You Must Fall In Love

Chapter Thirty-Six

Because there was no possible way that she could wash her hands and face for more than five minutes, Christine made her way back to the amulets as slowly as she could, dabbing her Band-Aid with a piece of toilet-paper.

She didn't like physical activity at the best of times, which generally made her impatient to be over and done with it — but when thinking about anything in any depth, she had to slow herself down to a crawl. She didn't believe in multitasking. Multitasking was for people who had things to do.

Alright, Christine. Who are you?

She was Singaporean. She had been born in a country that prided itself on being a place of harmony and goodwill, where all races and religions co-existed in bliss and perfect relations were the norm.

At least, that was what the government said, but she didn't have any reference points to tell her otherwise.

She had grown up speaking English, or rather Singlish, because it was the language that she was used to. Her strange but grammatically-correct English was a happy accident caused by her placement in an international school with the little expats and rich kids, not the national norm. The big Hollywood stars and the YouTubers spoke English, so she did as well. Mandarin was mandated, and therefore unhip, despite the fact that the government campaigns and the school educators campaigned virulently for its use.

She had never considered herself Chinese. China was where the foreign workers and the Sichuan skewers and the big Mandopop stars came from. They had weird internet memes and their own social media and their apps were strange. China didn't have anything to do with her.

But now, here she was, faced with an ancient Chinese woman who called herself the bride of a god, and a cousin who happened to be the most powerful mage in her part of the world, and both of them were telling her things that assumed she had more than a very fuzzy idea of what went on in ye olde Middle Kingdom, the most scholarly culture on God's clean green Earth, now ruled by some sort of Communist Party which people said was bad but she didn't really care about one way or the other.

And Jennifer Millicent Travers, for a good portion of time the whitest person she knew, was more interested in this than she was.

Christine wondered if this was what a midlife crisis felt like.

"Welcome back."

She stopped at the door, because that wasn't the voice she had expected.

"What are you doing here?"

Rob shrugged. He didn't have his hands on the chair this time, possibly because he knew she had been sitting there.

"Your good friend Jen didn't have a marker," he said, waving a small black tube with a round cap on its end. "So she went up to ask me for one."

Jen beamed.

"You have an Apache ceremonial dagger," glared Christine. "There is no way that you didn't have a marker."

"You're perfectly welcome to go find it, if that's what you want," said Jen in complete innocence. "Also, it's an Apache ceremonial knife, thank you very much."

"I bet she lost it," said Christine. "She always loses her stuff."

"I'd never have guessed," said Rob.

"Hey," said Jen. "Don't talk about me behind my back like that."

"I'm not even behind you," said Christine.

"Neither am I," said Rob.

"Meanies," pouted Jen.

Rob tossed the marker at Christine, who decided, in her infinite magnanimity, not to point out the fact that this situation was Jen's fault anyway.

"Since when was I nice? Thanks for the marker, by the way. You can get out now."

"I refuse," said Jen. "I'm going to sit here until you get it right."

"I was going to get out anyway," said Rob, folding his arms, "but since you said it so nicely, I think I'll stay."

Christine's mouth flattened out on instinct. Her patience was stretching like a rubber-band.

"What is there to see?" groaned Christine. "Are you guys just going to stand here and watch me fail at copying? Do you know how terrible my handwriting is?"

Jen flicked her gaze to the side. To Christine's horror, a sly look made its way across her face.

Jen wasn't allowed to look sly. That wasn't how things worked at all. This was probably the Hypothetical Lesbian Clone Jen that Yusuke had mentioned.

"Actually," said Jen, "I think I'll leave. Have fun, you guys!"

"Don't you dare," said Christine.

Jen gave a cheery wave, then departed entirely from the mortal plane. Christine smacked her head on the desk, left it there for what felt like an hour, then peeled herself off the spell-paper.

"She's trying to get us in the same place," said Rob.

"Why?"

"Do I look like I know what's going on in her head?"

Christine admitted that this was, all things considered, a grave improbability. Specifically, the words she used were something to the effect of Jen being the most indecipherable person since Mei-Mei of the 2013 P5 Maths Exam, Question Two.

And as she mentioned (but did not explain, because Mei-Mei was indecipherable), no-one was less decipherable than Mei-Mei of the 2013 P5 Maths Exam, Question Two.

"Who the hell is Mei-Mei?"

"She had fifteen apples and five cucumbers," said Christine, "and she gave them all to the National Kidney Foundation. That's all I know."

"Right, so you don't know any more about Jen than I do."

That one hurt.

"What? I know her perfectly well. Better than you, at least."

"Then why are you asking?"

"Isn't this what small talk is?"

"Christine, I wouldn't know what small talk is. I spent my entire childhood not talking to people and making up quips in my head. For the imaginary people."

"What a coincidence. I spent my entire childhood doing the same thing."

"You had Jen, didn't you?"

"For a while, yeah."

"So at least you had someone to talk to."

"Is this some sort of contest, Rob? Are we going to be judged on this or something?"

Rob smirked.

"We're an interesting pair, you and I. I don't like you, you don't like me, and we've somehow managed to maneuver our way into a weird bodyguard arrangement with no benefits, no duties and nothing but a hypothetical reward."

"I never said I didn't like you," said Christine. "I just act like I do."

"Which means?" he asked, looking intently at her.

That gaze was the problem. When you got past the sarcastic glint and the dead-fish apathy, there was something so charmingly innocent in his eyes that it made her knees weak. Its faintness only made the rest of it sweeter, like a hint of vanilla wafting through dark coffee.

"I... I don't not like you. That's it."

She was glad she was sitting down.

"Right," he said, looking away.

She hoped that was it, that he would turn away and leave her to wrestle with the amulets and her own confusion. But he didn't move at all.

"Let's talk, then. I'm not about to let anyone say I didn't try to wrap my head around you."

"We don't have anything in common, anyway," she said. "And it's not your head I'm worried about."

It's mine.

But Christine was beginning to realize that how she felt about the matter was quite irrelevant.