Until my words reach you

Unexpected Reunion

At that moment, I felt a sudden sense of nostalgia.

"...Uh hey, would either of you say something? Not gonna lie, this reunion feels a bit awkward..." she said

She's still socially awkward as ever.
Truth be told, I'm relieved. She's still the same, yet different at the same time. It's hard to explain.

"Ah...I guess I'm just a bit surprised to see you here?" I said nervously

"To be honest, I'm surprised to be here myself......the truth is I got fired from my internship" Aiko said

"Oh, why's that? It seemed like a good opportunity." I said a bit surprised

"Yeah. It was a really great opportunity. I messed up though, spilling ink all over few pages.
After that, the creator of the manga series spoke to me.
He said that "my art is emotionless and empty" and that I should "focus on studying, and graduating highschool".
Worst part is, he's not even wrong. Honestly...I wasn't talented to begin with. It was dumb of me to think so."Aiko said with a laugh, a hint of pain hidden underneath.

It was obvious that she was trying to hide the disappointment in herself.
How should I even respond to this?

"What manga were you assisting on?" I asked, trying my best to casually change the subject.

"Ehehehe~ I'm glad you asked! It was "Yuri-kun can't say I love you"one of my absolute favorite ShojoHop series!" She said grabbing the manga out of her bag.

She opened the manga to reveal the pages.

"This is what I worked on~" she said with a very smug smile.

Despite her failures, you could tell that she truly loved working on this manga.
Her art was so expressive, and full of life. How could he say her art is emotionless?
She probably spent hours working on this manga, only to get fired because of such a stupid reason?
They probably wanted her gone to begin with if that's the case.

Damn it...
It's annoying as hell honestly!

"You've definitely improved your art, that's for sure" I said.

"Well sorta, there is still have a lot I need to improve on though"She said

Aiko then glances at the clock.

"Anyways, I probably should head to my classroom. I wanna finish reading this manga before class starts. I'll come back to your classroom at lunch, so see you guys later!" Aiko said, closing the door behind her.

She seemed down.
With such a brief interaction...I assume she didn't want to talk about her internship at all, but knew we'd bring it up. I feel bad honestly.

One question of mine still remains unanswered. Why did she transfer back to Mizumiya? There's tons of better schools in Tokyo, so why here?
No point in worrying, It's not that big of a deal after all.
...
It's a huge deal actually.

Author: Apologies for the short chapter, I hope you enjoyed it!
This series will be going on a short hiatus, next chapter should be posted sometime early November. Thanks for understanding!