Chapter 2: Meanings

The gentle sound of water filled the scene as the girl looked towards the ocean, sand tickling her bare feet as she walked across it, disregarding whether it was burning or a nice cool feeling. She looked around, enjoying the peace around her until she thought she saw someone near the cliffs. Curious, she began to scale the not so steep cliff face, knowing that it wouldn't take her more than a moment to get to the top. She finally climbed the top of the seemed to be a cliff which was more of a hill, and there she saw something - or someone - beautiful standing, not looking at her. She walked behind the person and spoke silently. The person in front of her turned, again smiling upon the girl in front of her. The girl then began to walk a bit closer to the person until their bodies were touching; slowly the person tilted the girl's chin as she drew her face closer.

"WHAAAA!" Tomo yelped as she fell sideways out of bed, and she had just woken up to another sort of dream, scaring her at the possibility of what it meant. She looked weakly at the illuminated clock face, barely making out that it said 5:26.

Tomo groaned as she got back into her bed, suddenly noticing that it felt wet. She put her hand to her head and felt the numb coldness that was sweat, and she realised that she must have sweated throughout the dream as her blanket, sheets and probably her mattress were all soaked full of it.

Mentally noting to never sleep in bed when having dreams such as the one she had, Tomo tried going back to sleep, despite the wetness of the sheets around her. She finally succeeded in falling asleep, and she did not dream again for the rest of the night.

The next day at school, Yomi had just finished putting on her school shoes when she heard Tomo walking towards her. Getting ready for anything, she looked up to the tired face of her friend. Chuckling to herself, she stood up and asked her friend if she got any sleep or had been up all night playing video games.

"It's not funny. I did get some sleep but I had a bad dream around 5:30 and it was hard getting to sleep after that. And worse still…"

She leant towards her friend's ear and whispered something, making the tall girl crack a smile slightly as she asked "and did you?"

"Of course not! I was sweating heavily in bed; it's not my fault my mattress got soaked as well…" She said, hoping that nobody had heard this conversation with Yomi. She then tried to forget the subject and went onto her daily torment of her best friend.

When in class, their irate teacher still wasn't there until 10 minutes after the bell, again late for her class as she scribbled something on the board and passed out on the desk. Yukari barely lifted her head to see if anyone was doing the work, and fell back down, satisfied that they were.

---

The next class was gym, which began with volleyball. Tomo, as usual got picked to be on a 6 a side team, which mostly consisted of herself, Yomi, Chiyo-chan the class prodigy, Osaka the osakan whom didn't act like one, Miss Sakaki, the class's sporting legend, only second to herself of course and finally Kaorin, Miss Sakaki's personal fangirl, but Tomo believed that there also seemed to be something else going on there too.

After a few wins, mostly caused by Miss Sakaki's expert playing, gym was nearly finished until they heard the thundering footsteps of someone running towards them, or in this case running towards their gym teacher Miss Kurosawa.

"NYAMO! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?" Yukari yelled at the gym teacher, waving a piece of paper in her face before it being snatched by the latter.

"It's my bonus, I thought I put this locked in my drawer, unless… YOU BROKE INTO MY DRAWER!?" she thought and called back at the languages teacher.

"So? I wanted to know what secrets you hide in there, and that being one of them!" Yukari snapped back, a sly grin on her face as she knew what was coming next.

"YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO GO IN MY DRAWER YUKARI! LOCKED OR UNLOCKED!" She practically screamed at the grinning teacher, only to be stopped as the former pointed to her students, most of them were frozen in fright at their teacher's loud outburst.

She turned to see Yukari cackling as she ran off, she sighed as she muttered 'Yukari…' to herself and turned around. She tried to put on a happy face as she only said to them, "She pushed me to shout right?" The students all had a dark aura around them at their teacher trying to apologise to them for shouting.

"…Right?" Nyamo asked not as a question but as a cry, feeling small and ashamed at what Yukari pushed her to do.

---

At lunchtime Tomo was thinking what to do about the dreams that she had been having, and thought to ask Yomi who unlike her when she joined the school, actually looked up what facilities the school had. Yomi had told her that there was a counselor at the school who she could talk to if she was having any problems, and Tomo took her advice and began looking for the counselor.

She however didn't know where this counselor was, so she did the next best thing and asked one of the teachers where their office was. When she was about to knock on the door of the teacher's lounge, she heard talking from two familiar figures.

"Yukari, why did you have to come all that way just to make me scare the students?"

"Oh, I thought it would be fun, seeing you're usually their favourite teacher!"

"Yukari…"
"What? Oh don't be in a mood now, come on, if I kiss you will you feel better?"
"Well…"
"Too late!"

Tomo quietly opened the door slightly to have shock run through her; there she was seeing two of her teachers making out, but worst of all they were both women! She tried to turn only to sense a presence which she didn't find all that good, and she turned slightly to see the horrible person that was Mr. Kimura looking through the door also.

"Ah, so you know about them too?" He asked quietly, never closing his gaping mouth once. A scream emanated from Tomo and she was off running, Kimura however tilted his head and looked through the door, now seeing an angry Yukari looking at him with Nyamo embarrassed at her desk trying to hide a blush.

Tomo turned the corner only to hear what seemed to be Kimura screaming as he got beaten up by what seemed to be a very angry languages teacher. She stood outside a door and tried to catch her breath, and as she looked towards the door, she saw a plaque on it that said "Counselor's Office".

"Talk about coincidence…" Tomo told herself as she knocked and entered when called for. She took a seat as the counselor was sorting some papers; Tomo sat in the seat and waited for the counselor to be ready.

"Hello, I am Miss Fujioh, the school counselor, how may I help you miss?"

"Miss Tomo Takino, sir."

"Well Miss Takino, what can I do for you?"

"Well…"

Tomo went on to tell Miss Fujioh about both dreams she had, leaving out who the person was as she didn't even want to mention it just yet. After she had told the counselor, she laid back, exhausted.

"Hmm, well this could mean many things, but may I ask a question?"

"Sure, shoot."

"Was the person a boy or a girl?"

"Err…"

Tomo froze, because she didn't think that the counselor would ask this question, but she knew that what she had revealed to the counselor would be kept confidential, and she finally went away and told her who the person was.

"The person in my dream is a girl, but not just someone I don't know, it's my best friend…"

"Hmm, if that is the case, then I think I might have an answer for you, but I'm not sure you're going to like it..."

"I think I know what you are going to say Miss Fujioh, that I am in… err… like her?"

"Yes, I think that might be the case here, unfortunately I can't help you with this, but I can be here if you ever need to talk to someone about it, ok?"

"Ok, and thank you Miss Fujioh, you had confirmed what I was thinking."

As the counselor showed Tomo out she thought about how she would deal with the problem, whether she would try to tell her friend how she feels or she will keep it a secret and never tell her.

Tomo was walking home by herself tonight, and as she thought on how she would tackle the situation, something dawned on her. What if her friend had the same feelings about her, and she had been hiding it away from her for all these years? But then...what if Tomo did ask Yomi and she rejected her, what then could she do?

Tomo tried to think about every situation, every possibility but coming up with nothing which she actually thought would happen, and she sighed as she laid on her newly changed bed and looked up at the ceiling, briefly telling herself, "Ok Yomi, before I thought it was going to get complicated, but now it is already complicated and it's not going to get any easier…"