Chapter 73. Executing Operation, Codename: Date, Night. (1/3)

I was excited to pick up the second book and read it right away when I suddenly snapped out of it and realized what time it was. For us to finish an entire book, it had definitely been long.

When I checked my phone it showed it was 4:00 AM the following day. I gulped nervously and looked over to Alicia who’d curled her body into a ball on the chair shivering like a cute animal with shrunken eyes.

When Rosa finished I asked the two of them, “Well, how did you two find it?”

“S-S-Scary. But g-good. Really good. One of the better horror books I’ve read for sure.” Alicia stuttered out as she glanced over her shoulder to make sure nothing was there.

“It was exciting. I definitely never expected reading a book would get my heart pumping so much. I always thought they were just boring.” Rosa gave her own input as a first-time reader.

I honestly wanted to discuss the book with them more, but considering the time I looked over to Alicia worried.

“Alicia, we sort of lost track of the time. Did you tell your mother you’d be late?”

“Ah! Oh no! What time is it? I was supposed to be home by 10:00 PM.”

“Uh… sorry, it’s 4:00 AM right now.”

“What! No way! Seriously!”

She took out her phone and tried to turn it on.

“No way, my phone died at some point! My mom’s going to kill me.”

She looked more scared than she did after reading the book.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to her and do the explaining. It’ll involve a small lie though.” I tried to calm her down.

“You’ll explain what to her exactly?”

“Out of the three of us here, I’m pretty sure she’ll be the least mad if I’m the one to explain the situation to her.” As an adult at heart, I sort of felt like it was my responsibility to at least do this much.

“Well… it does seem like my mom likes you a lot.”

“Wait. Alicia, your mom knows Ran?”

“Ah. Sorry. I never told you about what happened after-”

“I helped out her little brother one time and her mother thinks well of me after I met her. It’s something like that.” I cut her off since I felt she’d give a troublesome and long-winded explanation of the sequence of events. It was best to keep it short and sweet, to the point.

Since my words had been true, Alicia didn’t have much of a reaction to the point form summary I gave. She just nodded to confirm my story despite it missing many important key details.

“I see. So that’s why.”

“Anyway, we should probably call her. What’s her number, Alicia?”

“Uh… it’s a bit embarrassing, but I don’t know it unless I can turn on my phone. I’ve got a lot of numbers saved and I never memorize them.” Right, she’s popular after all. Popular people problems. For someone like me, memorizing the numbers stored on my phone is a very simple task. I only have a few after all.

“Do you remember your little brothers at least?”

“Ugh… I should at least memorize his, shouldn’t I? I’ve gotten too used to the convenience of my phone.”

“You don’t have your charger with you either?”

“No. I forgot it at home because I was in a rush in the morning to meet up with my friends after waking up late in the morning.”

“I don’t have my charger with me either, do you have yours, Rosa?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I do… but it doesn’t fit her phone.”

I suddenly remembered something.

“It completely slipped my mind, I actually have your brother's number.”

Alicia was relieved when she heard that.

However, I hesitated for a moment to immediately call him. It was because I was about to tell a lie when I spoke to her mother. One that I didn’t doubt she might see through. She might even want to verify it. That being the case I needed to be prepared when I called and told her this lie so she would have no opportunity to refute it.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to call her little brother?”

“No… there’s a bit of a problem if I’m going to lie here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ll see soon. We can’t call yet. We’ve got to return to your place first.”

“My place? But that’s pretty far and it’s also really dark and cold out. Busses aren’t running at this hour either.”

“Though it pains me, we’ll just need to call for a cab. They’re at least available 24/7.”

“True.”

My relationship with Rosa is also known to Irene, Alicia’s mother. That was another reason why I felt things would work out if I was the one calling.

I called for a cab and gave them our location. Alicia and I went outside to wait for it while Rosa erased all traces of our library infiltration date operation under the guise of returning the key to her acquaintance’s office by slipping it under the door.

By the time Rosa finished up with her clean-up mission, the cab arrived at our location.

We informed him of our destination and he took off right away. He just thought we were some university students who’d spent some long hours working on a project and didn’t bother asking us any questions. The two girls beside me were obviously tired and ready to fall asleep.

They both shut their eyes, leaned their heads on my shoulder, and dozed off. I was the only one who stayed awake the entire way back. I couldn’t rest easy, why? Because I had my eyes glued to the trip cost on the center display at the front the entire way. My heart bled with every agonizing tick. By the time we reached Rosa’s place my eyes were bloodshot. I could feed myself for days with this one trip. I could even take many bus trips from one end of the city to the next with the unreasonable price on the front display.

I opened my wallet with a trembling hand and paid in full out of my own pocket. I felt responsible for this, it was my carelessness that led to this situation, and I had to pay for it. I wouldn’t learn my lesson if I didn’t. I had to discipline myself since there was nobody else to do so in my life.

If you messed up, you paid for the consequences. I should have paid more attention to the time knowing that Alicia was with us and she had a parent at home who would worry about her daughter’s location. I should have at the very minimum made a call much earlier. These two were still considered irresponsible children in my eyes, so they could be excused, but I had no excuse for this level of short-sightedness.

Once the cab driver accepted my payment I placed my hand on the two sleeping beauties' shoulders and shook them.

Rosa opened her eyes immediately, on full alert like her sleeping face had been a lie. Contrary to her, it took a good minute before Alicia woke up.

She lazily rubbed her eyes with her head still on my shoulder. When she realized what sort of position she was in her back instantaneously snapped into a straightened up position. Her lips took the form of a squiggle. Though her face didn’t redden, her stiff reaction screamed her true internal thoughts, ‘so embarrassing!’

She was the oldest among our little trio, but she’d been the first to fall asleep and the last to wake up. Falling asleep on my shoulder aside, this had greatly contributed to the awkwardness she felt.

I couldn’t help but add insult to injury by uttering a finishing blow to top it off. “How cute.”

She started lightly hitting my shoulder with her fists looking like she wanted to cry. She was the spitting image of a disgruntled bullied child.

I made my escape from the cab exiting out the side Rosa had already exited from.

Seeing me run off, she unbuckled her seatbelt in a fluster and chased after us.

“Don’t you think Alicia looks extra bulliable when she’s asleep?” I couldn’t help but ask Rosa when Alicia got close enough to here.

“Certainly, it just makes you want to tease her with how cute it is.” Rosa immediately agreed.

She grabbed our shoulders and started shaking us as she complained, “I’m not! Look, I’m the oldest here, okay? I should be getting respect from my juniors, okay? Okay? You got that? It’s bad to bully people too! Bullying is bad. Yeah, bad.”

“Yeah, yeah. We completely respect you. Pfft. Falls asleep first and wakes up last.” I teased her further, throwing salt into her still-open wound.

While Rosa and I teased Alicia the three of us made it back to her place. It was 4:45 AM by the time we entered her unit.

Now that we arrived at Rosa’s place, I called up Alicia’s little brother. The three of us had removed our winter attire while Alicia had quickly changed back into the clothes she’d worn earlier in the day. She didn’t remove my shirt though and had instead worn her top over mine.

The two of them had taken a seat on the couch together while I spoke to her little brother.

“H-Hello? Who’s this?” The call connected on the first ring, he sounded anxious when he picked up the phone. He hadn't even checked who’d called him like he was in that much of a rush to answer it.

“Hey, can you put your mother on the phone?”

“Huh? Devil teacher man? Is that you?” What the? Is that what he called me behind his back?

“Uh… yeah.”

“It was you! Wasn’t it! You must be the one who kidnapped my big sister!”