Chapter 1 - his weakness

Lea

So it all started because I hated my flatmate.
However, I’ve never expected that things would go this far. If my past self could investigate the future, she’d just laugh it out with a slight discomfort, barely able to process the vision. After all, how can things so little and trivial lead to events so big, so ridiculous, so…

But let’s begin properly. First things first, my name is Lea and I’d never wanted to have a flatmate. I was living in a small apartment which I inherited from my grandma, perfectly glad about my solitude. I was always an individualist, I had my own word, my own hobbies, habits, and activities, definitely not requiring other people running around, babbling, screaming, and wanting attention. When I was still living with my parents, I used to find the smallest things about sharing home annoying, like someone entering my room just to ask some dumb question like “where did you put the grater when you took it out of the dishwasher?”. Why they had to bother me asking? Why don’t just look for it yourself?
Anyway, I would never look for a flatmate if I wasn’t forced to do so. I simply needed money. I was self-employed copywriter who recently wasn’t lucky, few bigger expenses hit me at the same time, and my savings were shrinking, which all combined left me feel drained out, tired, and especially irritable. Well, I must admit: my potential cotenant hadn’t got it easy at the very beginning.
While looking for our lucky winner I had only one requirement: ability to keep mouth shut. Seriously, I may appear bitchy, but if that damn person could only stay quiet and mind their own business, I’d be content.
Obviously, my final flatmate, Jayden, wasn’t this type of case. He made me think so because when I first met him, he was hungover, as I got to know later (too late!). I must admit my first impression of him wasn’t actually that bad. The boy was around my age (I was 23), tall, skinny, and handsome in a specific way. I mean, he had a pretty face, although he definitely wasn’t fan of natural beauty. Young men had dyed black hair with long bangs, falling on one of face’s sides, these big, stretched ear holes (tunnels?), and small tattoo of a plant on a cheek. He was wearing decent clothes, though, some white, long sleeve shirt and branded jeans, looking fresh and clean.
And he didn’t talk too much. So I thought, why not? Let’s rent him a room. Let’s let him move in. He wouldn’t bother me. Frankly, I also quite liked the fact that he was young, not so bad looking guy.
Which turned out to be the most annoying, loud, pretentious, edgy, and vain asshole I’ve ever known.
I can write essays about things that I didn’t like about him.
For example, his edgy interests. He would sit on his ass, reading books about sects and occultism, not to mention his bedroom’s walls covered with this type of graphics and writings. He was also learning how to play on some sort of flute, which was loud and annoying, but he always looked so smug about it. He always invited some friends, who seemed to treat him like he was so cool and stuff, and they had their little parties or something in his room, drinking fancy drinks and talking in these blase voices. And let me tell you, he was obsessed with himself! He always stayed so long in the bathroom, probably matching outfits to earrings or something like this, to get out smelling like whole bottle of some male parfum. He even invited some photographers for “sessions”, I don’t know if he got paid for that, but they were taking half nude shots of him in some seductive poses. I only know because I accidentally came in once, when he was posing on his bed, with a silver cross covering his crotch – I’m not joking.
I was working at home, so I needed some tranquillity to be able to focus. Not only that, but I also hated the fact that he seemed to think that he is better than me. He wasn’t particularly rude, but always seemed so nonchalant, like he wanted to show me that he didn’t give a fuck about me or my boring life and will keep doing his things no matter if I am around or not – like when he had his photo sessions.
I am not ugly, I have long, brown hair, nice figure and I am pretty good at make-up; I was always ambitious and maybe a bit mysterious, as I’d never been really social. So I wasn’t used to lack of attention, not to mention insolence. I was dreaming of noticing some stain on his perfect image of confident, I don’t know, “artist”, as he probably considered himself.
It hadn’t appeared until that one night when I woke up for no reason and decided that I want to have some water.
I found him in the kitchen, eating a huge bucket of fries.
It probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but for me it was quite funny. He never used kitchen too much, I thought that he just didn’t eat a lot, not that he is a regular customer of McDonald’s delivery. I assumed that he is very careful about his diet, as he seemed to adore his own figure.
And there he was, greedily eating handfuls of greasy fries, in the middle of the night, with, as I noticed, large burger waiting for its turn. He stopped when he saw me, and his face finally lost its nonchalant mimic – he seemed surprised and – is this even possible? – a bit embarrassed.
I had to make use of that.
“You seem hungry”, I said, watching him carefully while filling my glass with water. I wasn’t hiding my smirk.
He blushed a little, which gave me some malignant joy.
“Yeah, maybe”, he said, shrugging his shoulders, clearly trying to appear as indifferent as always. But it couldn’t help him. From now on, I knew about his little weakness: unhealthy food.