Under the Umbrella ✓

-16-

Aria couldn't wait to knock some sense of coffee into her taste buds as soon as she left her campus. It was a miracle she plodded to Coffee Break without getting into an accident when her eyes were hardly open. She was sleepy and exhausted, and she regretted trying to finish off her assignment when the deadline was two days later. She just wasn't sure if she'd get to wrap it up on time while having it well prepped. Ironically, despite the exertion, she still couldn't complete it.

She headed straight to the counter, and Diane – the name of the café's manager she came to learn over the recent nights she dropped by – smiled at her.

"Not feeling good today?" she asked in concern.

"Does it show?" Aria questioned in return, to which the woman nodded regrettably.

"By the way..." Diane ducked below the counter and reappeared with something in her hand. "Is this yours? I think you left it by the table last night."

Aria took a closer look and identified it as her notepad, in which she revised her notes when she had some spare time. She hadn't even realized she lost it.

"Oh yes, that's mine," she said, receiving it back from Diane. "Thank you for keeping it safe."

"Uh... No worries. What would you like to have today?"

She took her pick of order and turned around to drag herself to her table, but the sight of the opposite side of the café prompted her to look at the window seat.

And there he was, his eyes already watching her.

The bravery she had hoarded in the last few days seemed to crumble the more she tried to force her legs to move toward that table. But she couldn't just walk away. Especially not after they had made eye contact. She felt as she'd never get this chance again.

She treaded to the stranger's table even as her mind chanted in strident voices that she was going to regret it. She sat across him in struggled assuredness, but he regarded her in indifference, unsurprised from the unanticipated company. She had pondered on what to say to him for days, which she had wholly forgotten about now. It all now depended on her conversational skills.

Greetings somehow seemed to be overrated between the two of them, so she scanned around him, and said, "You didn't bring your umbrella today either."

"I don't think it will rain today," he responded.

"And you expected it to rain the other days?"

"Yeah."

That was it? He just suspected that it would rain that day so he carried the umbrella around? She couldn't tell if she thought it was astonishing, bizarre, or if he was lying. "What if it didn't rain that day?"

He simply shrugged. "Then my feeling would have been wrong."

Okay. "Well, why did you keep giving it to me even though you brought it for yourself?"

"Why not?"

She stalled herself from narrowing her eyes at him.

That tugged the corner of his lips up by the slightest, and it didn't dissipate too soon as he inclined forward with his arms reposed on the table. "I live in the opposite building of this café."

"I don't want to know about where you live."

"I know," he assured. "I assume you don't live close by?" Aria nodded hesitantly. "That's why."

Oh. That made sense. It was such an uncomplicated reason, and she was mulling over it for days for nothing while making theatrical assumptions about how she looked miserable, being a damsel in distress, and whatnot.

"Well, then why do you keep paying for me?"

He was quiet for a moment. "I wanted something in return."

She vacantly stared at him for a few seconds. Of course, he did. Why did she expect something uncomplicated again? She was right to have been skeptical about this.

"What is it?" she queried with her arms crossed.

"I got it already."