WRONG NUMBER | NIKI

29 - A Little Too Transparent

HANA'S POV

The estate feels different without everyone in it. Maybe it is because the house is usually so full of voices that even its silence feels crowded, or maybe because, for the first time, I am here without my grandfather's presence hanging over every room like an invisible set of rules. My father had insisted that I stay while he, my mother, my uncles, and my grandfather left for their business trip, telling me that there was no reason for me to spend the break alone when the estate was perfectly safe and my friends were welcome to stay. 

Aera comes and goes whenever she feels like it, usually appearing around dinner and disappearing before breakfast, which I have learned is her preferred method of existing in any place where she cannot be the center of attention. 

Niki, however, has stayed, mostly because his parents are traveling with my uncles and because apparently everyone decided that leaving two teenagers alone in a massive estate with too many empty rooms and too much food was somehow a reasonable arrangement. I should probably find it strange, but instead there is something almost peaceful about it. 

The days begin slowly, with sunlight spilling across the enormous windows and the house remaining quiet until someone finally wanders downstairs, and then they stretch into afternoons filled with club work, half-finished conversations, books abandoned on tables, and the occasional argument over what we should eat. Somehow, Niki has become part of the scenery without ever actually becoming ordinary.

We spend most of our time working on the club project because apparently neither of us knows how to relax without feeling guilty about it. There are papers scattered across the library table, laptops open beside stacks of books, and notes covering almost every available surface. Sometimes we work together, sometimes we sit across from each other without speaking for nearly an hour, both completely absorbed in whatever we're doing. 

It should be awkward. Maybe it is, a little, but it is the kind of awkwardness that no longer feels like something I need to escape. 

There are moments when I look up and find him already looking at me, and instead of immediately looking away, I let myself hold his gaze for a second longer than I probably should before returning to my work. He never comments on it. Neither do I. We have developed this strange little language made entirely of glances, almost-smiles, things neither of us says, and somehow I am beginning to understand more of it than I should. 

In the afternoons, when the weather is pleasant, we take our books outside and sit beneath the trees in the garden, sometimes reading silently and sometimes arguing over characters as though fictional people have personally offended us. Once, I catch him laughing at something I say and the sound stays with me long after the conversation has ended, which is irritating enough that I spend the next twenty minutes pretending to be deeply interested in a paragraph I have already read three times.

Aera notices, of course. She notices everything when it involves someone she wants to impress. She has started appearing more often whenever Niki is around, suddenly finding reasons to sit beside him during dinner or asking him questions she could easily ask anyone else. She laughs louder when he speaks, touches his arm when she makes a joke, and somehow always seems to find herself standing close enough to him that I have to remind myself I am imagining the strange little irritation that sparks in my chest. 

Niki, however, appears completely unaffected. He answers her politely, gives her the same expression he gives everyone else, and then somehow ends up sitting beside me again five minutes later because he needs to see something on my laptop or borrow a pen or ask whether I have finished reading a particular section. 

I tell myself it means nothing. It probably means nothing. Still, one afternoon, when Aera leans toward him with a smile so obvious it should probably have its own warning label, I glance down at my book and realize I have been staring at the same sentence for approximately seven minutes. Niki notices. Of course he does.