“And?”
“I want to check something. You know, they say when you travel together you get to know a lot about the other person. So if we go there, I can find out if you still have lingering feelings for Leda, who you once liked, and whether you’ll protect me like a prince while attractive girls target me from all sides, or whether you’ll just leave me alone. It’s beneficial in many ways.”
“Your motives for wanting to travel together are too impure.”
I pointed this out to Liam and ate the freshly fried fries. Liam asked if I wouldn’t go then, and I answered that it was already decided so I had no choice.
“Alice asked me to go together yesterday. I didn’t know it was this kind of event though.”
Last night, Alice asked through social media messages if I wanted to go to the beach with Charlotte, Nathan, and Virgil. Then she sent me a photo of the blue sea rippling beyond the sparkling sandy beach. And I was hooked by the favorable composition of the travel members and the beautiful ocean photo and readily accepted the proposal. Without even listening to Alice’s added comment that a few more travel members might be joining.
When I guessed that the trip Alice mentioned last night was probably the event you’re talking about, Liam asked in a somewhat excited voice why I was only saying this now.
“I was going to tell you right after your story ended. I wanted to go there with you, but Alice still seems to have hard feelings toward you, so I wanted to discuss what to do about it. But if the host is Leda…… I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“That Alice……! Why do I always get beaten to the punch by her?”
“Because you didn’t have good intentions from the beginning.”
When I quietly let the words slip, Liam shut his mouth and started watching my reaction. Then in a much more sullen state, he fiddled with the swan’s rear and muttered.
“……When I look at you, I get that feeling somehow. That you started dating me purely because I liked you.”
Liam is right. If he hadn’t liked me, I wouldn’t have come to like him either. It’s because he liked me first that we came to this situation, and if not, I would still be thinking of him as the football team’s number one hunk, thinking how nice it must be to be such a great guy.
“You liked me so I ended up seeing you…… Is there any reason that shouldn’t be the case?”
“Of course not. But this also seems like my nature problem. You know, you’re really kind, and I kept pushing myself on you on the grounds that I liked you. I become suspicious that you’re seeing me because you feel a kind of responsibility about that.”
“If we establish the hypothesis that I’m seeing you purely out of a sense of responsibility, there are too many phenomena that can’t be explained.”
At my words, Liam smiled weakly and nodded. Then he added that he thinks that way with his head too, but his nature problem keeps complicating his insides.
“I’m greedy. You know? And my greed is the same in any field. Whether it’s studying, sports, or romance. So what I’m trying to say is, unless I’m convinced that your heart is entirely mine, I’ll be anxious no matter how well you treat me.”
“Then in the end, that’s not a problem I can solve.”
“Yeah. I could solve it if I overcame it myself, but that won’t happen. I’ll just admit it. Liam Blake is a sordid human being.”
Liam raised both hands to an appropriate height and spoke as if he’d given up. I shook my head to show I didn’t agree with that opinion, then scooped up a spoonful of sundae ice cream and shoved it haphazardly into Liam’s open mouth. As if the back of his head had gone numb, Liam looked at me with a totally dazed expression.
“Thrilling, right?”
“Huh? Oh, right. With so much cold stuff coming into my mouth at once, it’s definitely……”
“Me too.”
“You ate a lot of ice cream at once too?”
“That impure motive of yours. Being the target of it, it’s thrilling like I ate a whole bowl of this.”
After telling Liam that, I was about to take out another napkin, but stopped my hand thinking that two swans were enough.
“Give me your hand?”
At my words, Liam hesitated for a moment before reaching out his hand, and I told him to choose between the back of his hand and his palm.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to write with my finger on it. Try to ‘catch’ it.”
When I said it was instead of the catch we couldn’t play today, Liam snickered and nodded.
“Ha, okay. Then I’ll do the back of my hand.”
Liam said that and held out the back of his hand, and I calmly wrote with my index finger on the back of his hand.
I
AM
RLY
INTO
U
Up to there.
When I deliberately pressed firmly so it would be easy to notice and looked at Liam, his face was very flushed.
“You……”
“I interpreted it in my own way. I’m not that expressive type, so I wondered if you were anxious. Of course, the fact that I find it thrilling because you’re anxious is a separate issue.”
Saying that, I looked at Liam and smiled. And I said,
“Cheick Rowan is a sordid human being. My boyfriend says he’s anxious but I’m enjoying it.”
“Ah, you, really……!”
Liam tried to say something, gave up, and arbitrarily devoured someone else’s ice cream sundae. Having started the conversation myself, I was embarrassed and looked elsewhere for a while, waiting for the heat around my face to subside.
The meal, which had been noisy even though there were only two of us, ended, and after putting Liam in the passenger seat, I asked him where he wanted to go this time. After hesitation, Liam said let’s go back to the trailer.
Back at the trailer, Ted was crouched down somewhere doing something diligently, just like we’d seen before. When I got out of the car and looked closely, he was planting flower seedlings around the trailer.
“……Where did all this come from?”
In a voice uncharacteristically full of rebellion, Liam asked Ted. Ted answered in a way that was obviously a lie that he got these seedlings from someone he knew. Liam sighed deeply enough to sink the ground, then tried to say something to Ted but stopped and quickly went inside the trailer.
“Hello, Ted.”
I observed the situation for a moment, then greeted Ted. Ted, who had been following only the traces of where Liam had disappeared with his eyes, was startled when he saw me, but only briefly, and greeted me very warmly.
“It’s Cheick.”
As I came and went from this place picking up Liam in my car several times, I naturally became acquainted with Ted too. Of course, when I appear he’s busy avoiding me, but still when we run into each other like this, he greets me warmly.
“They’re zinnias.”
When I made a comment while looking at the seedlings planted around the trailer, Ted was very pleased and asked if I knew flowers well.
“I only know the common ones. But do you like flowers?”
“I do indeed.”
While Ted and I were having a conversation, Liam watched us through the trailer window with a face full of mixed emotions. I gave Ted one last comment and followed Liam inside the trailer.
“I hope the flowers grow well.”
A while later, after planting all the seedlings, Ted belatedly gave me an answer to what I’d said.
“All the flowers will grow well. Because you wished for it to be so.”
Ted left a meaningful answer and hurriedly left the scene, saying he was going to meet someone. As soon as he left, Liam sighed deeply again.
“I came back after making up my mind, but I think I just ended up being petty again.”
“It’s hard to suddenly try to do something you haven’t done before.”
“I guess? But really, I get angry every time Ted does something impractical. Those flower seedlings too…… What’s the use of planting them around this old trailer? No, let’s say I’m being generous and not considering that. But when someone who doesn’t even have money for one meal in their pocket is doing that…… I keep getting angry.”
Liam said he couldn’t handle Ted, who was unable to adapt to reality and was absorbed in his own world. But he also added that he didn’t feel good because it seemed like his cold attitude had driven him away.
“Ted left because of me, not because of you.”
Liam said he agreed with that to some extent, then lightly took my hand.
“Just because Ted left, don’t think he dislikes you coming here. It’s rather the opposite.”
Liam said that while Ted welcomes any of his friends, starting from today he’ll like me the most.
“You’re the first person who showed interest in him planting flowers. And in a positive way too. Since you did something even I, his son, didn’t do, he must have been incredibly happy inside.”
“I didn’t say much.”
“Ted’s an emotional person. Anyway, thanks to you, I was able to act differently than usual. Of course, my heart was ahead of me and there wasn’t really any result.”
When I tried to say something to Liam, who was blaming himself, he drew a line saying let’s stop talking about this topic here, then suddenly asked me if I liked swimming.
“Not particularly.”
“I really like it. And I’m pretty good at it too.”
