Checkmate ⚢

Chapter 31 Frustration

"She's exactly like her idol!" Professor Tosca exploded.

Not a moment after they reached their vicinity, Professor Tosca's fuse was still ongoing. Hana was not sure if Professor Tosca has a loose tongue or she wanted Hana and everyone to hear the pains and repressed emotions that delved inside the pits of her heart.

Jolted and troubled, Althea looked with frightened eyes at a woman she hardly recognized as her mentor. Hana cringed as Althea shielded her from harm's way.

Professor Tosca glared at the French woman and shouted in a loathe-filled voice. "Like Andromeda, this second-rate artist could not carry the burden of criticism herself. Andromeda left because she could not handle a little backlash on her works. She wasn't a fighter! Why do artists like me—and Althea—who kept standing our grounds, trying so hard, despite the ugly words and attacks towards us, lose to those who are fun-driven?"

Tired and saddened and angry at the prospect, but resolute all the same, Hana found herself absorbing and understanding this raw and unnerving emotion. All the while, instead of responding, Professor Oakley looked at her with a weird combination of dislike, pity, sympathy, and something else that Hana, for the life of her, could not identify. Still, she chose to be silent, without any words to add more fuel to the fire, in some way her body language was giving Professor Tosca the impression that she was a lowly scum not worth her time.

Somehow, Hana wanted to leave before this gets worst. There was an uncanny sensation settling in her stomach screaming that she will not be equipped to swim across oceans in a few minutes.

With her hands intertwined with Althea, she pulled her away slightly. Eyes glancing at the exit, but it seemed Althea stood her ground, proving to be something she's not. Hana admired her for that but she knew Hana herself was not ready for this.

"You!" The Italian woman stared at the old woman. "Why do you look at me with such piteous eyes?"

The most infuriating thing, Hana thought in the perspective of the woman filled with hate, was that Professor Oakley seldom responded to her efforts or her vents. She just ignored the younger woman, the small crease between her eyebrows the only tell of any annoyance on her part.

"I know you're angry at me, Tosca!" Hana's mentor yelled. "Do not take your frustration out on the girls!"

Althea's mentor glared down at Professor Andrea's small, defiant, angry face, which was tilted up to hers. Each woman waited for the other to cower, or to take the scowls from their faces, and the defiance from their eyes away, but both of them stood determinedly before each other, daring, challenging to do their worst.

Professor Tosca's thin and colorless lips tightened into a fine, crooked pencil line. "Yes. I'm frustrated and angry whenever I look at you. You—the one these two girls look up to—hiding cowardly in the shadows. You were never fit to become an artist so instead, you took another identity and hide away in shame."

"W-what?" Hana asked in a mousy squeak. Not a minute ago, she wanted to leave but now she just heard something worth knowing.