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22: The Same Space

I screamed so loudly that I probably made the Great Wall of China quiver. It was a Friday, a week since I had confessed to Kaito and had gotten rejected. There was an envelope in my hands. It was open. Inside were my exam results.

"Please don't kill me, mom!" I cried, hugging her feet as she scanned the results sheets.

"This is..." Her voice was monotonous.

Great, she's probably going to sic all of the neighbourhood's dogs on me!

"An all time low?" I said. "Extremely disappointing? Maddeningly horrible? Disgusting? Filth? Are you going to disown me?"

"This is actually an improvement, overall," she nodded, her eyes still on the sheets. Slowly, she rolled them up into a cylinder and I gaped at her.

"S-So I'm okay?" I asked.

"You still failed the Science one miserably," she scowled and bonked the roll of paper on my head. "You'll have to redo the exam!"

"I know!" I wailed. "They're going to make me stay after school for...tutoring!"

I said the last word like it was the worst thing in the world. I might as well have said "for whippings."

"You'll learn it better the second time around," she said, escaping my grip on her legs. "Well, no point in moping about it, not right now, at least. You can cry about it all you want once school actually begins. This might actually be good for you."

"Good for me," I mumbled, curling up into a ball and rocking back and forth. "Nothing good's happened in the past week..."

Bzzz.

"Gumi, lunch in twenty minutes!" My mom said as she walked out of the living room.

"Okay!" I yelled back, looking at my phone.

1 new message.

Miku: I'm meeting up with the others around three this afternoon, at the mall. We're thinking of planning that little sleepover!

I replied, saying that I'd meet up as well, frankly feeling a bit disappointed that it wasn't Naoki. Over the past few days, I had spoken with him a lot, about many things. He sometimes teased me and occasionally seemed creepy, but I got to know him well enough to tell that he was really just being playful and kidding around.

We had talked about food, for example.

Naoki: carrots? That's your favourite thing to eat?

Gumi: yeah, why?

Naoki: I don't really have a favourite food. Ice cream's good, I guess, but after having been forced to eat as much as me, it's really not my sweet of choice. Cake's nice.

Gumi: my mom's always making cake.

Naoki: lucky! Women are amazing.

Gumi: *facepalm* not this again...

Naoki: they're so soft! And warm! And squishy!

Gumi: STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT *plugs ears*

Naoki: plugging your ears won't help because I'm typing!

Gumi: argh...you know what I meant...

Somehow, most of our talks led to discussions about girls. It was funny, though. He always made me smile. I never told him about my heartbreak, though once or twice, I had felt the urge to talk to him about it. He seemed so well versed in the world of relationships, or so I assumed, with how he was always talking about girls. On the other hand, I felt that he had never been in a relationship, what with him mentioning that he hadn't spoken to a girl in a long time and how he always went on and on about how much he liked them and how amazing they were. I decided to keep my personal matters to myself.