Muscles wasn't nearly as pretty as his friend, but he was way more arresting. His face was a collection of sharp angles that gave his beauty a harder and more dangerous edge. I'd be too nervous to speak with Anime Guy if we were alone in this room. But I'd be too scared to speak to the other one. Forget Muscles. I decided then and there to nickname this one Danger.
But I wasn't here for them. I was here for Victor, their little brother.
Reminding myself of that, I put a lot of effort into not looking as scared as I felt when they stopped in front of me.
They both gave me short bows. I knew there were rules to bowing. We had learned them in Cultural Studies. But they all flew out of my head. So I just awkwardly returned their bows with something I could only hope was a decent head nod.
Danger stared at me, even as Anime Guy asked him something I didn't understand in Chinese. Danger nodded in response to Anime Guy, but his eyes stayed on me, black and glittering with cold curiosity. I swear I could feel his gaze burning into my skin. It was like having two hot lasers aimed directly at me.
"You're here to tutor Victor?" Anime Guy asked in Japanese. As pretty as he was, I couldn't say the same for his speech. His accent was rough and over direct, nothing like the careful and deliberately slow Japanese spoken to me at my school by people who weren't sure if I'd understand them.
However, I nodded quickly, eager to move on from pretending that I wasn’t frying underneath Danger’s intimidating stare. "Yes, the guard pointed me this way, but I think I walked into the wrong room. Do you know where I could find him?"
Anime Guy grinned. All perfect straight teeth and cool hair. "No, you’ve got the right place. This is Victor's room."
“Oh…” I look around, taking in the rest of the space. Room was an understatement. Just like I didn't see the teacher beforehand, I hadn’t clocked that the room was actually a huge suite. The gym area had several barbells and a treadmill, but it was only a third of the room. There was a large viewing area with couches at the other end of the suite. Also, a door, which I assumed led to a bedroom. And in the middle of the enormous room sat a long, low table with golden cushions on either side, presumably for sitting.
The table was covered with a laptop, a bunch of Chinese textbooks I couldn’t read the titles of, and a few English ASL books. So yes, this had to be where Victor did his schoolwork.
Maybe his brothers had just borrowed the room for their weirdly intense stick fighting lesson.
"Oh, my bad. Sorry. Do you know when Victor will get here?"
Anime Guy screwed up his face like I was stupid. "You're looking at him."
I stilled. The alarm bells were back. And this time, they weren’t faintly ringing. They were full-on blasting.
"So, you’re Victor?" I asked Anime Guy hopefully. He was almost too pretty to look at, and I was barely keeping it together for this conversation. But the alternative….
I couldn’t even manage a glance at Danger, even though I could still feel his stare on me.
Anime Guy didn't straight up laugh at me, but he looked like he was thinking about it.
"No, I am Han," he answered. Then he waved a hand toward Danger. "This is Victor."
My heart dropped all the way to my feet.
A Chinese boy, my father had called him.
But none of the boys I knew had muscles. As mean as Jake and his buddies had been to Byron, none of them could fight like that. And none of them had ever looked at me in a way that froze me in place because my body couldn't decide whether to throw up or run away screaming.
"Hi, I'm Dawn," I somehow managed to squeak out to Victor in Japanese anyway.
The not-a-boy at all signed something back, but I didn't understand.
"He's saying you can speak English," Han translated for me. "He doesn't talk, but he can understand it."
So he wasn't deaf after all. Either that, or he was really good at reading lips.
I swallowed, trying to get some water into my throat.
"Oh, okay. Nice to meet you, Victor," I eventually managed to lie. I was all sorts of self-conscious even though I didn't have to struggle through English the same way I did with Japanese.
There came a long, intense moment of silence. Then Victor raised his hands to sign some more words I didn't understand.
But his signs weren’t directed at me, as it turned out. As soon as Victor lowered his hands, his friend and his teacher started to clear out.
"It was nice to meet you," Han said in English as he grabbed his stuff and headed for the door. Maybe it was his accent, but it sounded like he was mocking me.
