Lost in a Pursuit

His words

Brr...Brr...Brr...

Miyano, please, please, PLEASE pick up!

I was at home, after school. I didn't have the courage to apologise to her in person.

The line went through a couple of seconds later. Whew.

"Hey," I tried to sound friendly.

"Hi Ichi," she answered, as cheerful as always.

"Miyano... you know... uhh... Sorry, I... um..."

"Ichi, what're you apologising for? You've done nothing wrong!"

"..."

At this very moment, a strong sense of guilt overwhelmed me. I squeezed my phone so hard, the hard phone case was digging into my palm. There was this unpleasant feeling in my stomach, like my stomach muscles constricting and my small intestine tangling itself into knots. I can't believe I'd been so horrible to decline her offers to hang out; I have no idea how many lies I'd told her to excuse myself. And she was still treating me as a friend.

I can't take this anymore.

I wanted to leave this sappy moment for another day. But, as I had realised, even if I delayed this, sooner or later I would still have to apologise. The longer the wait, the greater the guilt, and my apology would've long lost its meaning by then.

Dammit, Akashi-kun! It's all because of your words that I'd decided to do this!

"Ichi? What's wrong? You're scaring me."

My eyes blurred, its sides wet with tears. Dammit , dammit, dammit... I'm so sorry, Miyano...I'm really sorry...

"Okay," I inhaled deeply, "Miyano, you know... those various reasons---no, excuses---that I had said to avoid hanging out with you? Those were...um...lies... I had actually wanted to coop up in my room to study all day... And now I really regret it. I have not used my time properly...Sorry..."

As soon as I had finished my last word, I waited, in the nerve-wracking silence, for my final verdict.

One choice, and our friendship could've ended there and then.

"Well... Ichi..." Miyano's voice was surprisingly soothing, "It's okay, actually. I may not know your pressure of getting high marks, but I wouldn't want to restrain you from doing what you want. I know your greatest rival is Akashi-kun, because you would always talk about how you would try to do better than him next time. But... I still want you to make it up to me by treating me to cakes! Haha," she ended her verdict with a laughter. Clearly, it was a forced laughter with mirthless undertones. Knew it. I had expected that she wouldn't forgive me easily.

Nonetheless, I still had the chance to mend the friendship. If there are cracks, I'll glue it together.

"Thank you... Really," I raised my spectacles and wiped my tears with the heel of my hand.

"No prob! I'm your best friend, after all," Miyano shrugged the matter off like that was nothing. Hopefully, that was good. "Oh yeah, Ichi, are you gonna be taking Art?"

That reminded me. We went through the aptitude tests for Art and Music today! Frankly, the test for Art wasn't exactly difficult, but it wasn't exactly easy either. It was okay. Just okay. However, for Music... I probably flunked it, and I had already known beforehand Akashi was going to ace it. I...wasn't exactly not thrilled about this, since I had zero talent, I couldn't help it. Recalling the time he had played a piece on the violin of his effortlessly and gracefully on the school's stage, I reckoned he was going to take up Music.