Bab 5: 4. YOU ARE NO ONE
JELA
There will be times when you see a person and like him for no reason. There will be an immediate attraction that we can't define. Their laugh, eyes, body, and everything about them seem beautiful, and just like that, you fell in love with them for no reason. I think hate is like that too.
There will be times when you see a person and hate them for no reason. There will be a wave of immediate anger that we can't define. Their laugh, eyes, body, and everything about them seems spiteful, and just like that, you will hate them for no reason.
And that kind of person in my life is standing in front of me, doing work in a kitchen like a robot- Not the kind of robot that does weird sounds and turns slowly. It's a fictional robot that does things at the speed of light. Speed of light can be an exaggeration. So, let's settle to the speed of a bicycle. Still, faster than normal. It's a breathing robot. Six feet and some inches, bluish-grey-eyed robot. I don't know if there is a better way to describe him.
At one second, he was scrambling the eggs, but within a speed of the light, I meant the bicycle, he reached the stove to switch off it, and the other hand opened the drawer below to get a knife. Then there were vegetables I didn't remember him taking out. But he was chopping them, straightly looking at me. Somehow, the look on his face told me that he would rather have my head on that board than the vegetables.
He did all these things before I completed a glass of water. And guess what, there is still much liquid in the glass that was supposed to go into my mouth.
I never thought that a businessman could be a professional chef. He sure looks like one. Whatever he was cooking, it smells good that it made my stomach growl. As if someone told him that it would make a sound, he stopped whatever he was doing right when my stomach made the audible noise. I quickly place my hands on my stomach as if I could make it stop from doing that embarrassing to me. But the damage was already done.
"What's that?" He asks. He has a deep voice. There's something about the way he talks. It makes me want to listen to him. Maybe it's his voice or the command.
"Borborygmi," I answered.
"Huh?"
"The thing that occurs during normal digestion as food, liquid, and gas pass through the intestines. Borborygmi can also be associated with hunger, which is thought to cause secretion of hormones that trigger contractions within the gastrointestinal tract." I explained it in detail.
He looks confused. "Say it in English." He said.
I slowly release my hands from my stomach looking everywhere.
"Okay." He thought for a while. "In other words, you are hungry, and your stomach growled." He says. Even though he doesn't reveal it, I am sure he was saying it playfully, teasing me for the sound my stomach has made.
"It's just the human body," I say.
"Mmm..hmm."
"Okay, I am hungry. I haven't had anything since the disaster." When I said that, he raised his eyes to look at me without raising his head; his hands were still at their pace, chopping the vegetables. God, that look would scare anyone.
"Anyway, I need food."
"You can come and make whatever you want." He says.
But he doesn't sound so welcoming.
I folded my hands across my chest, "You will have to go."
He raised his eyebrow in question. Or did I just understand him asking me why would he have to leave?
"What if you did something when I entered the kitchen. I intend to keep a minimum of ten feet distance from you."
I heard him chuckle. He lowered his head so I couldn't see him, and I can't differentiate if it was a mocking laugh or a dangerous laugh.
His expression was blank when he raised his head again. "If I really wanted to do something, I would have done it already."
My hand instinctively reached my pockets, his pockets, since it's his shirt I am wearing. And he didn't go from his notice.
He stared at my hand for a brief movement, then, his eyes returned to mine.
"I am not interested in you to do anything to you," he said. I could sense the hatred in his voice like I am some worm he wished not to touch. Even if it benefits no one but me, I wanna know why.
"Then why did you marry me?" I asked. "For money or power?"
He doesn't look like he needs more money or power. His appearance itself shouts how much power he has.
Too much!
"Why did you marry me?" He questioned in return for my question.
Because I was blackmailed. Because I'll lose my career, because I can't stand my father, because I thought I can get out of this, because I was stupid.
I can't say any of things to him. It only makes me more vulnerable. I can't give him a chance to consider me weak.
He nods his head as if he understood.
"We both benefit because of this marriage. We have our reasons."
Only you and my father benefited. Not me. But I didn't shout those words. He filled his plate with the dish he made and walked toward the table. Once he was seated there, he started to dig in.
"As for me, I don't wanna stay in this marriage."
I cannot see for myself, but my eyes might have produced a thousand sparkles of light now.
H E D O E S N' T W A N T T H I S M A R R I A G E
H E D O E S N' T W A N T M E
I A M F R...
"But," he interrupted the dance my heart had been doing and the song my brain had been singing.
He pointed his fork to me, "You'll stay here, as for my terms and conditions until I say."
I laughed loudly at his words. "You wish?"
"I don't want this marriage as much as you don't. I am not staying here." I told him sternly.
"Then I can refuse to give you divorce."
One sentence is all it takes him to shut me up.
This seems so easy until he makes it difficult.
"What are the terms?" I ask him sharply.
"We will make a contract when I am free." Saying that, he got up from the table to dispose of the plate in the sink.
Did he just complete his breakfast in the meantime of a few sentences?
As a doctor, I wanted to tell him how dangerous it is to eat that fast, that he will swallow more air, which can cause bloating and gas. As a woman, whom he married for his own benefits, I wished he simply died choking on his own food which happens for 1 in two thousand persons. He was not the one right now.
"Until then, you can use that room." He pointed to the room I slept in before.
No thanks. "Thank you," I said slowly. But he heard it that he nods his head.
"And for the dress too," I said.
It's in me to maintain these formalities. I can't help.
"Thanks won't suffice. You will wash it." He said, bending onto the kitchen island. I saw a glimpse of a tattoo near his chest when his shirt displaced a little when he bent. I couldn't make out the shape or figure.
Not my business.
"Don't you have maids?" I asked him. "And don't say Layla's name. I will dismiss her soon. She is just a school student." I reminded him.
"Who says that she is a maid? She is not. She will come whenever she pleases and do whatever she wants to do. You are no one to dismiss her." He spoke coldly.
I don't understand this man. He is making a girl clean his house and gets offended when I accuse him of child labor.
Then it hit me. This godamn son of a bitch!
"Now, I get it," I shouted after him. "You want me to become your maid. I doubted you when you didn't attempt to do anything last night."
He was halfway to his room when I said that. After hearing me yell at him, he turned his head to look at me, one of his hands is gripping the railing of those ten grey steps.
"Tell me. Would you keep quiet if I made you my housemaid?" He asked.
"I'll fucking burn down your house, and you too," I told him spitefully.
"And you think I have time to afford that nuisance and rebuilding?"
"No," He replied to himself. "You will be no one to me as I am to you. And you will wash those clothes because you used them. That's a minimum manner."
And then he was gone.
*
It took me a good thirty minutes of my busy schedule to find a scissor. I almost stumbled on my own foot while rushing back to my room. Once I was inside, the first thing I did is to cut the lower part of my wedding gown. It took me another ten minutes. This stupid gown has too many layers.
It wasn't in my mind to cut it until it hardly reaches my mid-thighs. I was just trying to make it presentable. On the right, the gown seems short. So I cut a little on the left side, and what was once a floor-sweeping gown is now refusing to fall past my mid-thighs. I groaned in frustration. How do I even go out like this? But I have no other options. I have no dress to wear now.
Since my wedding gown has a sweetheart neckline, I wore the grey pajama shirt above the gown so that I won't reveal so much of my cleavage and tied the two ends of the shirt at my waist. I don't look nice. At least I don't look like a bride.
Bash walked down, and I walked out at the same time. He didn't give a startled reaction as soon as he saw me. But I am sure he was startled when he looked at me that his steps become slow for a brief moment.
Somehow, his stares made me more frustrated with myself.
"What?" I hiss at him, "You thought I'll tressure this like other girls?" I asked as he continued looking at my now short wedding gown.
"You are a girl?" Now he really looked as if he was shocked.
"Very funny."
"I want to know when we are going to discuss the terms. I am really busy. I have night shifts." I told him.
"Nightshift?" He raised his eyebrow.
"I am a doctor. MS, Pediatrics." I don't know why I explained that. But, boy. I need a little respect here. He can't just go on boasting about himself as a busy man. I am busier.
"Good lord. You are a girl and a doctor." For a second, he closed his eyes as if he prayed for all the patients I was going to treat.
It made my hand itchy. It wants to hit him hard.
" And I'll have my terms and conditions too," I told him.
"Think of it as a business. Both of the parties can have their benefits."
"Equally," I said.
"Equally." He nodded.
He is going to have a hell of terms from me, and I don't know what he has in store for me. This became easier than I thought. Nothing like a novel. And I am glad that the selfish contact-lens guy hates me as much as I hate him. Only his hate and the disinterest can keep me safe for now. But I can't say when a man's heart can be changed, when his dangerous brain can plot something awful. I don't want to go back there, go back to being a victim. Maybe I still am. But I am better. Courage is all it takes. I just have to fake it, and I will.
He is no one for me, and I am no one for him.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone