"Those" people

Chapter 5: Arina

Arina was maybe the most unexpected out of our little group.

She seemed like THE sweetest and purest person out of us all. The truth wasn't the complete opposite, as she probably had the biggest heart out of all of us, but she certainly wasn't pure. She had a bad habit of violence. Of course, it was all for a good cause! When we went out, people liked to poke fun at our little ragtag group because of how... Over the top we were. We did seem a bit much, but  Arina didn't take any of it, and would slap them without a second thought. This made our stays at bars a little shorter than we would have wanted but we didn't really mind, we just went to The Hangout's basement.

She had had passions for art and singing since she could remember. To indulge her love for art she made it her goal to get into an art university. And god damn she did. To indulge her passion for singing, she decided to open a youtube account, just for fun. The account actually got rather big, and she even got recognised once at The Hangout. It was quite funny, she got so flustered.

Arina actually grew up the furthest from us, in a different city. This made her feel slightly out of place occasionally, even though we told her it was ridiculous. Her and I became friends before meeting the other girls, and had even dated for a while. I liked to call Arina Riri, even though no one else called her that. All the things we had went through together made our friendship unbreakable.

She was actually quite tall, even though she didn't radiate tall energy. She had black hair, with bangs and two long strips of hair at the front that she had dyed her hair pink. Her face was the kind of face you just wanted to squish and kiss all over (Luna did that a lot). She liked to wear makeup, another passion of her that she shared on her youtube channel. Her eyeliner was always on point. She loved tattoos and got as many as she could afford. Her favourite was her koi fish on her right arm, but she had so many only Luna could remember all of them. Arina told us all about how Luna would slowly trace her finger over all of them every time they were cuddling together on the sofa. Arina wore pastel, all the time! It was her thing. She loved stuffed animals and would always cave and buy one whenever we passed a store. Her ideal room would have probably been just a pool full of stuffed animals, with some art supplies thrown in too.

Arina was loud. She was the kind of person who laughed with her whole body, and everyone just had to join in. She cried easily but no one held it against her. She sang a lot, and lightened up the entire apartment as she did. She shouted loudly at us when we did something irresponsible or that might cause any harm to us. She did it out of love. And she sure had a lot of love.

Riri didn't drink as much as us. We didn't have a drinking problem, but we did drink quite a lot. Arina didn't exactly disapprove, but she didn't indulge. Her cafe didn't serve any alcohol, and she stood by that policy. It was ironic that she was the one dragging us to bars. I think she enjoyed the atmosphere. The Hangout would always be her favourite place, and we adored it almost as much. She put so much work into it, decorating each wall with  old vinyls and hanging up drawings she had laboured over the previous nights when she couldn't sleep. Both of us were struck by insomnia, so whilst she drew and I read until sunrise, we occasionally grunted to signal that we were still awake and still alive.

Luna.

Luna deserves her own paragraph. What Luna and Arina had... It was otherworldly. After their perfect first date that was accompanied by Mania the entire time. Them three had become their own little family. They spent so much time together we joked about Luna living with us. But a few years down the line Luna didn't live with us. She lived with Arina and Mania, in New York. But that's a long way a way.

Arina was probably the most open person you could meet. She told everyone everything and didn't care. I think that was one of the things that drew people in. But of course, we were her only close friends. This was mostly due to the fact that we were very exclusive. We only liked a select amount of people and talked behind most people's backs. Luna was accepted into our ranks without a second thought.

Now, being Arina's roommate, I can tell you some very random facts about her but I won't because that would be an invasion of her privacy. Okay that was a joke now:
- she will eat any kind of potato if it's left around the apartment, so hide your left over french fries
- if you touch her palettes, prepare to die
- she makes the best cookies, even though she says they aren't good
- even though she was manager at a cafe and had some success online, she always wanted to be a psychiatrist and help people (we thought that was a brilliant idea)

I could go on for days filling the pages about the big memories that we had with her, like the time she bought us all tickets to Bali for Christmas after months of saving up, or the time she redecorated our entire apartment because she couldn't sleep, or the time we missed our flight to Bali because she drove us to the airport and got lost on the way. But there's no need to say all the amazing moments we've had with her.

The only thing you need to know about Arina is that the bound of her love knew no limits and she would have done ANYTHING for us. Anything.