Wishful Thinking

Nightly Life: Part Three

I wake up at four o'clock in the morning to the sound of a bump. At first, I'm disoriented. I can't remember where I am. The memories flood back to me as suddenly as they were forgotten. Hope's Peak Academy. Acceptance. The Ultimates.

Chihiro...

I sit up in bed, hair in a knot, and rub the sleep from my eyes. Once I can finally see again, I notice that Chihiro is missing from our bed. Confused, I step out of bed and quietly paw around the room to try and find him. Instead, I find the light switch.

Before I turn the lights on, I brace my eyes for the bright light. I flick the switch and the room floods with fluorescent light. My eyes adapt to the sudden brightness and I look around a fair bit. I can't find him anywhere

I check the bathroom, the closet, even in the hallway. He's nowhere.

Is Chihiro a sleepwalker?

I'm too tired to keep looking, so I decide to go back to bed. On the walk there, I drop the room key that Chihiro gave me and it bounces under the bed. I bend down to grab it again and I surprisingly see Chihiro down there, curled up in a little ball and shivering. He's still asleep somehow, despite the dust and hardwood flooring. I grab the key and put it on the counter, and return to the bed. I lightly shake Chihiro's shoulders to try to wake him up.

"Hey, Chihiro... What are you doing down there?" I quietly say. He mumbles a little and brushes me off, still with his eyes closed. 

"Come on, you can't be sleeping down there. You'll hurt your back." I shake him a little again. This time, his eyes flutter open. Slowly, mind you, but they opened.

"Oh... Hey Joy. What's happening?" Chihiro mumbles as he rubs his eyes.
"You rolled under the bed or something. I didn't know where you went." I say, a little louder this time. Wait for a second, did he just call me Joy? Is that a nickname??

"Oh. I'm sorry. What time is it?" Chihiro slowly crawls out from under the bed. He's fully dressed for some reason. When we fell asleep he was in his pyjamas.

"It's 4:15 in the morning. We need to get back to sleep." I say, helping him up. "Get your PJs on, we're supposed to wake up in three hours for breakfast." Chihiro nods and gets dressed in the bathroom, and he gets back into bed. As irritating as it is to wake up so early, I didn't mind talking to Chihiro again. It made it way better. 

I turn off the lights and curl up with him again. This time, he's facing me and hugs me back. He buries his head into my chest and pulls me close.

...

As sleepy as I feel, I just can't drift off. I'm kept awake by something, but I don't know what it is. It's been forty minutes since we went back to bed, but falling asleep is troublesome. Neither Chihiro nor myself have fallen asleep yet, and we just lay there looking at the ceiling.

"Hey, Joy, you have a ukulele, right?" Chihiro asks me through whispers. I nod. 
"Can you play me a song, please? It might help me sleep." I nod again and reluctantly let him go. I get out of bed, turn on the lights, grab my ukulele, and sit down on the edge of the bed. Chihiro is sitting up now, squinting through the sudden light. 

"What should I play?" I ask.
"Anything you want," he says. 

I begin singing a song that I wrote a few years ago that I wrote when I was mourning my cat. Despite my overwhelming nervousness about singing in front of Chihiro, I don't have any voice cracks or stutters. 

For the last two verses, Chihiro joined in and sang with me. When the song was over, I dropped my ukulele on my lap and looked at him in surprise.

"How do you know my song?" I ask.

"I've heard that song before so many times. When I was programming the AI I told you about earlier, I would have a video up in the background of a girl singing that exact song. Come to think of it, I think it may have been you! The hair colour, your hoodie, she kinda sounded like you too. I couldn't see her face because she was unaware of her being recorded, but it was still nice to listen to anyways!"

My jaw drops. I can't believe it.

"What's wrong, Joy?" Chihiro nervously asks. "Did I upset you?"

"No, no, of course not," I say. "I guess my friend put it online despite my requests."

"Well, I don't think it's a bad thing. A few days before I came here, I watched the video again and it's reached 900,000 views on YouTube. Your song is getting pretty popular."

I blush and turn away. I can't believe so many people loved my music. Knowing that so many people heard it makes me think about my cat again. I shudder and a single tear rolls down my face.

"It's a really good song, Joy. Don't be sad about it!" Chihiro says. He puts his hand on my shoulder and leans forward so I could see his face. He looks concerned. I don't look at him directly, only through peripheral vision. Seeing that he cares, even though I know he would, still brings me to full tears.

"That song was for my cat after he passed away," I say through quiet sobs. "I'm thinking about him now and I'm getting all emotional right in front of you..." I sniffle "I'm really sorry, Chihiro." I begin sobbing harder. That cat was my everything. 

Chihiro gives me a long hug and it makes me feel a lot better. After he lets go, I've finished crying.

"We should head to bed, Joy. It's 5:30 AM and we need to get up early. Come on, lets go." We shuffle back into bed and snuggle up close to each other. Chihiro reaches his arm around my shoulders and pulls me in close enough to feel his breaths. 

"Goodnight, Chihiro," I say.

"Goodnight, Joy."

After ten more minutes, I can't seem to fall asleep. With nothing to do other than wait, I tell Chihiro about myself.

"I used to write poems all the time, you know," I whisper. "Sometimes about love, about loss, and even about animals like frogs and bees. Eventually, I started turning those poems into stories, and those stories into plays for the drama club I was in. I was getting quite a bit of attention from the faculty that worked with drama kids and was even hired to write plays for elementary schools. One day, the club was short on actors as a few were sick and an understudy was out of town for the week. I decided to take their place as the lead role and did so well that I earned the title of Ultimate Actress." 

I finally begin to feel a little sleepy, and my eyelids get heavy. I look at Chihiro one last time before I close my eyes fully. His eyes open the slightest bit and says one quiet sentence.
"That's a very nice story, Joy."
I thought he was asleep! He heard all of that! Thank god I didn't finish with i love you

Finally drifting off to sleep, I look at his sleepy face again.

I 'm going to love Hope's Peak Academy.