The Revel Heart || Ni-ki

10

The day after their argument in the school auditorium, Ni-ki woke up feeling like he had been hit by a truck. His head pounded with the remnants of a headache, and his stomach churned with a mix of guilt and frustration. He had never been one to openly show weakness, to admit when he was wrong. And yet, the night before his sharp words, his inability to cope with his own emotions it all replayed in his mind over and over again, like a broken record.

He had pushed Celine too far. Worse than that, he had made her feel like she was just another person trying to control him, trying to dictate the terms of his life, when all she had ever done was try to understand him.

His phone buzzed on the edge of his desk, a message from his best friend asking if he was okay. Ni-ki sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. No, he wasn’t okay. He hadn’t been okay for a long time.

He spent the rest of the morning wrestling with the idea of reaching out to Celine. He knew he had to say something anything to make things right. But the problem was, he didn’t know how to say it. Apologies didn’t come naturally to him, not when he had spent so much of his life building walls around himself. What was he supposed to do? Send a text? Approach her in person and awkwardly stumble over his words? It wasn’t like they had a history of being emotionally open with each other.

In the end, he decided it would be best to do it face-to-face. He had already messed things up and if he do it over text it will just make things worst , leaving everything unsaid and unresolved. But the thought of confronting her in person made his heart race with anxiety. His mind felt a hundred steps behind him, unsure if he’d even be able to get the words out.

Celine, for her part, had been avoiding him just as much as he had avoided her. The tension between them was palpable in the days following their argument, as if the air around them had thickened with unspoken words. She had been busy with schoolwork, hanging out with friends, and pushing herself into the busyness of daily life in an attempt to forget about everything that had happened.

That morning, though, she was walking down the hallway, her head down, clearly lost in thought when she saw him standing by her locker. Her instinct was to turn around and walk the other way, but something inside her held her in place. She felt that pull toward him again, the same pull that had been there the just  like the time  they had spoken in the bar except now it felt less like curiosity and more like frustration.

Ni-ki hesitated for a moment, taking in the sight of her. She was wearing a light blue jacket, her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. She looked… normal. But there was something in the way she held herself an invisible wall around her, like she was waiting for something, or maybe bracing herself for the next shoe to drop.

"Hey," he said, his voice softer than he had intended, the words feeling foreign on his tongue.

Celine’s eyes flickered up to meet his, and she raised an eyebrow. "Hey."

There was a moment of silence, thick and heavy, before Ni-ki took a step forward, swallowing hard. "Listen, I… I want to apologize."

She blinked, as if she hadn’t expected that to come from him. "Apologize?" she repeated, her tone skeptical.

He nodded, running a hand through his hair, feeling the weight of every unsaid word pressing down on him. "Yeah. I know I’ve been an asshole. I said some things that I didn’t mean, and I… I didn’t handle things well. I was just.. " He stopped, trying to find the right words. "I was just pissed off and I lashed out."