Despite the small amount of chaos his words had caused nearby, a single fluttering of the Asian's eye was all it took to hold Bryce's short attention-span. He took a few cautious steps to peek at what the girl was so busily writing.
It was illegible to him.
Pictoral characters consisting of patterns of oriented lines were scattered across her screen, she could've been writing anything? He wanted to strike up a conversation with her, she was just his type— even more so due to his little change.
"Nǐ hǎo?" Bryce had been too caught up in wonder to notice that the beautiful Asian girl was now looking over her shoulder towards him with a curious look on her face. He had a preconceived notion that most Asian's were shy and avoidant, he hadn't expected her to engage with him even if he was looking at her work, but she was staring right at him, luckily he could at least work the simple phrase.
"Oh hey I mean, ni hao" his pronunciation garnered a small smile from the girl and that smile was quickly returned. She seemed interested in him, but reluctant to offer anything more than the previous wink, perhaps the language barrier was too much.
"English not very good, you okay?" The young Asian both made a naive effort to see what Bryce wanted and confirmed the language issue. However, Bryce suddenly had an idea, he'd never been good at languages, maybe it was time to change that, plus— he'd heard people that made an effort with Chinese were respected by the speakers.
He propped up his body in a more confident pose, his muscles slightly bulging, shirt puffing out in the right areas. He was still greatly enjoying his newfound height, it made his presence more manly and powerful (at least he thought so). "I'm fine thanks, and don't worry about speaking English, I speak perfect Chinese."
It was a lie of course, but not for long— he coughed as a tickling feeling strummed against his vocal chords— was that it?
He didn't think or feel any different.
The girl scoffed, and spoke in Mandarin to test his claim. "Zhēn de, wǒ bù rènwéi nǐ kěyǐ ma?" she smiled when the muscled Caucasian boy looked immediately confused, but then his lips parted and perfect Mandarin emerged from them, "Why do you doubt me? What can I do to prove it, maybe I should respond in a complicated manner full of ancient proverbs and elaborate grammatical clauses, would that suffice?" he asked pompously.
The produced sounds made no sense to his ears, all he had to do was want to understand or to speak and his brain took care of the rest. To Bryce, it felt like speaking English with a Chinese filter on. When the girl spoke, it was as if little subtitles appeared in his head, it was a pretty incredible feeling. Her eyes widened in surprise, had his earlier pronunciation been a joke? If she wasn't looking right at him she'd have thought she was speaking to a mature Asian man. Her interest in the rather tall and bulky stranger intensified, it wasn't common to run into such a good speaker so young.
"No, don't worry, your Mandarin is incredible, where did you learn?" She asked curiously, again it sounded strange to Bryce but it was almost as if she spoke English directly to his mind.
"Oh, I learnt online" He said the first thing that came to his head, and suddenly he could remember sitting by his laptop and tapping away on his phone at every opportunity to brush up on his Mandarin. He blinked a couple of times, the sudden memories felt strange, he knew they were untrue until moments ago yet they felt so natural.
"That's rather hard, you must have spent a long time studying, how did you perfect your speaking then?" The girl questioned him further.
"It didn't take that long" Bryce boasted, "and I—"
He took a moment to think, meanwhile his memories changed again, now he'd been a natural when learning, hardly needing to spend any time at all studying.
"Sorry..." he changed the subject, not wanting to accidentally change his past to have spent a year in China or suddenly have a Chinese family member.”...What are you writing?" He asked kindly, signalling the laptop screen.
The girl seemed a little dissatisfied by his response but turned the laptop screen towards Bryce who had moved to the opposite side of the table. "Can you read too?" She asked.
"N- Yes!" Bryce said with surprise, the foreign characters shifted before his very eyes, lines and markings morphed into English text on the screen where he wished to read. Once he'd read a passage it sprung back to the illegible pictographs. Quickly he realized how strange he must've been acting, so his mouth closed and he attempted to look more stern as he deciphered the girl had been reviewing a book. "Seems like you didn't really enjoy it?" he replied, turning the screen back around.
"Well, it wasn't very good, so why would I?"
"Good point. Are you a critic or something?" Bryce asked, showing interest beyond the girl's enhanced bust.
"Only for fun, I write for the paper" she replied pridefully but quickly took a sip of the tea held between her breasts, the conversation was straying to boring areas and the boy had stopped looking at her with those eyes. She didn't want a deep conversation about jobs, prospects or anything of the sort. So instead of asking about his own work, she asked, "...want to join me?"
Bryce could feel himself falling for the girl quickly, her eyes conveyed her intentions effectively. So he sat, and the girl smiled wide. "Sorry, I didn't ask your name" he admitted with a bow of the head.
"Ju" she replied leaving enough time to provoke a response from the boy, "I'm Bryce" he replied, hearing the first English word escape his mouth for a while.
'Ju' he thought to himself, 'how can I take this further?' he pondered on that for a short moment before realizing he could probably cover for anything he said. Nevertheless, he was liking Ju as Ju, and didn't feel right messing with her mind.
Bryce decided to try his hand at light flirting, "You're a very beautiful girl Ju, you caught my attention without even trying"
She looked down.
"I'm sure they did." she replied faking offence, it was much more fun playing hard to get. Meanwhile her facial features slightly sharpened and her hair became slick with additional volume.
Her short response caused Bryce to wince, "That's not what I meant, I err— I'm not saying they're um—"
She reopened the laptop to block his view of her exposed chest, her face full of counterfeit scorn.
Bryce felt the blood rush his cheeks, "you just... I didn't mean that, I mean it... I wasn't trying to be—" Bryce stumbled and stuttered for a while longer before Ju gave a small wave of the back of her hand to signal the end of her joke. It was funny to her, with such a large body she thought he'd be a lot smoother, but he seemed as awkward as an inexperienced teenager.
Bryce wiped his brow and let out a long exhale, he was off the hook. However, he'd accidentally given away how uneasy the situation had him, she was just so beautiful, he didn't want to squander his chance to bag a ten naturally. On the other hand, he didn't love being made to look foolish, especially not with how strong and powerful he'd felt only minutes ago. So he let out a short chuckle, "Very funny, you had me going there, but aren't they a little too big to hide behind that?"
He took a chance on offending her, she'd been cheeky up till now and he didn't think that'd be pushing too far, plus— the results would far outweigh the risks.
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