The Family Project

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I'm so freaking nervous! Today I'm visiting Kai's house for the first time! It's the last week of summer break, and here I am at the school gates waiting for him to come and pick me up. Should I be happy that he'll be leading me there, or upset that he thinks I'll get lost? I don't know…

We'd become pretty good friends over the past five weeks, though I know he'd never admit it out loud, I'm sure he feels the same. Somewhere along the way I started calling him 'Kai' and he hasn't bitten me to death for it. That's proof enough for me.

Lately, I've been so distracted that I haven't practiced that much with my flame. But on a more positive note, I don't have nightmares as often, so all is bene. Not to mention we'd finished our homework in the first week and it's packed in my bag, ready for when school starts again. Since Kai was there to 'tutor' me, I'm sure to have scraped a pass on everything.

But whenever he looked over my answers he'd say; "I can't tell if you're an idiot or a genius…" And I have can't tell if he's making fun of me or not. I got hit a lot for 'writing stupid things' or spacing out or stuff like that. But my sore head will be worth it when I show Padre my scores.

We spent the rest our time just lazing about in my room with a fan blowing cool air on us. The high ceiling and insulated wooden floors make my room nice and cool in summer and cosy warm in winter. Kai said my room had 'good acoustics', which means it's a good place to play music or something like that.

Speaking of music, Kai brought over a whole bunch of cd's the day after we found an old cd player. He mostly had foreign music but they're really cool! I've become addicted to music; rock, pop, jazz, the blues, hip hop, be it in English, Japanese or Italian. I love it all!

We'd just sit and listen to music for hours. I'd filled up a cooler box with ice, water, juice and some gelato Padre had sent over from Italy, so we didn't have to go downstairs for snacks. The look on Kai's face when he first tried the gelato was priceless. Well, it is the best ice-cream in the world, the reaction is expected.

I think the gelato was part of the reason he came over almost every day even after 'the obnoxious herbivore' had come back from camp. Except for last week when he had gone overseas to be with his father for the entire week. Now that I think about it, that's probably why he knows Italian, and German, and English, and Russian, and Spanish…

Seriously, I struggle with just learning Japanese, how can he know so many damn languages! Oh well, it was a bit lonely without him around but I'm used to it. Life pretty much went back to normal in that week. But, it was a nice knowing I still had a friend out there.

I was rather surprised when yesterday Kai called and asked (read 'threatened') me over to his house today with a whole tub of gelato. I'm sensing an ulterior motive here, but the excitement of visiting a friend's house won me over.

Today I'm wearing a sleeveless white hoodie with red trims, brown three quarter cargo pants and my trainers. Its scorching hot today but all the clouds and my instincts tell me it will rain later, so I brought my fold up umbrella.

"Why does he want us to bring so much gelato?"

"Who knows…?" I eye the blue cooler bag at my feet. It is good manners to bring a gift when visiting someone's house in this country, right? Kai had brought some snacks and even a watermelon when he had come over…

"Maybe he just wanted to make sure you wouldn't forget to bring a gift."

"Gee, thanks for having confidence in me…" I mutter dryly.

"What are you doing?" If I hadn't known he was coming I probably would have jumped right out of my skin.

"Buongiorno Kai. How was your trip?" I smile lightly at him.

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