respect as she watched the ease with which I handled the setting, mixing, rolling, and cutting.
And even before she asked, I could sense the question coming.
"How and where did you learn how to cook again?"
"From my mom," I replied without thinking twice, "she was a chef, a very great one and I think I sort of picked interest in cooking because that's all mom ever does and it kind of made me feel closer to her."
Even now, cooking always feels like a love story to her. Whenever I cook is the only time I feel the closest to her, that I get to really relive all the time we spent cooking together, all the damage done to my head wherever I caused a mishap in the kitchen.
No wonder my head isn't properly shaped again.
The thought brought a smile to my face.
"'Must be really nice," she cooed and she looked at me with a pointed expression that it didn't take me a second to figure out what she wanted at all.
"What about you? Why do you like cooking?"
She beamed again and for a second, I was transfixed. I really didn't get how a smile, a mere smile could be this transformative. Again, her face felt like someone had torched it from within and she wasn't just glowing, she was practically shining.
"See ehn, that's how friendship works, when I ask you a personal question, you ask me the same question too. That's how new friends get to know each other better.-
-And to answer your question, I really can't say that this is the particular reason why I love cooking. It might be because I love eating. Eating is my most favorite hobby, I think food is the most beautiful thing in this world. Then after eating, my next hobbies would be stalking BTS and watching kdramas.-
-For your hobbies, apart from cooking, what else do you like?"
Watching you talk?
"Hmm, I'm not sure. I don't think I have any other hobby."
"Ohhh, that's really tragic but it's no problem," she waved dismissively, "I'm sure we'd find other hobbies for you as time goes on."
"I'd be glad."
"Me too! Who knows? Maybe one of your hobbies could be listening to music. I'll just make you fall in love with BTS, would be nice if we share playlists of their songs and we spend hours talking about the music prowess."
She continued going on and on about BTS and how she was sure we'd get even closer once I started listening to their music but I wasn't even really listening to her words, I was just getting carried away with the sound of her voice.
I've always thought Nouman has the best accent but Nazeera's own was too good it made him sound like a cock's crow.
"Here," I pushed the plate of circular Gimbap to her, "it's done."
"Oh my God! I can't believe I got carried and didn't focus on the last steps. This is what I get for being talkative and it looks so nice. It looks exactly like what it looks like in Kdramas," she was literally grinning from ear to ear and clapping her hands together, "now, let's check if it'd taste alike."
"Have you tasted theirs before?"
"Nope but judging from their expression whenever they eat it, I think I can tell what it'd taste like," she picked up a Gimbap with a chopstick, assessed it for a while before popping it into her mouth.
I watched her eat it, slowly at first, then almost hurriedly, as if she couldn't get enough of it.
"So what do you think?"
She took her time swallowing, "I think... What I think is that you're a witch because what in... there's no way in the world that you watched that video only once and you made something this amazing. It tastes so amazing. Oh my God!"
She picked another one, then another one, and another one, and a sound that felt so much like an amused chuckle escaped from my lips.
God! She was so exhilarating and amusing, and energetic like a powerful house that never goes off.
"Be serious, I'm sure you've not only watched the recipe before but you've also made it because this can't be your first time."
"Well, it is. Never even heard the name before."
"I don't believe you, this is too perfect to be a first-time trial, especially seeing how you watched that video only once."
"I don't think friends should doubt each other."
She initially started to say something but it ended up transforming into a smile before she nodded slowly.
"Yes, you're right but how though? It's just somehow that you watched it only once and you made it this perfectly."
"Hmm, let's just say I'm good at what I do and I also have a very retentive memory."
She eyed me playfully for blowing my own trumpet, "Well, anyhow. I'm just glad that what you're good at is cooking so you can always help me with my assignments and practicals."
"As long as you're ready to pay."
"Oh come on, my friendship is more than enough payment."
"I'll check the value in the weeks to come and confirm that myself."
"I feel attacked, you don't know the literal sunshine and happiness I'm about to attack you with."
I wasn't sure but I think I do and I don't think I was ready for her, for whatever was going to come with befriending her. And I wouldn't even be able to just sabotage this, whatever it was. She was my best friend's sister, she'd always be here unless I decided to cut off Nouman too.
And that wouldn't be possible because it's like cutting my right hand off.
So I guess, I was fucked.
Looks like this trope is Brother's Best Friend🤭
To the Alfred and Nadia's shippers. Sorry😂 but why were you guys even shipping them together in the first place?
Do you think Alfred was just joking about the psycho or do you think he really knows someone like that?
Anyway, Alfred really deserves a long hugggg. He has gone through a lot and hopefully, that's the end and he won't go through more🥲
See you guys on New Year's Eve✨