My Bad

August 20th, 2017

Somehow, Ray ended up crashing the dinner appointment between me, Kenzie, and Yunyun (from chapter 7). We went to get ramen.

Ray and Kenzie made conversation while Yunyun and I slurped our noodles.

“You’re going to the top local university, right? Congrats.”

“The ratings are really subjective,” Kenzie answered modestly.

“How is it so far?”

“I haven’t started yet, but I’m moving things into my dorm. It’s getting busy. There’s a lot to do.”

Yunyun pitched in to ask, “What’re you going to study, actually? I don’t think I ever asked.”

“I’m going into the engineering faculty.”

“Oh, I’m planning to apply there,” said Ray.

“The average height of the engineering department is decreasing by the year,” I quipped.

Ray and Kenzie looked at each other.

Ray started. “He thinks he’s so cool just because he’s taller than us.”

“I know, right? So pathetic. So big and yet so petty.”

“His only potential is gravitational potential.”

“Yeah. Short people like us know how to be the bigger person without needing to be tall.”

“Hey, now.” I was being insulted, but I actually kind of enjoyed it.

I mean, I’m not into that stuff,
though I’m not judging anyone with a humiliation fetish,
but like,
it’s great to have friends who you can exchange these insults with light-heartedly, right?

I had to put an end to it, though.

“And the only thing about him that’s long is-”

“Ray, shut up. There are children reading this novel.”

Yunyun added, “And his jokes are absolutely trash. What was that, a fourth wall break?”

Yunyun’s comments would always bounce off me, but they packed more weight when he was on the same side as Ray and Kenzie.

Kenzie added, “And his brownies are so…brown.”

“Talk trash about my brownies once and you’ll never have them again,” I declared.

In response, Kenzie could only utter the first letter of her own name.

“…K.”

“Yeah, you’d better ‘K’.”

There was a moment of silence after that, which I proudly broke by slurping up the last of my noodles.

Because the others were around, I didn't have a goodbye hug with Kenzie. She and Ray left in the same direction, talking among themselves about university preparation, leaving me to take the train in the other direction with Yunyun.

Yunyun and I hadn’t texted much ever since going to the promenade with Kenzie together at the end of March. And then there was that little fiasco where he walked in on me having lunch with Kenzie, plus the aftermath.

He’d kind of become that guy. That person in your friend group who you’re normal with when everyone is around, but once the other people go and it’s just the two of you it’s a bit awkward.

You know what I mean?

The minor roasting session at dinner reminded me that I hadn’t exactly been a saint towards Yunyun. Back then, it annoyed me that he cared about my relationship with Kenzie, which shouldn’t have been his business. But to him, I was probably just a guy who spouted sarcastic remarks, made lame puns, joked about asking out the girl who’d rejected him before, and then ate lunch alone with said girl at school. Any animosity from his end was very understandable, now that I’d properly contextualized it.

Anyway, I was sat next to that same Yunyun in the train.

To keep myself busy, I rummaged through my bag to find notes to look at. But then I realized my books were full of doodles rather than notes. And I didn’t want to doodle on a moving vehicle, so I closed my bag and shelved that idea.

I checked my phone for a bit, then put it back in my pocket. Eventually, I closed my eyes, feigning sleep so that I would feel less obligated to start any conversation, and to communicate that it was okay for Yunyun to not try to start one himself. That was what I considered to be a mutually beneficial arrangement.

My eyes opened when I heard him say, “Yo, are you actually dating Kenzie? I don’t actually care, by the way.”

“We’re friends. We’re not dating,” I answered, almost like it was rehearsed.

"Seriously?”

I shrugged. “What you saw is what it is.”

“I thought you’d actually ask her out, dude.”

Avoiding that can of worms, I shrugged.

The train rolled on. Suddenly, Yunyun spoke again.

“Honestly, sorry, dude. I got way too angry at you back then.”

"Huh?" That caught me off guard.

"I should’ve just enjoyed my time around you instead of just hating. And who she wants to hang out with is her choice, too." He added, implicitly referring to Kenzie.

"I see." He was being more mature than me here. It made me want to do the right thing as well. "I wanna apologize too. I probably wasn't that tactful about your situation and shouldn't have joked about asking her out just to mess with you."

"You're not wrong."

I snorted. "Anyway. We good?"

“Yeah. It's cool. I’m interested in someone else now, anyway.”

“Oh, cool. Since when?”

“I met her in my summer course.”

“Nice. I think you should ask her out in real life rather than over text this time. You can join the run club, too.”

“Wait, what does run club have to do with this?”

“So you can get fitter. Then you can chase her if she runs away.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, honestly, though. Good luck. I talk smack all the time, but I really do think you should ask face to face this time.”

“I’ll consider that,” Yunyun said.

I sat more comfortably for the rest of the train ride. I suppose I had Kenzie to thank for setting this meeting up.

August 25th, 2017

It was a late Friday afternoon. I’d finished school for the week, and Kenzie had some time to spare after dealing with university preparations, so we went to meet up at a nature park.

[Kenzie]: Let’s meet at exit D
[Kenzie]: Tell me when you’re almost there

I’ve just gone out of exit D

[Kenzie]: Actually let’s do exit F can you walk up here

aksdjdkas

[Kenzie]: Soz

K

[Kenzie]: Come up to exit F?

Because I’d exited the station, I couldn’t go back in and take the escalator. So I walked up, and up, and up, until I was near exit F, then looked around. I could see Kenzie’s small figure approaching me. I positioned my hand above my eyes and perpendicular to my forehead as if I was looking at something far away.

Once she reached me, she said, “Sorry about that.”

Normally, I’d say “Better be!”, but I was feeling petty. “Oh, so you’re in front of me! You looked so small that I thought you were still far away.”

“Ha ha ha. Big petty person. You’re just salty because I made you walk.”

“nO? Also, I need to tie my shoes. Can you hold my bag for me?”

“Okay.”

“Here.” I handed her my bag, then untied and retied my shoes. Then I got up and started skipping towards the nearby set of stairs.

“Hey, your bag.”

“Congratulations, you’re my bag-holding slave now!”

“Ugh.”

“I wanna see the turtle pond!”

I pranced up the stairs to the turtle pond while Kenzie followed me, lugging my bag along. I eventually took my bag back after we reached the top of the stairs and she threatened to put it down and leave it.

The turtle pond was under a small bridge, where kids could easily drop pieces of bread into the water. The turtles were probably conditioned to think anything that fell into the water was food.

Since Kenzie had recently been preparing for university and participating in orientation activities, I asked her about how those things were going.

“There was a bit of drinking.”

“Oh, did you get wasted?”

I asked that like I was poking fun at her. That demeanor hid my unease that came from the prospect of her meeting all sorts of new people and doing new things while I could be left in the dark about it all. It’s not like she was obligated to tell me all about it.

“Well…I got a little tipsy. But you’re not gonna see me drunk!”

She diverted the topic ever so slightly such that she wouldn’t have to elaborate.

“That’s not fair, I still have one year and four months to go before turning eighteen.”

“Too bad.”

I picked up a leaf and dropped it into the turtle pond. The moment the leaf broke the surface of the water, all the turtles swam towards the leaf thinking it was free food. We laughed at them, and the nearby kids started dropping leaves into the water too.

We spent the afternoon exploring the park and the ponds, occasionally sitting down for a short break and talking about her university preparations. She mentioned an activity where she had to do this weird dance that involved moving her hands in a circle as if she was wiping a window. There was also the issue of moving into her dorm. As we walked, sat, and talked, dusk came upon us. We decided to finally leave the park to get some dinner nearby.

As the sky gradually darkened, it felt like Kenzie was becoming quieter. It made me wonder if she was thinking about something.

She said she wasn’t hungry, so she spent most of our dinnertime waiting for me to finish my food.

I felt like talking with her a bit more, so I thought of a recent AskReddit thread I'd read and asked her, “If you knew you were to pass away soon, would you be satisfied with your life as you’ve led it?”

“Of course not.”

“Why’s that?”

She took a while to organize her thoughts.

“Cuz I still have a lot of things to experience. I haven’t even started university yet.”

“Mmhm.”

“And there’s all that other stuff to do in life that I haven’t done yet.”

“I see.”

By then, the sky was black.

By then, Kenzie was quiet.

Both of us had gotten tired. We took the train back home together.

As we reached her station, she stepped towards the door. I stepped forwards a bit as well.

Then, she said “Bye” and left the train without looking back.

The usual goodbye hug that I was waiting for didn’t actualize. And thus, it stayed trapped in my head.