Chapter 8

On behalf of an innocent man who falls, or used to fall, in love with this beautiful girl, I expect her to say something like ‘take care’. Who you love the first time will not be the one who you will marry, I know it. Khanh doesn’t know my emotions, and I’m not rich enough to say ‘I love you’ or something. My future is full of plans, and this love should end, or at least till the day I can lead a business empire. It’s damn hurt here, in my little heart, so I need something to be a beautiful memory…

But what she tells me just drives me insane.

“Can you ride Thuy back home with you?” Khanh might realize how resentful my look is. She knows that I’m weak, but it doesn’t stop her from smiling and keeping convincing me for unbelievable reasons. “Thuy is just a girl, and the evening is not safe for her. She is injured as well.”

“She is literally light, too.”

Thuy?

She is a gangster, lady! The girl who is infamous for fighting, till the level where our homeroom teacher complained with her grandmother so many times that the old woman declared that Thuy is no longer her grandchild!

Since when, when the hell did people start describing a notorious gangster as if she is a fragile princess? The fragile one is me, okay?

Do I look like someone who can carry her with my bicycle? Even her skeletons make up about fourteen percent of her total body weight, okay? How can that number be lower than five kilograms? I’ll die if I have to carry her. It is a bitter truth, not a reason that a rude man uses to refuse helping a girl!

I’m thinking about that, and I’m intending to say that too. Crush? Sorry, my health is more important. But I don’t know if it is a bad luck or something, because at the moment I am about to refuse, my damn-miserable-stupid friend comes and tell Khanh with a certain voice as if he is my father and he takes the right to decide everything for me.

“Just bring her to Nguyet Anh and he’ll take her home. No problem with him, don’t worry. He is not mean at all.” Then he turns to show his bright white teeth at me, “Right, son?”

F*ck, not the ‘as if’ clause. Now he wants to be my second father for real.

Long has been the ‘trustworthy’ monitor of my class since the day we were just lower secondary students. Although I find nothing trustworthy in him, my classmates do, therefore his words speak. This case is the same as all the previous ones. Khanh hears his acceptance, looking at me with eyes full of gratitude before saying “thank you in advance” to me and running back to the room at the fast pace.

She doesn’t let me explain. What I can see is her disappearing behind the door and letting me face an idiot. Oh yes, crazy too.

I slowly raise my middle finger at the brat in front of me, turning back and leaving without a word.

Long asks me from behind with the voice getting louder and louder in the hallway, “Hey hey, Nguyet Anh, where are you going?”

“You ask me that?” For heaven’s sake, I do hold back my anger. I do shut up my mouth not to yell at this moron’s ancestors. But when this stupid thing comes and grasps my clothes to pull me back, my patience is all gone with the wind. “Put your shitty hand out of me now! F*ck!”

Now I hate my weak body as well. I’m so weak that no matter how I struggle to escape from this brat, he still clings to my leg and screams like hell as if… No, this thing has no dignity at all.

“No, I don’t mean that! Don’t go! You can’t leave now!”

“You agree, you bring her home! I don’t give a damn!” I bend down my back, trying to pull both his hands out of my leg. “Let me go! I will never carry that deadly burden! I’ll die!”

“You can’t!” One hand taken out, another hand grasping my coat, and the culprit still screams while realizing that my face is paler and paler in anger and helplessness, “Nguyet Anh, be calm, no, don’t be furious. Let me explain!”

I look at him. Long looks back at me, blinking his eyes to be a bit more trustworthy without realizing that his appearance is damn hideous in my mind. Then I bow my body down to untie the shoelaces in my foot before holding one in my hand.

“Briefly summarize, or this shoe will be in your mouth. I swear.”

“Okay, okay.” He opens his mouth, intending to smile to show his friendliness, but soon stopping when he sees the shoe, “Don’t be so aggressive, dude. Holding a shoe to threaten the others is not what a gentleman should do.”

“There’s no other way, hereditary habit.”

Ten minutes later, the shoe turns back to its original function in my foot instead of being a weapon. I accept taking Thuy back home with me with a plastic bag carrying a whole turkey and a box of swiftlet nest soup. Behind me are Khanh’s delightful smile and Long, the guy keeping vomiting his obnoxious words despite my dumbfounded face.

“Take care, dude! I’ll miss you so much! And thank you for your gift!!”

I don’t know which adjective is suitable for describing his words. I’m speechless, and I can’t suffer from it either. Having no other choice, I turn back, intending to remind this stuff that it’s shameful enough. But when I look at Long the brat, he also raises his both arms into the shape of a big heart, “I love you, dear! And remember to get home soon. See you tomorrow.”

Well, it is my fault trying to communicate with a crazy man. My fault.

I turn my head, talking with Thuy, the one who has stood there in silence for such a long time.

“Let’s go, Thuy.”

She nods, still being quiet and walking next to me. As an undeniable clause, I can’t carry her on the back seat because, so sorry to her, she is too heavy. I just walk alongside the bike, and we go on the way back home under the starry sky.

Unlike Long, I have nothing to talk with Thuy, and if Long the brat didn’t threaten me that Nam the poor kid might not be the final victim, making me get some goosebumps that I’d better go with someone else in the evening, I will never go the same way to Thuy.

Ah yes, Long believes in aliens more terrible than I think. Because of his unbelievable belief, Long even shows me he did hire some freaky people whom he calls ‘alien experts’ to come to this neighborhood catching those aliens, spending nearly three thousand dollars for those that we don’t even identify where the hell they come from! I swear, when knowing that all my money has to join the restaurant’s business while this money waster throws his wealth through the window, I nearly pushed both my shoes into his throat.

What’s angrier, I just found out that he came to the garage to unlock his fancy Ferrari Enzo, just to carry those cheaters!

For those who know nothing about his damn luxurious car, Long’s Ferrari Enzo is not only expensive, with the surrounding cost a million dollars but also exclusive. There are only four hundred of them in this world. Every single inch of that car is golden. So what? Ah, let me tell you.

Last year I—his worker, his shareholder, and best friend—accidentally scratched only one short, faint line on that sport car, and do you know what he did? He forced me to call him ‘dad’ in public for a whole month! If he just needs a place to burn his bills, why doesn’t he give them all to me?

How the hell can I be this crazy bastard’s friend???

Aliens? From now on it’s a synonym for ‘f*ck’, absolutely.

“There is someone standing not so far from us.”

All in the sudden, Thuy’s low, calm voice echoes in my ear, as if she is trying to hide her words amid the dark surrounding us. I have no knowledge of what’s happening now, because all I have done is yell at my bastard friend. So I glance at her serious face before turning my eyes to the front. Under the yellow light of streetlights, I can see a group of four freaky people standing together not so far from us. They are in the tree’s shadow with a fancy car left aside, so I don’t know what they look like or what they’re doing.

But, f*ck it, if we can be unlucky enough to come across them now, it’s no longer ‘unlucky’ but ‘luckless’.

Unlucky people can’t meet criminals when the police station is just one hundred meters away!!!