This winter break has been nothing special for Paula Rouco, except that she’s looking forward to it passing quickly.
She was looking forward to returning to Imperial to meet Severo Laris.
Throughout the vacations, she sent text messages to Severo Laris that went unreturned, and then, little by little, phone calls went unanswered.
All that online drama between Severo Laris and his father was then squashed within a few days, and after the temperature dropped, Leopoldo never came to the fore again, and it seemed that all was quiet.
Paula Rouco was especially happy the day she went back to school, picked up her dorm room and rushed to the Imperial neighborhood first thing in the morning without even seeing Susana.
She punched in the door code and entered the apartment without incident. Severo Laris was not home and Costillas was curled up in his warm nest nibbling on cat food.
As soon as he saw that his mistress had returned, Costillas let go of his mouth and ran to Paula Rouco’s lap.
Paula Rouco sat on the floor and picked up Ribs, her fingers teased Ribs’ cat face, “Where is your father, why did he leave you alone, he started school today and he didn’t text me, he didn’t even answer the phone.”
“Meow~”
Paula Rouco muttered to herself as she shook her cat, “You don’t think I’m right either, do you? But he’s been bothering me so much lately that I’ll reluctantly leave him alone.”
“Meow~”
“But he hasn’t brought any other girls home lately, has he? If you see him bring another girl home, pounce on him and bite him, you know?”
“Meow~”
Ribs thought: he’s just a kitten, not a dog, and his bite is not threatening.
Paula Rouco noticed that Ribs had put on a little weight and wasn’t as bony as when she picked him up earlier, and said with a big narrow-eyed smile, “Looks like he’s taking good care of you, you’re getting a little chubby, that’s good, I’m glad.”
The door opens with a click.
As soon as he enters, Severo Laris sees a man and a cat lying on the floor staring at each other.
The girl is talking to Costillas with her two little hands cupped around her face, not quite sure what she is mumbling about, but she is talking very seriously.
Severo Laris is standing in the hallway, contemplating this touching image for a long time, and soon, such an image will be a memory.
When Costillas saw Severo Laris, he ran on cat’s paws. Paula Rouco turned to see Severo Laris standing in the lobby, and her eyes instantly fixed through the void of air.
Paula Rouco, as before, ran to him gleefully and threw herself into his arms, wrapping her arms and legs around him.
“Why didn’t you contact me?” Someone’s watery eyes looked at him with pity and resignation.
Severo Laris gathered all the emotions in his eyes and said only one word: “Busy.”
“Too busy to return my messages, Severo Laris, you liar?”
Severo Laris lowered his eyes to his little milk face and finally, unable to resist, said in a weak voice, “I don’t know what to reply.”
“You don’t know what to answer, so you can answer that I miss you, that I like you, and that, in general, you can’t keep leaving me hanging.”
Severo Laris was silent as he pulled his arm away from her neck and said, “I’m going to cook.”
Paula Rouco felt he was being cold to her, shouldn’t he hug and kiss her after being apart for so long?
Severo Laris headed for the open kitchen and Paula Rouco followed him, snuggling into his arms.
Severo Laris frowned, “I can’t do anything with you like this.”
He didn’t care, and justified it by saying, “I used to be able to cook like this.”
Forget it, put up with it, there’s no chance I’ll … hold it again in the future.
Paula Rouco grimaced at him, “You said you’d take me to the amusement park if I got ninety points on my high school math final, does it still count?”
Severo Laris thought it would be one last date, to satisfy her and, more importantly, himself.
“For an account.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She looked at him with surprise and expectation, “Then let’s go this weekend!”.
“Just tomorrow, I’m free tomorrow afternoon. We’ll play until tonight.”
Paula Rouco frowned and said, “But I have class tomorrow afternoon.”
Severo Laris didn’t want to give it any more thought, he feared that if he kept going, he wouldn’t be able to say the breakup words, so he didn’t want to put it off another day.
“Skip class tomorrow afternoon.”
Paula Rouco looked at him in amazement, squinting wide-eyed and smiling at him, “Severo you’re so weird today, don’t you hate it when I skip class, why are you encouraging me to skip class?”
“Just a runaway, no repercussions.”
Believing this, someone laughed, “You really miss me, don’t you?”.
Very much indeed.
Someone leaned into her arms, foolishly thinking ahead, “Let’s go to the amusement park every month from now on, okay? I love riding the Ferris wheel.”
“I’m going to be very busy, later.”
Unfortunately, a certain person told me, “Then go play once every two months. You have to combine work and rest, you can’t work all the time, you’ll be exhausted.”
Severo Laris looked down and cut the vegetables without answering.
She chattered and talked a lot in his arms. Severo Laris had always been a man of few words and Paula Rouco thought he was acquiescing, not imagining that he was silently refusing.
After dinner, Paula Rouco goes back to living at the school.
“Severo, my mother has said she can accept us going out together, but she won’t let us live together, and as of today, I’m still going back to school. Why don’t you take me back to school?”
She walked to the entrance and was about to change her shoes when Severo Laris grabbed her wrist and hugged her tightly.
“Make an exception tonight. You’ll stay at school afterwards.”
Paula Rouco smiled at him and poked his face with both hands, as if she could see right through him, “You miss me, don’t you? You miss me so much, why don’t you say so, because you’re shy?”.
Severo Laris grabbed her small, stinging hands.
Paula Rouco played deep and sighed in an adult tone, “Since you miss me so much, I’ll stay with you reluctantly. But starting tomorrow I do have to go back to the residence, so don’t miss me too much, Lin.”
Suddenly, Severo Laris grabbed the back of her neck, lowered his head and kissed her hard and passionately on the lips.
Paula Rouco, gasping from the kiss, leaned into his arms and dug her fingers into his chest, “Severo, this is how you show you miss her.”
…
Late at night, after Paula Rouco had fallen asleep in his arms, Severo Laris leaned his head on one arm and turned on his side to gaze at her sleeping face.
Had she not been the girl Leopoldo had kidnapped, he might have ignored Adam Rouco when she approached him.
Because of the deficit, I had to let him go. So this is what it feels like to love but not be able to.
He had imagined that maybe they wouldn’t go all the way, maybe because of the difference in their status, or maybe it was life’s bullshit, or maybe she had grown up and understood and liked other guys.
She thought about all these things.
But those assumptions have to be turned around.
If it was about a status gap, then he could go and try to give her the best life possible; if it was about some trivial thing in life, he could also give in to her; if it was about her liking other male students, then he could also pursue her again.
But he never imagined that the sins Leopold had committed would come back to haunt him.
It wasn’t really hard to think about, but he was running away from it before, I guess, unconsciously avoiding that because he liked someone too much.
The Rouco family of The Holy City fame, how many can there be? The millennial Rouco family that Leopoldo kidnapped, who else can there be?
It’s just that Severo Laris, who has never wanted to think deeply about it, doesn’t want to go through the newspapers of the time because of the scar, which he doesn’t want to tear.