"My name's Hamilton!"

May is coming to an end, but even before summer arrives, the surprises just keep on happening for Milliardo Wright.

                 I hate surprises. With the month of May coming to an end, I was hoping that everyone would be saving their energy for the approaching start of summer. The average mid-day temperatures are now in the mid-eighties…I can’t wait for August to arrive. As I have to come to accept this spring, plans don’t ever go according to plan.

                To be honest, I am actually anticipating the arrival of summer this year. As much as summer is made for kids and the rich with money to go around the world to their summer home, it could be mean I get to spend more time with the Angel, assuming of course that she herself isn’t going around the world in eighty days on some fantastic balloon. Anyways, I am looking for what she might be planning this summer…so long as it’s not too outlandish.

Today, though, we’re at the public library. My day with work is over and in that same respect, so is the Angel’s, but rather than go get a drink at a local bar or what have you, we came here, to the public library. As usual, I found Angel waiting for me inside of my apartment, having let herself with a key she pilfered off of me and copied. On a good day, she’s just sitting around reading a book. On stranger days, when she’s in a really good mood, she’ll be playing “wife” and cooking something. And I have no idea where she gets these things from, but she brought a maid outfit over the other day and strutted about in it for over an hour. She left it too, but hasn’t worn it since. Shame, really.

As I said, she was there, waiting, smelling of toxic, sweet perfume and invited me out to the public library on a date. I was thinking it’s a good thing, since I would rather it be the public library than some French restaurant. Despite looking high maintenance, she’s actually not expensive to date.

However, my assumption that she just wanted to study was…wrong. Dead wrong, in fact. I realized too late that the Angel has set me up. It turns out that whatever she was involved with in school, a club or whatnot, was doing some kind of get together. Essentially, it was a congregation of a bunch of book nerds. As with the whole thing with the guys from work turned out, these sorts of things don’t work with Milliardo Wright.

For the Angel’s sake, I resisted the desire to just walk back home and spare myself the drama, but in no time flat, that bad luck reared its head.

“This is Milliardo.” Angel introduced me. “He’s into books so I tricked him into coming here. Milliardo, these people are in my literature circle at the university.”

There really is no shame in her game. She’s being totally serious, but that smile makes it come off as a joke. She got me, I’ll admit. I definitely would have passed if she asked, even if she played that “adventure a day” card. As clever as she thinks she is, though, this was a pretty dumb move.

With the Angel, the total number of people totaled five with three guys and one other girl. I had no opinion good or bad about them. Opinions are unimportant anyway. Compared to Xavier and the guys at work, these guys were pretty unimpressive. One had the fresh newbie spineless look with a buzz cut and small frame. Easily, he was the second most feminine person there. Another was…ordinary. I mean, “Who?” ordinary. The guy just had no presence, not even mysterious. The third guy was the most interesting. With short black hair and large square glasses, he kind of looked like Clark Kent, but he was no Superman. Last and certainly least was the ordinary girl who also wore glasses and a ponytail. She definitely had the ‘tutor’ look going on. I didn’t remember any of their names as I forget them as soon as the next person was introduced.

  Before they got into whatever is they do, they attempted to make me feel at home by trying to get to know more about me, starting, of course, with the obvious questions and observations.

“Is that your real name?” asked Ponytail.

“Sure is.” I answered.

“What does it mean?” was her second question.

“One billion.” I replied.

“It’s Italian, right?” asked Who.

“Sure is.” I answered again.

“What grade are you in?”

“…” To be honest, I was a little stumped with how to answer that question so I had to be a little indirect as I talked my way around it. “I’m nineteen years old and I work for a living.”

“Seriously? You look…sixteen.” Observed Ponytail.

“Yeah…I discovered the secret to eternal youth on my vacation to the Alps when I was fifteen.”

“…”

“…”

“…Okay…”

I hadn’t really meant what I was going to say to come out like that, but I really couldn’t resist. When it came to things like how old I looked, it was getting boring to just correct them and move on. I think the Angel’s nonsense is starting to rub off on me if I can make up something that ridiculous on the spot.

“Any other questions?”

“How do you and Angel know each other?” asked Buzz Cut probably curious as to why I was sounding like Angel.

“…That one’s actually a bit complicated…” was the set-up for my answer that I had no real follow up to. Naturally, this is where the Angel interjected while latching herself onto my arm like a blood-starved leech.

“We’re soul mates and we’re getting married!” she announced.

“With HIM?!”

I was trying to think of something to say in response to that…response when Clark Kent actually spoke out his most inner thoughts out loud. Instantly, the attention shifted away from Angel’s comment to his. Turning red, he tried to perform damage control.

“No…no, I mean…y-you’re too young and…”

I was beginning to feel bad for the guy, really so I just shook my head to show how futile it was to make excuses. In hindsight, I should’ve just kept looking ahead and ignored him and his comment. But, it was too late because he noticed what I was doing.

“What are you looking at?” Clark Kent stood up as he asked me. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and sigh.

But such a question demanded an answer so, I answered, “The future…and you know what? It doesn’t-!!”

Before I could finish my sentence, I felt a sharp pain in my side. The Angel jammed her finger into my side, which made me jerk my body. I lost a bit of my composure at that point because the reason I disliked being touched is because of that very weak spot getting poked.

“Don’t. Do. That.” I said very strongly.  My heart was on fire as I pulled my arm away from her, but it and my blood nearly froze when I saw the expression on her face.

“Don’t antagonize my friends.” She said. I was shocked and offended that she was blaming me when SHE was the one who invited me in the first place.

…However, I there was no way I could win an argument with her. Plus, the silent death glare she was giving me was just daring me to talk back. Alright, fine, so I just should have apologized right away. This look wasn’t new to me, but I had only been on the receiving end once before when I accidentally spilled her beloved diet soda. I had to sit on the floor and apologize for nearly an hour before she looked at me again.

Though peeved about getting poked in my side, I decided to swallow my irritation and, turning to face Clark Kent, clapped my hands together as if saying a prayer, bowed, and apologized.

“Well,” I said then, turning to the Angel. “That reminds me, I forgot that my…turkey is still in the oven so I have to go check up on it.”

“Hey, Milliardo…” she started, but I didn’t let her finish speaking this time.

“SEEMS as though you have something to work out, no?” I patted her on the shoulder and retreated from the library as quickly as I could.

As soon as I got outside, my general disdain for groups of people returned once again. “Don’t antagonize my friends” huh? Wasn’t I the one who was antagonized first? How is it my fault that he lost control of himself and said that? Even if he never had a chance, he should have never tried covering it up with that fashion. There was really nothing more he could say at that point.

“Friends,” I spat. “Who needs ‘em?”

“Mil-li-ar-doooo!” Singing my voice from some way down the street, Angel was jogging to catch up to me at the curb.

“…Done already? That was fast…” As she got closer to me, I took a step back and put my hands up to stop her. “Wait a minute now…”

Ignoring my protests, the Angel grabbed me by collar and pulled me.

“Whoa! Easy, easy! Don’t stretch the shirt.”

“Let me be emphatic.” She said over my complaints. She pressed her forehead against mine. “I love you, YOU, Milliardo. So you don’t need to get assertive.”

Assertive? “Assertive?”

“You don’t have to be jealous.” She assured me. “I do appreciate it though, I don’t like being objectified.

Jealous? Who? Me? Jealous?! Not likely!

There was something she was misunderstanding there, but common sense was telling me to just go along with her this time. She’s not too angry and things seemed to work out so I can put this episode behind me and go home. Can’t argue with Angels, after all.

“Milliardo? Is that you…?”

With the Angel still holding my collar, I didn’t notice until now the audience we had been attracting on the street from passersby. I hadn’t noticed even the woman standing just a few feet from the entrance of the corner store holding some bags. She was aged and a brunette, but still had traces of her beauty from her younger age.

“Ah…crap.” In much the same was as Clark Kent did, I let slip my honest feelings. I was hoping and wishing that I wouldn’t have to look at those gray eyes again.

“Hmmm…Milliardo…I know that lady…” said the Angel. Am I supposed to be impressed by your good memory or something?

The stone in my stomach fell even further when the door to the store opened behind her and emerged a rather fierce looking man and a young girl around Iris Kelly’s age, both with reddish brown hair. The girl had a guitar case on her back and the man was carrying more bags.

He took one look at the couple holding each other in the street and said, “Oh! Milliardo! It’s you!”

“Hey…Milliardo…” said Angel. “That man…looks a lot like….”

“Nope!” I quickly and immediately denied it, all of it, as I broke away from Angel’s grip and turned to cross the street before the light turned red. “My name’s Hamilton! You’ve got the wrong guy.” Angel tried to grab my arm, but I pulled it away.

“Running away again?”

…Those three words, arranged into that specific question, cut deeply into my heart and prevented me from taking that step. Meanwhile, the counter began counting down the twenty seconds until the light would turn red again.

“Yes I am!”

Angel underestimates me if she thinks shame alone is enough to stop me though.

“Milliardo, wait!” The woman �"my mother- called out to me. “We’re not going to ask you to come home if you don’t want to. It’s just…you never wrote us or called…we were all worried about you! Can’t we just talk…?”

My mother’s voice cracked as she got emotional. I must have really become another person, because I didn’t feel bad at all about that. This was more of an inconvenience than an emotional reunion. ‘Family’ was one of the concepts I discarded and questioned the most in the past year. To me, the Milliardo Wright I am right now, those people are just strangers to me. They’ve been dead to me for a year, they can stay that way.

…But I am running away. What’s wrong with that? I am running away from that massive spider web everyone is strung up on and glued to in place by. I am running away from being just another spoke on a corporate wheel that’s going to keep spinning with or without me. I am running away from sitting in a class room working for someone’s approval that’s not mine. If Angel and can look the world through my eyes and be positive about it…then I can be as negative about it as I please and when it suits me. I’m incomplete as a person and I am okay with that.

……the conclusion of these thoughts and my own beliefs came well after I had left that curb. I would have liked to say that to my parents and get the idea across to them, but who can think in such conditions?

In times like this, the ability to disconnect oneself from the world and enter their own is a useful skill to have and it’s something I have mastered. Reality is subjective like that. I can just pick up a book and immerse myself within someone else’s horrible life and feel glad that I’m not that stupid. It does wonders for my self-confidence.

Reality, unfortunately, isn’t something you can run away from forever, no matter how many years you spend in school trying to do just that. Reality entered when Angel did and I half expected one or both of my parents to follow her in. I was relieved when it was just her.

“I explained to your parents that you didn’t have a phone to call them.” She said. “But I didn’t know what to say about a DELIVERY BOY who doesn’t know how to send a letter.” She was joking about it…that’s a good sign that she’s not going to completely chew me out, I guess.

“…You didn’t have to tell them anything. I would rather keep that chapter close.”

“Milliardo, Milliardo, Milliardo…”

Heh, I really do love it when she does that.

“That’s okay. They gave me their number to give to you. It’s in my cell phone so whenever you want to call them, just tell me. In the meantime, I will keep them my mother, father and sister-in law updated about how you are doing.”

…Putting that aside for a moment. “You didn’t really tell them that we were getting married did you?”

“Hmmm…I wonder what I told them exactly…” she said completely straight faced, putting her finger to her chin.

“Y-You really are a piece of work…” I mumbled in disbelief.

“Heheh, if you want to know, you could always call them up and ask yourself!” After gently chewing me out, she reached for the maid outfit she stashed. “Now then…what do you want for dinner?”

So she asked…but it’s not like I really have a whole lot of choices to choose from.

“Surprise me.” I said.