C2 Chapter 2

Marissa Carmine almost had a panic attack when suddenly the volume of the music rose from the stereo.

She recently bought a new music system as her old one decided to die down. She wasn’t that good at technology like her peers, so when she attempted to press all sorts of buttons to reduce the volume, it only worsened the situation.

In her defence, she did tried to read and understand the instructions given in the manual, but it all were gibberish to her.

“You! Stupid dumb box! Why don’t you lower your damn voice? Goddamit! Why can’t this system be simple to work with?” She shouted loudly, talking to no one in particular. “Jesus Christ! Come on, which one of you is going to lower the volume of the music?” She started talking to the buttons trying to figure the operation of her music system.

As crazy as this sounds, she didn’t want the grumpy old lady to give her a long lecture about discipline, and, as it is, it wasn’t her fault that she was not that literate about gadgets.

Unfortunately, stars were not aligned to support. Right when she was able to control the volume and get rewarded with much needed silence, the doorbell rang. She was confident that it would be one of her neighbours to reprimand her. But she could handle them. Her neighbours were pretty decent and understanding but she cannot say the same for that grumpy old lady.

When the doorbell rang twice in mere few seconds, she was sure that her worst possible dream came true. It has to be the grumpy old lady.

Marissa recalls the time when her friend Ronny decided it would be hilarious to awaken the entire building with loud music in the middle of the night. Much to her dismay, the outcome wasn’t very good as she got a long lecture by the famous grumpy old lady about being an ill-mannered woman and how it is not ladylike to have a guy home in the evening. She sometimes wonders how the hell that old lady was even born in this era. She was too narrow-minded and orthodox.

Nonetheless, now she must deal with the consequences of her unintentional accident.

She closed her eyes and opened the door, presuming to be the grumpy old lady. “I am so sorry, Margarita. It was totally by mistake. I got this new stereo and was having difficulty handling it...” She kept on rambling words like an idiot for few second but she was greeted by silence.

That was not quite like the old lady.

Marissa slowly opened one of her eyes to get a glimpse of the grumpy old lady’s face, but to her utter surprise, she found a man standing in front of her. The very same man whom she swore never to meet or even think about ever again.

The man from her past.