No time, in Aoi’s opinion, was quite a long time. The young woman is not as sick as usual—that, in itself, is quite a feat.
However, Aoi still feels terrible, and as Lucas goes on a tangent—regarding which flour he should bring along with him to make the best pancakes tomorrow morning at breakfast on his portable, heated plaque—Aoi wants nothing more than to bend over, and hurl onto his knees. Please, she thinks, as she holds her sides, stop.
The young woman brings a hand to her lips. “Make him stop,” she mutters.
And Damian lets out an awkward laugh, before he pulls her aside, away from the mall’s entrance. He waves at Lucas, who stares at them, perplexed. “We’ll be with you in a sec!” Damian calls out to him. “Go on ahead without us!”
Lucas seems slightly vexed to be entering the shopping center alone. However, he merely crosses his arms, and then follows Damian’s instructions without much of a fight. “Fine,” he huffs. “But you better not steal the van.”
Damian furrows his brows. You have the keys, idiot, he thinks, though, he does not say it aloud, as he turns again, to check on Aoi’s state. “So? What now?” he asks her, with his hands pressed to his hips. “Should I just send a text to Lucas and tell him we’re staying outside?”
“Rooftop,” Aoi blurts, with her head hung low. She takes a deep breath.
“Huh?” Damian frowns. What do you mean, rooftop?”
*
They shuffle through a bustling sea of people and take the elevator up to the mall’s last floor. The short trip does not help with Aoi’s nausea, but she does not complain. It is only temporary, as is everything on this planet.
When they make it to the top, Aoi is relieved to find that—like back at her school—the mall’s staff did not lock the door to the roof.
They step onto concrete surrounded by a circle of plants. The young woman cannot say whether the air is fresher up here, or more polluted, nor does she care, for now, she finally feels safe; like nothing could happen to her today, no matter what.
“Well—” Damian stretches his arms up to the sky, before letting his palms rest up against the back of his neck. He glances Aoi’s way. “Someone looks cheered up.”
He stops to consider why, then asks her, “Did the meds you took in Lucas’s van finally have their intended effect, or…” Damian raises a brow. “Are rooftops just that magical?”
Aoi shuts the door behind them. She steps forward, then sighs. Her shoulders deflate. Her back is turned to Damian, now. “You wouldn’t understand,” she tells him.
“Really now?” He hums, then joins her side. His fingers are twined together behind his back. Damian wishes he had bought a scarf with him, for he finds it quite cold up here; especially since it is the morning. “And why is that?” he asks, as he wriggles around on his spot, before he finally kneels in an overdramatic manner, and looks up, until he is facing Aoi’s gaze once more. “May I remind you, young lady, that I’ve been to as many rooftops as I could in my life! I know a thing or two about them.”
“It’s not about the rooftop itself,” Aoi admits; her arms tense by her sides. Her fingers curl into her palms, that soon turn into fists. She is dizzy. Tired. She grabs her elbow. This conversation is stressing her out, and she wants—for the first time since they left Damian’s apartment—to be back home, waking up to the sounds of people who try to talk normally, yet always end up shouting instead. “At least,” Aoi clears her throat. “I don’t think it is.”
“Then,” Damian leans his chin against his knuckles. He glances at her again. “What is it about?”
The young woman shrugs. “I guess… if I have to put my finger on it, I’d say it’s the ritual.”
“Ah.” Damian shows her a long, nod of acknowledgement, as if he truly knows what she is speaking of. She doubts he does.
In fact, Aoi is skeptical in regards to the fact that he is even being serious at all about this. She furrows her brows, then averts her gaze. “Forget it,” she tells him. “It’s silly.”
She turns around, in an attempt to walk back toward the exit, but Damian stops her, as he reaches out, and grabs hold of her wrist.
The young woman gulps. “I’m fragile,” she mumbles, under her breath. “You’ll hurt me.”
He laughs. “Seems to me like I already have. Hey,” Damian gives her arm a tiny tug. “It doesn’t matter if it’s weird—let’s just be weirdos together. You can tell me. I’m the alien boy, after all.”
Above head, the sun shifts, and heats the gravel beneath their feet. Aoi looks at Damian from over her shoulder. She smirks. “Did you just call me a weirdo, weirdo?”
Damian returns her grin. “Maybe?”
Aoi pinches his arm—lightly, yet, enough to make the young man release her skin. “Fine,” she tells Damian, with a stomp of her foot that she immediately regrets, for her toes begin to ache uncontrollably right after the act. “I’m convinced that spending a few minutes every morning on a rooftop—no matter which one it is, as long as it isn’t at home—will spare me from any disasters that may have wanted to kill me on the same day.”
Damian perks up to get a better view of her. “And it resets?”
She nods once more. “Yes—at midnight, every time, without fail.”
“Okay,” he sits once more, looks at the sky, then leans back against his hands, that he places flat against the ground beneath them; the young woman cringes at how dirty the floor beneath Damian’s palms must be, she makes a mental note to offer him disinfectant on their way down. “But why morning, though?” he asks her, with his usual, nonchalant hum. “Wouldn’t it be more logical to do it like, two minutes after midnight?”
“Because it’s better at sunrise.”
“Yeah, but why—”
“Just because!” Aoi blurts, before she quickly recoils in on herself, then adds a mumbled, “S-sorry,” to the end of her statement.
The young woman squeezes her elbow. She traps a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. “I didn’t mean to shout.” Because of her sudden outburst, her throat stings like a kitten has clawed at its insides; she is persuaded it will swell by the time it is one in the afternoon, and that the pain will not leave until tonight, after three in the morning.
“I—”
A ringtone injects itself into the space between them. Damian reaches into his pocket. He pulls out his cell phone. The tiny tune that’s playing is quite high in its pitch—Aoi wishes she could unplug her ears for the instance of a second, just so that she would not have to hear the sound any longer.
Thankfully for her, Damian picks up, and the ache in her heart that had previously been, settles within her chest.
“Hey, yeah!” the young man tells Lucas, ever so casually, as if he hadn’t just been talking of nonsense and strange theories regarding rooftops, with a girl he met less than a year ago. “Yeah,” Damian snickers. “We’re fine. No, we didn’t get abducted by a giant, round flying thing. At least”—he winks at Aoi—“not yet.”
Aoi can only roll her eyes at his statement.
“Yeah, don’t worry.” Damian chuckles again. “We’ll be there in a sec. Over.”
Aoi does not ask Damian why he used the word Over instead of Goodbye, or See you! Oddly enough, she finds it rather fitting, for this to be his way of bidding others farewell.
She walks over to his side, once he has risen to his feet again. “I’m assuming that was Lucas?”
“Nah, it was a small, unidentifiable person.”
“Thank you for being mature.”
“No! Thank you for thinking that I am mature!”
Aoi throws him a menacing glare. “Damian, I swear to—”
“Yes, yes—fine,” the young man lets out an exasperated huff as he walks past her, then starts heading towards the exit. “I admit, it was Lucas.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets, and his phone, too, at the same time. “He’s done with shopping for food—or, well… ingredients? I don’t know what he calls them.” Damian turns to check on Aoi, like he’d done a few minutes before his call. “How are you feeling?” he asks her. “Do you think we can start hitting the road again?”
The young woman joins his side. “My bones hurt, I feel like I’m going to pass out, and everything is kind of blurry.”
“Ah.” He laughs; though, it comes out forced. “So, I’m guessing this is the norm, then?”
“Yep.” She whistles. “Just a good old, spoonful of pain to start off my day! Great, isn’t it?”
They go back inside the mall.
Aoi immediately despises the loud sounds that emanate from nearby adverts, played on flat screens hung up against pristine-clean walls. The flashing colors everywhere and bright lights blaring down at their figures make her squint; she almost runs into Damian, but manages to stop herself before her chest hits his back.
“It’s not better at all with the new meds?”
The young woman wonders why Damian feels the need to whisper that phrase. Then, she purses her lips together, and says, “I don’t know. Maybe—I guess I’ll find out in a few days. But it won’t do any miracles, that’s for sure… probably.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, Damian, Oh, is certainly one way to put it.” Aoi sprints past the crowd and shuts her eyes, once the pair they make enter the elevator. “This place is too full,” she mutters, under her breath, as she, too, hides her hands inside her two, oversized pockets.
Damian tilts his head. “Of people?” he asks her.
To which Aoi lets out an exasperated groan. “Of everything.”
Fair enough, the young man thinks, in response, as they finally exit the elevator, stroll past a corridor that Aoi complains about once more, because it: “Smells like ten different types of perfumes, I hate it, they should just pick one, and stick with it.”—at least, that is what she tells him.
When they make it back outside five minutes later, the young woman has a headache, and little bit more hate in her heart for large shopping centers.
“You sure you’ll be okay for the rest of the trip, dude?” Damian asks her.
Aoi does not even bother sparing him a glance as she replies, “I hate malls and crowded cities. Empty fields will do me much good, yes.”
“Well,” Damian’s hand finds her shoulder again. A grin takes his lips. “In either case, I promise you we’ll find a rooftop to borrow—tomorrow, and the day after that, too.”
The young woman cringes. She pauses in her tracks. “And why in the world would you do that?” she asks him.
“Because,” he chuckles, and looks up to the sky, that has decided it will be a clear blue today. “I still need to summon my aliens,” he says, “and what better place to do it, than at the highest points in each city?” Damian pauses. “What?” he turns to face Aoi with a smug grin plastered across his features. “You didn’t think I was catering to your needs in particular, did you?”
She gives his shoulder a soft, playful punch. “Of course, I didn’t. You would be much too nice, if that were the case.”
As they walk back to the van in the parking lot—where Lucas is still waiting for them and devouring a cake in the meantime—Aoi cannot wipe the smile off her lips.
She takes back her wish of being stuck at home again. This, she thinks, is way more fun.
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