Under the Umbrella ✓

-18-

The few times she had noticed him, he was regularly engrossed in a bunch of papers or his phone. While he hadn't turned his attention away from her, she noted that this time it was a file. She bet that that was what had him occupied before she joined his solitary company.

"You're a very curious woman."

She glanced up from the file to his face again. "I didn't ask anything." Was she really not subtle at all?

"I can tell you want to."

Aria didn't think it could get any more embarrassing than it already did, so she urged onto her courage and decided to be honest. "Fine. What is it that you go through with such interest whenever I see you?"

"Such interest," he repeated to himself in amusement, as if it were a wrong choice of word. "They're my cases."

"Cases?"

"I'm a lawyer."

"Oh..." She didn't peg him to be a lawyer, but it didn't shock her either. "My friend's studying to be a lawyer too."

"The friend that you meet in here sometimes?"

She nodded. "That's the only friend I have."

"One's a lot. I don't even have friends."

"Not even at work?"

"People at work think I'm obnoxious."

"I can imagine why," she pensively said.

He didn't look hurt in the least. She could see the plain mirth in his eyes from her candor. "How so?"

"It might be the way you carry yourself... kind of unconcerned and... stony. But of course, I'm just assuming."

"Is that bad?"

"No- I don't really know," she conceded. She was hanging onto a flimsy opinion with barely any observation.

She hadn't realized it at first, but she found herself trying to catch a change in his tone whenever he spoke. She perceived how his voice never raised a notch higher than his current low tone, even when he was teasing her earlier, as if his voice didn't allow him to take it up any louder, except for that one instance when she ran after him.

She peeked at the time in her phone before asking, "Aren't you supposed to be at work right now?"

"I am, but I prefer working at home, so I'll be going home."

"And you get away with it?"

"I'm good at my job."

"There you go. Now I have a clearer picture."

"Of?"

"Of why you come off as obnoxious."

This time he smiled a little wider than he normally did. She was once again reminded of how good-looking he was. His eyes crinkled around the corners and a faint indentation etched the left side of his lips. "I see," he said, gulping down the last of his drink.

She didn't know where she was getting the nerve to be this blunt with him. Just a while ago, she was dreading the track that approached him, but now she was comfortable enough to mock-offend him as if she had known him for ages. She didn't think she would get this far in a conversation with him, distrusting her courage and envisaging his unresponsiveness.

"I didn't take you for much of a talker," he remarkably voiced out her exact thoughts about him.

"I am thinking of the same thing about you."

He leaned back against his seat, gazing at her for a while like he was trying to solve something about her. She felt her face turning red by the second against his intense scrutiny.

"Why are you staring at me?" she muttered, unconsciously fiddling with the ends of her hair.

"I'm not staring. I'm thinking," he threw her words right back at her.

Her expression was stuck somewhere in between a scowl and a grimace, but she held herself back from making up an unwitty retort or gushing out something stupid again. To busy herself from his insistent observation, she began to scarf down on her cupcake.

"Say, Aria, is it strange that I want to get to know you?" he said out of the blue.

She went stock-still, the cupcake in her hand midway into her mouth as something flipped inside her chest. She couldn't tell if it was because of the way he enunciated her name or if it was the question itself. She was too flustered even to think of an answer even though nothing was spectacular about his question.

"It is," she managed to reply to him after a moment.

"Because it's creepy?"

She almost rolled her eyes. She genuinely couldn't fathom his addiction to that word. "Because there's not much to know." She glanced at her phone again and realized that she had stayed at the café longer than she had intended to that she might get late for work. She shoved the remainder of the cupcake into her mouth and got to her feet. "I got to go now," she uttered, grabbing her belongings. "It wasn't so bad talking to you."

He didn't say anything in return, so she turned to leave until he unexpectedly called out, "Aria."

She spun back around in a haze. Her name did sound foreign coming out of him.

She couldn't quite follow why he was extending a tissue toward her, but then he tapped a finger close to the right side of his mouth with his other hand. She snatched the tissue from him immediately, swiping the tissue against her mouth in a horizontal motion down. She took a glimpse at the tissue to notice the pink icing smeared on it.

All the while, he gazed at her conscientiously. She wanted to know what was going on in his mind with that contemplative look in his eyes.

He suddenly smiled, but it wasn't out of humor, as if one of his thoughts had blurted something cynical.

"Liar," he uttered, staring right into her.

Aria held his daring gaze, but her mouth failed to say anything. It was strange. It was strange that she knew on what grounds he had said that. It was strange that that was the mystery he was trying to unravel while he stared at her. She didn't know how to respond, even by means of an expression on her face, but between herself and the ethereal presence hearing the deepest, despairing voice of her tired mind, she confessed she had no doubt on the accuracy of the claim.