As usual, Roger starred in my dream that night. But the climate in my subconscious had changed, and there was a shivering flash that had controlled the electricity all afternoon, and I tossed and turned restlessly, waking up many times in the night. It wasn't until those hours in the wee hours of the morning that I finally fell into a dreamless sleep from exhaustion.

When I woke up, I was still tired, but I was also anxious. I put on a brown turtleneck sweater and that inevitable pair of jeans. I can't help but sigh as I daydream about low-cut spaletto tops and hot pants. Breakfast was as usual and calm and peaceful as I wished. Chuck fried himself an egg and I ate a bowl of cereal. I wonder if he's forgotten about Saturday. When he stood up and took the plate to the pool, he answered my unspoken questions.

"About this Saturday......" he began, walking through the kitchen and turning on the faucet.

I flattered, "What's the matter, Dad?" ”

"Are you still going to Seattle?" He asked.

"That's the plan." I grimaced, hoping that he wouldn't bring it up again so that I wouldn't have to be careful about chopping up half-truths.

He squeezed some dish soap onto the plate and scrubbed back and forth with a brush. "Are you sure you won't be back before the prom starts?"

"I'm not going to the prom, Dad." I stared dryly.

"Didn't anyone invite you?" He asked, trying to hide his concern and concentrate on scrubbing the dishes.

I avoided this minefield. "It's a girls' choice ball."

"Oh." He frowned as he wiped the plate dry.

I'm starting to feel a little sympathy for him. It's really hard for a father to live in one worry or another, afraid that his daughter will meet a boy she likes, but he has to worry about what to do if she doesn't. I shuddered at the thought of knowing who Chuck really liked if he had gotten even the slightest hint of it.

Then, Chuck waved goodbye and left. I went upstairs to brush my teeth and put away my books. When I heard the sound of the patrol car driving away, I waited only a few seconds before I ran over and peeked out the window. The silver car was already there, waiting in the driveway where Chuck was located. I jumped downstairs and ran out the front door, wondering how long such an unusual routine would last. I never want it to end.

He was waiting in the car, and he didn't seem to be looking at me when I closed the door and didn't bother to lock that damn latch. I walked to the car and stopped shyly before opening the door to get into the car. He smiled, relaxed—and, as usual, perfection and excellence were tormented.

"Good morning." His voice was like silk. "How are you feeling today?" His gaze wandered over my face, as if his interrogation had a deeper meaning than mere etiquette.

"Good, thank you." When I'm with him, I'm always good – even better than good.

His gaze fell on the dark circles under my eyes. "You look tired."

"I can't sleep." I confessed, subconsciously pulling my hair back behind my shoulders as a kind of cover-up.

"Me too." He teased and started the engine. I'm starting to get used to the quiet hum. I'm sure whenever I go back to drive my truck, its roar scares me.

I laughed, "I guess so." I reckon I only slept a little more than you. ”

"I bet you do."

"So, what did you do last night?" I asked.

He chuckled, "You don't have a chance. Today is the day for me to ask questions. ”

"Oh, that's right. What do you want to know? My forehead wrinkled. I can't imagine anything that would interest him.

"What's your favorite color?" He asked, his expression serious.

I rolled my eyes: "Every day is different. ”

"What's your favorite color today?" He asked, still solemnly.

"Brown likely." I've always dressed according to my mood.

He snorted, finally dropping a serious expression. "Brown?" He asked, skeptically.

"That's right. Brown is warm. I miss brown. Everything that should be brown - tree trunks, rocks, dirt - is covered here with a soft crumbling green. I complained.

He seemed fascinated by my impassioned speeches. He thought for a moment, then looked into my eyes.

"You're right." He said decisively, serious again. "Brown is warm." He reached out nimbly, but somehow, hesitated, brushing my hair back behind my shoulder.

That's when we arrived at school. As he pulled into a parking space, he looked back at me.

"What's the music on your Walkman right now?" He asked, his face gloomy, as if asking for a confession in a homicide case.

I realized I hadn't taken out the CD that Aiken had given me. When I said the name of the band, he smiled crooked at the corners of his mouth and had a strange look in his eyes. He popped open a small compartment underneath his car walkman, pulled out one of the thirty or more CDs crammed into that small space, and handed it to me.

"How's this Liszt?" He raised a frown.

It's the CD from last time. I lowered my eyes and took a closer look at the familiar cover pattern.

And so the day passed. He was mercilessly interrogating me throughout lunchtime as he walked to the English classroom, when he met me after Spanish class, and learned every inconsequential detail of my life. The movies I liked and hated, the few places I've been, the many places I want to visit, and the books - endless questions about books.

I can't remember the last time I said that. I'm self-aware, and I'm sure I'm going to bore him. But the preoccupied look on his face, and his never-ending interrogation, compelled me on. Most of his questions were easy to answer, and only a few made me blush. But when I do blush, it leads to a new round of interrogation.

For example, the time he asked me about my favorite jewelry, I blushed and said citrine without thinking. He asks questions at such a pace that I feel like I'm doing some kind of psychological test, the kind that requires your answer to be the word that comes to mind at the first time. I'm sure he'll keep asking questions from the list of questions in his head, unless I'm blushing. And I blush because, until recently, my favorite piece of jewelry was garnet. Just looking into his citrine-like eyes, I couldn't have thought of a reason for the change. Naturally, he would keep asking questions until I confessed why I was so nervous.

"Tell me." After being persuaded to fail, he finally ordered that it would fail only because I kept my eyes safe away from his face.

"That's the color of your eyes today." I sighed and surrendered. I played with a strand of my hair and my eyes were fixed on my hand. "I guess if you ask me in two weeks, I'll say it's black onyx." Out of my reluctant honesty, I gave more information, even though it was unnecessary. And I began to wonder if it would ignite his strange anger, which he would whenever I accidentally revealed too much that I was so obsessed.

But he paused only for a short time.

"What flowers do you like?" He began a barrage of interrogations again.

I breathed a sigh of relief and continued with his psychoanalysis.

Once again, biology class is getting complicated. Roger continued his oral examination until Mr. Ruth walked into the classroom and dragged the audio-visual case in. As the teacher walked over and turned off the lights, I noticed that Roger had moved his chair away from me a little. It's useless. When the classroom was dark, as it was yesterday, the electricity began to flicker again, the never-ending urging my hand to reach over that short distance and touch his cold skin.

I leaned over the table, resting my jaw on the folded forearms, my hidden fingers gripping the edge of the table tightly. I struggled to ignore the unconscionable that was trying to shake me. I didn't dare to look at him for fear that he would be watching me, which would only make self-control harder. I really wanted to see the movie, but I still didn't know what I had just watched until the end of the class. When Mr. Ruth turned on the light, I sighed in relief and finally glanced at Roger. He was looking at me with contradictions in his eyes.

He stood up silently and stood there motionless, waiting for me. We walked in silence towards the gymnasium, exactly like yesterday. Then, as yesterday, he wordlessly caressed my face—this time with the back of his cold hand, from one side of my eyebrow to my jaw—before he turned and walked away.

The PE class passed quickly while I watched Jack's badminton solo show. He didn't speak to me today, nor did he react in any way to my blank expression, maybe he's still sulking at our quarrel yesterday. Somewhere in the bottom of my heart, I feel terrible about it. But I couldn't focus on him.

After that, I hurried to change my clothes, knowing that the faster I moved, the sooner I would be able to stay with Roger. The feeling of oppression made me clumsier than usual, but eventually I rushed out the door, just as relieved as last time to see him standing there, and a big smile subconsciously appeared on my face. In response, he smiled, and then began a new round of cross-examination.

However, his questions are different now, and they are no longer so easy to answer. He wanted to know what I was missing about my home and insisted that I describe anything he wasn't familiar with. We sat in front of Chuck's house for hours until it got dark and the sudden flood of rain fell straight around us.

I tried to describe some food that I couldn't describe at all, like the smell of wood distillate—bitter, a bit resinous, but still kind—the sharp and mournful chirping of cicadas in July, like a feathered cactus, the vastness of the sky, the whitish blue that stretched from horizon to horizon on one side, rarely blocked by low hills covered with purple volcanic rock. The hardest thing to explain is why I find them so beautiful—to define a beauty that is not based on sparse, prickly, often half-dead vegetation, a beauty that has nothing to do with the bare shape of the earth, the shallow bowl-shaped valley between the rugged valleys, and the way they stretch under the sun. As I tried to explain to him, I found myself using hand gestures a lot.

His quiet, sharp interrogation allowed me to speak freely, in the faint light of the storm, completely forgetting to be embarrassed by the fact that I had monopolized all conversation. Eventually, when I finished describing the messy room I had in the house, he stopped and didn't ask the next question.

"You're done?" I asked, relieved.

"It's a long way off—but your dad will be home soon."

"Chuck!" I suddenly realized his presence, and sighed. I looked at the rainy sky outside the car, but it didn't give away any information. "How late is it?" I asked aloud as I glanced at the clock. I was shocked to see that it was already this time - Chuck was already on his way home.

"It's twilight, and the sky is red with blood, emitting bloody twilight light." Roger muttered, looking at the western horizon, which was covered in clouds and uncertain. His voice seemed preoccupied, as if his thoughts were thousands of miles away. I looked at him, and he looked out the windshield, but he wasn't looking at anything at all.

I kept looking at him until his gaze suddenly turned back to mine.

"It's the safest time of the day for us." He said, answering the unspoken question in my eyes. "The easiest moment. But in a sense, it's also the saddest...... Another day is over, and night has fallen again. Darkness is so predictable, don't you think so? He smiled wistfully.

"I love the night. Without darkness, we would never see the stars. I frowned. It's hard to see the stars here, though. ”

He laughed, and the mood suddenly lightened.

"Chuck is a few minutes away. Well, unless you want to tell him you'll be with me on Saturday......" he raised a frown.

"Thanks, but not anymore, thank you." I put my book away, realizing that I was already a little stiff from sitting for too long. "So, tomorrow it's my turn?"

"Of course not." Annoying indignation was written all over his face. "I told you I wasn't done yet, did I?"

"What else?"

"You'll find out tomorrow." He reached out to open the door for me, and his sudden approach sent my heart throbbing wildly.

"That's not good." He muttered to himself.

"What's that?" I was amazed to see that his jaw was tense and his eyes were full of trouble.

He only looked at me for a short second. "Another complicated situation." He said sullenly.

He pushed the door open with quick movements, then moved away, almost flinching, and quickly moved away from me.

The light from the headlights of the car pierced through the rain curtain to attract my attention, and a black car drove towards us, only a few meters away.

"Chuck is coming." He warned, watching the car through the pouring rain.

I jumped out of the car at once, no time to bother with my confusion and curiosity. The rain swept over my jacket and the sound grew louder.

I tried to recognize the person sitting in the front seat of that car, but it was too dark. I saw Roger glaring at the headlights of the new car, and his whole body was lit up. He was still staring ahead, his gaze locked on something or someone I couldn't see. His expression was very strange, mixed with frustration and defiance.

Then he started the engine, and the tires made a screeching sound against the wet road. After a few seconds, the Volvo was out of sight.

"Hey, Imia." A familiar, hoarse voice came from the driver's seat of the little black car.

"Kendil?" I asked, squinting through the rain. Just then, Chuck's patrol car drove around the corner, his headlights illuminating the occupants of the car in front of me.

Kendil was about to climb out, his grin clearly visible even in the dark. In the passenger seat was an older man, muscular and with an unforgettable face—a face too wide, cheeks pressed against his shoulders, and a tawny skin furrowed like an old leather jacket. And those amazingly familiar eyes, those black eyes on this big face, look too young at the same time, but also look too vicissitudes.

Kendil's dad, Blue? Allan. I recognized him immediately, even though the last time I saw him was more than five years ago. The first day I came here, Chuck mentioned him to me and I had even forgotten his name. He looked at me, scrutinizing my face, so I smiled tentatively at him. His eyes widened, and he didn't know if it was out of surprise or fear, his nostrils flared. My smile disappeared immediately.

Another complication is Roger's words.

Blue was still looking at me with nervous and anxious eyes. I sighed inwardly. Did Blue recognize Roger so quickly? Did he really believe in the impossible legends that his son had laughed at?

The answer is clearly written in Brugh's eyes:

Yes!

Yes!!

He believes!!