Chapter 87. Break up? (5/6)

Eventually, just when I thought I was on the verge of passing out, my lips suddenly locked in place. My laughter immediately stopped. As too did Rosa’s. When I opened my eyes, I saw her face. It was close, and though I didn’t feel it because of the cold, her hair was touching my cheeks. Rosa had leaned her body over me from my side and sealed my lips and desire to laugh along with it.

My lungs were sore from the cold air I’d uncontrollably breathed in while laughing. But my lips felt warm now. Her tongue gently coiled around my own while heating it up in the process.

Our breath was already disordered, thanks to our hearts that continued to beat out of control from that near-death experience and from laughing too hard immediately thereafter.

Her kiss here was one that calmed me down and reassured me. It made me feel I should stop worrying myself over the little things. And I should just accept that I love her. That I can’t live without her anymore even if I tried. She’d become an essential person to me without me even realizing it.

She loved me.

She wouldn’t allow me to run off on my own without her.

You are mine. That was what her kiss conveyed.

I am yours. She similarly wished to tell me that.

If you don’t have a place to belong, then neither do I. But we are each other’s place to return, so it’s fine.

Like this, a boy and a girl kissed, blanketed by the light snow drifting down to the ground as the cold winds battered their bodies and snatched away the warmth from their bodies. The only warmth it couldn't steal was the one between their conjoined lips and the one they felt in their hearts.

It was a little bittersweet.

But… it’s still freaking cold! Damn it! This city sucks!

After a few minutes, Rosa pulled her face away, hugged her body with her arms, and complained, “It’s freaking cold! Can we start heading back already? We’re going to freeze to death out here at this rate.”

“Yeah… we definitely should.”

I stood up and waited for Rosa to do the same but she staggered a bit when she got up.

“I… didn’t notice before but it seems I sprained my leg at some point during that whole process.” She said troubled.

“Sorry.” I bent down and placed my hand over it and felt it. It was cold, very cold.

“Ouch!” It seemed I’d applied a bit too much pressure to it.

While I kneeled down on the ground, I moved my bag from my back to the front of my body. I grabbed her hands, turned away from her then pulled her arms over my shoulders and wrapped them around my neck.

“Since it’s my fault, I have to at least make up for it a bit. We can at least get it inside the school and call a cab to pick us up. I’m not dumb enough to try and carry you all the way back to Alicia’s on my back in this cold.”

“It’s good you know your own limits. I’d be annoyed if you tried to do something so stupid.”

She fully agreed with my assessment of the situation.

Though the doors to the school were locked at this hour, there were still ways to get inside. The two of us had used such methods to enter and get to the rooftop. It really wasn’t difficult at all. You just needed something very thin and flat which could also bend a bit to fit through one of the front door creases. You then needed to slide it down behind the right-angle triangular notch between the door and door frame. 

You could even get in with something simple like a needle on a string and a magnet. Poke it through the top then let it fall to the ground on the other side. You could then use a magnet to pull the needle out from under the door. Once you have both ends, you’d pull on both sides of the string from your side of the door while simultaneously pulling on the door to open it. It was that simple.

The security was honestly pathetic. It wasn’t hard to fix this sort of vulnerability either, but the school didn’t want to fork over the cash. Though it was easy to enter the building in such a manner, the door for each individual room inside the school was a different story altogether. However, we hadn’t cared about those in the first place as the roof was never locked despite the warning sign on the door. Staff simply couldn’t be bothered to lock it. It was purely out of laziness. Some staff enjoyed smoking up there after all.

We had a few close encounters when eating lunch up there, but as we were on top of the entrance, we remained undetected throughout the first semester.

Though even if they did start locking the door, that wouldn’t stop me. I’d just snatch the key from the staff room in secret and make a copy or just pick the lock if it really came down to it.

I wasn’t a good boy playing by the rules in school like my first run through life after all.

Once I got us inside the school I rest Rosa down on the ground and took a seat beside her.

I took out my phone and confirmed it was still all in one piece. It was a relief I didn’t land on it and it landed on me instead. If it was the other way around I would probably cry myself to sleep at night. The warranty didn’t cover physical damage from a drop. Those bastard companies… I mean I get it, but still. You were responsible for taking care of your device. If you went and dropped it from four stories up, that was your own damn fault.

The company representative would no doubt look at you like you were brain dead if you thought they were going to help you with that. I wouldn’t know anything about that sort of thing though, since that definitely never happened to me.

No, I’m being dead serious, it never happened, okay? 

It… only fell out of my hand when I was right outside of my car. I was running to my car with two phones stacked on top of one another at that time. One slid off the other and the screen shattered. I just wanted to buy some fast food that day, but I had my heart broken instead. In the end, I never did get to eat any fast food that day.

The tears of blood prevented me from doing so. Instead of paying for burgers, I paid for a cheap replacement screen off Amazon and replaced it myself. I’d confirmed that it wouldn’t be covered under warranty from that snide bastard who wanted to act like it was cheaper to just buy a new phone.

Did he think I was an idiot? Screw that prick trying to upsell me on a new phone.

Haaaah. Well, forget it. I haven’t met that bastard and I definitely will never meet him in the future. There’s no chance in hell I’ll ever carelessly drop my phone like that again.

A short while after I called for a cab, Rosa called out to me by name, “Hey, Ran.”

“What is it?”

“About that talk we had on the roof, we should finish it.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Then first off, the topic of Irene. You were really played with by that woman, Ran.”

I completely agreed, “Yeah… I know. She did what she did to give me a reason to break up with you. She somehow saw through everything that was on my mind. She saw through the weakness in my heart and fully exploited it without mercy. But she naturally had her own interests in mind as well.”

Rosa had a similar opinion and said, “Yes, it’s true, Irene definitely did this with her daughter in mind. It was her intention to make you feel guilty toward me so you’d inevitably break up with me. With you available, her daughter would have a chance. She believes Alicia would never be able to do such a thing, to confess to a boy who’s her friend’s boyfriend.”

She continued, “Irene is the type of mother who will do whatever it takes for her daughter, even if it means using underhanded methods. That’s the feeling I got when I met her for the first time. Whether it’s done unfairly by dirtying her own hands, or hurting others, if it’s for her child, she’ll do it. Her love is all for her children, not herself. She simply doesn’t love herself and she’s likely been that way ever since her husband passed away.”

She paused for a bit before she opened her mouth again and said, “Ran, I’m sure you don’t know this, but I’ve long resolved myself to be cheated on. In fact... I needed you to cheat on me… For the sake of killing you.”

When she revealed her intent to kill me, I was a little surprised, but I could... accept it if that was what she desired.

“Yes, Ran, I needed you to cheat on me so I could achieve the objective I desperately wish to complete the most.” 

What objective does she achieve by killing me though? That, I didn’t understand at all.

“Ran, I will kill you.” She looked me dead in the eye and said that.

“Kill… me? Haaaaah… I suppose it’s only reasonable... that you’d want to do such a thing to a guy who cheated on you. But why save me just now? Isn’t that a bit contradictory? Was it because you wanted to do it with your own hands later down the line? Perhaps you wanted to deliver a slow and agonizing death through torture instead of a swift one?”

She smiled to herself when she heard my words before she corrected me, “No, Ran, what I want to kill is… the old you. I’m willing to use whatever means I have to. Even if I get hurt in the process.”