Negative -Girls: To Live And Die - Chapter 14

The sun lowers and pushes its light into the reconcile room.

“Not fair.” She lets the paper fall from her slender fingers, “unfair.”

“Depends on your belief what is fair,” I shrug.

“So I don’t have to do it?” a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

I nod, “absolutely,” I say misdirected, “you have to do it.”

You know what, a subjective question is the best. I know this is risky, touching on what I shouldn’t feel more, using my power as a tutor despite being a fraud–but look at her face. Worth a thousand dollars. No, I’m not a sadist, I’m dominant. A simple nature in every man.

“Ho-ha.”

She rolls her eyes, “let’s see who’d get the last laugh, Sunbae.” Gritting her teeth as if her sadist nature has been attacked.

In my disbelieve, She is doing it. Scribbling hard furrows tight, and eyes laser the paper. Good luck I’d say but luck would not be effective on a subjective question, you could, however, shoot whatever and get it right but goddamn you must be able a special being that could win lottery five times in a night. Or you could write back the question in the blank line like confused elementary students.

She thinks. She writes. Thinks and draws. She thinks then scratches everything outs from her pen.

“Don’t worry, Shizuka,” I say with a sweet smile I can give from a sarcastic person, “take your time. The evening is two hours more.”

She groans, “you’ll be the one worrying next time.” She writes again under the frustrated ink.

I lean on the couch, enjoying the nice temperature and the view of the pretty girl trying her hardest in front of me. Me, worry? How can I have worries? What makes me worry?

My eyes glance at the neat writing from her ink. What makes me worry? Worries start from what if. What if Shizuka asks me the real answer? What if I’m hadn’t enough to swindle around her pointy ears that can expose what’s inside a balloon of lies?

…

Of course, I have no worries! I don’t have to deal with answering on my own if the answer sheet is sleeping yet ready inside the red file. Let’s see…see…I don’t see it.

I search the whole file, and no matter how hard I look at each page, the answer sheet never appears.

Oh god, I should have told her she can not do it.

When my eyes return to the world, a grinning of the devil and the sharp eyes of knowing what faces are feeling flicks my adrenalin. Shizuka hmmed, “something is wrong, my dear Sunbae?”

“No.”

“Really? I just felt something in my heart when I saw your face earlier. A patterned beating. A Morse code perhaps? Telling me that the ‘next time’ has come.”

Her eyes land on my hand and file.

I pull away from my hand, clear my throat as I adjust my necktie, “It’s just your imagination.”

“Believe me,” Shizuka says as she puts down her pen, “I know what imagination is. Perhaps, you can tell me the real answer for question number one?”

“You have to answer it first.” I hope she never gets the answer.

With a glee, Shizuka takes her pen and scribbles some.

Click. The ink cowers inside the pen.

Then slowly she slips it to me, “please, my dear tutor,” She said so, very sincerely, “tell me in detail what’s wrong in my answer.”

It’s better not to say anything if you don’t know what to say. But this has Shizuka encourages. This has Shizuka has an epiphany. Of why her tutor never got into teaching mode.

“Why, Sunbae?” She tilts her head as if to look deeper in my neck’s shadow, “don’t tell me you can’t?

“Don’t tell me you’re a fraud?”

She eyes a theory. And she locks on it.

My throat grabs a mouthful of spit, “what the hell are you talking about?” I hold and put on the faked calmness. I grab her paper casually and put it on my face as if to read–when in reality, I am covering the tears from my forehead.

Shit told you this is risky. If she found out I’m a fraud I can say bye to this progress, say hi to Death Pill, and start anew again. If I died, would it make me back before the gamble? Dying million times again?

But there’s no need to escape and keep worrying. I have to be confident in my swindling skill. I’m for one is good at that, applying lie in truth. Swindling experience taught me that first, appear confident.

I pull down the paper and smile, confusing Shizuka. “Testing me wouldn’t change anything, Shizuka.”

“It would in my eyes.”

Then secondly, suggest. “You shouldn’t provoke me.”

Her thumb rubs on her nail, “what if I do?”

“I can give you a lot of homework–maths homework.”

Her body jolts up and she smiles in seducing and worrying, “but our deal would be out then? D-Don’t you want that pleasuring reward I promise? You would lose a point on me. Think of the Pro-Mise?” she places a golden finger on her cherry jiggling lips.

I’m sorry Shizuka, regarding your deal I would like to continue, but you can’t seduce a swindler. Dogs can’t intimate a wolf.

“I would lose a point on you, but Sohee would love to hear about me giving homework.” And thirdly, end it with convincing. “I have the answer for this.” a sentence indirectly saying I’m eligible to be a tutor.

Her face tightens and her hand jerk toward the paper. Wondering if she should take back her challenge or not. Wondering If I’m telling the truth or not. Wondering If her sadist side here would be safe or wrong.

Wondering if her gut is to be followed here or not.

But she’s a lucky student. She believes in luck. And luck doesn’t need to be convinced. She pulls her hand and, despite her nervousness gesture for the last few seconds, her face shifts to a smug.

“Oh, Sunbae.” She says in a playful tone, “words wouldn’t change anything now. My heart is sure now, that you don’t want to answer the biology question.”

Her worried expression earlier was nothing but an act to bait me to talk, make me bite on my tongue. I’ve been played. She’s not a dog but a fox.

Goddamit. In this case, I have to push my luck too. I can play a game of luck, too, Shizuka. I beat you once. And I will beat you again.

I deny her smug, “I don’t want to, yes. But I can. Biology is the easiest in the three science subject.” Sex is easy to do than trying to calculate an elephant mass and calling water H2O.

“Then let’s go on with it.”

“Yeah, let’s.”