Chapter 4

All things considered, the trip, so far, is better than what C.C. imagined.

The night before, she tired herself to sleep worrying about Lelouch overwhelming her with his mere presence alone. Her experiences with him were nothing but both confusing and disorienting at times – the unexpected touches, the whispered remarks, the surprise visit – that she was nervous about spending the day with him.

But so far, Lelouch has been keeping a respectful distance from her. He hasn't tried touching her without any warning and he's only been polite when talking to her. Their topics revolved around Junji Ito, his other works and other mangas she could recommend to him. What else is reading right now? He had asked. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, she answered. With this, they found a common ground when the man revealed that he had already read the book. No spoilers! C.C. exclaimed and she discovered that his low laugh rumbled something in her chest like hundreds of people stomping at the same time. It felt nice, as nice as the warmth of his body as he stood behind her to get a book on the high shelf that was beyond her reach.

She needs to get a grip of herself.

They stop by a café after their short trip to the bookstore – a little celebration for successfully finding the mangas in the first destination they went to. With a table filled with cake, pasta, pizza and frappes, the two savor the cool and quiet ambience of their surroundings.

"It's nice that the first store we went to has stocks, saved us a lot of time," C.C. says as an attempt to break the silence.

Lelouch hums his answer as he finishes sipping his vanilla frappe. "I'm okay with it taking a little longer and going to different stores. It's been a while since I did something like this here," he throws her a reluctant glance, "Unless, you have to do something later and you need to leave early?"

C.C. waves a hand infront of her. "I'm free all day and honestly, I haven't done this in a while, too." She sighs. "Lately, work has been too demanding and I don't have any energy left to go out during the weekends unless someone invites or much better, forces me to," she laughs.

"Ah, that explains your mood when we were in the bar."

"Was I that obvious?"

Leaning forward, Lelouch rests his left elbow on top of the table and places his chin on his palm. A playful smile wrinkles his cheeks but the seriousness in his amethyst eyes tells her that what he's about to say isn't goofy at all. "I thought you didn't like me. You almost never looked my way."

"Huh? No, it's not like that." Alarm bells ring in her head for it was true that her first impression of him was not that good. Guilt begins eating her alive as she realizes that he effectively crushed her wrong impression and had been nothing but a decent man albeit some of his unexpected actions.

"See? You're doing it again." Without her notice, C.C. has indeed averted her eyes away from him, her gaze focused on the plant pot outside the sidewalk. When she turns to glance back at him, embarrassed, she finds a wary look on his face. "Do I scare you?"

She lets out a choked laugh then shakes her head. "What? No. I'm sorry if I made you feel that way but it's just… you know, meeting strangers."

The relief on Lelouch's face is one that's alive and demands to be felt. It's so palpable that even C.C.'s breathing relaxes. "That's good to know. I understand, though. Meeting strangers can be really unnerving. Others thought that I'm good with meeting new people just because of the nature of my job but what they didn't know is that I still get nervous especially infront of the big shots. Or worse, if I have to fake a pleasant façade infront of a person who is obviously unpleasant, I get uncomfortable and irritated."

C.C. chuckles lightheartedly. "Well, I hope I didn't fall in the latter category."

And she is subjected once again to that smile. "Oh, you definitely didn't. You're on a whole different category."

But before she could interrogate him more about it, Lelouch asks for the bill in which he doesn't let C.C. take part of despite her insistence.

"This whole trip is my treat. I just want you to relax and have fun."

Since they've already achieved their goal leaving them the logical choice of going home, Lelouch suggests that they visit the art museum that they passed by earlier. Luckily, despite it being a weekend, the place is not packed with visitors giving them a little sense of privacy. And because C.C. is someone who doesn't frequently go to museums, the artistry and talent behind the displayed masterpieces easily blows her away – leaving her eyes and mouth wide open.

Occasionally, they go on their separate ways, navigating the place on their own, following that which caught their attention. The pressure to hold a conversation fades away and, at times, the two find themselves standing side-by-side, admiring the same painting, with the silence of their thoughts bridging the gap between them.

An invisible connection.

"It's mindblowing how these artists created these intricate masterpieces during their time when resources and access to technology were so limited," Lelouch utters as they marvel at a painting of a girl in a swan lake that dates back to the renaissance period. "It's sad that it is so rare to see such intricacies nowadays."

C.C. spares a quick glance at Lelouch before looking back at the painting before them. "I'm sure there are works like this still out there. We just don't think of looking for them or we don't look around thoroughly enough. There are things that we thought are rare, hard to find, but in reality, there is an abundance of their kind. We are just turned the other way or we failed to acknowledge them." C.C. shrugs. "Or sometimes, they are right infront of our eyes but we fail to realize their existence. Not until we have something to compare them with."

"Not until we think we lost them."

"But did we?" C.C. asks, a thoughtful frown gracing her face. "Actually lost them, I mean. Or are they the ones who lost us in the flow of time?"

It rains as soon as they go out of the museum. Unfortunately, none of them brought an umbrella and they still have to walk across the park to reach the parking lot. For a while, they wait for it to stop, spending the time eating ice cream.

"Really?" Lelouch had uttered in disbelief, a brow lifted, after asking her what she wanted to do while waiting.

"You know, it's too normal to eat ice cream during summer so why not rebel against the weather this one time?"

She was rewarded with an amused laugh and a shake of the head by the man. He returned with two big cones enough to occupy a few minutes of their vacant time. C.C. felt the consequence of having an ice cream during a cold weather as shivers began terrorizing her skin, rubbing her hands together as a weak attempt to produce warmth.

"We should get going." Extending his hand out, Lelouch feels the rain. The sky had somehow cleared a little but a drizzle stronger than what he would have liked still pour on the streets. Suddenly, a large coat drapes over C.C.'s head and when she glances up, Lelouch says, "On three?"

Automatically, C.C. grabs the side of his shirt so she could match his speed better. They rush through the rain, laughing at how they try to race the droplets that are already surrounding them. Water splashes against C.C.'s ankles causing her to regret wearing a pair of sandals but on the other hand, getting her jeans wet is also as bad as this. And actually more gross if she thinks about the damp material sticking on her skin. With that thought, she looks at Lelouch's feet and thanks God that his ankles are saved from the possible disaster.

"We're almost there!"

By the time they reached his car, they are a mess of damp hair sticking on their foreheads. Lelouch immediately turns on the heater then hands C.C. a box of tissue.

"Are you okay?"

C.C. nods but gives a regretful sigh towards his wet coat that he threw over the backseat of the car. "But your coat got all wet."

Lelouch dismisses her worry. "It's fine. This rain, though," he peeks through the windshield, and C.C. notes that the little crease between his forehead when he scowl is cute. "It doesn't seem that it will stop anytime soon. We might have gotten stranded if we waited a little more."

"It just basically came out of nowhere, huh?" she adds and feels much better when she finishes wiping her ankles. "The sun was so high earlier."

"Well, what can I say? Life is full of surprises."

The drive back to her apartment was filled with comfortable silence and the muted pitter-patter of the rain. The books they bought earlier sat on the backseat, Lelouch's damp coat gradually drying up behind them. It was one of those rides where she could easily doze off and wake up infront of her steps and the thought surprised her for it meant that she was willing to do that with the presence of a stranger. Err, technically, he isn't a stranger anymore, but someone who she still doesn't know well enough. Though, perhaps, this trip with Lelouch had given her little pieces of him that would form a complete puzzle the more time they spend together.

C.C. didn't doze off nor entertain more ideas of puzzles and time. Instead, she concentrated on the road ahead, emptying herself of any assumption and expectation. She ignored the way his free hand 'accidentally' brushed against hers a couple of times when they were nearing her street and how her heart skipped with the contact, or the way he glanced at her as if he's meaning to say something and she thought, Don't.

In the end, they say their goodbyes casually with C.C. thanking him for the treat. She is about to exit his car when Lelouch suddenly grabs her wrist, stopping her from getting out. She meets his amethyst eyes that wear an intensity rivaling that of a glaring summer sun. If her heart was skipping earlier, well, it is now full of a thousand horses trying to stomp their way out of her rib cage.

"When will I see you again?" he quietly asks as his thumb draw circles on her skin.

"Well," she doesn't like the way her voice wavers, "We'll obviously see each other again given that we have Kallen in common. Maybe, on the next meet-up which," she lets out a forced laugh, "Surely is just around the corner knowing how Kallen loves – "

"Alone… Just the two of us."

She prays that he wouldn't feel the heat that quickly creeps on her skin, and even prays harder that he wouldn't notice how her heartbeat accelerates upon hearing his words. But his thumb remains resting on her pulse, a light pressure against its violent throbbing.

When she wasn't able to respond, Lelouch says, "Can I see you again, C.C.?"

Closing her eyes as if to hide from his piercing ones, she whispers, "Why?"

A soft tug on her wrist causes her to open her eyes again but instead of meeting his intense gaze, a gentle look is what welcomed her. "Honestly, I don't know. I know we've just met and it would be too rash to say 'I like you' but I want to see you more, I want to spend more time with you and hear your thoughts – understand them. I want to see the way you light up when you talk about something you love or how you bit your lip when your unsure and a crease form between your eyebrows."

"You want to see me stressed?"

He laughs and shakes his head but his hold on her wrist tightens. "No. I…" he exhales. "I want to know you deeper than others do. Is that okay?"

"What about Shirley?"

"What about her?" His confusion is so genuine that C.C. concludes that she had assumed wrong. "Did you think I like her?"

She gulps. "Well, you two kinda flirted a couple of times when we're together."

Frowning, he gazes up thoughtfully, probably recalling all his encounters with the model. "Sorry if it appeared that way but I only like her as a friend. Plus, we only talk when you guys are around. I actually haven't talked to her since our meeting in the café last week."

"Oh."

"So… Will you let me know you, C.C.?"

No, her mind screams at her. What he told her, his confession, offers no confirmation of what he concretely feels for her. Who knows how long his interest will last and what if during the process of knowing her, he decides that he doesn't like what he sees or gets tired of her or realizes that what he only had for her is pure curiosity when she already fell for him? Because it is easy to fall for Lelouch vi Britannia. Too easy to fall for his charm and smile and amethyst eyes.

And C.C. falls easily. And hard.

It will only be a repeat of her being left behind.

But! There, in a tiny corner of her brain, a nerve cell decides to rebel. But, C.C. ponders, she appreciates his honesty – of how he doesn't carelessly give her an answer that he himself isn't certain of. Afterall, he's absolutely right, they've just met and are still in the process of knowing each other. Their few encounters couldn't suffice to give them a complete picture of one another and God forbid her but she wants to know him more, too. What he likes, what makes him laugh, what makes him scrunch his nose and smile when he thinks no one is watching.

Kallen and Shirley are right, she guards her heart so securely that she never let herself feel freely for a long time. But now that she has a taste of what she's been missing all these years, she cannot help but to want it again. To feel free. To feel alive.

She may regret this later, blame herself for not learning her lesson. Yet, there's also the possibility that she won't. Because what if it will turn out different this time?

She has to try. No more running away and hiding again for her.

C.C. gently peels his fingers off around her bringing a crestfallen expression on Lelouch's face. But it quickly disappears when she flips his palm up between them and lightly taps her forefinger against his.

"Okay," she silently answers. Like a prayer. "I want to know you, too." A response.

When the day started, C.C. didn't expect it to end with her heart hanging on her sleeve. But it did, and after a long time, she finally welcomes it.