Chapter 2

The sky was becoming cloudy. But then again, that was Washington State. So, at that point, I was more than used to the weather being as gloomy as it was. However today felt more gloomy than usual.

Aki and I finished our lunch, and we went to the library to finish as much of our presentation as possible.

“It would’ve been nice if you were here in the morning,” Aki muttered. “Wouldn’t have been left to do most of it myself.”

“Shut up,” I said. “I did a majority of the legwork. You just had to make the fucking slides, man.”

“No need to get feisty, sir. Just delivering a message to the king.”

“Suck me off while you’re at it.”

“Damn, you swing that way. You learn something new every day.”

“Fuck off.”

Aki laughed, and I sat there in complete embarrassment. I didn’t understand why I had him as a friend sometimes. But he was a good person. He always looked out for me and vice versa. We’ve been friends since we were young and have gone to the same school all the until our senior year. It’s hard to keep your friends for ten plus years and not want to decapitate them. But Aki was an exception. He was always a good friend; usually he was the type of person to give me a hard time. Especially when we lived in Tokyo. It was quite the shock to see him here in the US. The probability of him and I reuniting was very unlikely. But hey, it happened and I’m not complaining about it.

“What are we going to do about our project, bro?” Aki said frantically. “It’s due by the end of the day.”

“Relax,” I said nonchalantly. “We’ll be fine. We have plenty of time to finish it before our class starts. And think about this, we can always request an extension. Right?”

“If you say so, Kiyoshi. I just don’t want to fail this project like we failed the last one.”

“We didn’t ‘fail’ the last one, Aki. We just didn’t get an A on it.”

“Easy for you to say! My parents killed me when they found out I got a B+ instead of an A.”

“At least we passed it with a good enough grade to supplement how little we truly did on it.”

We could’ve went back and forth debating on who really put in most of the work. However, time was of the essence. And we were getting more and more screwed over the more we kept bickering at each other. Like that was going to help our case.

The bell rang for us to go back to class for the second half of the day. God, I wish I could shut that bell off for good and just go home again. Even though I literally missed the first half of the day already. What’s missing a full day of class?

We trudged our way through the barrage of students and through the endless mazes of hallways to our classroom. We barely made it on time. I forgot how hectic it was to get back to class after lunch. Was I really gone that long? Had I really forgotten the struggle of after lunch?

A slam of my desk took me off of my deep thoughts.

“Rise and shine, loser!” A girl said aloud.

It was Kaiya Kazunori of all people. She was another foreign exchange student that populated our lovely school.

“Stop daydreaming, Kayosha Sazuya.” She retorted.

“Kiyoshi Sazuya.” I said.

“Same damn difference.”

“…”

“Anyway, did you and Aki get our presentation sorted out? I don’t want to be flapping in the wind because of you two bumbling morons.”

“The probability of us—”

“I don’t care about the probability; do you have it ready or not?”

“…of us getting it done by the end of the day is most likely a yes.” I said, annoyed. “Does that answer your question?”

“…”

“…”

“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” Kaiya said, irritated.

“It’s alright, Kaiya. You can drop the tsundere act. I know how you truly feel about me.”

Her face burst into a bright red color. “Shut up. Baka. Go un-alive yourself! Just get our shit ready! God… so fucking annoying.”

Apparently, calling Kaiya Kazunori a tsundere was like stepping on a minefield. You would just explode, or in this case, she would explode at you. I don’t know why she would explode. It’s blatantly obvious that she was feeling some kind of way. Did that justify her cussing me out? Yesn’t. I say again, yesn’t. I knew she was under a lot of pressure to make sure that she got a good grade on our presentation. However, that didn’t give her the gull to lash out at me. Not that it mattered, anyway. We would have passed the presentation with flying colors, anyway.

***

The rest of the day went by extremely slowly. So slowly, in fact, that I almost fell asleep in our literature class, and we had an exam tomorrow. Yes, that boring. I would rather fail my exam than fight sleep and listen to the teacher because they completely bored me to death and back. I didn’t think that was possible.

I rose my hand because I needed to escape this hell that was English class. “May I go to the restroom?”

“Okay, but be quick, Kiyoshi. You don’t want to miss any important notes for the exam.”

I quickly rose from my seat and made my way into the hallway. Finally, I got some peace and quiet and some well needed fresh air. I took for granted how much fresh air can really calm the mind and rejuvenate a person’s mindset.

I headed down the stairs toward the bathroom. Surely, I could’ve elongated my way to the restroom. But I knew I had to get back to class or else I would surely fail that exam. I quickly did my business and hurried back to class. On my way to my class, I walked past a girl heading in the opposite direction. We bumped into each other by accident as I was scurrying back to class.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said anxiously. “I didn’t see you there.”

Her eyes met mine. She had the most beautiful blue eyes. Almost as blue as the ocean. I couldn’t help but stare right into them. They were almost hypnotizing.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t think you could see me.” She said anxiously.

Confusing rang throughout my head. What did she mean by she didn’t think I could see her? I wanted to ask her more, but I really had to get back to class. However, I wanted to know what she meant.

“I’m sorry, what did—”

She was gone. Almost like she was never there.