A Firefly's Glow

Chapter Eight: Part One

“N-N-N-N-N-N-N—“ I began, feeling my pulse stiffen my shoulders. “No!”

I kneeled against the sidewalk, biting my lower lip. “It’s over! I’ll never find the beltway now!”

“Beltway?” the scarlet-haired boy repeated, awkwardly glancing down at me with his eyebrow raised. “If you’re looking for the beltway, I’ll take you there. It’s not too far. I take the beltway to school.”

“Really?!” I enthusiastically hopped onto my feet. I grabbed the boy’s arm and rapidly shook them. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” the boy wriggled his arm out of my grasp. “Come on. If you’re that much in a rush, we should find the beltway before you spill your guts.”

“Right!”

I stumbled beside him as he continued down the sidewalk.

As we walked in the fading sunset, I narrowed my eyes.

“The way he looked at you didn’t seem as if you’re just his friend.”

Really? Was this seriously going to enter my thoughts again?

I pondered how employers looked at their employees, or how classmates look at each other.

Perhaps employers give employees their “I’m the boss” face with their arms folded and their eyes in thin, inspecting slits. That looked suited Mikan more than Amanatsu.

Whereas classmates might glare at each other and give the non-verbal message of “I’m going to be ranked higher in class than you!”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Amanatsu never looked at me as an employee or classmate.

His eyes were always wide open. He’s usually moderately talkative. Plus, if I happened to trip over my own toes in front of him, he’d give a loud appreciative laugh.

I narrowed my eyes. Amanatsu didn’t look at me as if I was just a friend. He looks at me as if I’m a best friend.

Though there was something about his gaze that made something different. Sora was probably one of my best friends, but she didn’t look at me like Amanatsu did.

Amanatsu had a softer gleam in his eye. The smile he gave everyone else was different from the smile he gave me. His smile towards me was tender. The smile he gave everyone else was overly ecstatic and happy.

My only other option was that he looked at me as a crush or lover, though I automatically knocked that choice out of the running.

When you look at your crush, your eyes get all sparkly and your cheeks get all pink—like how Sora looks at her millions of crushes. Amanatsu never looked at me like that before.

So the question wandered about my mind.

How does Amanatsu look at me, then?

I had nearly forgotten that I was walking in the company of someone else and I lifted myself out of my thoughts.

I peered my gaze towards the boy who walked beside me and my eyebrows furrowed when I saw that he was already looking at me.

His brown eyes glimmered as the street lights that lined the streets lit up. His expression seemed completely blank, as if he was wearing a pale mask.

He seems to remind me of someone else I know, I comically thought as the blonde boy’s face flew through my mind.

“Um?” I began, feeling my face flush from the awkward silence.