Les Laches

58.

Afgar stuffed a large binder into his backpack before walking towards the dining room. Taking his phone out of the back pocket of his brown chino pants and placing it on the dining table, Afgar looked at Tian, who was now busy pacing between the spacious rooms in his apartment kitchen. The girl was also looking at him and seemed to be giving a judgmental look at Afgar's appearance.

"Udah okay, right?" tanya Afgar demanded when Tian just threw a thin grin full of meaning before returning to struggling with his cooking.

"Yes, yeah, cool. You show-off guy!" chirped Tian while chuckling softly.

"How's it going?" ask Afgar not understand.

"Yes, the mood is so cute" Tian said again, laughing, hearing himself praise his best friend.

"Thank you, you know!" exclaim Afgar little keki.

Afgar considers the praise given by Tian only his attempt to tempt him.

"Seriously, uh!" tian said as he glanced at Afgar's slightly throbbing lips. "You're like someone who wants a blind date rather than a student who wants to menggampus."

"It's a shame."

"No, uh, horrified. I mean you're so cool. Not going to lose with the original Bandung agan-agan who said clear," said Tian while carrying a large plate full of shrimp balado on the table.

"Who would like to make love to other students on campus. I want to go to college instead of a table," Afgar replied as he immediately scooped up a large portion of the contents of the plate that Tian had just placed in the middle of the table. The smell of the girl's cooking made her stomach which usually just asked to be filled above 13:00, sounding loudly even before the time showed at 7 am.

"No boy?" tian asked as he propped his chin with both hands.

Afgar pointed the thumb of his right hand to the side of his face in response. Tian smiled happily before getting back up from his chair and walking towards Afgar's room. Unlike the usual, Afgar did not forbid Tian from entering any room in his apartment. In his home alone, Afgar never allowed anyone other than a housekeeper who had also been a nanny himself as a child to enter his room.

Afgar is not too easy to trust others, even his own family. His father taught him that the only person he could trust was the one he could hold onto his weakness so that he could play the card to keep the person secret. However, as he grew older, Afgar developed his own intuition and chose people he could exclude from the principles taught by his father. Of course, Tian was among those people.

Tian came out of Afgar's room carrying a pile of his clothes, blankets, and sheets. He looked at Afgar with his eyes set as if he was wondering how Afgar would make such a mess in his own room. After finishing his meal, Afgar washed his dishes and caught up with Tian standing in front of the washing machine in his apartment laundry room reading a PDF-formatted digital text on his smartphone.

"No breakfast?" tanya Afgar made Tian scowl. The girl was so immersed in her concentration that she did not feel Afgar's presence in the small room.

"I had breakfast at home" Tian replied, putting his phone in his jeans pocket and draining water from the washing machine that had stopped operating.

"Are you done eating it?" tian asked, this time while walking out of the laundry room.

"Udah," Afgar answered briefly.

"Where's the plate going?" tian shouted from the direction of the kitchen.

"What plate?" asked Afgar as he hurriedly stepped towards the kitchen.

"Your former dinner plate was," Tian replied as he turned his gaze in turn toward Afgar and then toward the table where Afgar was sitting at the meal.

"That's what I've been washing," said Afgar, raising his head to a dish shelf near the sink.

Tian walked up to the shelf and picked up a plate that looked still wet. After making sure Afgar washes his dishes clean and leaves no traces including traces of laundry soap, Tian takes a washcloth and prepares to wipe the wet surface of the dish.

"If it's still wet, the plate is cold as it used to be, Gar. Let your ceramic counters not damp with water droplets from this abis washed plate," Tian said.

Afgar moved closer to Tian and grabbed the plate and washcloth from the girl's hand, then began to dry the plate according to Tian's instructions.

"Toggle like this?" afgar asked as she looked directly into Tian's eyes as if she was challenging the girl to criticize her work.

Tian responded to Afgar's question by brandishing both of his thumbs. He then walked back to the table and covered the leftovers on the table with oil paper and a serving hood. Later, he returned to the laundry room.

Afgar sat in the living room of his apartment and turned on his plasma TV while waiting for Tian to finish his laundry. A news story about the Corona virus that is infecting people in several other countries, attracted Afgar's attention immediately. So sucked Afgar's focus, the young man was not aware of the presence of Tian who had finished drying his laundry and tried to attract the attention of Afgar by poking the left side of his body. In fact, it still makes Afgar flinch.

Even until the topic of news changed, instead of responding to Tian's actions to invite him to speak, Afgar instead pulled out his phone. Afgar checked his father's business itinerary and checked his travel history for several months before and after news of the coronavirus broke. He was grateful that there was no previous history of flights to China, so staff at their company were arguably safe from exposure to the virus.

Another story with a business travel proposal next month one of which submitted a collaboration plan with an agency in China. Inevitably, his father's agency had to suspend that one proposal. The suspension is actually a big problem because reportedly the proposal has a great chance of success and profit. Therefore, Afgar, as one of the strategists in the development of his father's business, had to rack his brain in order to devise an alternative plan to replace the proposal.

Afgar tried to dig into the network database he owned and eventually found several alternatives to review. He immediately sent a short message to his father's secretary and asked the man to prepare time for meetings with the executives. Afgar promised to send an email containing the data he had after he compiled the information he had collected at random.

After successfully planning the steps he would do systematically, Afgar's eyes searched for Tian. The girl was ready to come out of her apartment with a jacket, shoes, and backpack attached to her body.

"Your class isn't 08:30?" afgar asked as he checked the clock on his wall which still showed it at 07:45.

"Yes, I don't want to be late" Tian replied as he opened the door to Afgar's apartment.

Afgar hurriedly turned off his television and grabbed his car contacts and backpack from the table.