Page 26 of A Lab Rat's Guide to Fated Love
Vir took a hasty step back and crossed his arms against his chest. He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could figure out a single word, Nori burst into ripples of uncontrollable laughter.
“I—I’m sorry,” she wheezed in-between. “I—I pictured you—as a mouse. With the—ears and a—a tail.”
It was wild, watching her laugh. But even better was the sound accompanying the sight. It stirred something deep in his chest, waking him, warming him, and lulling him to sleep all at the same time.
It was also incredibly contagious. More hilarious than the visual image of himself as a mouse—a lab rat. That’s what he was, wasn’t he? And if it meant he could keep watching her laugh like this, he didn’t mind being a mouse either. Complete with the rounded ears and a pointy tail.
Squeak. Squeak.
Nori
At first, she’d been laughing atthe dumb imagery her brain had thrown at her, but once Vir joined in, it became increasingly harder to stop. She hadn’t laughed this hard in a long time. Not with another person.
The realization sobered her quickly.
“I should warn you,” she said, crossing her arms against her chest. She wasn’t finished discussing their living arrangements yet. “Since you’ll be living with me for a while…”
Vir’s single arched brow made her pause. She wanted to know how he did it—move just one eyebrow independent of the other. It was something he seemed to do often. But she bit back her curiosity. Now was not the time for tutorials. It was the time to establish who the real boss was. One not to be messed with, or else…
“Nori?”
“I have a fourth-degree black belt in Taekwondo,” she bluffed. She’d only recently received her second dan, but he wouldn’t know the difference.
“Okay…” Vir half nodded, as if waiting for her to continue.
“I’m a light sleeper, too,” she continued, stretching her spine upwards to appear taller. “And I have a bad habit of breaking things… and limbs… if anyone so much as breathes near me when I’m asleep. Since we’ll be sleeping in the same room, I thought I’d warn you before I accidentally—” She lowered her voice and jutted her chin out for good measure. “—or intentionally, end up hurting you. Besides, the experiment and ultimately your survival, is in my hands. It will do you good to remember that over the coming weeks.” There. He should consider himself warned.
While Nori waited for the gravity of her threats to sink in, she watched Vir’s expression go from curious to shocked disbelief before morphing into something that made him look like he was trying not to laugh. He whipped his face to the side, his eyes squeezed shut and lips pursed so tightly together as if he was standing there ambushed with stupid knock-knock jokes and not his very life on the line.
“You heard something funny?” Nori scowled.
“Not at all.” He turned to face her again.
“Do you need me to repeat myself?”
“Nope. Don’t mess with you unless I want to die.”
She gave him a curt nod. “Not the exact phrasing, but you got the gist. Otherwise, make yourself at home, I guess. And let me know if you need anything.”
Vir’s expression broke into a grin in response. But it wasn’t the condescending kind she’d been expecting. He seemed almost… happy.
She’d expected worse. Two nights had already passed. Eventful ones, and scary in other ways, sure. But she was yet to feel the terror she’d been anticipating at the prospect of sharing her living space with him. She hadn’t expected to be able to fall asleep with him in the same house, let alone in the same room.
Weirdly enough, she had slept well. Especially last night. Her thoughts drifted back to waking up clingy-koala style, and her face grew warm again. She glanced up in time to catch Vir eyeing her with a curious tilt to his head.
“What are you thi—?”
“Have I told you about my cat, Goober?” She’d almost forgotten about the emotion sensing stuff. The pain in the ass could feel exactly what she was feeling. “I was just thinking about him. He’s part-Siamese. They have a certain gene mutation that makes them turn darker in the cold and lighter as temperature rises. Would you like to see some pictures?”
“Ah. Yes, of course.”
Not a mind reader then. Just emotions. He didn’t seem to be able to tell the why, what,or whombehind them. Good.
Nori let out a relieved sigh as she tapped on her phone’s photo gallery to formally introduce her triangle-eared son, Mr. Goober Arya.
Late afternoon, a few relatively uneventfulweeks later, Nori occupied her usual sunny spot at the dining table, having spent the past hour attempting to reduce the lag in her algorithm.
Her gaze wandered off across the room, as it often did these days, and landed on Vir’s still form perched on the couch. He had his eyes glued to a tattered, old copy ofSynchronicity by Carl Jung. She didn’t understand why he kept going back to it, when he must already know the book from cover-to-yellowed-cover by now.
