Chapter 112. New Year’s Eve. The Dazzling Fireworks Explode, Start of a New Year. (4/6)

“Did… Rosa ever once say you couldn’t be with me?”

“No. But it’s implied.”

“Are you sure it’s implied? Would Rosa really set up this scenario just so her best friend would be coldly rejected? Why don’t you ask her yourself what she really thinks? What… she really wants to see come out of this confession of yours?”

“What she really wants to see come out of my confession to you?”

“Yes. Rosa, you’re there, right? Hiding inside. You can hear us, can’t you?”

“Ah. Oh no! What have I done? I forgot...” She pushed away from me and turned anxiously to the entrance.

“So she did come with you.”

“Hahaha. Yes, yes, I’m here. Jeez, making me come out in this sort of situation. Isn’t our boyfriend just the worst type of insensitive brute, Alicia?”

“Our?” Alicia hung onto that single word.

“Yes… our.” She looked at Alicia like she wanted to hug and console her to ease the pain in her heart. She didn’t want her friend to wish for death because the pain was too much for her to bear with.

“What do you mean, our? He’s yours! He isn’t mine! I don’t understand!” She covered and hid her face with her right hand. She didn’t want to be seen by her friend right now. She felt shameless. Shame for letting herself kiss me the way she had when she knew that her friend had been there from the very beginning watching everything as it unfolded.

“I can’t face you anymore Rosa. I’m a bad girl who betrayed her friend’s trust. There’s no way you could be friends with such a horrible person like me.”

“A bad girl? Hmph! Don’t make me laugh. You think this makes you a bad girl? If you're a bad girl, then I must be the greatest evil to walk the face of the Earth. Please don’t insult really bad girls by putting yourself in the same category as me. It’s unpleasant.”

“Hah? Hey. What’s with you, Rosa? Are you trying to copy my style? Am I looking at a cheap dollar store version of myself?”

“Sh-Shut up.” She seemed a bit embarrassed when I nonchalantly called her out.

“Pfft hehe. Rosa, he’s right, it doesn’t fit you well. It feels more like something he’d say than something you would.” Alicia unintentionally let out a small laugh and said that without thinking. When she remembered the situation we were in she covered her mouth and glared at me reproachfully.

“Alicia… I’m being serious though. I need us to work together. I can’t save this idiot here without your help.”

“Save… him? What do you mean?”

Yes, what in the hell do you mean by that? I’d certainly like to know the answer to this odd statement as well.

“It involves my secret, Alicia.”

“Your secret? What secret?”

“You cannot ever reveal what I tell you here to anyone, okay?”

Alicia nodded her head hesitantly with uncertainty in her eyes. Just what sort of damning secret did her friend have?

“Alicia, I’m actually an assassin.”

Alicia nodded seriously then took a minute to process the words she’d just been told. It was cute how serious she looked out of nowhere. I wanted to hug this adorable creature.

After the minute was up she opened her mouth and said with a serious face, “Rosa, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Hahaha! Rosa, she doesn’t get it. Please try again. Hahahaha!” I covered my mouth, crouched down, and held my gut. I found it way too funny. I shouldn’t be laughing, but I can’t help it. Alicia’s expression was priceless. Yes, that was the sort of reaction someone normal should have.

“Alicia, my parents are assassins and I was similarly brought up as one. The reason they move from country to country is because they are assassins. I wanted to live a normal high school life so I proved to them I could live independently.”

“Okay. I understand.”

“You do? Really?”

“Yes, I understand that I still have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

I started snickering even more. Yes, Alicia, you are like an oasis of normalcy in my life that has been thrown into the abnormal thanks to Rosa.

“I’m an assassin.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m an assassin.”

“Please come again.”

“A-S-S-A-S-S-I-N What does that spell? Assassin! I’m an assassin. An assassin, Alicia! Do you get it now?”

“Not in the slightest!”

The exchange was too comical for me to take. I fell onto my side and curled up in a ball trying not to die from being unable to breathe. It hurt, it seriously hurt, guys. Please stop. I don’t want to die from laughter. I really don’t. Nature will laugh at me if I do.

“What is it you don’t get?”

“Everything!”

“Do you need proof or something?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Then.” Rosa said that as she approached me on the ground. When at my side she bent over and grabbed my left arm. She suddenly unwound the bandage on it and revealed my palm to Alicia.

“Do you see this? Does this look like a cat scratch to you?”

“Uh… no.”

She turned my hand around revealing a similarly sized cut on the back. It hadn’t fully healed yet. It would still take some time before it did.

“This was the result of an encounter with my father, an assassin. Do you get it now? He was stabbed through the hand. The day I said he had a fever, I’d actually found him with my father in such a state on the verge of bleeding out unconscious on the couch inside my living room.” That was a lie, she did not find me with her father at all. I didn’t expose her lie though. I wanted to see how Rosa would achieve the result she wanted. 

Well, I actually couldn’t expose her even if I wanted to. She’d just pulled out a ‘don’t expose my lie coupon’ from her pocket and waved it in front of my face before she tucked it into my right hand. With that coupon, as the name suggested, I wouldn’t be able to expose any lies she told... for the next ten minutes. Not now, and never in the future. That was the condition I’d put on the coupon.

She really wouldn’t let me mess up her plans no matter what it seemed. That coupon book had turned out to be the bane of my existence. Oh well, I didn’t really mind giving myself this much of a handicap to my girlfriend. It made things more interesting.

“What! Is that true, Ran!” She looked over to me for confirmation.

I let out a sigh and said, “Haaaaah. Yes, it is true that Rosa’s father stabbed a knife through my hand and I almost bled out and died that day atop the couch in her living room. That is not a lie.” It really wasn’t. I just never said Rosa was there to witness any of it. All she’d seen was a photo of the scene. My confirmation of the couch in the living room was meant to convince Alicia that Rosa had truly arrived on the scene as a witness in the nick of time to save me from her father.

“But why would your father do something like that?”

“Because he proposed to me without ever having introduced himself to my parents. My father was enraged as a result of the disrespect an assassin like him had been subjected to.” That was half true. That was the fake sort of story he gave me at the start, it turned out it was just supposed to be a bloody prank. Just thinking about it a murderous look appeared in my eyes. 

It seems Alicia had noticed the look I had let slip and was even more convinced that Rosa’s words were the truth. Damn it, why am I inadvertently helping with her lies when I don’t even mean to?

“I see… so that’s why. But… just because your father is an assassin doesn’t mean you are, right?”

“Well, not officially anyway. I have trained myself in such a fashion from a young age though. In the future, I’d planned to go to the academy after high school to become an official one, but now I want to be a teacher instead. However… there’s one problem with my plans.”

“A problem? What do you mean?”

“Him.” She pointed a finger at me.

Huh? What problem do I present exactly? Please do enlighten my dumb ass, I’d love to know.

“There’s a problem with Ran?”

“Yes, he wants me to kill him when we get married.”