1 February 14
"You're going to die," the Gypsy stated matter-of-factly.
Summer scowled at the fortune teller, the woman was holding Summer's hand and pretending to read the lines there while the Gypsy's other hand was extended, palm up. She gave her customer a bored look as if Summer was too slow to react to the hand gesture.
"…Oh, you want more money?" Summer asked with raised eyebrows and an incredulous tone. The woman nodded vigorously. Her dark eyes shone under the dim candlelight inside her ominous tent.
Summer found it ridiculous! She walked into this circus tent willingly knowing that it was a scam because she couldn't resist it, she thought it would be fun to hear about the many men that were interested in her since they were non-existent.
Summer mirrored the woman's gesture extending her other hand, palm up, "Give me back my money," she said tentatively.
The Gipsy's face contorted; she looked like she could be the reason behind the prophecy's fulfilment right this instant.
"Ha..haha, just kidding~" Summer laughed awkwardly then held the Gypsy's wrinkled hand with both of her hands, "How about I give you more money, and you give me a different reading, ha?" She pleaded.
Scam or not, Summer wanted to hear the Gypsy saying something else to her!
The fortune teller stared with empty eyes and said absolutely nothing. 'Hah whatever,' Summer reached a hand inside her pocket and placed paper money in the woman's still-extended free hand. The old lady looked, sounded, and now behaved like a greedy crow; her eyes didn't even flicker to see the number on that money bill.
"Looks like there's still hope for you," the fortune teller finally said.
Summer's mood immediately perked up.
"Your jinx is overlapping with the great fortune of finding one's true love, it seems like your Mr. Right is the only path leading to your survival, you MUST seek the man that has been trying to make you realize that he is interested in you, and you have exactly 30 days left to live so you need to coax your stars in his direction, otherwise…" The Gipsy's many bead bracelets made a rattling sound as she showed Summer a slit-throat gesture with her hand, "Consider yourself warned,"
Summer was back to scowling.
"No one has been hitting on me..."
"That's not true," the woman argued stubbornly. "You are just slow in the brain,"
Summer's mouth fell open, not only was the crow a scammer and a thief but also she was incredibly rude! The crow's narrow eyes became wide all of a sudden as if something evil possessed her.
"Okay! Thank you~" Summer was about to scramble up to her feet when words started pouring out of the Gypsy's mouth.
"Open up your eyes, true love is somewhere close to you," The Gipsy suddenly threw her head back then her arms flew up and started shaking violently, "Around the corner! Around the corner!" She sang out like a crazy person.
Summer flinched backward as fear tugged at the corners of her heart, but as if somebody pressed the off button inside the fortune-teller, she was back to normal a second before Summer was about to run for her life. The Gipsy glared at a frightened Summer with very wide eyes, "Finding out who he is and pursuing him in addition to accepting his advances is your ONLY chance of surviving, you hear me? If you ended up dying, things would get VERY complicated for you,"
Summer blinked twice, 'Huh?' Maybe those candles around the tent were spiced up with something, after all, the tent did smell funny. Summer sneakily reached inside her purse and took out her handkerchief then placed it on her nose and pretended to sneeze. 'If I died, things would get very complicated for me? As if!' Summer thought inwardly.
The Gipsy's bead bracelets rattled again as she shooed Summer out of her tent with her hands, "You have been warned!"
"I-I am warned, thoroughly warned, bye now!"
Summer pushed herself with one hand and was up on her two feet with the stealth of a ninja, she half ran out of the tent with her other hand pressing the handkerchief on her nose, she was holding her breath inside her lungs.
"Haah…Haah,"
Summer panted with her hands pressed against her knees after leaving enough space between the crazy woman's tent and herself. She was quickly back to making a run for it as she couldn't wait to go back to the safety of her home.
***
"... Welp, I'm dead then," Summer threw both of her arms up in the air in the middle of the road right next to her apartment building. A couple of startled pedestrians took two steps away from her.
She spent the entire way back from the circus to her home trying and failing not to take the fortune teller's words seriously. She squeezed her brain hard and thought of every man that was even slightly close to her, but nothing rang a bell. 'No one is even remotely interested in me!'
When she was back inside her apartment and after locking her door three times, her feet took her straight to the calendar that hung next to the refrigerator in her kitchen.
"You have got to be kidding me,"
The calendar mocked her silently, exactly 30 days later, the date would be February 14.
Summer wanted desperately to convince herself that this whole thing was a coincidence, but she found it hard to do so. She was one of those people who believed in the signals she received from the universe and had searched for them many times; they did end up guiding her way more than once. She had always found comfort in that method of living.
"One month to live… Mr. Right around a corner… Valentine's Day…"
She tried to paste the clues together and reached one final conclusion after thinking long and hard about the events of the entire day. It doesn't matter whether it's a scam or not, Summer decided to take the warning the Gypsy crow gave her very seriously. And in order to be able to look forward to a future with somebody she already knew but couldn't quite tell who that was, Summer had to look behind and take a glimpse at her past.
She picked up the cocoa cup she prepared for herself and threw a marshmallow on top, then she headed to her bedroom. Once there, she turned on the light and headed to her bookcase, she picked up her worn out diary that she used to diligently write in before she got employed and stopped having time for it. She walked a few more steps and placed her cup on the bedstand, then she stretched her body sideways on her bed with her diary in hand.
'Boys, huh…'
She decided to reminisce about the only two boyfriends she ever had – boyfriend number two was hardly a boyfriend since he was her fiancé – all of it was truly bothersome.
The first chapters had the name of her first boyfriend all over them, he was her first love, a boy whom she met in elementary school. And even though she went to an all-girls school, he ended up pursuing her in the ninth grade since he was her neighbor.
The pages of her diary were filled with dramatic events that took place during the next two years, there were many lines decorated with red hearts going on about very few dreamy public meetings with him, and then there were many heartless pages about the meetings that happened in secret between the two of them because of her family's ideology.
Summer sighed as she remembered all of those forgotten youth feelings, she hated going around her parents' backs and so she passive aggressively rebelled over their rules as a teenager, that was until she found out that her great Romeo had three other girlfriends on the side! 'Give me back my first kiss', Summer thought bitterly.
She flipped through the next pages with some more cynical thoughts about how the world seemed about to end back then, 'Sheesh!' She finally reached the parts that introduced her second boyfriend.
'The unreasonable fiancé, I dodged a bullet back then.'
Summer looked at the words that started making up images inside her head.
She got introduced to the guy by the uncle she hated most out of the seven ones she have, the young man her age was regarded as a perfect match for Summer by her entire family because of his education and background that befitted them.
Her twenty-one year old self went along with the engagement believing that having a fiancé would give her more freedom in her college life, that her family would at least give her some of the space she desperately craved but dared not demand since she loved them so much. She was right about the freedom part, but that freedom proved to be too pricy.
'Poor fella,' she mused.
Each time her mind wandered to the days when she was engaged, Summer was full of pity for him. She broke off the engagement a few months after they wore the rings with the blessing of her family, the guy was pathologically jealous and overall, a very angry person. He would've been an eternal winter in Summer's life, yet she wished him well every time she thought about him.
*Thud!*
Summer let the warn-out notebook fall from her hand to the floor.
'What a pathetic love life,'
