Not An Ordinary Walk

“Rens! You’re going to be late! You better be out of be-! Eh…? You’re already up?”

“Uh… yeah? I wouldn’t want to be late to a camp, right?”

“Yeah, but… Strange. I thought that most guys like you would struggle with getting ready for a school event.”

My sister looked at me skeptically. She had definitely been watching some new drama to have those random ideas.

“What type of guy is that, exactly?”

“You know… The ones who have all that talent but end up being lazy and not wanting to do anything with their lives. You could’ve made it big if you continued learning script-writing.”

“Sis, we’ve been over this. I just like writing novels more.”

“What a waste…” she said, sighing. “You could have met someone like Rei.”

“Well, I have met her. She’s in my class, after all.”

“Yeah, if only she was in your… Wait, what? She’s in your class?”

“Yeah. She’s also in the same group as me for camp.”

Having heard this, she smiled and laughed to herself.

Scary.

“Well, that will be interesting. Why don’t you tell her that you wrote the movie?”

“That’s all in the past. Besides, she’s appeared in countless other films. It’s not like it’s anything special to her. Anyways, I’m going to head out. By the way, where’d dad go?”

“He had some sort of meeting. I’ll let him know you left. Have fun!”

Carrying my suitcase, I walked towards the school. The wind was quite chilly, so I had worn some gloves so I didn’t freeze and catch a cold.

I was about 15 minutes away, when a black Cadillac stopped beside me. The windows rolled down and on the other side was Rei.

“Morning, Rens.”

“Good morning.”

“Aren’t you cold? Want a ride?”

I was a bit hesitant, since her driver was giving me quite a cold stare.

“Um… I should be fine. It’s only a 15 minute walk from here. I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

That wasn’t the answer she was looking for. She made a slight frown.

“Lukas… You can just drop me off here. I’m going to walk the rest of the way with my friend.”

“But Miss? You can’t just be walking out in broad daylight. You know what type of people might be around…”

“Well, Rens here will protect me. He was a national champion in karate.”

I was…?

This seemed to have convinced her driver as he simply nodded towards me. Rei stepped out of the car to take her suitcase out of the trunk. She was wore leggings and a white coat with a fluffy hood which was complimented by a red scarf.

“You do know I’ve never done any martial arts in my life, right?”

“Shh… It was the only way I could have ever gotten permission to walk with you.”

I was quite surprised that she was wanted to. We’ve never had a conversation before aside from yesterday. And she shouldn’t know about me being Nf3.

“So… why did you want to walk with me?”

“Oh I’m sorry, I forgot how famous you were. May I please have the pleasure of walking with Rens?”

She curtseyed as if she were a fair lady acknowledging the royalty of a king. It felt a bit embarrassing and hard to watch. I turned away and walked ahead of her.

“Hehe, I was joking!” she said, catching up to me. “You know, you’re quite interesting. That introduction you did was funny.”

“Don’t remind me of that… What about how yours which was so basic?”

“Well, that’s how it’s supposed to be right…?”

It was quite unexpected. The usual consensus was that famous people rarely talked to common people willingly. But here I was, speaking and joking around with her. She was a friend. We had reached the school gates, which was the meeting point.

“By the way… What was that about, during the entrance ceremony…”

“Huh?”

She had brought up the entrance ceremony, but I had no idea what she meant?”

“Well… You were kind of… staring at…”

“Oh? Did you two walk together?”

Walker and the rest of the group and spotted us. Rei turned towards our team and greeted them.

“Yeah, how early were you guys?”

I guess I wasn’t going to find out what she meant.

After the teachers marked us off, we boarded the bus. I had taken the window seat and was sitting next to Ivey, who continued to give me strange looks.

“So… are you going to explain yourself?”

“Explain what exactly?”

He smiled like how my sister does.

“I’m just curious how you and Rei got so close. I heard that Rei wasn’t too keen on making new friends.”

That was quite far from the truth. She seemed quite happy to talk to me and I felt comfortable.

“It’s probably just a rumour…”

“Even so, it still is something, that you were able to talk to someone like her.”

Azuno, who had earphone in, entered the conversation. He was seated on the opposite side of Ivey and hadn’t looked up.

“See? Even someone like Azuno ,who isn’t even into all that drama, realizes that was something special.”

The two of them seemed to share the same idea but I simply ignored it and ate some of my snacks. It was just a normal meeting between friends.