I want to go home

"I wanna go home already..."

I, Elena, stare at the pitiful existence I call a friend. The pitiful existence has been complaining from morning. Her overflowing drained aura is affecting me as well. This has to stop.

"I wanna play video games. I want to rest on my bed. I want to rest on my bed while playing video games."

The two of us are currently on our way to our classroom. We just passed the main gate of our school. From here, it is about a minute of walk.

"Lenaaa. You see the other day, I had to look for the store until 9pm. Because of that I had to stay awake until 4am to watch My Donkey Prince: Season 4."

"You could have slept."

"I couldn't! Anticipation filled every fiber of my existence after watching season 3 the night before that."

"Wait. You-- How many all-nighters have you pulled until today!?"

"It's not an all-nighter if I slept for 3 hours. I could survive with that."

"No no. You can't. You are literally compromising your health for anime!"

"I'm fine. I'm fine." Celeste brushes off my concern with a bright smile. Though with the bags under her eyes and her pale complexion, it is not really convincing.

"Besides not sleeping for full 7 hours before the age 25 hinders the development of your brain. So each all-nighter you pull, you are a step further from the full-potential of your brain!"

"It's not like I need lots of brain cells to live. Insects could live with just a few." Celeste yawns after speaking such words of wisdom.

"Some insects die after a few days." I retort.

Celeste suddenly faced me and wore a terrified expression on her face. "T-that's true..."

At this point, I do not know if she is just humoring me or if she is genuinely terrified. "On a less dimmer side, termite queens could live for decades."

She raises her hands and rests a concerned gazed upon them. "Is the only way for me to survive to reach my twenties and beyond is to give birth endlessly?" 

"How does your brain even function...? Is it even functioning well? From the looks of it, it is in a pretty bad state."

"Oh!" A sudden thought seems to have hit her small brain. Such thought robbed the emotions of terror and surprise which were formerly evident on her face. "Elena have you done your assignment? Let me copy it!" . Her face is now full of expectation of me saying yes to both her question and request.

"No."

Once again, the emotions of terror and surprise overflow in her face.

"It's the second subject today. Please! You're my only hope!"

"Do your assignment lazy-ass. I can't spoil you all the time."

"Please Elena! I beg of you!" Elena grabs my arm and begs with her eyes.

"Alright alright. Geez." You're so high maintenance."

With a sigh, I quickly give in to her plea. It's not that I am strongly against it anyway.  As our walk continued, our talks then devolved into matters regarding  school.

Upon finally arriving to our classroom, Celeste greets a few of our classmates in the front. Cheerfully exclaiming "Good morning normies!" before going with me in the backrows to (without doubt) spend the first period copying my assignment.

Celeste is usually seated on the front row. She claims it helps her stay awake especially on times she gets very little sleep. Although on some days she would sneak to the back and take a seat beside me for several reasons. Some days she will copy or do her assignment for the next period. On other days, she would find an angle where the teacher can not see her, and doze off. There was even a time she brought a pillow and boldly stated to me she plans to sleep.

She seems pretty enthusiastic today so I presume she is not feeling sleepy. Well, we have a history test today so she must have mentally prepared herself for it. I guess I should peek at some notes too as a meager form of preparation.

And so our first few subjects pass by with me occasionally peeking at my history notebook. Celeste has long returned to the front row. She whispered she will probably pass out if she stays in a comfortable position for another period. When morning classes are finally over, Celeste comes over my desk and proudly shows me the results of her history quiz.

"Elena. Lookie. I aced the quiz."

"It both terrifies and annoys me how good you are with school considering how little you sleep and how detached you function."

"Is that a compliment? Yay!"

'No use. She's a lost cause. Well, she's cute. So I guess it's fine?' I observe her spinning around in bliss before losing her balance. 'No, it's not.'

"Congrats. But sleep early tonight."

"I wanna watch season 5!"

'Holy shit. That shit show has season 5!?' My thoughts scream with that remark but great thing I have not blurted that out, lest I might have hurt Celeste's feelings. She seems really into the show. Nevertheless, that show has been the cause of Celeste's seep deprivation lately.

"If you don't sleep early I'll search a summary of that shit show right now, and spoil you about it during lunchbreak."

Celeste smirks smugly as she covers her ears to demonstrate her superior strategy. "You can't spoil me if I cover my ears and then watch it immediately as soon as I go home."

I give her a serious expression that is halfway through a deadpan and glare. She locks eyes with me with a defiant look for a while, until she finally understood my seriousness and looks away with a pout.

"Alrighty. I'll only watch three episodes tonight."

I sigh for the second time today, whilst feeling my seriousness relent into mild tiredness. That sounds like an improvement, so I guess I'll stop prodding her to sleep early today.

During lunch, just after taking in a spoonful of mashed potato, Elena browses through her phone. With her mouth filled, she tries to speak.

"Ewena! Whet's continue eating in the Arcade canteen and then pway consoles the entire afternoon!" She gulps her food after speaking something nearly incoherent. I vaguely understood it though.

"Huh?" I still looked at her as if she just said something insane. Celeste hurriedly takes another spoonful, chews it and gulps it down.

"Lookie! We have no classes for this afternoon!" She shoves the screen of her phone to my face. I grabbed her phone to put it to a better distance with my eyes before reading.

"Our math teacher is absent and our economics teacher seems to be not feeling well. Our class mayor informed our ethics teacher regarding the absences of the other teacher. Ever the diligent teacher, he replied: "I'll just leave you an assignment to pass for the next meeting, it's better you spend most of the afternoon doing something else than just waiting in school for my class."

The sentences Celeste just ranted is more or less the contents of the announcement made by our class mayor in our group chat. Knowing our ethics teacher, he is probably just lazy to hold class and thought it must be a semi-acceptable way to skip a class himself.

"I'll pass. I want to go home." I say without hesitation.

"Come on. Just an hour or two! I heard there is this notorious player who stole my precious tenth spot in that fighting game located in the center of the arcade. My pride won't allow it. Besides, you felt pretty frustrated too due not winning at all last week, right?"

"You're a bad influence to my life."

Celeste pouts and begins putting her cards in the negotiating table. "I'll teach you the recent coding lessons in I.T. to compensate! You're free this weekend, right? Right? We can study in my house!"

"I guess that balances it out a bit." The recent programming lesson was a bit difficult. I don't have much brainpower to process all the stuff that was going on. If not for Celeste being my seatmate, I would have been totally lost in the lesson.  She's pretty handy when you need someone you can ask for help when in hands-on activities. Although, her interest in I.T. is mostly because of her inability to leave the computer until she passes out. "You sure you will not be insisting to play a game first before we start studying? Such event will inevitably result to you insisting to keep asking for one more."

"No games! Only study in the weekend!"

"I have my doubts, but alright. I guess I'll accompany you."

"That's decided then!" Celeste hums gleefully as she continued eating. The rest of our lunch passes in near silence as she gets too absorbed enjoying the flavor of potatoes. She would also stare in something far away while chewing and seem to have a pensive look. When we were about to leave the table, she finally speaks up what she has been thinking about.

"Elena. We should have at least one round of games before we start studying."

"You really can't resist. Can you?"