[Homemade Holiday - Babygirl]
[Something Has to Change - The Japanese House]
Jancy would do anything for things to last forever.
Things were only going up compared to where she was only a few months ago. She had finally discovered the perfect balance in life, a routine wherein she alternated from being bored while craving excitement and being overwhelmed while craving tranquility. And though positivity was not easy to come by for Jancy, she found herself waking up everyday with an eagerness for the day — a feeling that was previously so foreign to her that it was petrifying.
Everything was simple. She went to her classes, she went back to her apartment, she ate dinner, she slept, she woke up to the ring of her alarm. Then on the weekends, she went home to her parents and brother, who was a junior and always unnecessarily grumpy. Despite the token grumpy member of the family, they would have relatively enjoyable family dinners on Friday night and watch an episode of Bake Off! before everyone got tired and retreated back into their designated bedrooms. That was the kind of life Jancy loved. It felt as if nothing bad could ever happen.
***
The days were getting colder and colder. Jancy's nose felt like a brick of ice as she waited at the bus stop, scanning the crowd for Mika, who originally said that she'd be there at 2 P.M sharp. Jancy brought her phone out and clicked it open with her frozen thumb — 2:15. Mika was never this late, at least not in the few months the two have known each other for. She scanned the crowd again, standing on her tippy toes to compensate for the fact that she'd buried her face into the collar of her jacket in hopes of preserving some warmth. Mika was nowhere in sight; just a bunch of freshmen with an assorted array of beanies standing at the end of the street. Blue, green, white, grey, black...
"Jancy?" Mika tapped her shoulder and smiled big. Then, "sorry I was late. My midterm ran past time."
"It's okay. How'd you find it?"
"I hate Friday midterms. But I think I did okay, I mean," Mika pushed up her glasses and shivered, "at least I finished it."
The cold from the old snow was slowly making its way through the padding of her boots when the bus rumbled over and stopped with a worrying screech in front of them. Like robots, the people in front of Jancy and Mika piled onto the bus, heads down, feet shuffling, until everyone was packed together.
"That's better than how I've been doing," Jancy said as they squished between a very tall woman and a pudgy man, "I failed yet another quiz."
"No way," Mika's cartoon-like brown eyes widened behind her black-framed glasses. They were separated by a couple of people now. "You're just too hard on yourself!"
"I'm the opposite, actually," Jancy jokingly called over to her, but they were so far away from each other now that all she could see of Mika was her brown ponytail and all Mika could see of Jancy was the top of her frizzy red hair.
But deep down, she wasn't joking at all. There were always somber moments in between the good ones where Jancy felt like she was truly floating through her life, as if she wasn't connected to anything at all. Sure, she had people that she loved (and more importantly, she knew that they loved her too) but there was always the looming possibility at the back of her brain that if she truly were to be the girl that she longed to be, those people would drop like flies. She watched as the people slowly came and left out of the bus, Mika included, and realized that maybe she was simply a bus going around in circles — bus loop, stopping at the designated stops, then all of a sudden she'd be back at the bus loop to see the same faces again.
