2 Chapter 2

7:00 PM Ly Café

The Ly Café's board above shone an LED neon sign of purple and magenta.

The narrowed street road was hard and damped, illuminated by an array of stores standing adjacent to each other against the moonlight. The starless sky peered at the silent avenue of blunder. Its jet black space unfolded around infinity.

As Angelo entered the café, a woman welcomed him with a greeting.

"Good evening, sir! Welcome to Ly Café," A default statement, protocol for customer ingress. "May I take your order?"

As response to the illocutionary, his frozen anxiety melts with the coffee's aroma. After ordering a brewed Americana, he went to search for a seat.

He veered around and suddenly felt a cold prickle around his chest, stinging his nerves quite painfully and saw that a plastic cup of frappe was accidentally casted on his shirt.

"Oh my goodness!" A girl holding the frappe reacted. "I'm so sorry, sir! I didn't mean to…"

Curious gazes were thrown at their side, making Angelo burn from discomfort.

A sweltering uneasiness made his vision momentarily spin falteringly. "It's… alright." He said in almost an undertone.

He plodded towards a vacant seat while supporting his head, his other hand desperately ramming his pocket to find sticks of spite. His cigarettes are the constant resort for a carked condition.

The spilled frappe added to his irritation and infuriation.

"I'm really sorry, sir," The girl apologized sincerely. "I'm willing to replace your shirt for a new one. There's a mall few blocks away from here."

Angelo is hesitant. His incoming savior from solitude might come. "It's alright, really. I don't mind. It's all an accident, anyway."

"I insist, sir. I don't think I'll be able to go home without thinking about what I've done."

A glint of jolt startled Angelo when his cellphone suddenly vibrated, indicating a recently received text message. It was from the woman he's supposed to meet up.

I'm sorry, stranger. I won't be able to come. My work shift was extended.

Angelo looked up to the girl. "I think I'll come with you."

--

8:33 PM CagaLagoon Mall

"That looks better on you," The girl complimented as she stares at Angelo's newly bought shirt. "Again, I'm really sorry."

"It's alright."

As they strode past an arcade, the colorful spectrum of city in blue, rosewood, fuschia, and chartreuse shades beguiled their child hearts.

The music's alacrity hurls them back to nostalgia, snapping their minds as vagabonds through history. They entered the small world of forgetting as machines flashed electronic escapades.

Their short time inside made them bury their burdened psyche. When the mall is almost closing, they went to a fast food chain nearby.

They sat at the rear end to enjoy the glass window adjacent to their seat. The overview seduced their stressed judgments to the face of a lighted metropolis, a pulchritudinous countenance without the sense of urgency and semantics and pain.

"I'll have the same whatever you order," The girl instructed when Angelo offered to do the ordering over the counter. "Just make sure to add a cupcake."

"Are you sure? I'll only be having an ice cream sundae and fries."

"You're not gonna have a proper dinner?"

"The hotel where I'm staying right now offered me a contract. It includes my dinner, so I don't want to go wasting the food later."

The girl nodded. "Hmm, I see. I'll just have the cupcake, then."

"Not gonna have a proper dinner?"

She chuckled and shook her head. "Nope."

After ordering and getting their desserts, they finally rested their feet as they sit peacefully on the seats. Beside them are cars and automobiles, most likely with frantic noises from their horns.

But Angelo and the woman with him are free from those stochastic noises.

A young girl passed with a baby bump protruded from her tummy, stretching her oversized dressed.

"Teenage pregnancy," The girl with Angelo suddenly blurted out of the blue. "It's quite common nowadays. The issue, at least."

"The issue?"

"Teenage pregnancy had probably become a trend back then too," She explained. "But it wasn't much of a big deal for people."

Angelo suddenly remembers that stranger who complained about having sex with their brother. "It wasn't a big deal back then, probably because incest wasn't a taboo."

The girl spun her head to stare closely unto Angelo's pair of deep sable eyes. "That's one thing also… probably."

Angelo shoved his plastic spoon for the last scoop of his ice cream. His tongue burned a melting sweetness, like that of a viscous lava tantalizing through his pharynx. "I've been with you all this evening without knowing your name."

The girl smiled sweeter that his ice cream. "My name's Faura."

"I'm Angelo."