Later I texted her and apologized about a million times. She replied about a 100 sorrys later.
She scolded me for spamming her, then she accepted my apologizes. We texted back and forth changing the subject every-now-and-then, completely forgetting the whole point of being on our phones for a good 1 1/2 hours. There were a lot of LOLs and OMGs but then Valerie suddenly got very serious.
She said via text, "OK Ope, let's get down to business."
I texted, "Alright. You start first."
Since when did she even call me Ope? "So... about your birthday party, and the present."
"Ok; here we go with the lecture of punishment".
"WHAT?" She said "What I was saying was that when you had opened the present you seemed displeased. Like you were expecting something better."
"Well, was the box the present?"
She said with a smiling emoji, "No, not really. Well sorta, kinda. The main gift was the thing inside all of the ivory and pearl."
I replied, "Well I did see something but, it was like, invisible. I caught a glimpse of something. It looked like a..." I stopped typing. Took a deep breath, and typed, "a ghost." She answered with a bunch of exclamation points, "Yeah! So you did see it didn't you!"
Was my gift from my best friend a ghost? Valerie texted, "You're cursed! And you didn't even know it!" I received the message like it was real. But was it real? If it had been real-
"Sorry Kōbon, gotta run! Bye we WILL talk about this this later OK?"
I answer, "OK," bewildered beyond possible.
