His eyes swung back to her as they inevitably did whenever they were in the same space.
“Is the apology acceptable to you?” he signed to Dawn.
She nodded slowly, her eyes two saucers inside her creamy brown face. He sensed she was still too shocked to sign or answer him out loud.
But a nod was all Victor needed. Her answer told him that his goal, his only reason for transferring to this school, had been achieved.
Victor nodded to Donny then. And Donny told Jake and his cohort they could go in Japanese.
The three boys wasted no time running away. The one who had peed himself didn’t even change out of his bright yellow basketball clothes. The coach had explained to Victor and all the other new basketball team recruits that it was strictly against Tokyo Progressive’s rules to walk its halls dressed in anything but the school’s uniform. But perhaps some things scared Yoshi more than being caught outside the locker room in his piss-stained shorts.
Good. He would end up doing much worse than pissing himself if he ever touched Dawn again.
He returned his gaze and his thoughts to Dawn, whose shocked expression still hadn’t given way.
Her reaction told him that he had been correct about her innocence. Her father surely had done much worse things to Nakamura’s enemies than Victor had to those boys. But he had obviously protected his daughter from ever seeing such violence.
Was she pleased about what he’d done for her? Or horrified? Victor couldn’t tell.
Her brother, on the other hand, made his feelings about the comeuppance Victor had delivered quite clear.
“That was so sick, man!” Byron signed and spoke at the same time, just like his sister. “V, I can’t thank you enough.”
Victor had only introduced himself to Dawn’s younger brother for the purpose of his mission. But he liked the two years younger kid just fine. He had a sense of humor similar to his sister, and Victor had silently laughed at a few of his antics as they completed their classroom assignments together.
He was glad Byron approved of his violent tactics. But Dawn still hadn’t said anything.
For the first time, she was staring at him, but not in the way he couldn’t help staring at her. She was staring at him like she had no idea who he was.
She looked…what was that American slang word she had taught him?
Ah, yes, he remembered now. Shook. Dawn had explained that this form of the word was always used in the past tense. Never in the present tense if one wanted to sound on-trend. And it was the perfect description of her expression right then.
She didn’t just look shocked. She looked shook.
“Can I talk to you?” she silently signed after a few very long, tense moments. “Alone?”
A new feeling rattled through Victor. One he recognized as fear.
But only vaguely. After what had happened with Han’s original father, his emotions had made a permanent shift from normal to a cold baseline. One that never spiked with anxiety or fear. For the worse had already happened, why should he be scared of anything else?
Yet, his heart thrummed with that only dimly recalled emotion as he thanked Phantom for his assistance and instructed Donny to escort Byron to the school gates and wait with him there.
Would she rebuke him once the others had left the room? Tell him to leave her alone and never talk to her again. It was only now occurring to him how crazy this might all appear from her point of view. How crazy he might seem….
Another new feeling he couldn’t quite label filled his chest. Remorse? Regret? Whatever it was, it made Victor shift uncomfortably as everyone else cleared out of the locker room.
All too soon, they were gone. Leaving just Dawn and him. Alone for the first time since she told him what happened in this very locker room.
After the door closed behind her brother, Donny, and Phantom, she turned back to face him.
“I can’t believe you did that!” she said with extra emphasis on her signs.
Victor’s stomach curdled, and he found he could no longer hold her gaze. He had given her a glimpse of the monster that lurked beneath his usually cool surface. Just a tiny glimpse, and now she would reject him—
“Thank you.”
The two words brought Victor’s gaze up. And in her eyes, he saw what he hadn’t dared to hope for before. Happiness. Pure delight. Directed straight at him!
“Thank you so much,” she said, taking a step closer to him. “I want to hug you. Is it okay if I hug you?”
Victor stood there. The future dragonhead. So strong. So powerful. He tried to respond. But his hands were frozen. He couldn’t work out how to answer her in CSL or ASL.
However, in the next moment, any answer he would’ve given her was rendered mute. She pitched forward and threw her arms around him, pressing the side of her face into his chest.
