White: Book 5

Sacred

It took about forty-five minutes to get from Naru's apartment to mine. He had gotten something about ten minutes away from the SPR's office, but sense I'm poor and use to be a high school student, even with Naru's wonderful paychecks, my apartment was thirty minutes away from SPR in the other direction. Therefore, do the math, and by the time I was home I had begun to doubt my genius plan to lure Naru away from his parents. All that waited for me until I fell asleep was an empty, quiet apartment. At least I had had dinner with Luella so it wouldn't be so much time.

Sighing to myself, I got my mail out of the apartment complex's mail box and went through the envelopes as I climbed the stairs. An ocher summer's evening spread my shadow out long and thin out of the corner of my eye.

I paused as I came to, not an envelope, but a post card, displaying a beautiful coral reef. I flipped it over to find, to my delight, a short note from John.

Thought I'd let you know I got home safe. Also I wanted an excuse to write in Japanese. I always thought the characters so exotic compared to old English. Hoping you are safe and happy.

Sincerely,

John

Underneath this was a small scribbled address, all in English, for somewhere in Australia. Something warm blossomed in my chest, along with a curious ache I couldn't quite understand. Shrugging it off, I slipped out my keys from my small backpack (I still hadn't bothered to get myself a purse when my school backpack still worked perfectly well), and unlocked my apartment.

Inside smelled of home and was warm from the lack of A/C. The setting sun lit up the room with a single square of orange from the kitchen window. I put my mail on the counter, slipped off my sandals, then stood their stupidly for something to do.

"Guess I should do some cleaning," I said aloud to myself. "And...I guess I could pop some popcorn and watch some Columbo. Yeah...yeah that actually sounds pretty good. A mystery marathon. Maybe I could even bother to paint my nails. That'd be something."

So I set about to cleaning and scrubbing the place. Since it was just a little studio apartment, with the only other room being a small bathroom, it took a grand total of one hour to get everything squeaky clean and my laundry done up in a bag in the corner to take down to the washing room in the morning. By then the sun had set, though its orange glow hadn't. I showered, taking my sweet time and singing nonsense tunes. Scrubbed my feet, daydreamed about Naru and weddings, wondered about the case and played with particularly horrifying, but exciting possibilities.

By the time I had gotten out, my tiny A/C unit had had its time to cool down the place and the sun's glow had set along with it. Twilight was setting and the digital clock on my TV-less Roku box said 9:24pm.

I found my laptop and while I waited for it to turn on I checked my phone for messages.

Naru: Why must you tease me?

If I didn't know him better, I'd say he was sounding somewhat whimsical and flirtatious saying that. But, since I knew him better, I knew he was glaring up a storm at his phone as he typed this in frustration.

As before, I started off feeling bad, and then remembered he wouldn't even hold my hand in front of his parents when they obviously didn't give a damn.

And since it's always best to be honest with Naru, since he can be a bit thick at times:

Me: Because you're ridiculous. Your parents obviously don't care if you show that you love me. Your mom even likes it when I force you to.