(21) When it hit them

As they walk to the clinic, occasionally, he finds himself glancing down at Airi in his arms, still frowning and uncomfortable. Her hands were crossed on her chest, defensively, as if closing in on herself.

“Please put me down.” She demands again and only falls on deaf ears. Her head was leaning down, as if trying to hide her face, seeing her like this makes him feel like he is doing something wrong, and he knows it in himself that it’s true.

He is full of contradictions, he acknowledges. He wasn’t always like this.

Going to this university is one fine example.

During his final year of high school, he already resolved to study in a city miles away that offers much more to a person of his academic standing, even his parents were on-board with the idea. It would mean that he wouldn’t stay with Nina and his friends, who would go to a local university but it’s not all bad, and he could always visit them or vice versa. Nothing’s ending, it’s just the end of an era that’s all.

It was supposed to be set in stone with all the loose ends tied.

Except one.

”I’ll be going to Oakland University.” He hears Zoey tell her friends. A local university, he notes to himself. He knows Zoey well enough to know that she could definitely do better than a second-rate university like that. Her friends know it to be true as well and proceeds to tell to consider other options to which she smiled back, a sheepish smile that got him wondering.

”There’s someone I can’t leave alone,” she reasons, “if I’m not here, I’d worry.” Her friends smirk at this, thinking for that person to be a significant other or a boyfriend. She only laughs at this, saying that’s not it which only fell on deaf ears.

He knows deep inside who he is talking about, what confuses him is why does she still worry for her, after everything she did? Normally, even their closest friends would have the heart to walk away. It’s unorthodox but it’s not something he would dwell over. After all, he made his decision and she made hers. It’s why he refuses to make any contact with her or keep tabs on everything that’s going in her or her family. It’s cruel but she did much worse. She hurt his friend, someone important to him.

Airi aside however, he still considers Zoey a dear friend despite no longer talking to each other for three years. He can’t brush off everything they went through just like that. So, gathering his courage, he decides to reach out to Zoey, hoping to talk to her one last time. He doesn’t want to have any regrets.

He expected a pleasant conversation between friends who hadn’t talked to each other for years.

”What the hell do you want from me?!”

What he got was road rage.

“I can’t believe you would have the guts to come talk to me after how you pushed Airi away like that!”

Why the hell was she angry?! Isn’t Airi the cause of all this in the first place?! Everything would have been fine and peachy if Airi hadn’t gone and did what she did. She ruined everything!

“Push her away? She’s the one who fucking left!” He snaps, “if you hadn’t realized, she left you as well without so much as a fucking apology! She hurt people Zoey, she pushed Nina down the stairs I mean, who would do something diabolical that?”

”You seriously believe she would push someone down the stairs?” She asks, incredulous.

”What else is there to believe?” His voice rises as if trying to prove a point and stating the obvious, “everything points to her! And the fact that she was suspended before transferring proves everything!” He sees Zoey turn silent, as if she can’t believe what he’s hearing.

He presses further, ”what I seriously can’t believe is how you would still treat her like a friend after all this time. Seriously, how blind could you get? Like what, does she have some huge dirt on you too—

Without warning, she slaps him, strong enough that he steps back, confused at the sudden turn of events. His fingers dazedly traced the pain across the left side of his face, still in disbelief. Did she just slap him? This bitch—

Zoey was crying.

He freezes in place, his mouth gaping open. That Zoey who he identifies as this icy iron fortress for being stone cold in the face of anything is here in front of him, breaking down and crying, her books scattered across the floor. The tears flow non-stop that it sets him panicking, as if a siren rang out. His was his anger was replaced with the impulse to console her, tell off anyone who hurt her even if that person was he himself.

With one hand, she tries to wipe down the tears that kept falling. “How could you… how could you…” she repeats to him as her other hand hits his chest, much weaker and tolerable than her slap earlier.

”I…I’m sorry, okay,” he finds himself saying instead, anything to make her stop crying. He has tried to console women—girls since he started middle school (usually the ones he rejects) so he isn’t new to the scene. However, it was his first time with a person he has known never to cry in all their years together. It registered to him that this is the first time he had ever seen her cry, and he asks himself why is that, he has seen her angry and scared but this a whole new area to him, unchartered territory only few people ever came across. He realizes that he had only been seeing one side of this person all this time. He wonders if Airi knew this side of her.

”Don’t ever… ever, say that to Airi!” She almost yells, however with her voice hoarse and clogged, it comes out weak and stifled instead.

She grips his uniform strong enough to leave a lasting crease, “Promise me you won’t tell her!”

”I.. I promise…” he says, confused and uncertain.

”… it would break her to hear you say that.”

He doesn’t understand where she was coming from. What makes her value Airi so much? What had she seen?What angle did she see her that painted this image of Airi in her eyes? He always had this image of Airi being strong (although not as strong as Zoey) who pulls everyone to her pace, forcefully if she has to. A girl spoiled rotten by her family that made her have this unbelievable logic that everyone would do the same.

Only when it comes to him would she be this kind soul, a complete 360 degrees from who she actually is. She would instead spoil him rotten and stick to him like glue because she had this ridiculous idea that she should protect him at all cost. She would always come running to him whenever she sees him. She is someone who would be angry when told all the things she is— a horrible person, no matter who because she always value herself more than anything.

She isn’t the type to ‘break’ over these things.

And yet here is Zoey making him promise never tell her these things as it would surely do.

”Why…”

Zoey glances in his direction and sees his confused expression, his eyes reflect all these questions he wants to ask but couldn’t. She realizes what Airi meant when she said he is better off hating her and resigned to this idea to keep things as is. She pulls away from him, finally calming down.

”I don’t blame you for thinking the way you do. If I were you, I’d probably arrive at the same conclusion.” She says, “after all, it’s not what you don’t know, it’s what she refuses to show you.”

”I don’t understand…”

Zoey proceeds to pick up the books she dropped over her outburst earlier.

”My bad, of course you’d think that after what happened to Nina,” she starts, “you’re better off moving on with your life. Forget about Airi,” she turns to him, smiling a bit. “You’re not wrong, she did do all those things, those horrible things…” She says this with an eerily solemn voice as if there was some hidden context he wasn’t seeing.

The school bell rang. They both look over at the sound of students settling back to their respective classrooms and the voices of the teachers calling off the students to return to their seats.

“Well, that’s that,” Zoey says with cheerfully awkward finality, “I have a quiz on fourth period so I should head out first.”

He wants to stop her.

”Good luck on your college applications, but I think I’ll need it more than you,” she says with a laugh before heading out and going back to her class.

He doesn’t understand, how could she think and have these expectations on what Airi would think or do? What does she know about what happened? Just how much doesn’t he know?

After all, it’s not what you don’t know, it’s what she refuses to show you.

With everything that happened, for the first time, he starts to question himself.

Just how much is Airi refusing to show him?

__________________________

That confusion still haunts him today, eating at him whole.

Although somehow it seemed stronger today for some reason.

“Put me down,” Airi says again, he ignores it.

In the recent months, no, since meeting her that first day of university, Airi had been nothing but an enigma to him. Something he couldn’t look away from for some reason.

It was as if seeing her for the first time, how she reacts, her expressions. Her smiles. He wonders how could he forget that Airi could also smile like he did at Zoey and her friends, that she could look so resolute but also weak like when Keith up and cornered her, revealing her past to her new friends and how broken she would be when he had told her off harshly for something she didn’t do.

Are these the things Airi refuses to show him?

And now, how she is as angry as she could get as she stares up at him, demanding to be put down. He feels weak against her stare for some reason, as if he is slowly being drained. Is this her effect on him?

"Ren.” She calls him in this angry, authoritative tone that he would normally be should be put off, but all that registered in him was how long it had been since she called his name again. He felt his face warming up.

“Ren.”

He turns to her, dazed and confused.

She sighs.

”You have a fever.”