Handcuffs

"What are you doing here?"

Startled by the unexpected company, I turned around to find Joshua's annoyi---annoyed face.

I returned his question to him with an equally irked tone. "What are YOU doing here?"

"This is my hiding place! Go somewhere else." He shooed me away as he crouched lower behind a table that was turned on its side.

Not wanting to invade an already marked territory, I coolly walked away only to scramble back and sit beside him in a flash, which earned a protest from him. "What the heck?!"

"SSSHHHHH!" I hushed him and pushed his head lower before whispering, "They're here."

He stilled when we heard the sounds of crunching dry leaves and a couple of heavy footsteps not very far from where we were hiding.

"I swear I saw Joshua run this way." It was Mia's voice. That traitor.

"I also saw Zee going towards the cafeteria before I lost sight of her."

'Arthur? Shouldn't he be playing badminton right now?'

My heart drummed as the sounds of their footsteps gradually came closer and closer until they came to a stop just right behind the table. Joshua tried to inch closer to the table to avoid being seen but I stopped him because he might tilt the table in the process. So we both held our breaths, not minding at all that our faces were just a few inches apart. At that very moment, nothing was more important than staying hidden.

Then we heard Arthur menacingly chant my name in a sing-song voice that literally gave me goosebumps. "Zeanne Haile~ Come out, come out, wherever you are~"

Mia chuckled. "Down, Arthur. This is Kidnap for Lovesom. Our genre is romance. Romance! Not suspense thriller."

"Ha! Try getting locked up against your will and we'll see if it doesn't turn into a suspense thriller for you. It's payback time. Mwahahahaha!" His evil laughter slowly became distant but knowing that they were leaving didn't give me any sense of relief at all.

'That psychopath!'

"Did you do something to Arthur?" Joshua curiously peered at me.

"I wrote his name down on the kidnap list. Ten times" I answered gravelly, mentally beating myself up.

Joshua gasped. "You egregious toe rag! So, you practically locked him up in that dark and stuffy room for 5 hours?!"

'He just insulted me, didn't he? That definitely sounded like an insult.'

"Lower your voice if you don't want them to come back here." I put a finger on my lips and flopped down on the floor beside him, not caring if my jeans were to be dirtied. "I was manning the booth when he came and snatched my sandwich. So, since I could not run after him, I listed his name down."

"You spent money just to get revenge? Totally not worth it."

I waved my finger at him with a smirk. "I spent HIS money."

"How the hell did you do that?"

I pointed at the Nike sling bag that I was wearing. "You see, before he left for the prelims of his game, the idiot entrusted precious Nicolas to me."

His eyes rounded in surprise as the magnificent light bulb lit up. "Cunning beyatch."

'I guess beyatch is now officially a word.'

"Anyway, there's only 2 hours left before the booth closes. So, we just need to keep ourselves hidden until then." I peeked at the side of the table to make sure that the coast was clear. Arthur and Mia were no longer in sight so I relaxed and sat down with my legs crossed on the cold cement.

"What do you mean 'we'?" Joshua had his signature frown on his forehead again.

"Oh. Didn't I tell you? Arthur borrowed money from Jake to lock us up for 2 hours."

He backed up and hissed at me. "And why did I get involved in your mess?!"

"Because they think that I like you and being in close proximity with you would drive me crazy. Don't tell me you forgot already?" I opened Arthur's bag and found a bag of chips inside. I took it out and opened it. "Eureka!"

Joshua looked at me as if asking if it was okay for me to eat Arthur's food. But when I offered him the chips, he didn't hesitate before helping himself. It didn't even take five minutes for us to finish the chips which was pretty understandable because it's way past lunch time and we both still haven't eaten yet. "Okay. So, an eye for an eye? But if he can just borrow money to lock us up, why didn't he borrow money to get himself out earlier?"

"Didn't you hear what Mia said? Our genre is Romance and not Suspense Thriller. No one would lend him money for the ransom because I paired him up with a very interesting person." I grinned at him.

"Who?" He asked then clapped his hands with an equally large grin on his face. "You locked him up with Ameera for 5 hours?! Hedwig you're a genius!"

"There they are!!!"

Joshua and I jerked in surprise when we heard Mia's voice from the other end of the long hallway. And as soon as we saw her and Arthur start running towards our direction, we sprinted away from where we were hiding.

And that's what I did for almost a week: playing hide and seek. Finally, on the 4th day, I've given up to my fate and lost the will to keep running away. Hoping that Arthur would just go bankrupt in the process... which was not happening very soon.

It was drizzling on the 4th day and I was feeling really sluggish to a point that being locked up inside the dark classroom seemed really appealing. And right after lunch break, someone from my class approached me and dragged me towards the classroom. Fully expecting to find Joshua inside, I tied my hair up so that they won't get in the way when I sleep. But to my utter surprise, someone else was already sitting with his head down on the arm of the chair opposite to where my captor made me sit.

'Is he sleeping?'

I was about to put my head down as well when Craige raised his head and looked at me with confusion. "Zeanne?"

"Expecting someone else?" I asked Craige as I leaned back on my seat.

"No... I just didn't know..."

"Woah there! Don't look at me like that. It's not what you think!"

'Why do I sound so defensive? Damn it.'

Our booth has been very popular and we never ran out of clients since day one. But recently, most of our clients were very willing 'victims'. They pay us to kidnap them along with their crushes and took great advantage of our booth to either confess or just simply be closer to their person of interest.

The satisfaction rate was very high.

And so was the complaints from the unwilling victims.

And Craige was one of the latter. An eternal very unwilling victim.

He's considered a VVIP for his very high selling rate.

I just made it sound very inappropriate, didn't I?

"Sorry. That's not... You have any idea who's behind this?" He chuckled awkwardly which made my fingers tingly for some reason.

"Probably Arthur. He holds nasty grudges, you know" I frowned then noticed the reddish marks on his face, an obvious evidence of sleeping. "How long have you been locked up in here?"

He sat up straight and rubbed his cheek which must have been pretty numb. "Since morning."

"You're pretty nonchalant about this." I can't help but smile in awe. 'If it had been Arthur in his situation, he would be on rampage by now.'

He rubbed his eyes and yawned. "I can't exactly cry about it."

"But you want to cry?" I snickered at the thought. "That would definitely be a sight to see: The Almighty Fafa Craige bawling his eyes out after being locked up inside the booth for more than 7 hours."

"It's not like that, but I'm definitely not ecstatic about it either. Have you ever seen a happy kidnap victim? That would be really weird." He pointed out but then we heard the people in the cubicle next to us giggling, obviously enjoying each other's company like a couple of lovebirds.

"They seem really happy to me." I shot back with a smile.

"Are you happy to be here with me?" He challenged.

The smile on my face was replaced by a frown in an instant. "... Not exactly."

He raised an eyebrow, which seems to be a habit that I'm finding hard to get used to and makes my heart start drumming hard on my chest. "Then do you hate being here with me?"

'Darn this palpitations!'

I looked at him, really looked at him, trying to read what's going on in that head of his. "No."

He flashed a triumphant smile. "See my point?"

'Ah...'

"I think I got your point. You're really good at this, aren't you?" I can't let myself keep getting swept by his pace so decided to change the topic. "Anyway, who have you paired up with since this morning?"

"You expect me to remember them all?" The side of his lips lifted with amusement and my jaw dropped.

"There were too many too remember?! Heol. You really are something, Clinton."

"It's not like that. I just didn't ask for their names." He rubbed his neck and smiled awkwardly with his sharp tooth showing which looked really adorable that it made me unconsciously chuckle.

'Why the heck do I keep noticing these bloody things?!'

"Was Ameera one of them?" I asked, sounding a bit more enthusiastic than I intended to. I love teasing others about these things as much as I hate being teased myself.

He squinted his eyes at me. "Yeah."

"And?" I urged on.

"Nothing."

My jaw dropped once again. "Nothing? You didn't talk to her? Not at all?"

"We talked a little. She said 'Hi' and I said 'Hello'." He said as he lazily propped his head on one arm with his eyes still on me.

"That's it?" I asked looking down at him, surprised by the fact that he seemed to be this uninterested with the girl that he claimed to like.

"What's there to talk about?" He raised an eyebrow at me.

'He's right. There's nothing to talk about. It's not as if they were close or something.'

A minute or two passed in silence and I know that he was still looking at me intently. I could literally feel it with every strand of hair on my neck. Hating that feeling, I grumpily snapped at him. "What?"

He tilted his head, looking at me like how a kid would stare when his feeding his bunny. "Sorry. You just suddenly became silent."

I sneered at him. "What's there to talk about?"

He shook his head with a smile. "You can be really spiteful, you know?"

I shrugged. "Haven't I told you that I'm quite mean?"

"Yeah, you did." His eyes suddenly shifted to the window behind me. "The paper came off."

I turned and saw that the wallpaper used to cover the window to make the room dark was peeling off. I smoothed my hand over it to flatten it back to the wall but when he saw that I could not flatten it all the way up, he stood up and did it himself. Unprepared for the sudden close proximity, my chest tightened like a knot. I tried to put some space between us and cleared my throat. "All good?"

"I'm hungry." He declared as he lazily sat back on his chair.

With my throat feeling dry, I also suddenly craved for a cold drink. "Want to grab something to eat?"

"Can we do that?"

"Why not?" I stood up and went out of our cubicle to one corner of the room but nobody was manning the stall.

I didn't notice that he followed me out until I heard him whisper close behind me. "I don't think this is a good idea."

"Why? The snack stand was placed inside the room for this very purpose." I took one juice and he took a sandwich set. Just when we were about to drop our payment on the box, Caroline appeared with a frown.

"What do you think are you doing?" She asked with her hands on her hips.

"Paying for the food? Or are these for free?" I replied, confused by the way she was looking at us as if we're criminals.

"That's not the point." She approached us and grabbed our hands. "What are you doing here without a handcuff? You're not on duty Zee. You're a hostage right now. And no special treatments allowed."

She cuffed my hand with Craige's then smiled at him. "Not even for a handsome VVIP."

After collecting our payment, she practically shoved us back to our cubicle and once inside Craige smiled at me awkwardly. "I told you it was not a good idea."

I squinted my eyes at him, "You didn't say that this was going to happen."

But I guess the handcuffs really made a huge difference to the experience. Because not long after that, silence clung in the air and we didn't utter a single word until our time was up. We didn't even look at each other's way which made the awkwardness really obvious. Plus, the awareness of having our hands so close together was just so disturbingly--- I don't know--- freaky?

***

Dear Dairy Milk,

Is this normal?

It's not, right?

He keeps getting into my line of vision.

And today, he took awkward to another level by just breathing in the same air in that cramped space.

Why am I like this? We're supposed to be friends now but I still find him difficult.

P.S.

I was locked up with Arthur, no thanks to Katherine.

We played Thumb Wrestling and that idiot kept winning with that humungous toe that he called thumb.