Page 41 of A Lab Rat’s Guide to Fated Love

Twenty Five

Goat-Nori and the Wedding

Vir

A musky, sweet aroma filled the kitchen as Vir carefully chopped a single ripe guava into neat little crescents. He scraped the seeds off each slice before carrying them to the small table by the window, where his breakfast sat waiting for him.

It had been raining all of last night, and the grueling sound had kept him up till the early hours of the morning. He considered calling in sick, then quickly decided against it. He was going to need the distraction today.

Placing his half-eaten toast back on its plate, Vir picked up his coffee and took a sip.

Strong. Bitter. Perfect.

“Good morning, Billie,” he spoke softly, turning to his landlord’s fat white cat as she appeared on the windowsill. Landing with unmatched grace, Billie sauntered towards him and began head-butting his elbow to ask for her routine morning scratches.

Vir obliged.

“Rrrrreeow.” Billie squinted at him affectionately, purring like a running motor the entire time.

He chuckled, squinting back at her. “I love you, too.”

Once satisfied, Billie hopped off the table and trotted away to her bowl of kibble that Vir kept filled for her by the electric fireplace.

He took another sip of his coffee before letting out a sharp exhale as he unfolded the month-old newspaper he’d swiped from the university library.

His eyes darted to the black-and-white picture at the bottom right corner: a candid shot of Nori with her arm looped around Ryan’s; both laughing as they glanced sideways at each other.

It was a wedding announcement. The date was set for exactly a month from when it was published.

Renowned nano-biotechnology scientist, Dr. Nori Arya, set to marry childhood sweetheart Dr. Ryan Matthews in…

Today. Nori was getting married today in another part of the world, while Vir sat continents apart, sulking in his apartment, hating the weather, and professing his love to a cat.

Billie was a lovely cat, though. He had no regrets there.

Vir reluctantly nibbled on another piece of toast before he gave up and pushed the plate away. He’d slathered on enough butter to feed an army, but the thing still tasted like dry cardboard in his mouth.

At least she looks happy. He folded the newspaper back with a sigh. That’s enough.

Glancing around his empty living room, he considered skipping work again. Billie caught him watching and squinted from atop the kitchen island where she sat loafing peacefully.

He squinted back at her in response.

“If a cat makes eye contact with you,” Nori had told him once, while showing him a demonstrative video of her cat, Goober, “and blinks slowly, that is him saying ‘I love you’ in cat-speak. ”

Vir lurched to his feet, his chair scraping against the floor.

“Rrrrroow,” Billie chirped without moving from her comfy position on the counter.

Tossing the untouched guava slices onto a paper towel, Vir grabbed his things and left the apartment for work.

“Nori!” He called out as he passed by his landlord’s front yard below, and an overly cheerful goat with a small bell collar came hopping towards him. Unfolding the paper towel, he crouched to offer her the sliced fruit, then chuckled at goat-Nori’s excited bleats at the sight of her favorite snack.

He couldn’t recall exactly when it had started to become a habit, but at some point, during the past few years—on days he missed Nori more than the usual amount—he’d started buying guavas to cut them the way she used to like. Since Vir couldn’t eat those, he’d just toss them out afterwards.

Goat-Nori bleated again, and he stroked her tiny forehead as he recalled the day he’d first met her as a sickly little kid roughly a year ago. His landlord had found her as an abandoned baby goat nearby, drenched from the rain and deathly frail.

She’d refused any food offered to her before sniffing out the guava in Vir’s trash that he was on his way to discard. He’d offered her the seedless slices, and she’d devoured them all within seconds, making him laugh and call her goat-Nori in response. The name had stuck. She was goat-Nori.

Not that human-Nori was ever going to appear there, demanding her name back.

At least she’s happy. He pushed himself to his feet. That’s enough.

A lright then,” Vir dismissed his last class for the day, “enjoy your weekend. And don’t forget, the report’s due next week.”

While the students slowly filed out of the lecture hall, some pausing briefly to wish him a good weekend on their way out, he returned to his desk to gather his things.

He’d planned on spending the evening at the library, preparing material for the next week’s lectures so he wouldn’t have time to mope around and wallow in self-pity for a few more hours.

But now he just wanted to head back home. And maybe have a drink or two .

Though alcohol wouldn’t fix his feelings—or lack thereof—it might knock him out for a bit. Otherwise, looking at the dark clouds looming outside, he knew he had another sleepless night waiting for him ahead.

Vir couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt something. He was still highly sensitive to others’ emotions. Nothing had changed in that regard. But no matter how intense an emotion he picked from others; it still wasn’t his own.

A permanent layer of apathy coated his insides, allowing him to feel everything, yet be indifferent to it all.

Whether this was some leftover side-effect from the experiment or something else entirely, Vir didn’t know.

But he also didn’t care. To him, it was neither a good thing nor bad.

Just a twisted shade of a perpetual gray that seemed to have enveloped him at some point, and refused to let go.

He wasn’t bothered about color, anyway. Because what was the point?

Picking his stack of books with his tablet balanced on top, he started towards the door when a lone remaining student still seated at the back of the hall caught his eye. He glanced in her direction and staggered to a halt, nearly dropping the stack as heat flooded his chest.

No. Fuck, NO.

At long last, after years of tending to his very fragile sanity, he’d finally lost his mind.

And how did he know that? Well, because Nori was somewhere in Canada right now. At her own wedding. She couldn’t be in two places at once. And he certainly wasn’t dreaming.

Vir wanted to bark out a laugh. One that perfectly matched his current state of mental decline, but he couldn’t even open his mouth. He watched, frozen, as the woman rose from her seat and slowly made her way down the amphitheater steps.

“Hello professor.” She extended a small hand towards him. “I’m Dr. Nori Arya. Have we met before?”

A painful lump rose in his throat at the sound of her voice. The way her mouth moved to form each syllable made his chest constrict, threatening to squeeze the life out of him right where he stood .

His vision blurred, and he blinked before something hot and wet rolled down his face. So, his tear ducts were still functional, after all.

With a sharp exhale, he turned on his heels and marched out of the classroom.