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Chapter 3

The boys had lunch in a pavement restaurant under the enormous shade of an ancient Banyan tree near their school. An yawned constantly, gaining frowns from Lâm. Nam remained right beside them, looking somewhat lonesome and pitiable since the only person capable of seeing him here insisted to ignore him.

"Ah, I forgot to ask you earlier. Trang didn't come this morning, did she?", An covered another yawn.

"Nope.", Lâm put a huge piece of steak in his mouth.

"Don't you miss her?"

"Stop talking bullshit."

Nam opened his mouth to ask a question but gave it up as he was positive that Lâm would not answer him. The boy was now wearing an even more intimidating look than usual, clearly not fond of the joke.

"Speak of the devil...", An muttered.

Lâm turned around, so did Nam. A tall and slender girl in ao dai was running towards them from the direction of the school's back gate. Her tiny black pony tail danced as she jumped over some puddles on the sidewalk. A brilliant smile appeared on her cute face the moment she arrived at the boys' place.

"I took the first two periods off.", Trang explained.

"Were you sick?", An got a chair for her.

"I'm going home now. Yeah, I had a fever, I'm fine already. I just wanted to let you know..."

Trang peeked at Lâm, who had kept his silence all along. He had returned to eating his meal nonchalantly.

"... why I hadn't turned up this morning."

"Are you coming to the match this afternoon?"

"Sure!"

Trang stiffly repositioned her purple bag to her other shoulder. An looked up at her, then looked ahead at Lâm, who had not displayed any reaction at all.

"See you at two."

With that said, Trang took off. It had not even been a minute since she had come. Nam watched her sullenly walking away, then turned to Lâm, who had just finished lunch.

"What's up with you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Why were you so cold to her?"

"I didn't have anything to say, that's all."

"You could have asked her if she was well now..."

"She said she was okay already, didn't she?"

An heaved a sigh and went back to his meal. Lâm took the bottle out of his bag and drank half of the water inside. Nam sat on the chair that had used to be for Trang. Lâm cast a glance at him as if to inquire what he thought he was doing. In response, he produced a defiant smile.