LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT - SEASON 2 CHAPTER 50
As usual, Jeru picked Thea up from work. But this time Thea asked him to accompany her to the grocery store. He brought her to a big grocery store nearby his place and Thea seemed to be having fun filling up the shopping cart with various kinds of food. ‘Why is she buying so much stuff?’ he thought to himself as he watched Thea from behind.
Thea paused and turned around to ask him, “By the way, what do you usually eat? What’s your favorite dish?”
Jeru was caught off guard with that question but he quickly replied, “Anything will do. I’m not really a picky eater. As long as it’s edible, I’ll eat it.”
Thea made a face as soon as she turned her back on him and continued to put more things in the cart. She was startled when Jeru took the cart from her.
“This is too heavy to push already. Are you preparing for a feast? This is enough, so let’s go,” he commented as he headed to the cashier to pay.
‘What a domineering man…’ Thea mumbled silently as she looked at him with a pouty face.
As soon as they arrived at Jeru’s place, Thea arranged the groceries neatly in the kitchen cabinets as well as the refrigerator. She then proceeded to prepare some quick and easy recipes that would only take less than thirty minutes to cook.
Funny, but she was excited to cook for Jeru, especially when she recalled how he thoroughly enjoyed eating the food that she prepared this morning. In that regard, he was just like Zach who used to finish all of the meals she used to prepare for him.
She was missing the days where she was able to cook freely with music. She looked up and saw that Jeru had gone straight up to his room. Probably to wash up or to check some work documents.
She was all alone in the kitchen, so she quickly took out her mobile phone, put it on the kitchen counter and played some music, only loud enough for her to hear, and started cooking. With expert hands she quickly chopped all of the ingredients up and started to do her magic as she mixed those ingredients together in a heated pan. She then began to sing and dance.
She would give the kitchen’s entrance a glance-over every now and then to make sure that Jeru was not there to watch her as she danced and hummed along to the music. That would be too embarrassing.
She was bad at singing. Zach would often laugh at her whenever he saw her cook and sing. But at least she was good at dancing.
She was done making a spicy beef and pepper stir-fry dish, and then continued to make chicken stir-fry dish with noodles and a lot of vegetables.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” Thea hummed along to the song on the radio, out of tune… She forgot about the cameras that were hanging in every corner of the house, including the kitchen.
Jeru was sitting in his study when he saw a flashing light from the surveillance system. The signal came from the kitchen, indicating that there were very active movements there. “What the hell is she doing for the alarm to give a signal?”
He checked the monitors and his jaw dropped when he saw Thea dancing while cooking. She was shaking her hips, seeming to be having a lot of fun. The sight made him chuckle as he murmured, “Is she twerking?”
But then he felt something starting to stir down below… It made him curse. Then he noticed something else that made his forehead crease. He zoomed in on the video and saw Thea’s lips were moving. “Is she singing too?” he muttered as he turned up the volume.
As soon as he heard Thea’s singing voice, Jeru burst out in a fit of laughter. He was laughing so much that his stomach was starting to ache.
“She’s amusing,” he chuckled as he wiped the tears that shimmered in his eyes from laughing too hard.
During dinner, he looked at Thea and couldn’t help but grin widely. Thea noticed it so she frowned and asked, “Why are you grinning like that?”
“Uhm, nothing… I just recalled something funny. Anyway, let’s eat.” Jeru said, trying hard not to laugh as he started to eat. Just like this morning, the moment he took the first bite, he became silent as he was too engrossed with the food and could only focus on eating.
Thea smiled as she watched Jeru eat. She liked how Jeru seemed to be loving the meal she had prepared by eating the dishes wholeheartedly.
When she noticed that there was no more beef on his plate, she unconsciously took some from the server bowl and put it in his plate. “There, eat more meat,” she whispered as she smiled at him and slightly bowed her head to eat her own food.
She failed to notice the flush on Jeru’s face which seemed to have just emerged from the simple gesture that she had just done. Jeru looked at her and sighed as something had started to cross his mind. But he quickly brushed it off.
However, he could not deny the fact that he was starting to look at Thea differently. ‘Maybe it’s her cooking?’ he pondered. Wh@??ver it was, he knew that he would need to be extra careful with his weight now, because Thea was really an exceptional cook. If she continued to dominate his kitchen like this, he was afraid he would gain more weight.
He chuckled unconsciously. Thea heard that and looked at him. “You just chuckled, right?” she asked, as she threw Jeru a suspicious look. ‘What is wrong with this man? Before he was grinning and now he is chuckling?’ she thought irritably to herself.
Jeru coughed and cleared his throat and said, “Uhm you cooked really well… You’ll definitely make a good wife in the future. You know, as the saying goes that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach…”
Thea was astounded by Jeru’s comment and her face turned rose pink all of a sudden. “Excuse me, I don’t intend to get a man’s heart with my cooking. That’s the last thing I would want to do…” she murmured defensively.
“Oh yeah, you can also get a man’s heart by dancing, but I think you will fail with your singing,” Jeru added and this time he could no longer suppress his laughter.
Thea gasped and her eyes widened as she looked at the camera in the dining area. She had forgotten that there was a camera in the kitchen too. ‘Oh, no!’ her face reddened even more, but then she gathered herself and continued eating while she nonchalantly said, “Did you also see in the camera that I put something in the meal? A special ingredient, perhaps?”
Jeru: “……..?”
____
“Mighty Warriors! You have a new cage mate. You can call him ‘The General'” shouted Draco followed by a scornful laugh as he abruptly pushed Zach inside one of the barred room.
Zach had managed to memorize every corner of the passage they had just walked through. Just like the other rooms that he’d seen on their way here, the room that he was in now was around eight by six feet with a metal bed bolted to the ground, a sink and a toilet.
Only one side of the room had a complete wall from floor to ceiling, while the other sides were covered with metal bars, dividing the rooms with each other. It looked so much like a cage. That was probably why Draco was calling it a cage; a human cage.
Each of the ‘cages’ had only one occupant. It looked like they were all fighters. Based on their facial features, Zach could tell that they all came from different places all over the world. Although he presumed that the majority were his fellow countrymen.
“So General… I hope you enjoy your new five-star room! Don’t forget to make friends and enjoy your last time together because later on you will have to ki|| each other! Ha ha ha ha” Draco added, followed by an evil laughter that roared throughout the deck on which all the cages were located.
“You’re the new fighter? Hi, I’m Riley… I’m also known as ‘Pretty Boy’, which is my alias,” said a man who excitedly greeted Zach from the right side of his cage, as soon as Draco left.
True to the alias he was given, Riley had a small body, a fair skin complexion and soft feminine facial features.
“Uhm, can you understand me?” Riley asked as he moved closer to the metal bars which separated him and Zach.
Zach answered with a simple, “Yes.”
Riley almost jumped out of joy as he said, “Finally! I’m glad to finally have a neighbor whom I can talk to! The man before you did not speak at all, so I often just shouted to Cobra if I wanted to have a conversation. Cobra is the guy over there, to the left of your room. He also speaks our language.”
Zach turned his head to the room on the left side of his cage, and looked at its occupant, a man whom Riley called Cobra. He was sitting on his bed with crossed legs and his eyes closed. It looked like he was meditating.
Zach remained quiet and just laid down on the bed.
Riley moved even closer towards the metal bars between him and Zach and whispered as he jerked his head in Cobra’s direction, “Doesn’t he look scary? So, I heard you are called ‘The General’. But I think my alias would suit you better. You’re so handsome. Maybe you could be ‘Pretty Man’. Though you’re not exactly the delicate type like that…”
Riley paused to look at Zach with admiration. This was the first time he saw a handsome fighter like Zach. All the other fighters looked scary and most of them were unsightly.
He then added as he scratched his head, “By the way, though I look like it, but I’m not a boy anymore. I’m already twenty six years old. But yeah, they called me Pretty Boy because of my small body, compared to most, and my soft features.”
Zach ignored Riley’s continuous chatter about his appearance. He instead just asked, “Why are you here?”
Riley leaned his face onto the metal bars and said, “I was sold by my uncle when I turned eighteen. I became a street fighter and miraculously got taken in by a kung fu master. However my master was ki||ed.”
Riley sighed as he continued narrating his story, “… So in short, I ended up in this organization and have been serving as one of their fighters. But the Boss said he will set me free if I win this upcoming tournament.”
Riley reminded him of Torin, who was also a blabbermouth. Zach would only ask him one question and Riley would respond with ten answers.
‘I hope he is fine.’ Zach muttered silently at the sudden thought of his best friend who had saved his life.
“And you really believe that?” Cobra interrupted mockingly in his deep and loud voice, hearing the word ‘free’ from Riley.
“Boy, did you not hear it? They will change the rules this time, so you will have to fight until your last breath. Do you really think you could win against each and everyone here? Or do you think anyone here would spare you, instead of fighting to the death for their own freedom?” Added Cobra with a gloomy face.
Riley dropped his shoulders and shrunk his body more until he was slouching on the ground. Zach got up off the bed and went towards Riley and squatted down in front of him.
He was gathering more information about the tournament to see if there were other details that he could use to his advantage.
Then Zach sighed and said, “Cobra was right… They were only saying that to motivate you so you would fight fiercely for your freedom, but in reality you will only have to fight for your life. Even if you don’t die and end up winning, as long as you are still profitable for them, they would never set you free. They will still keep you locked up in a cage, just like now.”
Cobra’s eyes were still closed as he said, “So it’s better if you don’t get close to anyone here, boy, because you will end up ki||ing each other…”
Riley crumpled his face and irritably said, “Can’t we at least experience having a good friend once before dying?”
Zach looked at Riley with pity and sorrow for his misfortune. He felt apologetic about the fact that a pure-hearted man like Riley had managed to fall onto Leon’s grasp. For a person to be able to retain his innocence despite all of the hardships that he had gone through, it would only mean that Riley was a good man.
Zach’s abhorrence for Leon grew even more. The man was truly a plague to society for subjecting good people like Riley to a horrible ordeal such as this.
Should Leon somehow decide to join the fight himself, Zach wouldn’t think twice to end the bastard’s life.
Zach’s mind was busy formulating a plan on how to escape the ship before the tournament began. He had already heard enough about it to understand what Leon had in store for him.
It would be a violent and brutal tournament in which every fighter would have to eliminate each other by death until the last man standing.
Zach gritted his teeth because he knew that Leon would never let him off easily. Leon obviously did not plan for him to only fight. He wanted him to ki||. He wanted to see blood on his hands. Well, Zach wouldn’t mind ki||ing. As a soldier, he had ki||ed before. But the blood he had on his hands had always been of those who were $cvm of the earth.
But to ki|| a man like Riley…
Zach sighed. He must escape from the ship no matter what…