They walk back to Damian’s apartment. The sound of Aoi’s luggage rolling across gravel fills the mute lull that settles between them.
Two minutes pass.
Damian insists that she give him her things. “It looks heavy,” he says.
For approximately thirty seconds, Aoi is resilient to the idea. She tells herself she wants to be independent for once. However, Damian is right—even to the average person, her belongings are indeed, quite the challenge to push, especially since they are going uphill now.
Aoi pauses. She sighs, then finally hands the duffel bag over to Damian, who takes it as if it is nothing. “T-thank you…” her words are muttered; Aoi averts her gaze from his.
He gives her a curt pat on the back. “Don’t worry about it.”
And then, the sound of wheels rotating begin anew.
“I’m guessing shit went down?”
Aoi shoves her hand into her pockets. Part of her is relieved to find her wallet and her phone haven’t fallen out. “They want a divorce.”
Damian makes a noise similar to what one makes when they are punched in the stomach. “Damn,” the wheels of Aoi’s luggage stop for a short moment, before they pick up their pace again. “I’m sorry.”
In reality, it isn’t that Damian feels the need to apologize—after all this has nothing to do with him, he has not impacted the relationship of Aoi’s parents in any way—simply, he does not know what else he could say to offer comfort to the young woman, who is obviously shaken by the news with the way she peels the skin off her lower lip, by trapping faded pink flesh between her teeth.
“Yeah…” Aoi’s voice is quiet as she follows Damian across the street that leads to his apartment. “I’m sorry, too.”
“All right, let’s stop for a moment.” Damian’s steps come to a halt.
He stretches his arms up to the sky, then turns around, and places both his palms against Aoi’s shoulders. Aoi thinks, that they are warm. He, is warm.
“You’re here to get away from it all and find extraterrestrials with me, are you not?” he asks her.
The young woman knits her brows together and considers the question. “Maybe…”
“What do you mean, maybe!” Damian motions at the world around them. “Look!” he exclaims, as he points to the stars that shimmer—dying lights—above their heads. “Look at how wonderful the world is! This is no time to be feeling down! Aoi.” He smirks, as their eyes finally meet again. “You’re free,” Damian tells her. “Why not enjoy it while you can?”
And how right he is, Aoi finds, as she takes his advice and considers how far she’s come.
For once, in this very moment, she is not surrounded by the looming dread of hearing yet another argument, screams. It is only she and Damian—them, and the wind.
Aoi’s frown wilts. Out of the expression of gloom the young woman once wore, blooms a smirk. And a chuckle. “Thanks,” Aoi tells Damian, with a muted nod. “Again, I suppose.” She laughs. “For someone who’s supposedly a loner, you’re very good at cheering people up.”
“Hey! This is a choice! A choice, okay!”
The two continue to banter along the rest of the way. Whilst they do, Aoi notices that being here is much less scarier than she initially assumed it would be. In fact, she finds this strange interaction, in this town she has never been to before, rather peaceful.
As a black cat runs past their bare legs, and has Damian yelping out of fear, Aoi snickers once more.
Yes, she thinks, she could get used to this.
*
Damian’s home consists of a single bedroom, that is squeezed tightly between two other apartments which, at least from the outside, do appear to be slightly bigger in size.
Aoi does not mind this. However, she finds herself worrying that there may not be enough space for the two of them on the long run. “Are you sure you don’t mind me staying here?” she asks him, with a curious, raise of her brow.
Damian huffs, then shoves her luggage inside. “Honestly,” he shrugs. “This is probably going to be a lot of space in comparison to what we’ll have once we hit the road. Might as well get used to it now.” He turns to face Aoi, who is still standing in the doorway. “Well?” he says. “Are you coming? Or have you changed your mind?” The nerves Damian had managed to keep at bay up until now slowly creep up on him. He hooks an arm around his neck. “Uh, sorry about it being small though, if it bothers you that much, I can pay for your ride home, and we can just meet up somewhere before we leave this weekend, and—”
“Please, no!” Aoi jumps into what is both simultaneously his kitchen, living room, and bedroom all at once, in hopes of showing Damian her enthusiasm.
What she doesn’t account for, however, is that the gesture serves as a leeway for her leg to bump into her duffel bag, that had been propped up against the wall.
Her luggage falls onto Damian’s foot.
Damian cries out in pain. He quickly steps away from her and the bag, but it is too late. When he takes his shoe off, his toe has got quite the gradient of violets and blues painted across its nail.
Aoi cringes at the sight. Her shoulders tense. “Oh, God,” she blurts. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.” The young woman stumbles around her baggage. She hops over an empty pizza carton in hopes of getting to Damian’s tiny, makeshift kitchen that consists of a fridge and a small electrical plate; both of them are stuck to a lone kitchen counter.
When the fridge’s door is finally in her line of vision, Aoi grabs its handle; she tugs at the off-white plastic. “Do you have any ice that we could use to—”
Although Damian can barely see the events unfolding before his figure as he squints through his pain, when Aoi freezes right before the fridge, the young man can only assume that she has stumbled upon what he has found himself referring to as Them, over the past couple days. “You’ve seen Them, haven’t you?” his voice is low.
“Damian…” Aoi whispers. Her attention locks onto the army of pastries—a dozen cakes—that stare back at her, one by one, with their glossy, bright red strawberry toppings. “Did you rob a bakery?” she cannot help but ask him the question, for she does not see any other reason her friend could have, for hoarding all this food.
“Very funny.” Damian huffs. He grits his teeth together, then presses his hand down against his toe. “The ice is in the freezer, by the way.” He does not know how to explain to Aoi that a man he met in a nightclub by chance has been bringing cakes over every night, and using Damian as his own personal taste-tester. Lucas, you idiot, you’re lucky I’m in need of free food, Damian thinks to himself, as he observes Aoi fumbling with the freezer’s old jammed door, until she finally manages to correctly close it.
The annoyance he feels toward Lucas dies down very quickly, once Aoi has put a chilled, plastic bag over his modest injury.
Damian tilts his head back and leans against the wall. He shuts his eyes, then huffs once more. “Sorry, Aoi,” he mutters. “But would you mind closing the front door for me, and locking it, too? I… think I need a moment before I can walk again.”
Aoi perks up. “O-of course!” She rushes over to the entrance with relief in her heart, for she had feared for quite a few minutes that her error might have possibly caused the loss of her newfound friendship with the young man.
Once they have both finally settled down, Damian tells Aoi to go take a shower if she wishes to, as he prepares an extra mattress for her across the floor, that he yanks out of a dusty old closet.
The young man sneezes. He curses under his breath.
The bad word is swallowed by the dull thump of Aoi’s temporary bed hitting the pale carpet.
Damian quickly moves his foot out of the way so that the previous incident does not have a chance at repeating itself. He sighs. The pain in his toe is much better; he prays his nail won’t fall off, this would be a hindrance, especially now, three days before their fabled trip.
The young man shuffles closer to the wall, then rests his back against it. Within the bathroom, Aoi has turned on the shower. Damian closes his eyes to the sound of running water. It has been a while since he has had company. Aside from Lucas’s latest, obnoxious ritual of pushing cakes into Damian’s arms, then leaving as quickly as he arrives, Damian does not remember ever having any one else over. Though, he likes to tell himself this is normal. He has only been here for a little over six months; considering the fact that it had taken him two whole years in primary school to make his first friend, Damian finds this period of time rather short.
Most days, he does not mind being alone; the young man wonders if that makes him closer to being one of those aliens he so desires to meet, rather than a human being.
There is a short screech as a faucet is turned off. The pat, pat—patting of feet against wet tiles.
Water sloshes onto the ground as Aoi exits the bathroom with a beige colored towel wrapped around her body. She squints, once, for the lights above are a little too bright to her liking, then says, “By the way, how are we going to get around, if you don’t have a car?”
Damian pauses to consider her question. It is in this moment that he realizes his plan is, perhaps, not as grand as he had first initially wanted it to be. “I don’t know,” he admits, with a shrug.
He considers telling Aoi to forget all about the road trip, and suggest they go stargazing at the local park that’s only five minutes away every night this week instead. However, something tells the young man that this would not satisfy Aoi in the least bit. And that if he were to speak these words, she would have a high chance of grabbing her luggage, then going home, instead.
He is not wrong.
Aoi was lured into this trip by the promise of adventure, and finding these aliens that Damian always speaks so highly of.
“Hello?” The young woman steps forward. She only stops once her feet are aligned with Damian’s own. He is wearing mismatched socks. She, on the other hand, dons nothing but the weight of the pain in her bones.
Two cats scream at each other outside. Aoi waves a hand before Damian’s face. “Was your brain kidnapped by tiny green men, while I was away?” she asks him.
“It’s too big,” Damian tells her. “They wouldn’t be able to grab it.”
To this statement, Aoi rolls her eyes. “Hilarious.”
She squeezes the water out of her hair with both her palms. Droplets of dew trickle onto the carpet and darkened the whites of it like someone’s had a bad nosebleed.
The young woman finds it quite peculiar, how comfortable she feels here. It is like someone has taken a box and filled it with misfits—the fact that they are both rather strange people makes her feel normal, for once.
“I was thinking of renting out a van for a week,” Damian tells her, after what could probably be considered more than just a mere moment.
Beneath their apartment, in the streets below, another feline creature is meowling, surely for some food. “You can drive?” Aoi asks Damian.
He shrugs. “Yeah?”
She tilts her head downward, the narrows her eyes at him. “Well enough to take us around half the country? You don’t seem too confident.”
The young man waves her worries away. “If it makes you feel any better, it took me an eight hour drive to get to this apartment when I moved here.”
Eight hours? Aoi thinks, as she raises a brow. “What were you running from?”
Damian leans against his knee. He pushes himself upward, until he stands once more; his toe has stopped hurting. “Very bad people,” he tells the young woman, and before either of them have a chance to continue planning their trip aloud, the doorbell to Damian’s apartment rings.
Three times.
Four.
Both Damian and Aoi freeze.
The noise disappears.
“It’s almost two in the morning,” Aoi is the first to speak. She elbows Damian’s side. “Who is that?” she hisses.
Although the young woman does her best to put on a brave face and appear unaffected by the current events, her heart is pounding in her chest, her fingers tremble, her palms are coated in sweat—she starts to reconsider and wonder whether being here was a wise choice after all.
What Aoi doesn’t account for, however, is finding that Damian’s hands are also shaking quite profusely. “I…” He gulps. His arms tense by his sides. “I’m not sure,” he whispers. And Aoi’s blood goes cold, for if neither of them know, she is aware this odd noise may truly mean trouble.
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