𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐑𝐘

ELEVEN.

You had to be dreaming. Obviously you were still sleep deprived from that late night yesterday—and now that was eating away at your dream, forcing you to hallucinate.

Not like that would have been the first time, anyways. A gunshot embedded with some drug had hit you once, and the worst thing that had happened was that Dream's Mask song started to play on repeat in your head. As did James Charles's voice. Then you had suddenly seen Colleen Ballinger moving towards you at startling speed—

"Are you actually Arata?" You blinked, "I mean, AI is getting scary right now..."

Well, you doubted that AI would be able to capture his true essence. Even doing nothing, Arata had the unmistakable charm and charisma that all, if not most, idols possessed.

"Are you thinking about that hallucination you had a while back?" Arata sighed, "that must have been rough."

See, Arata truly knew you. He knew everything about you; you knew everything about him.

Daichi cleared his throat.

"So, seeing how you two actually know each other, then I trust that you will be able to help Arata assimilate into the school once more."

"You're asking him?"

"You're asking me?"

Both of you turned to look at Daichi with incredulous looks on your face—and Daichi raised an eyebrow. You two were undoubtedly in sync, and the student council president didn't know whether to be alarmed or amused by it.

"Arata is very popular—even before he was an idol trainee. While you, [Name]..." Daichi paused, "you tend to create the opposite effect."

"How unpopular are you, [Name]?" Arata furrowed his eyebrows, mirth evident on his features—"you used to be very popular back in Sora, if I remember correctly. I mean, look at your face. You could have joined me to become an idol."

You scowled. Sora was some high level assassin-spy academy you two had once attended—it wasn't exactly fun, what with the brutal missions and the injuries, but there weren't cowards. Who even was scared of a snake? They had dealt with other animals before.

"Terry the snake happened. And the person who pulled me to the forest started this whole mess. I don't think I'm unpopular, per se, and it's not exactly like they dislike me. I think...they think I'm scary." You explained, frowning. The details of the incident was still etched in your memory. If only you could remember your biology half as well as you remembered your embarrassing moments.

"Some school lab incident," you told him, with a look that read I'll tell you more later.

"Forest? I thought that was a school garden," Arata interrupted you, confused.

"That's what I thought too!"

Daichi looked extremely concerned and simply done. He pinched his nose bridge, exhaling a long breath.

"You two—"

"There's a burn on your wrist. It's going to scar." Arata seemed to ignore whatever words you just told him, and instead touched your hand gingerly, with some sort of...tenderness you couldn't quite place your finger on. It had been extremely long since you two had last seen each other—but so far you two hadn't done anything but exchange smatterings of words. But his gaze always lingered on you, soft and sweet like you remembered.

"Whatever it is, I don't care. My point is, perhaps you two would like to catch up while directing one another around the school. [Name] always gets lost. He shows up for Mathematics with Chemistry textbooks, he shows up to the science lab—which he is temporarily banned from, by the way—with his English textbooks."