"Victor is right through there," Donny told me, raising a hand toward a set of open double sliding doors at the far end of the hallway. " You can go right in. He’s expecting you."
So that was his name. Victor.
I started down the hallway. Alone.
And to think, I was so irritated about having to read Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll last year. Sixteen-year-old me thought it was too childish and simplistic. But seventeen-year-old me was totally identifying with the confused and lost Alice as I walked down that long tunnel of a hallway.
You need to calm down, Dawn, I told myself. It's just a kid. Don't worry. You’ve totally got this—
I came to a dead stop when I reached the open doorway; my mouth fell open.
I totally didn’t have this.
Two guys were fighting with wooden sticks inside the room. I mean, just going at it, like they were trying to kill each other!
They moved blindingly fast, and the sound of their wooden poles banging against each other filled the air. To me, who'd never seen anyone physically fight with sticks before, it looked like one of those kung fu movies Byron loved. They were grunting and swinging with extreme force. It honestly appeared like somebody was going to be broken or dead before the battle was over.
One of the fighters was broad and with heavy muscles, and the other was tall and lean. They were pretty evenly matched, I concluded after watching them go at it for a while. Muscles’ swings looked way harder to block. But the lean one had a further reach, which allowed him to get in quick jabs from farther away.
I stood there, frozen in the doorway, not sure what else to do but watch. Were these the older brothers of the boy I was supposed to be tutoring?
A gray-haired teacher I didn't notice before suddenly yelled something out in a language I was pretty sure was Chinese. And the two fighters stopped on a dime, lowering their sticks.
They bowed to each other and then to their teacher. Then both fighters immediately turned toward me.
My stomach flipped, weird and clumsy, like that one time my mom tried to put me in gymnastics.
Obviously, Donny had pointed me to the wrong room. And now the two fighters—the…wow…unbelievably hot fighters were walking straight toward me.
My breath hitched as they approached.
The lean one had long but somehow also spiky hair, an impossible combination that I had only ever seen before in anime. He was insanely gorgeous, and his unbothered lope told me he was used to girls staring. Confidence radiated off of him in waves.
Muscles wasn't nearly as pretty as his friend, but he was way more arresting. His face was a collection of sharp angles that gave his beauty a harder and more dangerous edge. I'd be too nervous to speak with Anime Guy if we were alone in this room. But I'd be too scared to speak to the other one. Forget Muscles. I decided then and there to nickname this one Danger.
But I wasn't here for them. I was here for Victor, their little brother.
Reminding myself of that, I put a lot of effort into not looking as scared as I felt when they stopped in front of me.
They both gave me short bows. I knew there were rules to bowing. We had learned them in Cultural Studies. But they all flew out of my head. So I just awkwardly returned their bows with something I could only hope was a decent head nod.
Danger stared at me, even as Anime Guy asked him something I didn't understand in Chinese. Danger nodded in response to Anime Guy, but his eyes stayed on me, black and glittering with cold curiosity. I swear I could feel his gaze burning into my skin. It was like having two hot lasers aimed directly at me.
"You're here to tutor Victor?" Anime Guy asked in Japanese. As pretty as he was, I couldn't say the same for his speech. His accent was rough and over direct, nothing like the careful and deliberately slow Japanese spoken to me at my school by people who weren't sure if I'd understand them.
However, I nodded quickly, eager to move on from pretending that I wasn’t frying underneath Danger’s intimidating stare. "Yes, the guard pointed me this way, but I think I walked into the wrong room. Do you know where I could find him?"
Anime Guy grinned. All perfect straight teeth and cool hair. "No, you’ve got the right place. This is Victor's room."
“Oh…” I look around, taking in the rest of the space. Room was an understatement. Just like I didn't see the teacher beforehand, I hadn’t clocked that the room was actually a huge suite. The gym area had several barbells and a treadmill, but it was only a third of the room. There was a large viewing area with couches at the other end of the suite. Also, a door, which I assumed led to a bedroom. And in the middle of the enormous room sat a long, low table with golden cushions on either side, presumably for sitting.
The table was covered with a laptop, a bunch of Chinese textbooks I couldn’t read the titles of, and a few English ASL books. So yes, this had to be where Victor did his schoolwork.
Maybe his brothers had just borrowed the room for their weirdly intense stick fighting lesson.
"Oh, my bad. Sorry. Do you know when Victor will get here?"
Anime Guy screwed up his face like I was stupid. "You're looking at him."
I stilled. The alarm bells were back. And this time, they weren’t faintly ringing. They were full-on blasting.
"So, you’re Victor?" I asked Anime Guy hopefully. He was almost too pretty to look at, and I was barely keeping it together for this conversation. But the alternative….
I couldn’t even manage a glance at
