A Firefly's Glow

Chapter Fourteen: Part Two

I sat myself in a seat beside the spotless windows and sloppily sunk my head onto the surface of my desk.

Even if this was just the first minute from when I had entered the classroom, the morning had seemed to awkwardly and languidly drone throughout the day.

Just minutes after I had woken up, I had merely stepped outside my bedroom doors. I was apologetic for what had happened the night before, but a part of my gut told me that I should avoid Keita, at least for that morning.

But “coincidentally”, the second I had stepped out of my bedroom, I had run headfirst into a familiar blonde-headed boy that I knew was the boy I was determined to avoid.

Running into him scared me that morning for two specific reasons: One, I wanted to avoid him for that morning—and running into him was certainly not avoiding. In fact, it was completely the opposite.

Two, what I had originally wanted to apologize for—the fact that the handkerchiefs that he had helped me place upon the hallway lights was removed—had its proof right outside my door. Keita had walked by my room from the alternate hallway, so he probably hadn’t seen the proof yet. But running into him outside my bedroom door just before he sees the bare hallways was deadly enough for me.

I prayed that he would continue down his hallway without taking a turn towards the path that he thought had the stiffly hung handkerchiefs, and I got my wish. He didn’t take a notice in any of the proof, but the shock still stained my thoughts afterwards.

The car ride to school was also quite as traumatic. Throughout the ride, I kept my head firmly planted against the base of the seats, spending the whole entire ride praying that Keita would not turn his head around to glance at me from his seat in front of me. He hadn’t turned his head around, but the car ride’s minutes felt like hours. When we finally reached campus, I stumbled out of the car and hurried towards one of the buildings without a single word. My abnormally painful shoes pinched me as I scrambled inwards into campus, and I was sure that I hadn’t put my shoes on backwards again.

All of these series of events landed me where I was now, with tiny beads of sweat running down the back of my neck. I released short exhales and I closed my eyes in exhaustion.

“You look like you just ran a marathon,” Amanatsu’s friendly, relaxed voice laughed as I listened to the clattering sounds beside me. I inched open my eyes to see Amanatsu’s figure sitting in the desk beside mine. His gingered hair sat loosely over his forehead, and his smile grinned across his face.

“I just did!” I stated, whipping my head off my desk and onto the palm of my hand. “This campus is so huge. This isn’t a school—it’s a neighborhood of buildings!”

Amanatsu released a cheerful laugh. “That’s why it’s not wise to run through campus. Walking is perfectly fine. We still have five minutes before class starts.”

“I wasn’t running to avoid tardiness,” I murmured, setting my head back onto the desktop. “I was running away from Keita.”

“Why?”

“Because last night, my glass of water spilt on him and it looked like I did it!”

“I think he’ll forgive you if you apologize.”

“I already apologized,” I crestfallenly sulked. “I apologized within the minute of the accident and he told me to stop apologizing.”

“That’s understandable,” Amanatsu pulled a notebook out of his briefcase. “You have the tendency to apologize a million times—and you only need to apologize once.”