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He cocks his head to the side, then reaches up and unfastens the ties that keep his mask in position. Grasping the front of the mask with one hand, he pulls it free from his face. Showing me who he is beneath the mask.
It’s not what I expected. Not at all.
“You’re…” I begin, my words swallowed down by the tightness in my throat and the frantic beat of my heart pounding inside my chest.
“Deformed,” he spits, his eyes flaring with anger.
“Deformed?” I frown, my eyebrows pulling together as I drink in the sight of him. “That wasn’t what I was going to say at all.” Goosebumps rise across my skin and my stomach flips with both pity, empathy, and beneath it all, a glimmer of...lust. That reaction, most of all, sickens me. I force it away, lock it down. I will not be attracted to this man. No. Never.
“Then what were you about to say?” he asks, misreading my reaction. He thinks I’m disgusted by him. I’m not.
“I—”
“Be careful, Zero... Well?” he insists.
You’re like me.
Those are the words that sit on my tongue as I stare at the thick, red scar that runs from just beneath his left eye, across his cheek and ends up beneath his ear. The skin is raised, puckered and pinched around the scar. In some parts it’s lumpy where the scar tissue hasn’t healed well. It’s a prominent disfigurement, an obvious flaw on an otherwise beautiful face. The wound that caused it must’ve been horrific. What on earth happened to him, and more importantly, why do I even care?
“Someone hurt you,” I find myself saying.
His eyes flash, the blue lighting up like lightning parting the rolling clouds of a stormy sky. “I don’t need or want your pity.”
“Is that why you wear a mask?” I press, unable to hide the compassion in my voice. He’s younger than I thought, no more than his late twenties, and yet that scar and the way he’s looking at me now makes him seem far older than his years.
“I wear a mask because Ilikeit. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“You’re hiding,” I whisper, and I don’t mean his scar. I’m not talking about his predilections either, given he’s so open about those, but something else, something deeper. My skin prickles, telling me I’m right.
For a moment he doesn’t respond, instead we stare at one another as though trying to understand the true depths of the person standing before us. Then his nostrils flare, and before I even know what’s happening, Konrad has my arms gripped in his large hands, his fingers pinching my skin through the hoodie I’m wearing.
“I’mnothiding,” he spits. “You think I care about this scar, or the pity I see in your strange eyes. You think I’m weak for choosing to wear a mask to cover what people find unacceptable, disgusting?”
“N—no, that isn’t what I think,” I retort, flinching as his grip tightens and he lifts me off the floor. My fingers fly to his chest, grasping a hold of the lapels of his suit jacket to steady myself on my tiptoes.
“I don’t hide behind the masks any more than my brothers do. We wear them because that’swhowe are.”
“What does that even mean?” I find myself asking. “Who are you, really?”
Pushing me away so that I stumble back against the sink, he snarls at me, his top lip curling. “You don’t get to question me. Get washed, you smell like cow shit.”
With that, he snatches up his mask and walks out of the bathroom, leaving me panting, breathless, and utterly confused by the sudden overwhelming sympathy I feel for him and the desire to truly see the man beneath the mask.
