i like you but i cant say it

CHAPTER 3: shattered pride (page 9)

Caleb layed on his mattress. There wasn't even any bedsheets on it. He watched the fan in the middle of his ceiling slowly turning, barely even generating any air into his room.

"The outside is cold enough anyway." He thought while the sounds of crickets outside his window chatted in a never ending loop.

The walls in his room were in pitiful conditions but Caleb barely cared to notice them anymore.

He shut his eyes and turned to his side, the sounds of the television downstairs played annoyingly while his mom was already passed out drunk on her chair.

Usually, he would've climbed out the window or never returned home in the first place, but the pain in his limbs made it unbearable to even walk more than a few minutes at a time.

He lifted a hand and touched the bandaid plastered on his elbow, and Caleb felt his eyes glisten.

Something inside him shattered today. The sounds from downstairs were getting on his nerves as he picked up the only pillow he had and covered his ears with it. He bit down on his bottom lip as tears started to form and roll down his face, seaping onto the mattress under his head.

"Hope you get better..."

"Had he really been genuine when he said that?? His face was..." Caleb remembered exactly what Kenji had looked like in that moment, the genuine worry in his eyes, "was it real..?"

The sounds started fading away, the last thing he thought about being Kenji's face before exhaustion took over Caleb's body.

[...]

|ᴡᴇᴅɴᴇsᴅᴀʏ|

In class, the teachers only seemed to talk about nonsensicall things.

Caleb rested his head onto his hand, his mind starting to fog again. The teacher's words sounded like muffled conversations between herself and herself. What was she even getting at?

Caleb would rather focus on flipping his pen around in his hand, much more interesting.

Suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his hand. He flinched and dropped the pen. He let out a frustrated sigh before bending over to pick it up but his torso ached painfully.

A pale hand reached over and grabbed the pen. The hand lifted the pen up and placed it onto Caleb's desk.

Caleb got up and looked, his hazel eyes meeting Kenji's dark brown ones. Caleb was surprised but Kenji didn't spare him a longer glance and looked back to the teacher, I mean, how could he, Caleb's the one who's been getting aggressive with any and all interactions they've ever had.

Well, almost every interaction now.

A flash of yesterday's image of Kenji crossed over Caleb's mind again, and something made his heart feel as though it just skipped a beat. His chest tightened and his eyes began to drift aside nervously for the first time.

It almost felt unreal, how did it happen? Like a blurry memory from a movie, but yet it was real.