Sometimes it was like having two lives; being two different people.
Her school was an exclusive one, and an expensive one, but the girls still gossiped in the halls between classes. Television, movies, music. Boys.
"I hear you're just back from Tokyo again, Usami. You really do have a boyfriend there, don't you?" Honda Ayumi, from Ayaka's art class. She was loud, snotty and domineering. She was someone who Ayaka intensely disliked. She had a pin-up of Bad Luck in her locker.
Sometimes, Ayaka wanted to ask why she had it there, why she liked the band. There was always lead in her stomach when she opened her mouth to try. "...No, I don't have a boyfriend, Honda-san."
Art class. "Draw something from memory, in any medium you like."
She chose charcoal. She was seeing a cityscape in her mind's eye, one she'd seen with her real eyes not so long before. It wasn't that she thought it beautiful or interesting, or anything, it just stuck in her mind and wouldn't go away. There was a voice and a person tied to that memory, but that part of it felt like it belonged to someone else.
She drew the cherry tree from the garden at her home.
As often as she could, Ayaka brought her homework outside to the garden. There was never any place more suited to studying: no place as tranquil. No place as unchangingly beautiful, day in, day out, spring, summer, autumn or winter.
She'd always loved this place; she was born here, had been raised here, her whole self perfectly matched to the manner and pace of life here. If only the world had been in agreement with her parent's plans for her, she would have always stayed here.
Everyone and everything else had changed, though, until she too, finally, inevitably, changed as well. Now, everything was temporary. Soon, eventually, she'd leave. The other place had already tempted her, stole itself a place inside her heart, and when she went to live there for good, she would already love it.
And if she ever woke in the middle of the night, unsure of where she was, it would be all right. She wouldn't be alone.
She smiled. She looked down at the math homework on her lap and sighed. Knowing things would change made it hard to continue as normal in the meantime.