Yashin loses a bet to his best buddy Owen and has to keep silent the whole night. Too bad he's just met the love of his life, right?
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I had to write something stupid like this to soothe my beaten heart.
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a saltwater room
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Yashin and Owen stand together, under the manic disco lights.
'What's up with you gaping like a fish, bro? Oh, riiiiiiiiiiight, you can't tell me, hehehe'
He can't, so he points at it. Her.
Owen winces in solidarity, then smirks.
'Good luck with that, prince charming. No cheating –I'll be watching.'
Yashin shakes his head, miserably.
'Good. Remember that cheating equals you making my homework the rest of the semester.'
Now, it's Yashin who winces.
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They're going around her like sharks, those guys. They look like they're in a football team or something –who goes out clubbing in a uniform, anyway?
Yashin strategically comes up to her once the coast is clear. She's so pretty, he feels hypnotized.
'Can I help you?' she asks, raising a perfect eyebrow. Man, he could stay there staring at her forever.
'…'
Right, he can't speak, how annoying. He's sure that Owen is hiding somewhere ridiculous, trying to catch him slipping.
He won't slip.
Instead, he takes a bow at her, and sees her blush.
He can do this.
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He masterfully manages not only to ask her if she'd like a drink, but orders the drinks and rightly guesses her taste.
Gets her to laugh at his antics, too.
Not bad for someone who feels like a fish out of water.
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They're dancing.
Luckily for him (though even more luckily for her), he's a pretty awesome dancer. His Caribbean ancestors would be proud of him.
And anyone would be wooed by his awesomeness.
This girl, though. She looks so polite that he cannot crack her smile. He wishes he knew. Trying to come up with something, he spins her and twirls her so that any normal girl would be wonderstruck.
The best he can do to show that he cares is giving her his most dignified puppy-look, while wishing that Owen will some day pay for this cruelty.
She laughs.
Well, suddenly Owen's reckoning doesn't matter anymore.
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He's managed to learn that her name is 'Evy', and she's managed to come up with a thousand possible ridiculous names for him, so much that it ceases to be amusing and it starts to become depressing.
He takes her hand and leads her to the bar, where he signals for pen and paper. He writes.
'Your name is Yashin?' she asks.
He nods, solemnly.
'Oh, those names I came up with… you must've wanted to kill me…'
He starts to gesture something that should be interpreted like "so-and-so", or "not that much", but halfway he thinks it through, and nods gravely.
She blinks. Then bursts out laughing.
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Man, she's got a contagious laugh.
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'This,' she says, between fits, 'this is probably the weirdest disco night I've had in my whole life!'
He conjures a painful expression, kind of like a wince.
She laughs harder. 'That's good, Yashin! It's good!'
After some seconds of uncertainty, he starts to laugh, too –distantly hoping that the sound of his laugher doesn't count as breaking the bet.
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She stops.
'Yashin,' she says, in wonder, 'you've got an unfairly sexy voice!'
He quirks an eyebrow, and asks her through signs if she hasn't maybe had too much to drink.
Mirthfully, she tells him that he'll know when she's drunk because she'll probably start telling him all about how she dumped the hell out of Louis-Antoine, her stuck-up ex.
'Doesn't that count like talking about him?' he writes, in the beer-stained notepad borrowed from the barman.
'Smartass,' she answers.
But she's got a fond smile, so he guesses she doesn't mean it.
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When it gets late enough for the barman to ask for his notepad back, Yashin gives it back with considerably less pages. He ignores the man's glare, though.
'I gotta ask a favor of you,' she tells him, after he goes with her to retrieve her coat. He nods, looking like he's paying special attention.
Anything you ask, ma'am.
'Take me to your friend Owen, please.'
It's a weird request, but he can't refuse her anything.
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Owen looks at them coming like he's in charge. But he's surprisingly demoted.
'Release him from the bet,' she commands -regally, like a princess.
Owen smirks, he looks like he's having fun.
'Why should I?' he counters.
Evy smiles sweetly (not even Owen can say no to that), and Yashin feels like there's a whole school of little fishes loose in his stomach.
'So that he can ask me for my phone number,' she says.
Unexpectedly, Owen bursts out laughing –'Oh my,' he says, 'I couldn't possibly refuse her anything…!'
Yashin manages a little smile of resignation.
'Well?' Owen addresses him, 'What are you waiting for, man? Ask her!'
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Author's Note:
the title comes from Owl City's beautiful song 'The Saltwater Room', which I totally advise you guys to listen because it's so light and happy and bright (and unlike this damned sappy manga why did I even read it )
I can't even take merMEN seriously!
... snif. I wish I knew how this damned manga ends so I can stop thinking about it.
I swear I never planned to write this. But Aus kill me, metaphors kill me, and this manga is so damn depressing I had to give something a happy ending.
Anyway. I hope that it's been useful to bring some solace to some other lost suffering soul like me.
Comments are appreciated :)