Queen of Hearts

Chapter 12: return of Sawaki | Evan

The video call between Kameron and I had ended up disconnecting of its own accord. I knew it wasn't my fault, because I had the laptop on the table, and had been unable to tear my eyes away from the beautiful scenery of Kameron's backyard ever since she had left. Even the increasingly loud noises of Hannah's and the Beast's arm wrestling did not catch my attention.

Despite this, the screen eventually turned dark. She'd basically ditched me, for as far as I could tell, but I could not help but feel slightly concerned. It wasn't a usual habit of Kameron to be tardy, or to be so unorganised as to let a video call end by itself because she was not fast enough to return. I wondered if she'd decided to take the bunny back to its owner immediately afterwards, but was it like her to leave me like that?

I honestly didn't know anymore. The Kameron I really knew was from a year ago, and by now she probably had changed. She probably was only answering my messages to seem polite.

I wasn't going to think about her more than I had to. At least, that was what I'd told myself. So I'd gotten up and decided to make dinner, thinking that busying myself would at least distract me from my innermost thoughts.

"Would you like some help?" And to my surprise, it was Brendan that offered. He, his cousin and Hannah were still lounging about at my place, and the Beast probably felt obligated to provide assistance.

"I can help too, Evan," Linny added, but Brendan was quick to shove her back out of the kitchen, shaking his head.

I had heard many stories of Linny's epic fails in cooking. She'd burnt white chocolate when she was supposed to melt it, apparently. How hard was it to melt white chocolate?

Of course, I never told her this, unless I wanted an arm ripped off. "You can chop the vegetables instead," I suggested, mainly as a compromise, since Linny's face had turned a bright shade of crimson and she looked like she was about to explode everything around her in a ten metre radius up in flames (I was saying this figuratively, but I'm not so sure if I believe it).

Linny shot Brendan a withering glare before nodding. "Okay."

"Hey! What can I do?" Hannah said loudly, suddenly popping up behind the grey and purple haired girl, making her flinch.

Penny had never complained about Hannah's cooking before, so I assumed that she was at least better than Linny in the kitchen. "You don't have to help me, you know. I'm just making dinner because it's getting late."

"If you want us to leave, you can just say so," Brendan said seriously.

I shrugged. "No, it's fine. Just don't stay past seven."

"In that case, I guess we're going to be wannabe Masterchef cooks," Hannah joked. I facepalmed, Linny rolled her eyes, and the Beast just seemed confused.

"What's Masterchef?" Brendan enquired. And that was the question that effectively ended all nice talk between the four of us.

The next few minutes were taken up with some reprimanding from Hannah's part and intense criticising from Linny's side of the kitchen. I couldn't help but add a few comments of my own, since I was also slightly appalled. I never took the Beast for someone who lived under a rock (as the saying goes), but apparently, he was oblivious to the big things of the twenty-first century.

Sure, Masterchef was an Australian entertainment show, but still, shouldn't he know about it? Hannah was still acting as if she were highly insulted by the Beast's ignorance, and rejected his less than satisfactory (like usual) attempts at conversation.

"How was talking to Kameron earlier?" Linny spoke up a little awkwardly.

I unintentionally made a face. "It was fine." Linny raised an eyebrow, but did not comment. Hannah and Brendan were too busy having another arm wrestle dangerously close to their bowls of stir fry to notice.