Ironies of life

Chapter 12: The incident.

“I hate you, Dante Hartell.” Naoki said the moment he stepped through the front door of his house and saw Dante calmly standing beside the front door.

“I get it. It’s not the first time you said it.”

“It’s not going to be the last either.”

Dante clicked his tongue and pulled out his phone and called the police once more.

“Good evening… yes he came back home… yes he is fine, a little scared but I’ll help with that… No, he doesn’t look injured… Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you I’ll take care.”

Naoki followed Dante into the kitchen and waited until he set down the phone before speaking.

“You actually called the police.” The disbelief was evident in every word.

“You went missing. That’s what you do when the child you are taking are of goes missing.”

“In the first place you don’t ever let your child go missing,” Naoki countered. “And in the-”

“Well I didn’t realize I had a real child until an hour ago when he ran away. I thought I was sharing the house with someone my age.”

“And your saliva too or was that just in addition?”

Naoki got really angry after the child comment and almost lost control, but if Dante thought he could beat Naoki in smart talking he was wrong. Maybe Naoki wasn’t the strongest guy but sarcasm was his game. He could almost see it in Dante’s expression that he had hit a weak point.

“You are such a…”

“What? Teaching bad words to your child?” Naoki interrupted him. “No wonder I ran away from home.”

‘Are you angry? Are you about to explode?’ Thought Naoki. ‘Yes, you are going to regret everything. You are going to pray you get out of here. How are you going to deal with being the loser for once?’

But suddenly something stopped Naoki’s great feelings. Dante smiled and commented:

“This is fun.”

Naoki covered his face with a hand and let out a frustrated sigh.

“And I thought I was the weird one.” Naoki turned and began walking towards the stairs.

‘I’m so done with this guy. If he is never going to lose I won’t bother talking to him again.’

“Hiro!” Dante’s voice was really deep and low, strongly enunciating Naoki’s last name.

He turned his head slightly and looked at the blond dude over his shoulder.

“This is the last warning. Stay in the house.”

“I’m not scared of you, Dante.”

“I bet you aren’t, but you aren’t stupid either. Are you?”

Naoki could have just accepted. He wasn’t planning on dealing with the police anyway, but then something came suddenly to his mind, a way to take advantage of the situation. Or at least a way to understand anything.

“I won’t run away anymore but I’ve a condition.”

“You are not in the position to…”

“You won’t try to kiss me again, ever. Neither touch me, at all. If that happens I swear I’m not going to come back. I’m pretty sure I’m in the position to ask for that.”

“You said you weren’t scared of me.” Dante pointed out in his attempt to regain control of the conversation.

“Deal or no deal?” Naoki insisted with a biting tone.

“That’s so unfair… I want to have a condition too then. If you go out of the house you owe me a kiss but as long as you stay here I won’t try anything.”

“What are you talking about?! One day you’re just a bully and the next day you love me? Okay, where is the camera? Great job guys, I almost bought this prank.” Naoki gave a sarcastic and hollow laugh as he pretended to look around for the nonexistent camera.

“Love you? I don’t love you.” Dante refused the idea, making a face. Perhaps the only moment where he showed he could feel something.

“Then why do you want a kiss from me? I was right, this is just your new strategy to bother me.”

“It’s not all about you, since when do you think you are the center of the world?”

“It’s funny hearing that from you.” Naoki barked out a short, dry laugh.

“I might feel physically attracted to you but that doesn’t mean I love you.”

Naoki couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was like a slap to the face with a fish. He wished he could just wake up because this seemed a lot like a nightmare.

“YOU FEEL PHYSICALLY ATTRACTED TO ME!?” He almost fell from the stairs.

“Here we go with the yelling and acting mad again. No, I don’t. Or maybe I do. I don’t know if I do. It seems like I do.” Dante stopped confused. He confused himself with his own speech. “I came here to find out because everything has been so weird since I began wondering if I was feeling attracted to you.”

“Okay, I’m done with this conversation. You are not going to find out anything because I’m into girls.”

“And do girls know that?” Dante teased him, but he didn’t know that was one of Naoki’s buttons. He shouldn’t have gone in that direction.

Naoki jumped down the stairs and stomped towards Dante in barely restrained anger.

“You have manage to ruin all my possible relationships so don’t you dare say that again.”

Dante smiled again making Naoki want to strangle him. ‘What is it that he finds so funny? I’m going to erase that cruel smile from your face.’

“So was I right in finding the girls you liked? I had doubts about two of them. Especially Gala.”

During one second Naoki looked at him with disbelief. Was there really someone on the face of the earth able to say those kinds of things as expressionless as Dante? Was he playing a game? What was so funny about it?

He couldn’t contain himself anymore and explode, closed his fists and began hitting Dante as hard as he could, yelling:

“YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COME INTO MY LIFE AND DESTROY EVERYTHING I LIKE! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW I FELT ALL THOSE TIMES! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I HATE YOU DANTE HARTELL! Making me watch while you got all those girls just for the sake of getting them far out of my reach, making people think I didn’t deserve their company, making me look stupid in every new thing I tried, stealing my friends, stealing my spot in the swimming club, STEALING MY FIRST KISS! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!” At some point in the middle of the speech he began crying, words coming out garbled and choked. Even when he was finally attacking Dante he couldn’t control his feelings. Remembering all those hard moments and admitting them in front of his enemy, in front of the cause of all his misfortune, was painful.

Until the moment Dante barely pretended to defend himself from Naoki’s punching, which was also hurting Naoki’s pride, but just after that sentence he trapped Naoki’s wrist and twisted it, just as some weeks before in that class where he asked him to go to the prom with Gala.

Dante held Naoki this time against the kitchen island, making him lean forward because of the pain of his wrist, but also because he was pressing his legs from behind.

Naoki’s tears drop on the island and for a moment it looked like everything was frozen. Then he tried to force Dante to let him escape by moving his shoulder, but that only caused him more pain almost immobilizing his whole arm. Plus even if Dante was always cold, his legs were burning hot against Naoki’s skin.

“What did you just say?” Asked Dante. “Your first kiss?”

Naoki blushed. He was just letting his heart talk, but he definitely would have preferred to avoid telling him that embarrassing information.

“Are you even surprised? You took all the girls I wanted to kiss.”

“What about Gala? I…”

Naoki began to fight against Dante’s hold much harder after his comment, and due to Dante’s lack of attention, his solid grip combined with Naoki’s harsh struggling resulted in a loud crack from Naoki’s shoulder. The martial artist tried to release him as fast as possible, but it was too late. He stepped back as Naoki screamed in pain and fell into his knees.

Dante expression was stayed cold and dry of emotions even as his mind came up with a solution in seconds. But to Naoki, those few seconds were like an eternity full of pain. It was as if the atmosphere suddenly lost all oxygen, he couldn't breathe and there was nothing else in his body but the excruciating pain pulsating from his shoulder.

Dante grabbed him and situated Naoki’s arm on the island, lining up the displaced shoulder with the stone. The move made Naoki scratch the air and squirm. The indescribable suffering left him blind, everything around him turned white and there was nothing else but the agony consuming him.

Dante took a deep breath in preparation before pressing Naoki’s shoulder violently back into place with a loud pop. Hiro fainted.