Prelude of Humanity

Chapter 16

I like you—I love you—I miss you—I really love you lots—You are everything to me!

The three-day rule.

You may have heard of it, probably from dozens of romantic comedies that you may have encountered to serious love affairs. Usually on the boy's side, it's something that they do once they get the phone number of their love interest, either through direct or indirect means—well the former seems more reasonable than picking up a message from a stranger that happens to say "I love you, sweetheart."

Anyway, the three-day rule is pretty self-explanatory; you take a break from texting or doing whatever with your significant other for three days. They say that a first day call or chat may seem too eager or desperate (or the girl may judge the boy as possessive), a second day felt as if the act was planned, but the third day seems eerily just the sweet spot. If you ever had some tidbits in economics, it's somewhat similar to the seven-day rule where you should give yourself seven days before deciding if you want to purchase something or not. But hey, you haven't heard all of that from me.

Three-day rule. . . Seven-day rule. . . That could apply to any mishap.

Going back to the three-day rule, some people take it in either two ways: either they take it as a testament to themselves and not get too serious into a relationship, or a benchmark to see if their significant other gives a damn about them—what people call a red flag or a green flag. I hate those two terms because it's just adjacent to cancel culture, which I hate with a passion. We love making problems that don't exist.

Lesson? It's the usual thing that parents say to our hard-headed, ignorant, selfish, and youthful minds: There's always tomorrow for that.

Today's April first, three days after Miko's death.

I didn't realize it's been three days since that whole fiasco happened. But it at least gave us some breathing room for our minds to process, rationalize, and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, it's extremely difficult to move on from the death of someone you love, conditionally or unconditionally.

Actually, Ala-chan texted me yesterday about the wake of Miko's death that will be held at the Seiru National Funeral Parlor. That's exactly my itinerary today. Basically, I woke up at nine, took a bath, and finally made my own breakfast this time—the usual rice with luncheon meat. I was told to dress properly today, so to be on the really safe side, I wore black pants and a white polo shirt with black buttons. If I wore a tie or a bow, I might've been mistaken for a waiter now.

As usual, I waited for Ala-chan to arrive at around ten. I'm not entirely sure why it's not the other way around—I mean Ala-chan's house is pretty near to the train station compared to here. Or is it an excuse for Ala-chan to have more time in my room?

"Waiting is really a mind game, huh?"

Today's quite bland and uncompelling, though it's probably because of the occasion. Instead of me just going about my laptop on the table then either play Solitaire or HeroTom, I just did things minimally this time. Heck, I didn't even open my laptop today. Instead, I just read some of the fat library books from uni (yes, I still occasionally go to uni for that matter, which is a handy service) and for most of the time I just sit like a dead idiot on my thoughts and elements—like just a hundred percent present spiritually, zero percent physically.

Knock knock, sounded at the front door.

"Really, it's been almost an hour now?" I sighed, and placed the book I was reading down the table.

But I waited for a moment. I sat up on the chair attentively as if I was on a stance, as if I was expecting something to happen.

. . . .