He was also loyal. It'd taken nothing more than a couple of text messages from Han for Phantom to drop everything he was doing in America. He’d shown up in Japan with a duffle bag and a grin to—as he’d put it, "keep you company."
For that reason, Victor ignored his disrespectful tone and simply raised his fists to fight.
But instead of raising his fists, Phantom said, “If you’re having second thoughts about beating up that Nakamura kid over a girl—good. You should be.”
Victor inwardly sighed. Yes, Phantom was unfailingly loyal. If asked to hold a sixteen-year-old prone while Victor punched him, Phantom did so without blinking an eye.
But unfortunately, the price of that loyalty was having to put up with him always speaking his mind. If he represented American males in their twenties, it would seem they were all incapable of keeping their opposing thoughts to themselves.
“When your dad finds out, he’s going to be pissed,” Phantom continued, ignoring Victor’s lack of response. “And you know that shiny suit Donny fuck’s probably texting back and forth with them right now.”
Phantom was wrong about that….
Donny had most likely texted his father about the incident this afternoon as soon as Victor and Phantom left him alone at his post. Donny always quietly obeyed orders, but his loyalty lay foremost with their dragonhead.
But enough. This wasn’t a conversation Victor cared to have with his cousin. Especially since Phantom was 100% right.
Instead of answering, Victor sprayed his opponent with a volley of kicks and punches.
Phantom blocked his first hits easily. That was fine. The beginning of a fight was often a character study for Victor. He threw a quick array of hits and kicks, like a child playing Mortal Kombat. Testing to see what worked and what didn’t. Waiting patiently for the perfect opening to end the fight with the most efficient strike, painful and ruthless. This was just one of the reasons Han refused to engage in hand-to-hand combat with him.
Despite his size, Phantom was doing a great job of both deflecting and avoiding punches. He was almost putting up a good enough fight to distract him from thoughts of Dawn.
Dawn, who still hadn’t been in contact, even though he gifted her with a phone that he’d never taken back. Dawn, who would probably keep the NTT Docomo but never talk again to the mute freak who could only confess his feelings with a childish note.
“Ow, man! Fuck!”
Victor didn’t realize one of his punches had landed until he drew back his fist to find his cousin bleeding profusely from his nose.
“Too hard?” He would not apologize. That was not the way of a future dragonhead. But he did not like that thoughts of Dawn had caused him to lose control. That made him feel guilty as he asked, “Did I break your nose?”
Phantom grinned, the blood from his nose running into his teeth. “Nice shot, cuz.”
Before Victor could thank him for his good-natured response, Phantom swung one huge leg through the air and round housed him.
Getting hit with the full force of his cousin’s kick was like taking a steel beam to the chest. Victor flew backward, past the edge of the mat, and then even further. His journey didn’t end until he landed on top of his study table, which instantly shattered under his weight.
“Too hard?” Phantom asked with a smirk, coming to stand above him.
“No, just hard enough,” Victor signed before staggering to his feet. “Thank you.”
Victor wasn't trying to be tough. He welcomed the pain of receiving the full force of Phantom’s revenge. It was better than obsessing over Dawn.
The light from his own NTT Docomo, sitting in the middle of the table’s wreckage, caught his eye. He bent down to pick it up, his heart once again raring with hope. It was still in one piece. But…
No new messages.
Had she even read his note? Of course, she had. Who could resist a secret?
He rubbed at his chest for reasons that had nothing to do with Phantom’s hit.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Are you all right?”
Victor looked up, and his heart soared when he saw Dawn standing in the doorway beside Donny.
Phantom wasn't nearly as happy to see her.
“You just let her in here without asking your boss for permission first?” Phantom asked Donny in his rough Cantonese, suddenly concerned with the hierarchy of Red Diamond command.
“I told him he should always let her in,” Victor signed, coming to Donny's defense.
“Yeah, well, that's a bad fucking idea,” Phantom muttered in Cantonese. “Just like all the other shit you’ve done for this girl.”
Fortunately, Phantom simply glowered and didn’t speak his enmity in English directly to Dawn in that particularly American way of his. Victor wouldn’t have stood for that.
“Hi,” she said into Phantom’s glowering silence with a tentative wave. “I'm Dawn. We didn't exchange names the last time we met.”
She waited, probably expecting a polite answer.
But Phantom wasn’t polite. By any standard, American or Chinese.
He merely stood there, letting her know that he wasn't one for small talk with his lack of response. And he turned his back just enough not to have to see any commands Victor might give him concerning his behavior toward Dawn.
So Victor answered Dawn himself. “His name is P-H-A-N-T-O-M.”
“Phantom,” she repeated without speaking. “Like the ghost?”
“Exactly,” Victor answered. “And he doesn't understand ASL. If you want to be rude and shut him out of our conversation, the way he shut you out in Cantonese, we should keep talking this way.”
Dawn laughed at his suggestion. But then she looked at him worriedly and asked, “Are you sure you're all right? That hit was crazy. You flew!”
Yes, he had. No doubt he would find his chest covered with a bruise the next time he took off his shirt. Perhaps his back, too, considering his crash into the table.
“I'm fine,” Victor signed, nonetheless. It was the truth. All of his pain had receded into the background as soon as he saw Dawn standing at the door.
“Leave us alone,” he signed to Donny.
“Boss said to clear out,” Donny let Phantom know in Cantonese.
Phantom did as he was told, but he glared at Dawn all the way out the room.
“I don't think P-H-A-N-T-O-M likes me,” Dawn signed with a chagrinned look as soon as his cousin slid the doors closed behind him.
Her sign language was the usual mess of CSL and ASL, but Victor understood her meaning.
The polite thing to do would have been to assure her that Phantom’s ire wasn't her fault. But Victor couldn't be polite. He had to know, “What are you doing here so late?”
“I had to wait until my father left and my mother was asleep to sneak out and come here,” she answered in a rush.
But then her hands faltered. She raised them once, twice, before speak-signing, “I read your note.”
Victor's heart hammered in his chest. It was a wild animal throwing itself against its cage because it wanted something so badly.
But he waited. Not out of patience. He waited because he couldn't have signed in those long moments if he’d wanted to. He could barely breathe.
“You are so great, Victor, but I can't.” She gave her head a short sorrowful shake. “I can't do this with you.”
So this was what it felt like to get rejected. A new kind of pain exploded inside his chest.
Strange, so much had been given to him his entire life. Friends, women, servants, and riches. His life had been painless up until now. Even his mother and ability to speak had been taken away before he was old enough to truly feel the loss.
But this…this hurt. This hurt even more than he’d bargained for when he’d decided to return to Tokyo and finally tell her how he felt.
A wind, despairing and loud, filled his head, and he could barely concentrate on the rest of what she said after that.
Who cared about her r
easons anyway? The point was she'd read his secret. And she'd come over here to tell him she didn't feel the same. He should send her away. Have Donny drag her out before she realized how upset he was—
“….I just couldn't do that to another girl. And I know a lot of people are all about open relationships these days. I also get that Americans have a reputation. But I'm not like that."
Those particular words broke through the howling wind inside Victor's head.
He froze. Frowned. Then lifted his fingers to sign, “What?”
“You don't know this sign? Girlfriend?” she asked, emphasizing the sign for GIRLFRIEND. “It's like wife…but before marriage.”
Yes, of course, he knew that sign. In both CSL and ASL. He’d thought of it often during his time in Hong Kong away from her. But… "What did you say about girlfriend. Repeat that last part.”
“Um…” she said out loud before mumble signing, “I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your girlfriend, but I don't do that. I don't go out with other people's boyfriends. I'm not like that.”
Victor blinked. Then signed, “I don't have a girlfriend.”
Now she frowned. “Ayane, that woman who came every Thursday? Wasn't she your girlfriend? I’ve been assuming she was your girlfriend this whole time.”
She was having trouble looking at him again. To the point that Victor worried that she wouldn't be able to see it when he answered, “She is not my girlfriend.”
She glanced up. But only a little bit. “Then who is she to you?”
“No one,” he answered, signing emphatically. “She is NO ONE.”
Her eyes widened, and she took a step back as if he had hit her, the same as when Phantom round housed him earlier.
“You don't have a girlfriend?” she repeated. As if she didn't entirely trust his ASL.
“No,” he answered, adding a short shake of his head so that there would be no further misunderstanding. “I don't have a girlfriend.”
“Oh…” Again, she didn’t sign, and her voice sounded small.
Dawn looked away from him. Up at the ceiling. Down at the floor.
And the truth began to dawn on Victor—absolutely no pun intended. His supposed girlfriend had only been an excuse for her rejection. It was the reason she’d prepared to explain why she couldn't return his feelings. So now she had to figure out how to let him down easily without it.
Victor couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand being on the receiving end of her pity-filled rejection.
“The note was a joke,” he signed.
At the same time, she signed, “I like you too.”
They both stopped, their hands freezing in mid-air as they each registered what the other had just signed.
“It was a joke?” she asked, her voice cracking underneath the question. She stared up at Victor, her big brown eyes stricken and hurt.
For a moment, for too many moments, Victor just stood there, frozen and buffering. What had he done? What the fuck had he done?
He raised his hands to correct the lie. To tell her the note was 100% true, and quite frankly, the hardest thing he'd ever had to write. But she turned her back on him before he could, rushing towards the door.
No, no, no! She liked him back. She actually liked him back. He couldn’t let it end this way.
Victor raced after her, grabbing her up in his arms before she reached the door.
He pulled her to his chest, telling her with his body what he couldn’t with words. But she fought his hold.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “Fuck you! Let me go!”
He never heard her scream before. Or swear.
He hated that he'd hurt her. Hated it so much. All his pride went out the window as he forcefully turned her around.
“No joke,” he signed as clearly as he could while keeping her facing him with one arm banded tightly around her. “No joke. I…”
Diu, he didn't know the ASL for “promise” or “swear.”
A moment from their first ASL class flashed through his mind. Like a lifeline thrown out to his stormy sea.
“My words don’t cheat,” he signed. Then he resorted to the same mishmash of ASL and CSL that she so often employed, hoping she'd understand. “I was trying to save face. I like you. I like you very much.”
She didn't believe him. He could see the disbelief in her brown eyes, filled with angry tears, threatening to spill over.
He had to convince her. Had to show her he wasn't lying…
So he kissed her. He kissed her so hard that all the feelings he'd been keeping pent up inside came flowing out to shout the truth at her in a language she could understand.
I like you. I like you. I like you too much. To the point of craziness. He told her this with his kiss, his mouth roaming over hers.
He kissed her and kissed her until she became pliant and began to kiss him back.
Then he drew back and signed something else he had never said to another human before. Especially to a girl. “I'm sorry. I am sorry for being a coward.”
He told her, “I like you very much. You make me very happy. Dawn, you are the only girl who does this to my heart.”
Her eyes were still wide, but they were also soft now. And she was no longer fighting him.
So he risked withdrawing both of his hands to ask, “Will you be my girlfriend? Please say yes.”
13
DAWN
“Will you be my girlfriend? Please say yes.”
My heart thundered in my chest, and there was a strange feeling in my belly like I was falling…into something I didn’t understand but desperately wanted.
So just in case, you weren't paying attention…
Victor was back in Tokyo.
He’d enrolled at my school.
And now he was asking me to be his girlfriend. Just a few hours after my father ordered me never to see him again.
And, I was, like, 50% sure he was actually serious this time.
Maybe he wasn’t.
Maybe there was another shoe hanging out right above my head, just waiting to drop.
But before I could second guess myself, two letters formed on my right hand: O and K.
“O-K?” he repeated with his own right hand.
“O-K,” I signed again, clamping my lips. And hoping to God, this wasn’t him playing some cruel mind game with me.
But when I peeped up at him and saw the expression on his face, it instantly became clear to me that it wasn’t.
One, I just wasn't the kind of girl guys bothered to play mind games with. In all three years I’d been in Japan, not one of the boys at school had asked me out or even given me a second look. I was near invisible at my school, and I was pretty sure most guys at Tokyo Progressive only knew me as Byron's sister.
But I didn't feel invisible at that moment. Not with Victor looking down at me, his gaze soft. Like I was the only thing in the room. The only thing in the world.
So this was how it felt…
This was how it felt to be gazed upon by someone who liked you as much as you liked them.
Before Victor, before that moment, I’d been baffled by the girls at Tokyo Progressive who spent so much time trying to get boys to look at them like Victor was looking at me. Their efforts had seemed so silly to me. But now I got it. I totally, totally got it.
Then I got it again when Victor leaned down to kiss me.
This time as my boyfriend.
The day after our first kiss, Byron and I found a Bentley idling outside of Adachi-ku station when we arrived.
“I don't want to be one of those people who think all black Bentleys look the same,” Byron said beside me. “But is that Victor's car?”
As if in answer to his question, Donny climbed out.
“Neih hou!” he greeted, opening the back door of the Bentley for us as we approached.
Byron and I exchanged a “can you believe this?” look before jumping into the car.
There, we found Victor, waiting inside. We both climbed
into the row of seats opposite him, just like the last time we were in his car.
But before I could buckle my seatbelt, Victor covertly beckoned me with a downward hand.
My face flooded with a warm, pleased heat. And all sorts of feelings popped off in my chest as I switched seats and settled in beside him.
Byron glanced between the two of us. Getting it now, even though we never got the chance to talk about my relationship with Victor.
He gave me a significant look. And being his sister, it was easy to translate. Dad's not going to like this.
Fortunately, he was cool enough not to share that thought out loud. He just spoke-signed, “Noice! Thanks for picking us up, V.”
And that was it. Byron and Victor signed about basketball and other things the rest of the way to school. I stayed out of the conversation, content to bask in the feeling of being Victor Zhang’s girlfriend.
ToProg wasn't remotely like the high schools back in Jersey. When we pulled up to its front gates, there were no hormonal teens tonguing each other down on the other side of it. PDA like that just wasn’t a thing, even in Japan’s most metropolitan city.
But couples did hold hands, and Victor took hold of mine as soon as we emerged from his Bentley.
Letting everyone know in this culturally acceptable but very public way that we were together now.
And just like that, we were official.
In an instant, I went from being Byron's sister to the new guy's girlfriend.
Did I say I was invisible before? Suddenly American girls who had never talked to me in the entire time I’d been going to Tokyo Progressive wanted to sit down next to me in homeroom.
Wow, how did you find such a hot Japanese guy—wait, is he Japanese?
Where is he from?
How did you even know each other? Did you meet before this week?
Is it true he can hear but can’t talk? What’s up with that?
Barbara Walters had nothing on the girls gathered around me in homeroom. I mostly deflected their questions the best I could. Until this, Victor had been so private. It didn’t feel right to gossip about him behind his back with girls who never gave me the time of day before I started dating him. But I had to admit that I, too, was curious about why my boyfriend was mute.
Victor: Her Ruthless Crush Page 9
