Game Changer | Petalz 🌸🍃

Chapter X

 What the hell is he doing here?

It has been years since Sakura last saw her dad outside a stadium or a soccer court, and if she had to be honest, recently, she found it hard to even imagine him outside of those two places.

But there's no doubt that it's him, strolling in the distance. She would recognize that peculiar gait anywhere: hands behind his back, he's walking in that slow but deliberate manner, trying his best to hide his limp.

"Sakura?" Kazuha calls out to her, eyebrows deeply furrowed as she takes off her headphones, and only then Sakura realizes they've stopped running.

He can't see us together, she thinks to herself in panic, leaving Kazuha's questioning gaze unanswered.

"Are you okay?"

Jump into the river? Ditch Kazuha and run back home?

As she tries to come up with an escape plan, Kazuha approaches her, visibly alarmed by her behavior. She tries to look over her shoulder to follow Sakura's line of vision but in that moment, Sakura grabs her arm and drags her to the nearest tree.

Her first instinct is to hide behind it, but the tree isn't wide enough to hide them both, so she presses her back against it and pulls Kazuha closer to herself to use her body as a cover.

The younger girl lets out a startled yelp, her hand bracing against the tree trunk next to Sakura's head to avoid collision.

"What's going on?"

Once again, Kazuha wants to check what's behind them, but Sakura reaches her hand to firmly cup her cheek, preventing her from looking away.

"Don't look behind you," she mutters, still not letting go of Kazuha's cheek which turned significantly warmer under her touch.

"O-okay," Kazuha mumbles, her eyes flitting all over Sakura's face before settling on a spot above her head.

Craning her neck to look over Kazuha's shoulder, Sakura checks the location of her dad. Thankfully, he has walked past already without noticing either of them.

Sakura heaves a sigh, closing her eyes and slumping against the tree. When she opens them again, Kazuha's gaze flickers to her face, and it finally dawns on her the kind of position they are in - Kazuha towering above her, so close she can practically feel the heat emanating off the girl's body. Her eyes shy, her cheeks flushed, and when she speaks her breath skims across Sakura's ear, making her shudder.

"Is i-it okay now?"

Sakura swallows hard, heart pounding so loud in her ears she can barely hear her own thoughts. And so she can only nod to Kazuha's question; she doesn't trust the kind of sound that would leave her lips if she opened them now.

Kazuha pulls away from her, taking two steps back, and Sakura can finally take a breath without the fear of brushing up against the girl.

"Sooo what was that about?" Kazuha asks cautiously.

"Uhm, I..." Sakura stutters as she tries to come up with some convincing explanation to that bizarre stunt she just pulled off, but she still hasn't fully recovered from whatever that situation was a moment ago and her thoughts consist of only one phrase repeated over and over again - that was too close, way too close .

And the worst part is, she's not even sure what situation she's referring to - her dad almost seeing them together, or Kazuha's body almost pressing against hers.

"Have you perhaps seen someone you didn't want to see?" Kazuha prompts and Sakura recognizes concern in her voice.

But she doesn't want to mention her dad. It's too complicated, and she wouldn't even know where to begin. So although she wanted to avoid this at all cost, she feels like she has no other option but to lie.