Satzu - reliable

#3

There are different kinds of silences. The awkward kind, when you are with people and they seem to be too uninterested to keep the conversation going or are too nervous to say a word. In either way, it's uncomfortable but on the other hand, there are also those peaceful silences when you are just sitting by yourself, thinking about everything or nothing or that kind of silence that, inspiring confidence, accompanies you to sleep.

This description might try to clarify that the awkwardness of silence depends on whether you experience it with people around or just all by yourself, alone.

But that is not the case. Tzuyu laid down on her back, on her bed, intently listening to the quietness around her. It was that kind which proves that silences can also be uncomfortable when no one is around.

In Tzuyu's case, even though her little dog laid sleeping on the other side of the room, it felt a bit to her as if this silence was somehow choking her. Making it harder and harder to breath with every minute, only filled with clipped exhales.

Her fingers fumbled rashly towards her bedside dresser table, opening the upper drawer. A nearly relieved sigh went through her whole body, making her shiver lightly as her fingertips touched the surface of a half-full cigarette pack. Tzuyu lighted one of the cigarettes and guided it towards her lips, all while still staring at the ceiling blankly.

She couldn't even begin to think about how many times she had already laid there like that. On her bed. Staring at the ceiling. Alone. No noises.

With more and more exhaling through her cigarettes, small clouds made out of cigarette smoke seemed to form opaque fog underneath the ceiling. To the young woman underneath, it felt as if this beautiful creature was cramped by the rooftop and it nearly made her a bit dizzy to see how the smoke accumulated above her. Then again, it reminded her of herself which kind of caused again that her thoughts became clearer.

Accordingly, Tzuyu was finally able to unstick her eyes from the ceiling and to let her gaze wander towards her phone which was reproachfully twinkling while laying on the floor. In the course of checking it in more detail, the phone's owner ascertained that Jihyo had tried to call her several times. Futile.

But she did not feel like calling her back. She did not feel like touching her phone and holding it towards her ear generally. The disappointed voices of her parents reaching out towards her through it were still too present, too much echoing in her head to use her phone as blithely as she had before.

It had hurt. It had hurt more than she had imagined it. And even though Tzuyu should already have been used to it, a little part of her heart, probably the only part that was not left completely unbothered, clenched a little bit in her chest at the thought of her parents not even showing up at the place that they called their home to inspect the damage. They had not even had the time or the volition to come back to their house to lecture their daughter. Not even for shouting at her.

The following cloud, made out of cigarette smoke was blown angrily, nearly frustrated and the little dog who had pretended to sleep until that specific moment started up from his pillow, restively. Tzuyu's countenance softened to a certain extent as she caressed his head soothingly and while doing so, she brought the conversation with her parents that had taken place minutes ago to her mind again.

There hadn't been any shouting, not even angry voices. It had been the opposite actually. While her parents sounded nearly bored but still kind of stressed as usual, they came in consonant to the conclusion, that their daughter had evidenced unacceptable manners so that it made them question what they misdid while raising her. The named daughter had kept quiet even though points answering the last part came into her mind effortlessly.

Additionally, she had set Jihyo's word of advice to try to explain that it had not been her own fault at naught. Without having spend much time with her parents during her childhood, Tzuyu was more than aware of that it would not had helped on. Instead, she had sat quietly on the floor in her room, face blank, fingers clawed in the champaign-colored, fluffy carpet.

On exactly that carpet, Tzuyu emptied out the rest of the cigarette pack's volume after stubbing out her still lit smoldering side on one side of her bed. Then, she picked a new one up from the carpet, hold it between her middle- and index finger and lighted it after fiddling around at the lighter. The generated feeling in her lungs with taking the first pull on the cigarette made the woman sigh silently in relieve.

The talk with her parents had continued similar so she did not feel the need of replaying everything in her head again. Instead, she checked her mailbox on her phone since she had been informed that a link towards a voluntary-work-project would be send to her.

That voluntary work project was indeed something that confused Tzuyu. She would have never imagined her parents to put something like that forward and even the explanations seemed quite illogical to her. Apparently, as seen from the perspective of her parents, she was not aware of how dark the real world was so that she was supposed to help working at a project where children who did not get to see their parents often are taken care of.

Tzuyu's motivation for the whole volunteer-work-situation was obviously limited but she still clicked on the link while tickling the little dog, sitting patiently next to her, under the chin. She was immediately led towards an online article about a former college student who decided to establish the mentioned volunteer project.

The article was long so Tzuyu only looked briefly over it and paid closer attention to the attached pictures below the text. The most outstanding one showed a young woman, the person who the article was about probably. She had long blonde, slightly wavy hair that framed her small face perfectly, while her hazel eyes seemed to sparkle as she smiled encouraging into the camera.

Tzuyu caught herself getting a bit confused the longer she hold eye contact with the woman on the picture. She disliked when people smiled like that, substantiated with the fact that she herself rarely smiled, even less at people.

And she only realized that she had stared at the picture with her head slightly tilted and mouth minimally opened as the little dog, who had climbed onto her legs and sat down there in the meantime, somehow managed to imitate her way of watching the woman in the picture.

In embarrassment and nearly automatically, as if she was caught doing something prohibited, Tzuyu winced and let her thumb swipe on the screen, closing the tab with the smiling woman quickly. As the screen in front of her went back, she exhaled audibly, nearly relieved while the little dog looked at her in confusion.