Life Made Anew

21: Date time with Mateo... De España!

Maki has gotten down about a third of Ballade in F minor in the past two months. It had been a week since Kamino had confessed that she liked Mateo to Maki.

Maki has been counseling her on how to get Mateo to like her. Apparently, she had already been doing well by spending a lot of time with him, but she wanted to propel it forward a bit.

"Go on a date with him," was Maki's first suggestion.

"Wait! Isn't that just for couples?" Kamino was quite confused. Embarrassed at the suggestion as well.

"That's where you're wrong. I don't mean to make it sound like a date when you ask him. Just ask him if you want to watch a movie with him." There was this new romance movie that Maki suggested, but he probably wouldn't like it. She would ask what he wanted to see.

It was a Friday after school, and they had just finished when Maki brought of the suggestion. Kazama and Mateo were waiting for them. From the music room to the entrance was too far for Kazama to actually hear her playing, but he was told to wear headphones so her wouldn't hear her playing anyway.

"Hola, Kamino. ¿Estás lista?" (Hey, Kamino. Are you ready?)

She nodded and started walking home with Mateo. She was too nervous to ask him to a movie, so she stayed silent for a bit.

"U-umm... Mateo?"

"Kamino?" They spoke at the same time. "You first."

"I was just going to ask if you, you know, wanted to go watch a movie tomorrow." She was blushing and hid her face in her scarf. It was something Mateo gave her as a gift. His mom thought him how to crochet, and he used that to make her a scarf.

"I was actually about to ask you that." He laughed. "What I want to see is actually a sequel to a movie that came out last year, so you may not understand. It's one of my favorite sci-fi series, even though it's quite obscure and very few people know about it."

"Is it called 'Journey Through the Stars'?" Kamino asked. (It was one of the first movie titles I came up with. If there is something called that already, I wouldn't know about it. It was completely random.)

"You know about it?!" Mateo started to grow excited. His face was like that of a child. His eyes were gleaming.

"Yeah, I do. I..." She stopped herself.

"You what? You can tell me."

"I used to be an actress; I quit recently. That was my last movie. I played the part of Lunica." She shook her head. "People only want to get close to me because I'm pretty and star in movies. I bet that you're the same way." She faced him. He looked deep in thought.

"Now that you say it, Lunica really does look a lot like you."

"Wait, so you didn't even know that I played her?"

"Nope. I just wanted to be friends with people in my class and ended up being friends with you." He smiled. "I didn't even know you were an actress until you mentioned it just now."

"So you didn't try to get close to me because of my, quote, fame?" She was glad that he was different. She had many friends that just wanted to use her fame to get what they wanted, especially guys.

Guys in particular were bad to her. Many times guys tried to rape her because of her good looks. She always got away quickly because she knew the signs of that. Mateo has witnessed it only once because guys don't go after her anymore. The first time was her unlucky day a while back.

"So do you want to go see that movie tomorrow?" Kamino asked.

Mateo nodded his head frantically. "Let's go!" He walked her home and waved good bye to him.