The Heroes We Weren't

Chapter 34 - The Speech

"I can't."

I was seated on the guestroom bed with my legs over its edge; the shiniest of white silks now clung onto my body as I had gotten dressed for the ball. My hair had been clumsily re-braided for the fifth time and my arms had begun to ache from my constant crave to get every last lock of hair to stay in place.

Never perfect, never good enough to take on the stage.

Hyun-Soo had squatted on the floor in front of me, his hands gently placed on top of mine. He was wearing one of Adam's suits; the top two buttons undone and the tie so sloppily crooked.

Perfection, to me.

"Why can't you?" He asked.

"Because he's above me." I admitted. "He always was."

A wrinkle formed between Hyun-Soo's eyebrows.

"Are you sure we're talking about the same man here?" He asked. "How could grumpy ol' vest man be above anyone? Above you, none the less."

I grinned. Johnson was a grumpy ol' vest man.

"Ever since I met him," I began, "it's like everything he ever says is clever, intelligent, you know? And me, he makes me feel dumb and unimportant and poor and-"

"Mhm." He lowered his head, viewed my freshly painted nails and carefully removed a bit of nail polish from the side of my thumb. "How about we leave the self-pity at home?"

"I'm not pitying myself," I lied, "I mean has Johnson never made you feel like-"

"'City." He looked up at me again. "Ever since I met you, all you ever did was blame yourself - For not saving those in need, for not doing better, for not being better," he continued, "yet you are perfectly fine the way you are."

He shrugged his shoulders.
"Vest-man on the other hand-" he sneered "-has got some serious issues to work on."

Cue the most overused of lines, from any pathetic attempt of a romantic book or movie that you have ever seen, where the author must have been out of both their silly mind as well as their ridiculous metaphors – but, I felt like drowning in his eyes.

There, I said it – his dark brown eyes seemed incredibly inviting to immerse myself into yet his words were the anchor to my ship.

I shivered at my own cringe worthy moment of inner so called poetry. Anxiety for the ball was craving my full attention and so the memories that I now scribble down onto these pages are mostly just in the form of eyes, fingers, tie - All his and all but little details irrelevant to the story, but so amazingly easy to cling onto in a moment of a nervousness impossible to escape.

They were though. Perfect. The eyes.

"Do you not see it?" He asked. "For the longest time now, you've been calling him 'Johnson'." I wasn't following.

"You dropped the 'mister' forever ago." He added.

He was right. I hadn't called him 'Mister Johnson' for a very long time.

"I don't think you fear him any longer." He continued. "I think you fear yourself, 'City."

He raised his hand to gently tap his finger against my forehead.

"I think you fear not living up to the expectations of some silly world you've made up inside of your head." He continued. "A world where some kind of audience is reading your every thought; a world where you're expected to save everyone by the end - like some sort of heroine."

"You're just as confusing as M." I mumbled. "Words, cannot. Chocolate, can?"

He smirked.

"We will go to this ball, and you will hold this speech." He said. "We will save whoever we can, but if no one wishes to be saved then so be it – at least we tried."