Chapter 3
Chapter 3
To keep my parents from swallowing heart medication at the dinner table, I decided Cen Juan needed an emergency makeover.
We would begin with the jangling subculture uniform.
When I stormed into his apartment, his hair was still an aggressively vivid purple, and the bell collar really was around his neck. It jingled as he opened the door.
His eyes lit when he saw me. He leaned in at once. “Mis-”
I clapped a hand over his mouth. “Get ready. Change your clothes.”
He pulled my hand away, rubbed his cheek against my palm, and looked up with alarming excitement. “Something kinky?”
I pushed away that fluffy purple head. “Something suitable for meeting my parents.”
His body stiffened. The lazy amusement left his face and his gaze wandered. “We’re really doing this?”
“Yes.”
Cen Juan turned away. “So annoying,” he muttered.
Before I could answer, he kissed me quickly and headed for his wardrobe, the bell jingling behind him.
He rummaged for half an hour and finally emerged holding a black T-shirt with a gigantic skull on it.
I stared at him without expression.
“This is the plainest thing I own!” he protested.
An hour later, I pushed him into a minimalist menswear shop. The saleswoman greeted us warmly, though her gaze lingered for one delicate moment on his purple hair.
I forced myself to say, “Could you find him something that… makes him look like a decent person?”
Cen Juan blinked. The saleswoman paused, then smiled professionally. “Of course.”
The fitting session became torture.
He despised every respectable outfit she selected. “People wear this? Where’s the cut? The design? The soul? I’d rather go naked.”
He tossed a shirt back on the rack, hooked a finger into the hem of my clothes, and asked in a wounded murmur, “Don’t you think the way I usually dress is handsome?”
I looked at the purple hair, the glittering studs, and the absurdly beautiful face that made the whole combination strangely magnetic.
“It is handsome. Your kind of handsome is avant-garde art. My parents are classicists. They need time to absorb the artistic influence.”
He snorted but accepted the explanation.
Our final compromise was several black T-shirts and a pair of jeans with fewer holes. Within his aesthetic system, this was an enormous concession.
After paying, I pressed him into a chair in the mall rest area and pulled alcohol wipes from my bag. “Take the metal out of your face.”
He tipped back his head. “You have so many demands. So annoying.”
Despite the complaint, he obediently closed his eyes. Under the mall lights, his cool white skin was almost dazzling. I carefully removed the studs from his brow and lip.
Without the hard metal, his face suddenly came into clear focus-sharp contours, long lashes lowered, and an unexpectedly clean, almost boyish innocence.
He looked like the pure-hearted high-school boy he had never actually been.
Back then, his hair had been black and his face free of rings and studs. Only the sleepy defiance in his eyes had remained exactly the same.