Ren's First Date

For Ren, the morning of the hangout was also filled with emotion. Hers, however, were different. While Sota was full of nerves and anxiety, Ren brimmed with excitement.

She had been up early, tackling as many chores as possible prior to Sota arriving to get her. She wanted to make sure her absence had as little impact on her family as possible, or else she'd never get another chance like this.

--Alright. My mother is gone, my grandparents are asleep, and my sister is fed and absorbed into her tablet. Everything should be good to go!

As if on cue, Ren's phone buzzed on the counter. She darted over and looked to see who it was. 

[Sota]: Just got here. Ready to go whenever you are!

Ren peeked out the kitchen window. Sure enough, there was Sota in the driveway. That was when her emotions really began to flutter.

--Finally, I get to be a teenage girl for once and hang out with a friend! This is so exciting.

She wasted no time. Before something could go wrong and this chance got taken away from her, she grabbed her things and ran out the door. 

***

It was early in the afternoon, and every part of the day so far had blown past Ren's expectations. 

From the moment she got in the car and began talking about Everquest, to the laughs and shenanigans at the Chinese buffet. All of it had felt like the happiest day of Ren's life. Even now, several hours later as they drove on towards the arcade, they still seemed to be able to laugh and hold conversation naturally. 

Usually by this point, Ren would run out of things to talk about or be bored of the conversation. That wasn't the case at all, though. 

--He's amazing, even beyond what I expected from our interactions in class. How nice it would be to have someone like him as a part of my life...

Ren let the thought die there. She was getting way ahead of herself. Even if she ignored the obstacles that her family would present, there was no world where that made sense. Sota was several years older than her, and had several great personality traits. 

--I'm the stupid one if I let myself start thinking I'm going to end up with someone like him...

"Here we are!" Sota's voice echoed through her thoughts. 

Ren came back to reality and looked out the window. In front of them was a gigantic building designed to look like a medieval castle. It had to be three or four stories tall and the word ARCADE spanned across the outer wall of the top floor. 

"Oh, wow!" Ren exclaimed. "I didn't know we had an arcade nearby that was this big!"

Sota smiled, "I'm glad you're excited. I haven't been here in awhile, so hopefully it still lives up to expectations."

Ren nodded in agreement. They both hopped out of the car, grabbed their things, and headed inside. 

Ren was even more amazed once they entered. Central stairs led up into the other floors, and it looked a lot bigger from the inside than the outside. 

"Where do we even start?" she asked, her attention getting pulled in every direction. 

"Well, let's grab some tokens first, Then we can walk around, take note of things, and just play as we go."

"Okay!"

They made their way over to the token machine. Sota pulled out his wallet, and grabbed some money. 

"Hold this for a second?"

Sota handed Ren his wallet, not wanting to put it away in case the bills he grabbed didn't work. Fortunately, they did, and tokens began pouring out in earnest. 

"That's more than I expected," Sota admitted. "Quick, let's grab some cups and get them picked up."

Both Sota and Ren got to work. Sota grabbed a couple cups and handed one to Ren. Ren sat the wallet down on the token machine and took the cup. They then quickly began raking tokens in. After about thirty seconds, the machine finished spitting out tokens and they had tons of tokens to play with. 

"Alright, let's go!"

"Yeah!"

Ren and Sota began their exploration of the arcade. Blissfully unaware of the fact that they were soon to be thrown a curveball...

***

A couple of hours flew by in no time. They fully explored the arcade, and played almost every game they could get their hands on. 

A 'Guitar Hero' machine sat on the second floor. They played a few songs against each other, which Sota completely dominated at. 

A 'Dance Dance Revolution' machine was on the floor above that. Sota agreed to give it a chance since Ren had been a good sport about Guitar Hero. Ren proceeded to clean house against him. 

There was a large co-op shooter game that they spent almost a full hour on by itself. They got incredibly far, scoring on the leaderboards, but not quite far enough to finish the game before they ran out of tokens. 

"No fair! We're so close!" Ren pouted. 

"Hold on a sec," Sota laughed. "Let me see if I can grab some tokens really quick..."

When Sota felt his pocket, his wallet wasn't there. Confusion came over his face as he patted himself down, searching for the wallet. Then it dawned on him. 

"Did you ever give me my wallet back?" Sota asked Ren. 

Ren thought about it for a moment. Sota had handed it to her, he had put the money in the machine...and then she had put it on top of the machine before helping with collecting the coins. 

"Oh,  no..."

Ren's expression shifted instantly from happiness to terror. With great intensity, she ran off towards the staircase, leaving Sota behind. 

Ren practically flew down the stairs, darting around corners and barely dodging other people as she navigated her way back to the token machines. 

--Please be there...please be there...please be there...

She turned the final corner and skidded to a halt, her gaze fixated on the machine they had gotten tokens at a couple hours prior. 

The wallet was gone. 

--No...don't do this...this can't be happening.

Ren leaned up against a nearby wall. Through her mind flashed hundreds of memories of 'things going wrong'. Chores done improperly at home. Unrealistic expectations set on her by her family. She had gotten so good at avoiding 'wrong' at home because it was always traumatic. She'd be punished, scolded, told how useless she was. Each wrongdoing caused her humanity to be stripped away piece by piece, and that was all rushing back to her in this moment. 

--Not today, not like this. He's been so nice to me...

"There you are..." 

Sota suddenly came around the corner, seeing her leaning up against the wall. He walked up to her, having pieced together where she had ran off to. He had a quizzical expression on his face initially. By the time he got up to Ren, however, he noticed that tears were beginning to form in her eyes. 

"What's going on?" he questioned, suddenly very alert and serious. "Did something happen?"

Sota's sudden shift came from his own anxieties. To Ren, however, it felt like the beginning of a brutal storm of insults.

--I'm so stupid. Why do I always screw things up? I deserve this...

"I...forgot it here," she managed to choke out. "The wallet...I left it on the machine...I'm so sorry!"

She then closed her eyes tight and waited. Would he insult her intelligence? Tell her he wished that she'd never gotten invited? She tried to brace for whatever it was. 

After a few moments of bracing herself, Sota finally responded. 

"Oh. No biggie," Sota spoke calmly. 

Ren's brain seemed to trainwreck at that response; more so than if she had gotten insulted. 

"What do you mean 'no biggie'?" she questioned, a bit angrily. "I lost it! You trusted me with it, and I couldn't even do something that stupid simple! Your ID, your money, all of it's gone because I couldn't do anything right!"

"No need to be so hard on yourself..."

"But this always happens! This was the one day I didn't want anything to go wrong, and look what happened. Maybe my family is right about me..."

Ren wasn't sure what it was about that statement, but Sota seemed to respond a bit viscerally to it. He gently, but still firmly, grabbed her by the shoulders to turn her eyes towards his. She was startled by the sudden physical contact. Her mind flustered, torn between romantic nerves and fear of getting attacked. 

Sota's expression, however, was very gentle and supportive. 

"Let's at least take a look around, first." he suggested. "We'll walk around, do some detective work. If we don't find it after all of that, then maybe you can panic. Does that work?"

Ren was floored by his kindness. She wasn't sure how to react to it; and she certainly didn't feel deserving of it. She forced herself to focus, at least on the question at the end...

"Yeah," she finally replied, pulling herself back to the world. "Let's look for it and go from there..."

Sota smiled and dropped his hands. 

"Sweet. Let's get looking."

***

They spent about twenty minutes scoping out the path they had walked. They checked machines they had visited and floors that they had walked on. Ren was pretty sure it had gotten left on the token machine, but Sota wanted to check just incase. 

After that proved fruitless, they went to the first floor and checked in with the front counter. Sure enough, someone had turned in the wallet about an hour ago. 

"Looks like you," the employee noted, looking from Sota to the picture on his license. "Here you go!"

Sota took it with a smile. He opened it up and took a look. Almost everything was in there...

"It looks like the money that was in here is missing," Sota noted to the employee. "You don't happen to have gotten a name or anything?"

The employee looked a bit flustered at the idea. 

"Oh, no... I'm so sorry!" she apologized. "It didn't even cross my mind. They left not too long after dropping it off, and they didn't provide any sort of name or ID when they found it. I'm terribly sorry!"

Sota sighed. He glanced over at Ren, who immediately broke eye contact with him. 

--It's my fault. He probably lost a lot of money. What am I going to do?

Instead of speaking to her, Sota turned his attention back to the clerk. 

"Did they mention where they found it?"

"I believe they said it was on the floor near the 'Guitar Hero' machine? Sorry I can't be more helpful..."

Upon hearing that, Ren's eyes widened a bit as she processed that information. 

"Great, thanks! I must've dropped it while I was over there."

With that, Sota stepped away from the clerk's desk. Ren followed as she thought through what they had been told. 

"See? Turns out you did give it back to me, and I dropped  it. Sounds like that one's on me..."

"But..."

"No buts. You heard her, right?"

He was right. Ren had done nothing wrong, and no longer had the overwhelming fear in her system. Slowly, but surely, her emotions began to regulate. 

"Yes," she finally replied. "What about your money?"

"It's not that uncommon for criminals to grab the cash and turn in the wallet," Sota explained. "It voids them of some suspicion, at least until they get far enough away. That's why I only brought a small amount of cash, most of it for the food. The rest of it is on my cards, which they didn't take. Yeah, they snagged themselves probably $20, but not a big deal."

"Oh..." she remarked, not really sure how to respond. "That's...impressive that you have that knowledge."

"Yeah...I grew up with a bunch of criminals. I may not have been one of them, but you eventually learn how they think."

Ren was shocked that Sota would say something like that as if it was a regular 'fun fact' about himself. It also made her question what Sota had been through. He definitely wasn't a bad guy, so how did he manage to navigate a situation like that?

"Why don't we head out?" Sota suggested. "There's a mall not to far from here that we can go visit for a bit, unless you need to be home soon?"

"That's...not a problem," Ren stuttered.

"You sure?" Sota asked, seemingly concerned. "If you don't wanna hang out anymore, I can..."

"That's not it!" she shot back. "I just know we've been hanging out awhile, and I want to make sure you're not getting bored of me..."

It seemed a bit out-of-character compared to how bubbly and excited she'd been all day, but her nerves were still fired up from before. 

Sota just laughed in response. 

"Don't be silly," he assured her. "Do you know how fun today's been? I'd hang out with you every day if I could."

That moment - those words - kicked off a different emotional spiral in Ren. Her brain dropped the entire wallet incident, and honed in to this new idea. 

--Spend every day...with me?

Could this really be happening? Was she convincing herself that there was no chance of something between them, when there was? Riku had mentioned something about it being 'like a date'. She was calm and composed at the thought when Riku had brought it up. 

It felt different in this moment, though, because it was no longer a distant fantasy thought. It was right here, in front of her...

And Sota had been more than she'd hoped for. 

There were a lot of emotions flying around her mind. She would need time to dig through them all and figure out what was going on. What she knew for sure, however, was she didn't want today to end just yet. 

"Alright, then!" Ren replied, energetic and smiling from ear to ear. "Let's continue our little date, then!"