Outside, the beeping of car horns and conversation from the streets interweaved into a low, rumbling background track that was drowned out by an overdramatic voice from the phone.

“Yes, I know, I’m fine, really! I promise, it was just a small accident, the doctors said I was fine!” The girl replied, sitting in the back seat of the taxi, combing back her ebony waves with impatience.

“Mother, I swear, I am not hiding anything from you and I will definitely, definitely tell you if something is wrong, ok?” She sighed again. “It was only a small car crash, no one ‘took advantage of me just because I’m a foreigner here’. Come on~ it’s only the first day of my holiday, I have so much to see!”

The car slowed down before turning into a spacious underground carpark. With perhaps a little too much force, the girl slammed the red car door and spun around with her single luggage bag, heels clicking softly as she took wide strides towards the B&B she had booked from home.

It was a little strange, but not bizarre that the lodge was located above a small local restaurant, the entrance stairs just to the left of the restaurant’s back door. Red and blue neon signs flickered on and off, at such a steady pace that it seemed more like an aesthetic than a faulty electronic. 

What was odd was the man in a lime dress shirt, curly black hair hanging over his guitar as he played away to a familiar tune that she had never heard of before.

Sitting at the bottom of the stairs.

Blocking her way.

“Uhm,” she began, pausing in front of the dark-haired stranger. “Could you excuse me? I just need to use the stairs…”

He raised his head, and at once all of her attention was drawn to how beautiful the man was.

Even prettier than a girl.

When she realized what she had used to describe him, she still couldn’t take it back. There was really no other better way to describe the man rather than ‘beautiful’, and his effeminate features showed her for the first time how strikingly beautiful those features could be on a man. He looked no more than thirty, around the same age as her, and she felt a little comfort in seeing a familiar face somewhere so far from home.

“I just need to use the stairs real quick—“ she tried again.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

His voice was lower than she’d expected, and th