hemophilia

ten

❛❛ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐟 𝐡𝐞'𝐬 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧 "𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞" 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝? / 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐩 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧' 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐳𝐞 / 𝐎𝐡, 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐞 ❜❜

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

"Did he handle you alright?" Yuki inquired while checking my ear. "The piercings look good! Fits you real nice."

Her remark made me a little flustered, making it quite hard not to take her flirty personality that seriously. "Yeah, he was very gentle."

"He usually works with male clients, so I wasn't sure if he could be that gentle," she said as Choso side-eyed her, "But he is a pro after all."

"Why so?" I wondered.

Yuki shrugged, "Girls find him a little scary."

The explanation made me raise my eyebrows. Choso? Scary? I could understand intimidating - even years ago when I first saw him, that's the first impression he'd made on me, but I couldn't really wrap my head around how he could be terrifying for some people. Maybe I'd gotten a little too accustomed to him, and now I couldn't see him from a stranger's perspective. But even so, I think that if you went past the surrounding darkness, you could spot the sparkle in his eyes. I looked at him, his face had completely healed since March - it had been several weeks since, after all, but there was a tingle in my fingers that was aching to touch his skin again.

Yuki was definitely the chatty type, I could see why Nobara had taken a liking to her - but Yuki was easy to like, anyway. Our conversations flowed like we'd always been friends, and she managed to get past my shyness, I even listened attentively to all the words coming out of her mouth. I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be stealing glances at Choso every now and then, and almost all the time, I caught him also looking at me.

About an hour later, my phone dinged, and a text from Nobara appeared on the screen asking if everything was fine, to which I quickly responded that yes and I'd be home soon. Yuki left a couple of minutes before we did, saying she was in a hurry and asked Choso to close up the place - I guessed they didn't work on weekends.

"Do you want me to drive you home?" he offered as he closed all the lights.

I juggled a little with the idea, I wanted to be around him, but I also didn't want to make him drive in my direction for only about five minutes. "No, it's too short of a drive, I don't want to take up more of your time and you'd already come here..."

"Then I'll walk you."

I could've argued against that, but I chose not to. The idea of being alone with him still terrified me, but I didn't want to continue pushing him away. We could at least be friends. After he finished closing up and locked the door, we started walking down the usually busy street, this time a lot more quiet as it was a Sunday evening.

"Do you want to grab some tea?" I blurted out in a moment, so random that I almost surprised myself. "I know a nice place on the way, but if you don't then-"

"Yes," he interrupted, "I'd like to grab some tea with you."

A stupid smile formed on my face as I felt my cheeks turn a little red. I blushed so much around him that I felt like a middle schooler seeing her crush in the hallways. As I walked alongside him, I could still sense his intoxicating cologne and it was driving me more and more crazy. It was the middle of spring, so I could no longer do my winter trick and hide the lower half of my face in my scarf to cope.