Chapter 60
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It was the same pizzeria as last time, the same table. It was past 2 PM, an awkward time for lunch, so there were plenty of empty seats.
Unlike last time, which had been like a drinking session, the two ordered a pizza each like any Italians would. Red house wine ordered by the glass and cool drinks were served before the pizza.
The lemonade made with lemons grown in Paeli was the acquaintance’s recommendation. He bent his waist awkwardly without using his hands and drank through a straw. The acquaintance burst into laughter at the sight of his hunched large shoulders.
Without stopping sucking on the drink, he looked up at the acquaintance with raised eyes over his sunglasses. By then, he had become less troubled by making eye contact with the acquaintance than before.
Having emptied half the lemonade in one go, he brushed off his swimsuit with his hands and said:
“My swimsuit is almost completely dry already.”
“Right. It definitely got hot earlier than usual this year. Does your hotel have air conditioning?”
“Yes, fortunately. But I haven’t turned it on yet. It’s cool enough at night just sleeping with the windows open.”
On Friday when they went to Naples, he had picked him up in front of his hotel, and when they returned, he had dropped him off at the same spot. Unexpectedly, he wasn’t staying at a luxury hotel similar to ‘Mio palazzo’ but at an ordinary 3-star hotel. It was a place that was overall clean with good reviews, but many accommodations in this area, even 3-star ones, didn’t have air conditioning.
He, who seemed to have caught his breath from the heat after drinking the lemonade, leaned back against his chair. Then he stretched out his arm and stroked the base of his wine glass. The acquaintance quietly looked down at his long fingers with neatly trimmed nails.
Suddenly the hand disappeared from view. When the acquaintance raised his gaze, he had removed his sunglasses and was bare-faced. As if there was something important he had to say while making eye contact, his eyes carefully turned toward the acquaintance.
“After graduation, I want to aim to work in Europe.”
“Really?”
He nodded. And smiled faintly. He seemed embarrassed to have suddenly brought up talk about his future.
“It’ll be difficult right away, and it’ll probably take a few years to get qualified… but I’ve been thinking about it vaguely for a while, and this trip let me make up my mind for certain. Coming on this trip here… I think it was really the right thing to do.”
His voice became filled with gentle certainty as he went on.
The acquaintance had no intention of denying that he felt attraction and was drawn to him. However, the acquaintance wasn’t optimistic enough to hope after hearing he wanted to work in Europe in a few years. He wasn’t the type to chase romance that far either.
But he envied his confidence in talking about the future years ahead as if it were tomorrow within reach. It wasn’t just because of being twenty years old. Four years ago at twenty, the acquaintance had given up theater.
The acquaintance stirred his barely touched lemonade with the straw. The sound of ice clinking against each other was cheerful.
“Could that be… the breathing hole you mentioned before?”
He put down the lemonade he had no interest in and picked up his wine glass. Just as he was about to bring the glass to his lips, someone roughly grabbed his shoulder from behind.
“Vino da tavola!”
Red wine spilled over the table and onto the acquaintance’s legs. Reflexively grabbing napkins to wipe up the wine, the acquaintance looked to the side. He could tell from just the rough hand and voice, but this time it wasn’t Yui.
“Long time no see? It’s hard to see the prince’s face. What brings you down to the lower areas where us commoners live today?”
The owner of the sneering, grinning face was Luca. He seemed to have no intention of apologizing for causing the wine to spill.
The acquaintance and Luca were the same age. Although they weren’t from the same school, since they had both grown up in this neighborhood from a very young age, they knew each other.
In childhood, they had still played well together at town events and festivals. But after puberty, Luca had become a representative figure among those who were hostile toward the acquaintance as an outsider, Asian, and adoptee.
Luca had the masculine, attractive appearance that seemed to realize the world’s stereotypes and fantasies about Italian men. But only his appearance was attractive. Having spent his school years getting into trouble, he hadn’t changed even as he approached his mid-twenties.
“What’s this? A boyfriend?”
Luca bent over and leaned his arms on the fence, looking at him across the table with interest. Then he soon smiled wickedly and nudged the acquaintance’s shoulder with his elbow.
“Ah… maybe a sex partner? Did you pick one up from among the tourists?”
“Shut up and get lost. Aren’t you embarrassed at your age?”
At the acquaintance’s stern voice, Luca snorted and grinned.
“I don’t want to hear lectures about embarrassment from you of all people. If you were really someone who knew shame and gratitude, you wouldn’t have gone around the whole town talking about being a homo and bringing shame to your adoptive parents’ faces.”
Luca picked up the lemonade glass from the table without permission and drank through the straw while adding:
“Well, I guess that’s the level of guys who don’t even know their own roots.”
His mouth itched to retort asking if he wasn’t sorry to his diligently living parents either, but he knew from experience that engaging that way would only make the situation drag on longer. If he were alone it might be different, but right now the best strategy was to send him away quickly.
“So don’t snoop around the business of someone who doesn’t know his roots. Go on your way.”
Perhaps losing interest because the acquaintance’s reaction was lukewarm, Luca put down the lemonade glass he had drunk to the bottom and straightened from leaning on the fence.
Then he grabbed and kneaded his shoulder across from him a couple times, grinning.
“You should drink fine wine if you’ve come to Italy. This may look like a luxury product on the outside, but he just got lucky meeting rich adoptive parents. If you drink cheap stuff without knowing its origin thinking it’s good, you’ll suffer from a dirty hangover the next day. Be careful.”
He probably said this thinking he wouldn’t understand Italian. But unfortunately, his Italian skills were sufficient to understand Luca’s childish provocation.
He quietly looked down at Luca’s hand kneading his shoulder. Then the next moment he was looking at Luca’s profile as he joined his group and giggled.
“I’m sorry. That was unpleasant, wasn’t it? He’s not exactly a friend… he’s someone my age who grew up in this neighborhood with me, and his hobby is picking fights whenever he sees me…”
He would have understood all the talk about boyfriends and sex partners too. It was embarrassing to have made him listen to such filthy talk.
His face turned back this way.
“I’m sorry for making you hear strange things.”
“That your romantic interests are men… I knew from hearing the theater group talk about it. I’m sorry.”
“Ah… um… there’s nothing to be sorry about. Being adopted and my sexual identity aren’t really secrets. Though I haven’t gone around broadcasting it to the whole town like that bastard said.”
He cast his gaze once more toward the backs of Luca and his group as they strolled across the square toward the fountain.
It seemed better to turn his attention this way.
“You don’t need to make such a serious face. When I was young… I got angry and had arguments and even fought with fists… but nothing ever changed. It’s not my fault, it’s just that his level is only that much. I don’t pay attention now. Though it is annoying.”
“What did that man say just now?”
“……”
The story he had earnestly told seemed to have no effect. As if he hadn’t been listening to the acquaintance’s words at all, he suddenly brought up a question that departed from the flow of conversation.
“What do you mean?”
“What he called you. Table wine?”
The acquaintance hesitated for a moment and moistened his lips with the remaining spilled wine. Even if he didn’t know exactly what vino da tavola referred to, he might have roughly figured it out from Luca’s final rant about luxury and cheap stuff.
To talk about it as lightly as possible as if it were nothing, he leaned his arms on the table and rested his chin on his hands.
“That’s… about wine grades… it was a nickname since childhood. Kids are kind of cruel, you know.”
“……”
“In Italy, wine is divided into five grades, and the… lowest grade wine is vino da tavola. You can’t tell the origin or producer… of…”
It happened in an instant.
He suddenly jumped up and leaped over the fence, drawing everyone’s attention. Grabbing the wobbling table and looking in the direction he had run, he was already almost catching up to Luca’s group.
Sensing something ominous, Luca looked back, and while he gave his opponent time to get into a defensive stance, he didn’t give him a chance to attack first either.
Even from close range of only a few steps away, the front kick targeting the abdomen, precisely where the liver was located, was heavy. With destructive power like a concrete pillar being driven in, Luca’s large body was impossibly slammed into the fountain.
Without hesitation, he jumped into the fountain and grabbed Luca by the collar to pull him up. People instantly crowded around the fountain.
“Stop it. Stop!”
The acquaintance who had followed also splashed into the fountain.
In his eyes flowing with madness, it seemed like only Luca existed at that moment. The acquaintance gripped both his cheeks and made him look at himself. Even though he had been hit in the abdomen, Luca, who was limp in his hands, was bleeding from his nose. If he let him get hit even one more time, things would definitely escalate.
The acquaintance stroked his cheeks and shook his head.
“I’m okay. I’m fine! So let’s stop this. Okay? Stop… I’m really fine, I tell you.”
“……”
His eyes gradually refocused on the acquaintance. His eyes, which had been filled with killing intent just moments before, soon became blurred as if they would shed tears. In a voice only audible to him, the acquaintance said once more:
“I’m really okay.”
“……”
“Everything is okay now.”
The acquaintance realized. When there was someone to be angry on his behalf, the words “I’m okay” could finally become sincere.
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Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
