The Only Delicacy

She turned around, fluttering around her soft and glowing hair that slightly touched his chest, and spreading forth wild flower scent towards those near her.

He silently and deeply inhaled her sweet scent without her permission and stared at her faintly reddened cheeks and ears and somewhat messed up hair, which was brought forth from all that running.

Looking at the boy who was just a fist away from her, she looked upwards, her big bright eyes assessing him.

He had handsome features, such as his 190 centimeter height, crew cut black hair, upturned black eyes paired with golden-framed glasses, fair and pore less skin, thin and long turned-up nose, and kissable thin lips. He wore a white long-sleeve Sunspel Riviera polo shirt that was tucked in a brown leather belt and dark blue skinny jeans, and black leather Oxford wingtip dress shoes.

Adding on to his charming traits was the aura he excluded: a rich intelligent, cold and aloof, gentleman.

She did not mind his impenetrable aura nor his bewitching appearance that many women would utterly die for. Living up to her eccentricity, she thought of how expensive those clothes and shoes might be and how she could barely afford a tenth of its price.

He noticed her adorable and lovely eyes scanning him and hid a smile, with a faint blush that couldn't be seen by the naked eye. Right now, her innocent expression made it hard for him to control his intense desire to lock her up in his mansion, keep her for himself, and kiss and touch her everywhere.

Aside from the fact that they were classmates who sat quite close to one other, she wondered why he started talking to her when they barely even know each other, more so talk. She did not even know if he recognized her.

But currently, the unreachable and otherworldly top student of the batch, Kyle, was actually talking to her.

Thus, she felt like an ant encountering an elephant. Meanwhile, he felt like a wolf meeting a bunny. Their perspectives were different, but similar at the same time.

But what she did not realize was that, for most students, she was also one of the unreachable. As the third highest in ranking out of all the batch, with her nonchalant expression, impressive beauty, and lazy habit of sleeping whenever time would allow it, she was placed as a prodigy in their hearts.

Therefore, many were contented with watching her from afar.

Indeed, a beautiful rose must be shared.

She then remembered what he said, making her quite angry. "No, Kyle." She furrowed her brows and bit her lower lip. She thought, "I did everything I could to arrive on time, and that was the first thing he said to me? What did I ever do to him? Was there something I missed?"

From where he stood, the angle only made her more endearing, which made him stiffen, as if an invisible cupid arrow struck his heart. Not once, but twice.

He stared at her in appreciation. In his eyes, a rosy atmosphere popped out of nowhere, perfecting her beauty, her slightly reddened cheeks and ears, her large teary eyes, soft pants, her adorable angry expression, and, most of all, her lower red lip that seemed to hurt from being bitten.

These all made her irresistible.

As the saying goes, beauty lies on the eyes of the beholder. An otherworldly and unreachable being, like him, was now helpless against her. Or to be more precise, at her mercy.

The first cupid arrow that struck to his heart was like all the other arrows that struck him whenever it was class time.

Ever since he first saw her sitting by the window three years ago, he felt his heart beating faster, making him immediately shift his gaze back to his laptop. He thought this random reaction would stop before the end of the day. But sadly, it never did.

With such an irregular heart rate, he thought he should go to the hospital.

In fact, he arranged for one on the next day, but data showed his heart rate was normal.

"That's odd," he thought, with his index and thumb touching his chin. He pushed his glasses upwards, displaying how grave he thought of the situation. He decided to observe his abnormal reaction with her some more next time.

On the next day, he exchanged seats with a student and sat right next to her, staring at her like he was prying open her soul. Since she was sleepy that time, she did not bother with him. She thought he must have been staring at someone else. Or maybe at something outside the window.

She mentally concluded, "As long as he does not bother me, then I would not bother him also." So, she half-slept and half-listened to the teacher in front.

Needless to say, his actions riled up the surrounding students, brimming them with curiosity. One whispered, "What is he doing?" Then another answered, "You idiot! Can you not tell that he is gawking at her?"

All of them started to silently ask questions to one another, but no one knew whether they had answered the other correctly. Because of such an unusual event, they immediately shifted their attention towards these two love birds, hoping to catch them in any kind of act, instead of listening to the teacher.

The teacher was also too preoccupied with her lesson in history that she did not notice the little fiasco taking place within the classroom.

Kyle neither knew what they were thinking nor even cared about it. What he cared about was getting the answer to this abnormality. He deeply hoped he had not develop any kind of incurable diseases, like cancer and the like.

But as time passed, he realized that nothing changed. Nothing bad happened to him. His irregular heart rate was the same at school, but not at home. Therefore once school was over, he decided to search in the internet, for the internet was much more trustworthy than asking a human being.

At home, Kyle speedily typed, "The causes of irregular heartbeats," and scanned the stated sites.

"'Arrhythmia?' No. My health is perfectly normal," he was somewhat angered by those sites. Surely, there must be a logical explanation to this. With a solid determination, he hastily searched the answer given by well-known medical institutes for about one hour.

Then, he accidentally clicked one of the blogging sites and checked it. At the next second, he was immediately dumbfounded, thereby making his eyes literally widen and his lips slightly part.

Kyle asked, "Love?"

That one word was something he never thought he would say or ask one day. Needless to say, it was something, he thought, completely impossible for him.

Being born from parents with an arranged marriage and who, up 'til now, had never even loved each other to begin with, made him not think highly of the term, 'Love.'

"Hahahahaha!" He felt like he could not stop laughing. As a matter of fact, he laughed for quite some time.

Love was just an ideal fantasy for him. It was for children clouded with dreams and visions. It was for naive youngsters who kept forcing their feelings onto others by calling it love, never realizing it was just due to hormonal changes.

He ridiculed the entirety of it.

But now, here he was. Not laughing at them, but at himself.

"How ironic," he thought, while ridiculing himself.

A person who hated the whole idea of love was now in love. Despite how illogical it sounded to him and despite how much he wanted to avoid this kind of situation, he had to face reality. He was bound to experience it sooner or later, but it just so happened to occur now. He did not know how or why, because it just happened.

No preparations. No pressures from coercion. Just plain eye contact and the drumming of his heart.

This was one of the strengths of Kyle - how fast he adapted to change.

As the most intelligent student of all, he, who was a walking vocabulary, was now secretly searching for the meaning and, additionally, the scientific explanation of love at home. He wanted to be well prepared and also wanted to know everything beforehand. Simply speaking, he wanted to find out whether it could occur with different people at the same time and other fun facts that he deemed interesting.

Revealing this to the public would undoubtedly embarrass him to the core. But, as a man, he must leave his pride and try to understand this alien term.

He fully understood the quote, "Do not judge what you do not understand." It was like blindly criticizing someone without knowing their reasons.

After some extensive research, he was now filled with information about love. But before he could conclude he was really in love, he decided to observe again and experiment once.

Before classes started the next day, he intentionally bumped into her and discovered that the consequences of just one action were extremely unbearable. He used his entire effort to not break down in front of her and hastily left without apologizing or even listening to her apology.

Once he was sure he was about a hundred meters away from her, his entire cheeks reddened up to his ears, his heart felt like it was about to explode, and his manhood became aroused.

That was yet an another additional experience he absolutely did not know how to deal with.

He arrived home, lay down on his bed and looked up at the ceiling, while he was lost in his thoughts. At least now, he was sure he was in love, but he did not know whether to cry or laugh. To be sad or to be happy, he did not have the answer.

That was a first for a genius and topnotcher like him

Wait, in fact, he had a lot of firsts when it came to her. And that made him experience another first:

He was anticipating his future.

Would she become his wife? Thinking of that made him brim with joy. Or would we end up heartbroken? Thinking of that made him extremely angry. It was no exaggeration to say that he would destroy the whole universe because of it.

Kyle had blushed absolutely redder than before. He had just realized his thoughts and could now reckon he was not 'in love,' but 'madly in love' with her.

"What did she do to me?" he thought. Again, there was no answer.

He felt like he was back to being a child, with a lot of questions in mind.

He couldn't do anything about it. All he could do was research some more on how to deal with his manhood instead of covering it with his case. Regarding how to get the girl, he thought he should take it slow. If he did something now, he might scare her away.

"How troublesome," he smiled. Whether this experience would be good or bad was all up to him. Only he can determine his future. With an unyielding determination, he vowed to possess her.

No matter what.

As days passed by, he was simply contented at staring at the girl beside him. And now, she was getting used to it. But, she can't help but wonder, "What is he staring at?"

She looked towards the window, but saw nothing interesting. Out of boredom, she shifted her gaze and looked at him instead, looking to where his eyes were actually staring.

That first eye-contact made him nervous and he immediately shifted his gaze. Her, looking at him, was a whole different thing. It made his heart, or we can say, his entire being, erratic. He engraved that memory like a picture onto his mind, mentally writing down the date and, at the back of the picture, a memo about the experience.

"How idiotic. Can't you do anything instead of looking away?" his conscience reprimanded him.

But he could not help but follow his instincts, for he was not used to it. He lost an opportunity to chat with her and so, he began to hate his shy nature, more and more.

He was not a girl. He should be the one leading her and using all kinds of methods to flirt with her so that she, too, would fall in love with him. But he could not help it.

He remembered all those rumours that stated he was an excellent lover, with a lot of experience, the most ideal husband and the like.

His brows furrowed, "Who exactly said he was experienced in this department?" He angrily thought of committing murder to all those who started these baseless rumours. Even he, himself, was scammed.

They deserved brutal deaths!

While he was angrily thinking about who the culprits were, she tilted her head to one side, making it seem like a big question mark had formed just right above her head.

"Does he need to be so secretive about it? Fine. Have fun yourself." She silently cursed him, mentally thinking what she had done to deserve being treated this way.

Three years later, he had yet to strike a conversation due to his reserved nature. He was contented with staring at her from afar, without her noticing, as to which she actually did but pretended not to because he did not bother to share his interest with her. Realistically speaking, he was also more contented with not making any idiotic actions that would make him regret it for a lifetime.

But since some boys, who patiently waited for him to make his move, thought he stared at her for no apparent reason, they all became restless and started dropping by her seat every break, giving her snacks or lunch whenever she forgot to bring one.

Seeing this, he had to take things to the next level or else someone would snatch her away. He glared at them, leaving only the brave ones who could not read the mood to drop by her seat.

Now, after gathering up the confidence to speak to her, he initiated a conversation with her, which led to the event now and, for him, was like a dream come true! Except that he did not know how to bring up a conversation. Therefore, it seemed like an insult to the other party.

What made it worse was that he never realized it, himself! He thought he just said a fact with no hidden meaning behind it, "You're late." Because stating facts was a trait true to himself, not those useless flirtatious words.

What he did not regard was the fact that his watch was actually 5 minutes advanced.

Apparently, it gave birth to another first. His facts became nonsense in front of the person he loved.

Moving on to the second arrow, the other cupid arrow that struck him was, in fact, several times bigger than the other.

She actually knew his name! Nothing could compare to a first love saying your name for the first time!

He immediately pictured this moment and etched it to the deepest parts of his soul, making sure to never forget it. No. In fact, he literally pictured her with his phone by instinct. It was his habit of recording or picturing information that may be of use in the future.

Except, his first love was, of course, a special case.

Of course! A picture like this would be of much use in the future. This time, he was extremely grateful to his instincts.

She noticed it and looked towards the camera, tilting her head to one side. "What is he picturing?" she thought.

At the same time, he immediately pressed the button, "Click."

Afterwards, he stealthily hid his expensive cell phone behind him before she could even retaliate.

But before she could even steal back his phone with her killer speed, the bell rang. She slightly jolted, sighed upon herself, and hastily opened the door towards the classroom, leaving him before he could say anything more to make her mad. Since it was not that much of a big deal, she disregarded both his insult and his odd reaction towards her answer and soon forgot about it.