Hopeless Romantic

3. The Present

New Years had passed and school had reopened.
Classes resumed as usual. It was just difficult to wake up in the cold.
"There's no good weather or bad weather. There's just weather and your attitude towards it",
whoever said this had definitely never woken up at 6 in the morning to go to a place they shouldn't be in.
Rio's birthday was coming up and Oscar already had a gift in mind.
A book she desired to own.
"I honestly just love books that center women as their main roles, everything is about them, they are the moment"
"I've studied about those books in middle school, they caused quite a revolution back then"
"As they should, the oppression, the patriarchy, it was one of the very few ways women could suppress those."
"How many of those books have you read?"
"Not many, maybe like four or five, there is one book I want to read, I might buy it soon"
"Oh, which one?"
"Not telling you"
He found out the name of the book. Turns out the book wasn't available in the town library so he had to look for it through different means.

The guy being the biggest idiot you'll ever see, went through a lot of process just to get it.
First, he went to a bookstore and enquired its price, to his vain the book wasn't even available there, so he asked the store owner if he could arrange for it.
After the deal was made, he started saving up money. Instead of taking the bus he would walk everywhere. He stopped eating his daily packet of peanuts after lunch to save each penny.
Next, he found out he couldn't buy it directly as his mother's friend was an employee at the store, so he asked a classmate who lived 10 blocks away from the store to buy it for him.
A week before her birthday, the book was in his hands.
He read through it, it was a short and simple story of a girl in an aristocratic dominated society. He repacked the book and kept it in his bag.
Then he waited for her birthday to come. He was more excited than anyone.
He decided to stay up till 12 to call her. He tried to fight back his sleep to make sure he did. But he couldn't. He blacked out
While most people would say that it was really stupid of him to do something for a girl who he barely knew, he would say the opposite. Oscar spoke of her as if he knew her a long time, he knew her from somewhere and he knew she was the most unique person he would've met so far.
Rio loved her gift when he gave it to her on her birthday, her eyes shined with surprise while his eyes were filled with content.