“Um…” she said out loud before mumble signing, “I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your girlfriend, but I don't do that. I don't go out with other people's boyfriends. I'm not like that.”
Victor blinked. Then signed, “I don't have a girlfriend.”
Now she frowned. “Ayane, that woman who came every Thursday? Wasn't she your girlfriend? I’ve been assuming she was your girlfriend this whole time.”
She was having trouble looking at him again. To the point that Victor worried that she wouldn't be able to see it when he answered, “She is not my girlfriend.”
She glanced up. But only a little bit. “Then who is she to you?”
“No one,” he answered, signing emphatically. “She is NO ONE.”
Her eyes widened, and she took a step back as if he had hit her, the same as when Phantom round housed him earlier.
“You don't have a girlfriend?” she repeated. As if she didn't entirely trust his ASL.
“No,” he answered, adding a short shake of his head so that there would be no further misunderstanding. “I don't have a girlfriend.”
“Oh…” Again, she didn’t sign, and her voice sounded small.
Dawn looked away from him. Up at the ceiling. Down at the floor.
And the truth began to dawn on Victor—absolutely no pun intended. His supposed girlfriend had only been an excuse for her rejection. It was the reason she’d prepared to explain why she couldn't return his feelings. So now she had to figure out how to let him down easily without it.
Victor couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand being on the receiving end of her pity-filled rejection.
“The note was a joke,” he signed.
At the same time, she signed, “I like you too.”
They both stopped, their hands freezing in mid-air as they each registered what the other had just signed.
“It was a joke?” she asked, her voice cracking underneath the question. She stared up at Victor, her big brown eyes stricken and hurt.
For a moment, for too many moments, Victor just stood there, frozen and buffering. What had he done? What the fuck had he done?
He raised his hands to correct the lie. To tell her the note was 100% true, and quite frankly, the hardest thing he'd ever had to write. But she turned her back on him before he could, rushing towards the door.
No, no, no! She liked him back. She actually liked him back. He couldn’t let it end this way.
Victor raced after her, grabbing her up in his arms before she reached the door.
He pulled her to his chest, telling her with his body what he couldn’t with words. But she fought his hold.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “Fuck you! Let me go!”
He never heard her scream before. Or swear.
He hated that he'd hurt her. Hated it so much. All his pride went out the window as he forcefully turned her around.
“No joke,” he signed as clearly as he could while keeping her facing him with one arm banded tightly around her. “No joke. I…”
Diu, he didn't know the ASL for “promise” or “swear.”
A moment from their first ASL class flashed through his mind. Like a lifeline thrown out to his stormy sea.
“My words don’t cheat,” he signed. Then he resorted to the same mishmash of ASL and CSL that she so often employed, hoping she'd understand. “I was trying to save face. I like you. I like you very much.”
She didn't believe him. He could see the disbelief in her brown eyes, filled with angry tears, threatening to spill over.
He had to convince her. Had to show her he wasn't lying…
So he kissed her. He kissed her so hard that all the feelings he'd been keeping pent up inside came flowing out to shout the truth at her in a language she could understand.
I like you. I like you. I like you too much. To the point of craziness. He told her this with his kiss, his mouth roaming over hers.
He kissed her and kissed her until she became pliant and began to kiss him back.
Then he drew back and signed something else he had never said to another human before. Especially to a girl. “I'm sorry. I am sorry for being a coward.”
He told her, “I like you very much. You make me very happy. Dawn, you are the only girl who does this to my heart.”
Her eyes were still wide, but they were also soft now. And she was no longer fighting him.
So he risked withdrawing both of his hands to ask, “Will you be my girlfriend? Please say yes.”
13
DAWN
“Will you be my girlfriend? Please say yes.”
My heart thundered in my chest, and there was a strange feeling in my belly like I was falling…into something I didn’t understand but desperately wanted.
So just in case, you weren't paying attention…
Victor was back in Tokyo.
He’d enrolled at my school.
And now he was asking me to be his girlfriend. Just a few hours after my father ordered me never to see him again.
