Chapter 7 Operation Diary On Ice
Operation Diary On Ice
My heart stopped.
And started again the instant my gaze met his.
I glanced up at him as he leaned against the doorframe and once again so effortlessly casually he was so effortlessly charming in all the most excruciating ways.
He looked down at me because we weren’t thirteen anymore and he was evidently much taller than I was, and I was a tall girl standing five foot eight.
He had to be way above six feet tall. He had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen—ones that had no business being on a boy who didn’t know what to do with them.
But clearly, his stylist did. His eyebrows were thick and characterized his face with so much personality.
He definitely had makeup on, so I’d assumed he had just come back from a shoot of some sort.
I swallowed hard and folded my arms in protest at the way he just casually showed up at my door.
Matter of fact, I was a little mad at the way he just showed up in my life again out of the blue and without a warning, stepping into my world without a care and making it his.
Oh, it was a nightmare and I needed to either put him in his place or wake up.
“You’re at my door.” I was still trying to process his presence.
“Incredibly observant, aren’t you?” he replied with such effortless sarcasm that was so innate to him that it struck me to my core.
“You have no right to do so, need I remind you.” I scoffed, shaking my head in utter disbelief. “What ever happened to saying hello and how are you doing? I haven’t seen you in years.”
“Pardon me, where are my manners? Hello, Soh, how’re you? You have something that belongs to me and I wish for you to return it,” he prompted in his honey-like tone of voice. I rolled my eyes at him in annoyance.
“If there’s one thing a man will always have it’s the sheer audacity, huh?” I reached for my door handle, “I don’t have to entertain you.”
“Really?” He lifted an eyebrow.
“Nope. Not even a little bit, not even at all,” I affirmed and there was this twinkle in his eyes, both of annoyance and of curiosity. “Just because your face is all over New York City doesn’t mean it has to be in my doorway, goodbye.”
“You saw my face all over town?”
“Don’t act surprised, feigning ignorance is unbecoming of you,” I chided, and he placed a hand over his heart, satirically like a soldier injured at war.
“Ah I see, and what would you deem becoming of me, Soh?” he questioned, and I couldn’t hold his gaze any longer, I felt like I was being stripped bare.
“It’s Yesoh. And whatever that may be, it’s not my concern to dissect,” I proclaimed, and he pressed his tongue to his cheek with a slight smile—his teeth were so aligned and perfect you’d think they were veneers. He always had peculiarly sharp canines, maybe he was a… “Vampire?”
“What?” He eyes narrowed in confusion, and my skin flushed with embarrassment.
“Nothing! Just go okay, you don’t get to spring up on me like this,” I declared, standing my ground despite how he shook the earth beneath my feet. I wouldn’t let him, not anymore. “Goodbye.”
I then closed the door and leaned against, it holding my breath until I heard a shuffle of footsteps and I knew he’d left.
I felt like I’d run a marathon with the way I could feel my heart rattling against my rib cage and the sweat forming on my brow.
I had only had one conversation with him and I already felt like I was fighting for my life.
It was almost as if hearing his voice opened a portal, and I was spiralling, travelling back in time.
When he called me Soh, suddenly I was a few feet shorter, my hair was untamed and tangled, my toes hot with sand that was far away.
He made me feel like I was fourteen again.
But I am not. This is five years later, I’ll be twenty in the winter, and I won’t let him shrink me down to the gravel of my youth. I won’t bruise my knees and muddy my boots for him, not anymore.
Just then, I wondered how he could’ve known that I was the one who had his childhood diary, then I remembered Cahya existed and that he couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.
I stormed out of my room and made it my sole mission to find him and scold him both for spilling the beans and for not telling me about Wynter being back in town.
I had to walk across campus—it was a lot of effort and I did end up blowing off some steam along the way to the point that when I actually arrived at his dorm door…
I almost forgot what I was even mad about.
I knocked on the door a few times and waited for it to open.
“Oh, it’s you,” he answered, and I shoved past him to let myself in.
“Whatever happened to sibling solidarity?” I interrogated him, and his eyes widened in surprise, the tips of his ears turning red. “You’re an awful liar, Cahya. God—”
“So I was right then, you did steal his diary?” Cahya scoffed, folding his arms in distaste.
I didn’t appreciate his tone. “I did not steal it!”
“Would you prefer the word burgle?” he countered and I rolled my eyes. “Why would you do that?”
“It was staring right at me in the box in your car, how couldn’t I?” I threw my hands up in the air in defeat.
“Did you just victim-blame the box? Because we don’t do that around here.” Cahya shook his head slowly in disappointment. “Why not just give it back to him huh?”
“It’s old! He hasn’t written in it since summer seventeen. Why does he need it back so soon, hm?” I wondered, trying to make my actions sound better.
“Because it’s his, Yesoh, not yours. He’s been in town for less than a week and you’re already losing it, oh brother,” he scolded. “You do this all the time, this is why I waited to tell you…”
“Do what all the time?” I badgered him and he took a deep breath, soothing his temples.
“Start acting different. I don’t know, he just has that effect on you. You get out of character,” he attempted to explain, but I found myself offended nevertheless, even though I knew he was right.
He was right, this was rather unlike me.
I was a ballerina and balance was my forte, both mentally and physically.
I could walk across a tightrope like I was as light as a feather, I could stand on my toes for hours and not break a sweat.
And yet, all it took was one name to have me losing all composure.
I felt like a temperamental kid again, and it was all because of Wynter.
I took a seat at Cahya’s desk and took a deep breath in, I needed to get it together.
“Why is he back, Cahya?” I questioned simply, awaiting his answer. “Just...why?”
“He transferred for his senior year, and he’s going to be mentoring the first-year figure skaters as a favor to Julliard.
They’ve been begging him to do so for years, but he was always busy training for the Olympics, this is the first year he isn’t spread thin so he agreed.
” Cahya packed his books in his bag, “Happy?”
“Happy?” I repeated, feeling my heart sink at the audacity to ask me those words. “You know as well as I do that no one’s been happy in a long time. But I don’t know, maybe he is, he looked it.”
“He does look it,” Cahya agreed, flipping through pages of sheet music. “Now where is my textbook…”
“Are the girls…are they in New York too?” I wondered. “Sydney was curious.”
“Apparently they’re still in Nottingham, they were…hesitant to return to the US,” Cahya explained, inevitability finding his missing piano textbook and shoving it in his satchel as well, then he paused. “Which is understandable.”
“Yes…understandable.”
“Listen, I’m sorry if you felt blindsided by the news of him coming back, and maybe I should’ve told you sooner but you should just give him back that little book and spare us all the headache, yeah?” he suggested, placing a fond hand on my head and I glanced down.
“Whatever,” I grumbled to myself, and he smiled, shaking his head.
“Cheer up, Soh. He’s just a boy.” He helped me stand up by pulling my hand; we then walked out the door and he locked up his dorm. “I have class now, I’ll see you when I see you.”
And then he was gone, disappearing down the hall.
“He was never just a boy,” I whispered to myself, knowing that no one other than myself would ever comprehend the complexities of what became of us by the end of summer seventeen.
Because summer seventeen is when everything changed. When everything built itself up to the skies like Babel and lightning struck it to the ground like it were an aberration of sorts. Maybe it was. Maybe we were.
I figure that this detail might’ve slipped both my mind and yours, so I find it important to emphasize it nevertheless.
The truth is that Wynter was my brother’s best friend, probably still is deep down.
In the same manner, which I never had any sisters, and found solace and understanding within the Kwon girls, Wynter was able to find that within Cahya.
Which is not surprising, considering the fact that they are the same age, two years older than I, and though it may seem like nothing now that we’re all grown up, back then there might as well have been a sea between us.
For a long time, and probably even still to Wynter, I was nothing more than just his best friend’s tedious and eccentric younger sister.
In his eyes, I was just that one kid who always wanted to hang around wherever they were.
He probably always thought that I knew his sisters far better than he, but that wasn’t true.
I observed him always. I knew his patterns and all his most subtle intricacies.
Wherever Cahya went, Wynter did to—it was rather endearing actually.
Sydney often joked about how the two were platonic soulmates.
I told her she was right, Sydney always was.