Outside her house, the noon sun was blazing, and she could feel the sweat collecting on her back, and between her breasts. She wafted her hand in an inconspicuous movement to push her bra up, and wiped perspiration from her forehead.
She suspected it all had little to do with the heat.
The boy has been quiet since the moment she ceased conversation and turned her back to him, preparing fresh orange juice.
Usually, she would have taken the orange juice bottle from the fridge and poured some in any nearby glass, but not for this guest. For him, she took out the fresh, glistening oranges she purchased yesterday, and set three on the kitchen counter beside the manual juicer.
The woman shot an amiable glance behind her back, and smiled at the boy sitting in her kitchen, on her sofa, legs pulled together in modesty, hands resting, reserved, on his knees. With the sunlight from her large windows descending upon him, she was breathless, overtaken by the holiness of the image, by the pale, well-defined face that smiled back at her, by the prominent, rosy lips of her little visitor, and the way his golden brown eyes curved in mirth.
She let out a delighted sigh, and returned to her task.
"Here it is, Hisoka." she placed the glass of orange juice before him on the table, and suddenly felt lost as to whether she ought to sit down beside him, or on the opposite chair.
"Yummy!" the boy exclaimed and reached for the glass, an imperceptible smile gracing his face. He lifted the glass up to his lips and took a tentative sip. "It's delicious, Mrs. Coll!"
The woman let out a sigh, feeling humbled by his elation. The jittering of her knees caused her body to seek the chair beside her, and she tried to slide into it with as much dignity as she could muster at the sight of his gleaming, gleeful eyes.
"Are you alright, Mrs. Coll?" Hisoka asked, setting the glass down, the tip of his small pink tongue slewing over his lower lip, his eyes curious and amused. "You look a tad bit fevered."
She waved him off and offered him a big, genuine smile. "Oh I'm fine, don't mind me!"
Her voice was a screech, but it seemed to satisfy her guest, who picked up the glass again and took another patient sip.
"I like what you did with your hair."
Her heartbeat was quicker than the nervous hand that flew up to her bob cut. A giggle bubbled up in her chest, and escaped her in an awkward snort. "Hisoka, you're always so nice."
"It's the truth," he said, skidding his fingertip along the edge of the glass, collecting the dew on its surface on his skin, raising his wet index to his mouth.
His face remained molded into an expression of affable disinterest, maybe even boredom, but she didn't make much of it, that's how this boy always looked. Nevertheless, in the depth of his eyes she could perceive a mutual understanding, an acquaintanceship of sorts, a childish and dangerous giddiness at their little meeting, here in her house, out of the school.
It never went beyond a glass of orange juice and harmless chattering, yet there was an interwoven, inconceivable pleasure at the secrecy of it all. A growing sensation of warmth pervaded her at seeing him outside of school, and she loved the forbidding menace of it, the tantalizing way he ran his fingers over her household objects, over her counters, her couches and her glasses.
He was beautiful. Tall for his age, if worryingly thin, with glossy red hair forked to the side in school, messy and carefully disheveled outside of it. The mascara he'd unabashedly applied to his long eyelashes this morning was smudging, and it made him all the more lovely and exotic in her eyes. He was a charming boy, but there was a deep, brazen femininity to the slope of his chin, to the crease of his mouth, to his speech, his voice, his shy smiles, in his politeness and good manners, exceptional for a teenage boy.
He possessed a passing resemblance to his peers, in his inclinations towards fun and levity, his apparent forgetfulness, his vitality, yet he was wickedly unlike them.
As a schoolteacher, she was well aware of the charm permeated by the well-mannered, genteel teenage boy -being a rarity throughout her career- but his charm was different. He towered above the average teenage boy, and so did his unkempt yet deliberate appeal. Something about him was exquisite, foreign, alien. He was a doll of fine porcelain. A noble boy from a Renaissance painting. She suspected that what separated him from his peers was keen self-awareness; he was aware of how he lured the eye, of how his mannerisms affected those around him, mature and well spoken, it was hard to see or treat him as a teenager. The halo of his fabricated innocence beguiled her, the way his pretty eyes smiled at her in the school hallways, his tastefully bashful averted gazes, the demure and alluring gestures of his hands.
She could feel a strand of hair come loose at the back of her neck, a drop of sweat so cold descended between her breasts, down to her stomach. She crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair, resting her chin on the back of her hand, attempting a casual appearance, attempting to look unaffected by the grandiose power his presence held over her.
Despite the great age disparity between them, he was the one more in control.
Every time he left her house, she would sit in her kitchen, lounge on the sofa he occupied just a minute ago, revel in the piquant scent of his shampoo, something strawberry, apples, candy (oddly enough, he possessed no special scent of his own).
She could always see awareness in his eyes, his knowledge of the exact nature of what transpires between them, deriving the same pleasure from all its felonious and impish implications.
There was no physical contact. Not even a handshake.
"Mrs. Coll, your nose is bleeding."
His voice jolted her from her chair, and her fingers rose in a haze to her nostrils, feeling the warm blood drip down to her lips, down her chin, to her blouse. She blinked several times before the reality of the situation hit her, and before she could make a move, Hisoka was standing up and bouncing to the kitchen counter, taking a clean napkin from one of her drawers (how did he know which drawer to look into?) and quickly returned to her.
"It's probably the heat," he said, gently tipping her head back and pressing the napkin under her nose. "Are you sure you're not sick, Mrs. Coll?"
His voice trailed in her ears, playful and coquettish, sounding little concerned with her sudden nosebleed. His hands, fluttery, dapped the tip of the napkin under her nostrils, and waited patiently for the bleeding to stop. When it seemed the blood ceased flowing, Hisoka removed the piece of cloth, took her trembling hand in his, and used the clean end of the napkin to wipe her fingers.
Throat dry, eyes stinging, face numb from the rush of heat, she closed her eyes, and sighed.
He was never this close to her.
Slowly, tentatively, with fear and excitement gripping her heart, she opened her eyes, and saw his divine, unblemished face staring down at her. Unlike what she was imagining behind the darkness of her eyelids, there was no smile on his face, and his eyes had grown darker. He stopped wiping her fingers, the grip of his hand on hers grew firmer, and perhaps her own misplaced trust, or the haze of her infatuation with him, prevented her from drawing back even when his grip became exceptionally painful.
"Did I do this to you, Mrs. Coll?" he asked, and if not for the emotionless, hard line of his mouth, she would've thought him simpering. "Did I make you bleed?"
Something changed in the atmosphere around them, the same oxygen she breathed thickened, the glow of her kitchen wilted around her, and the heat of pleasure in her body descended into coldness of fear and apprehension. This boy above her, filling her vision, now somehow taller, more imposing, considerably strong, was no longer an endearing kitten passing her every now and then for a treat, but a wild predator, sharp as a dagger, nearing closer and closer until their noses were an eyelash apart.
It wasn't a neutral expression he wore, that wouldn't have been unusual for him. His face has become one of calculated apathy, entirely devoid of any comprehensible emotion, and it was ghastly, ominous, and despite every fiber of her being demanding she shrink back and grovel in surrender, her head was rising, her lips seeking his, her free hand reaching to grab his arm.
Hisoka straightened his back.
"I must go now, Mrs. Coll." he offered her a bright smile, folding the blood stained napkin and placing it neatly on the kitchen counter. "Thank you for the orange juice!"
Her body refused to move. Paralyzed on the chair, her head thrown back, her neck tilted at a painful angel like it's been snapped, she watched him slip his dainty feet into his shoes, chuck his schoolbag over his shoulders, and without once looking back, he left her house.
He didn't even finish his orange juice.