Chapter 114. New Year’s Eve. The Dazzling Fireworks Explode, Start of a New Year. (6/6)

“Alicia, it will take both good and bad to make this idiot live a long life. So you need to forever stay a good girl, you got that? Him having two girlfriends makes him the bad guy, not you the bad girl. That is how society will look at it at least. Girls are always the innocent ones here. The guys are the guilty ones in this sort of situation. People don’t actually care about the process that led to this situation. They’ll just see a gloomy guy like him and automatically think he’s deceived us and is a dirty cheater; when in reality, we’ve just pushed ourselves onto him.”

“Oh! I see. I see.”

Don’t act like you’re perfectly fine with that!

“So what do we do now? Should we head home?”

“Actually, I was thinking we could light some of these up together before we leave. It should make for a nice memory between the three of us, don’t you think?” Rosa suddenly pulled out a package of sparklers from under her jacket.

“Oh! As expected of Rosa to come out with something like this. Let’s do it. Let’s do it.” Alicia agreed happily while still hugging me.

Rosa used her razor-sharp fingernails to effortlessly cut through the plastic package.

“Woah! Amazing! How’d you do that? Do you have a knife hidden away somewhere?” Alicia cried out.

“I told you, I’m an assassin, right? My nails alone are sharp enough to cleanly cut through skin and even this plastic packaging.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Watch.”

She approached me and poked my neck lightly and drew something small.

“A heart? Wait, that’s his blood? Doesn’t it hurt?”

“The nail polish I use numbs pain so a person won’t even feel it when they’ve been cut.”

“I see. You could have just shown me that earlier you know.”

“You might have just thought I had a hidden knife-like just now and I was trying to trick you somehow using sleight of hand. Now that you believe I’m an assassin, you’re willing to believe it a lot easier.” I smelled some major bullshit, the reason was entirely different. She wanted a certain outcome and the way she’d gone about it was the best way to do it. Using my injury was a much better way to stir Alicia’s emotions up. She could use my reactions as well, which also led to the entire false narrative she spun up.

She did well, I was willing to give her that much. But she was reliant on my cooperation. She put her full trust in me that I’d abide by my words. If I was the slightest bit uncooperative, all her effort would have been for naught.

Sadly, I’d developed a bit of a soft spot for my girlfriend and I didn’t want to see all of her hard work and meticulous effort go down the drain just because I wanted to be petty. I mean, I was a petty person, but that didn’t mean I’d be petty in every situation. I had a soft spot for her, okay? And maybe Alicia too, sue me!

Was it because they were pretty and cute?

Shut up. Don’t ask stupid questions!

Ugh, my brain has gradually been infected by that stupid disease called youth. It’s unpleasant just thinking about it.

I’m too old for this crap.

The three of us gathered around close together in a circle while squatting down and lit up the sparklers Rosa brought.

“By the way, sparklers are pretty dangerous. They can get as hot as 1000 to 1600 degrees Celsius.” I threw out that random tidbit.

“So what? Might as well use them to warm our asses up then. This city is too damn cold.” Rosa gave such an unladylike reply.

“Which is why we should hurry up and get out of here. It’s the exact reason I wanted to leave just now.”

“Weren’t you just trying to run away so you didn’t have to face our wrath?” Alicia countered.

“No, my left hand is killing me. So is my stomach. I’m sleepy too. And freezing. I just wanted to go into hibernation and never come outside again until winter is over.”

“What? Why didn’t you just say that then? You looked like you were going to run somewhere far away.”

“I was, the Bahamas or Hawaii was my destination.”

“Haha, why don’t we all go there together in the future?” Alicia made such a suggestion 

“Oh, that’s a good idea. We definitely should. Maybe for our honeymoon when we’re all married or something,” Rosa immediately agreed.

“But Rosa, I just realized it now, but how are we both supposed to end up legally married to him exactly?”

“Easy, you legally marry him in this country where you have citizenship, while I marry him in another country I have citizenship in. Though I have citizenship in this country, I wasn’t born here. I have citizenship in the country I was born in and a few other countries as well. Family connections from a lineage of assassins and whatnot make it easier for me to get citizenship. You just need to get a few people to bend some rules is all. Nobody in the know wants to piss off a family of assassins.”

“Oh, that sounds a bit scary,” Alicia casually commented while watching one of her sparklers die out.

Then please at least look scared when you say it sounds scary.

She innocently lit another sparkler up and continued to stare at it completely unaware of the retort I made in my head.

Haaaah. It’s hard to even get mad at her when she has such an innocent appearance. From this day forward, it seemed I’d officially acquired two girlfriends… two future wives.

What’s with my dog shit luck? What god did I anger to make this happen? I just wanted to remain a loner and live a quiet peaceful life, yet here I am doing the exact opposite of that.

If one wasn’t enough trouble, two sure were.

The two girls chatted back and forth while I took a back seat and listened to their future plans.

From the sounds of it, my life wouldn’t be anything near peaceful.

Oh yeah, Irene… I should… probably bring this up with Alicia. It would be best if she knew… plus it might make her waver. But it might also make her relationship with her mother turn strange. It could ruin it...

Hmm… this was a rather difficult problem. Should I dump it on Irene to solve? No, she’d just act like her feelings was nothing. She’d put her daughter first above all.

I took a deep breath and resolved myself to speak up about it. It was also one of Rosa’s requests I had to fulfill.

“By the way, Alicia, your mother is also in love with Ran.” Rosa, out of nowhere, completely took the wind out of my sail.

I was about to just blurt out I fucked her mother or something stupid. But the way Rosa worded it was much more appropriate to ease Alicia into things. Good save, Rosa.

“What! My mother? And Ran?”

“Yeah. She’s in pretty deep you know. She fell hard.”

“That’s a bit troubling to hear.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. In fact, she was the mastermind who set up this entire plan to get you and Ran together with my assistance. She plans to just bury her own feelings toward Ran for your sake though. She thinks it would be too much for a mother and daughter to both be intimate with the same person. I don’t really agree with her though.”

“Ran… is this true?”

“Well, I was actually about to bring it up. I don’t know about her being in love with me, but we are on… pretty good terms. She was the one who made the offer and invited me to move in with you guys for free. I didn’t want to be a leech though so I set some conditions such as her quitting her lowest paying job and allowing me to rent the room rather than staying for free.”

“I see. If my mother made the offer herself, I can only imagine she does have those sorts of feelings for you. That room used to be a spare room our dad often used when he was up late working and didn’t want to return to wake mother up in the middle of the night. If she’s offering that room to a man on her own… I think she might love you after all. Maybe she sees a bit of father in you.”

“Uh… I doubt that.” I’m no father. I’m the farthest thing from it. Unless it was the blue decorative contacts. No way… could it have been that that got her?

“Alicia, what do you think? Are you fine with your mother giving up her own happiness for yours?” Rosa suddenly asked that.

“Of course not. I want to see my mother happy.”

“Then… you’re saying it’s fine if there is a third in this relationship of ours?”

“My mother has sacrificed so much for my little brother and me. If you’re saying Ran can really make her happy, then I have no problem with it. It’s just… a little embarrassing to suddenly be told all this.”

“Alicia, do you actually realize what you’re agreeing to?” I chimed in.

“What do you mean?”

“In a hypothetical situation, let’s say I married you and your mother. What would that make my relationship with you become?”

“I’d be your wife and my mother would be your wife, right?”

“Right, but wrong, it would mean I’d be married to my own stepdaughter.”

Alicia’s eyes widened when she understood my words.

She didn’t speak for a good minute while countless things likely ran through her mind. Only after that minute did she snap out of it. She got closer to Rosa and whispered something into her ear.

“Oh? You think so too?”

Alicia nodded her head.

“Right, right. This subject actually came up before. I’m not the weird one for thinking that way after all. It is like that.”

Alicia nodded again.

“What are you two talking about?”

“Ran, I might not be such a good girl after all. I feel a bit dirty.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Ran, please don’t look at me like that. It’s embarrassing.”

“What’s so embarrassing?”

She moved her sparkler from her right hand to her left which held a second sparkler then balled her right hand into a fist. She then covered her mouth while she averted her eyes to the side with a strange look.

“Ran… the thing is… I think I have a bit of a father complex.”

“Hah? What now?”

“Meaning if you… became my step father… I might actually be… into that sort of thing.”

“Where has the good girl I once knew gone to? Please bring her back! I don’t remember you being such a girl!”

“When I think about it, you feel sort of reliable like my father was. He was also a bit solitary too. He’d lock himself up in that room and happily work all by himself.”

Well, I tried. I thought maybe by some sort of fluke she’d lose interest in me if she was weirded out by the idea.

“So you were one of those daddy’s little girls when you were younger?” Rosa asked.

Alicia nodded meekly in confirmation.

“Then things work out perfectly. Just let him marry your mother in the future and imagine all the different kinds of things you can do together with such a relationship.”

Cleanse my mind. I must not allow Rosa to corrupt me.

Despite my best efforts, the image of her calling out ‘Daddy, harder’ snuck its way into my mind. I’d truly been on the internet too long.

I didn’t dare look Alicia in the eyes after I’d superimposed that image with her. Neither of us could.

By now everyone else’s sparklers had run out. I had the last and only that was still going.

The three of us watched it in silence until the last moment when it finally went out.

After that, we called it a day and all head home together. Because of how late it was, we called a cab.

As soon as we got back I filled up my empty stomach then immediately passed out on my bed.