That evening, Chen, Reon and I decided to go for a guys night out. It was eleven PM and it was freezing while we where waiting for the bus to come, which was going to take a decade, or so it seemed.

'So how are things with Haneru?' Reon asked gently, undoubtly aiming to hear more than he asked for.

'No complaints.' I answered, 'we've only been going out twice, remember?'

'Yeah, off to the supermarket, how romantic.' Chen giggled when adding a slight melody to the word 'supermarket'. 'Oh my dear, shall we buy bread? Yeah, my love, and cheese too!' he went on theatratically. Reon and I started snickering initially. Chen's hilarity was hard to resist in a somehow threatening situation like this. Some way I felt not comfortable at all, standing here at night at this deserted bus stop.

As soon as silence fell, a noise behind me caught my attention, and I turned around to catch a little movement in a bush. 'You scared of the big bad wolf?' Chen growled and imitated a wolf's howl.

But I felt a huge shot of relief when the bus finally arrived and we were able to exit the cold night's air.

While greeting the bus driver, I could swear I heard some more noise behind me.

It didn't take us long to reach Rumoi's single night club, but somehow I couldn't feel excited about it. No girl seemed to be as intriguing as Haneru had been to me and I stuck to drinking beer.

I was somehow bothered by the fact that my friends were having a great time. Chen and Reon lived like they'd die tomorrow, drinking way above their legal limit and dancing with as many girls as possible.

I envied them when they fell to the floor, as drunk as they could be, shouting irrational things and touching girls where they shouldn't be touched. I wish I could enjoy myself the way they did right now.

And the most annoying thing was, I had always enjoyed myself that way. Always – until Haneru Dolcesconi entered, and tore apart, my life. Everything that I had embraced with so much enthousiasm before seemed childish and irresponsible now, and I knew this was all because of this one girl.

This one girl I was so desperately wanting to be with – this one girl I was missing so strongly I couldn't stop drinking craploads of alcohol, trying to let my feelings fade away so I could forget and have fun.

The feelings didn't fade. They didn't become even an inch less powerful than they were. I missed Haneru, I wanted to feel her cold, marble skin and let my fingers glide trough her soft, perfect hair.

It was about 4:30 AM when the party finally ended. I can't remember how we ever managed, but we left the club and entered the street feeling enormously tired and drunk in every way.

Still, I couldn't help but notice a gang of handsome-looking Japanese guys talking to people around us. Chen tried to tell me to ignore it, or that's what I thought, but he didn't manage to speak properly as we dragged along to the bus stop. However, as soon as we got there, four of the gang members were waiting for us.

'You guys had a good time?' the tallest guy, his hair bleached blonde, asked. His tone was quite friendly to my surprise, still I was very well aware this could mean no good.

Still quite unable to speak, we frankly ignored him, but he didn't give in. 'Perhaps you got some money left for us?'

'To what goal?' I finally asked.

'Actually, my friends and me need to buy some good stuff. But yeah, we got no money left, ya know, so we thought, maybe you could be generous.'

I gasped as I studied his face and discovered his wide, amber colored pupils. Surely, those were a drug users' eyes.

One of the other gang members suddenly pointed a knife at us. 'You would be the first ones to not be generous, ya know.'

'And we won't force you to give the money. If you don't give it, we'll take it.'

Chen and Reon stepped back, causing me to be in front. Obvious reasons; I was the tallest one.

I tried to get my brains to think clearly, but I was still too dazzled by the alcohol. Bluffing was the best I could think of. 'You actually dare to threaten Europeans?' I spoke, pulling out my best poker face.

'Got no problems with that, lad.' the guy with the knife snickered. 'How long's it taking ya to get the freakin' money?' He stepped forward incredibly fast and stroke my hand quickly with the point of his knife.

Little drops of blood gushed out of my hand almost immediately.

'There you got it. We could also just kill you.' the gang leader said, but suddenly he seemed to freeze.

When I turned around, I got why. Right behind me stood a pale, blonde European with dark, piercing eyes. Those eyes were focused on the gang leader, who was at least two feet shorter than him.

I heard Reon's double tongued voice, curiously asking: 'Serge de la Romée?'

'You scum.' Serge spoke with his beautiful, slightly French accented voice. 'Disappear or you'll know what will happen.'

'Yes, we know what would happen, Serge.' the gang leader said, seemingly confident with himself. 'We most certainly do.'

'What is your point into stepping onto those gentlemen?' I suddenly heard someone say. It was an even more beautiful, light and soft female voice. I would recognize Haneru's voice out of thousands of others.

I turned to see her, but my vision was heavily blurred. She stood too far away, still my heart thumped with excitement. As she came closer, I could see that she looked stunning as ever. She was such a godlike creature!

The gang leader's eyes focused on Haneru. 'You do seem to care a lot about them, Haneru Dolcesconi.'

I was too drunk to be confused about them knowing Haneru and her friends. 'Certainly, Taiyo.' she spoke.

'And you know, you should be scared. We got a few more tricks upon our sleeve this time.'

I looked around me, expecting to see what she had meant. The only things I saw were Chen and Reon's frightened faces. Different from me, they didn't seem to feel safer.

Taiyo laughed. 'You brought more of your kind? That won't affect us. You see the way we expanded our ranks.' He pointed at his little gang friends. There were about eleven of them now. It was indeed way to many to deal with. I couldn't imagine Haneru and Serge fighting them off, despite that whatever trump card they had.

'Those sucky newborns.' Serge laughed. 'You honestly expect them to be useful?'

'You shut up right now, Serge!' Haneru shouted angrily, making me curious about "newborns" even more.

'Now, Taiyo, what we meant is entirely different.' she said. 'Actually we brought you some cute dogs.'

From the corner of my eye I saw two figures moving towards us fastly. It took me some time to recognize them as Yumna and her boyfriend Calvin before they rushed into us.

'You call them dogs?' I asked super curious. This situation was getting stranger any second.

'Now this is odd.' Yumna sighed. 'They attacked you, Stephen?'

I nodded stupidly. 'Those gangster people, actually.' But as if she would think Haneru attacked us.

'We'll settle things fast enough. I heard a lot about you, Taiyo.' said Yumna and offered her hand.

Taiyo accepted and they shook hands. To my utter surprise, they even granted eachother a small bow.

'Why don't we settle things in the woods near here, then?' he responded to her, his eyes now focused on Calvin. 'That should be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.' Calvin said enthousiastically.

'I'll stay with the boys here, then.' Serge offered.

'No way. You go have fun.' Haneru disagreed. 'I'll take care of things here.'

And within mere seconds, Yumna, Calvin, Serge, Taiyo and his people had disappeared. I felt like fainting and emberassingly enough, I did.

And emberassment was the first thing I felt when I opened my eyes again. How could I be stupid enough to faint? What should people think of a guy fainting after going out?

Then I realized I was in my host parent's home. I felt I was lying on the couch in the main room, but suddenly, Erika's face filled my vision. 'Mom! He's awake!' she screamed.

'Please, Erika. I'm having a serious hangover.' I admitted shamefully and tried to keep my headache under control. I horribly failed, but at least Erika left.

It was then I noticed I was still not alone. There was someone sitting next to the couch, on a chair. To my surprise, this peculiar person was Yumna Reem.

'What the hell are you doing here?' I asked her impolitely. My headache was making me rude and I cursed myself for speaking like that to her. Who knows what she had pulled off to get me home safely!

She didn't answer, which kind of allowed me to study her looks carefully. She was wearing a short little dress and enormously sized high heels, which laid focus on her beautiful, overly tall brown legs even more.

How did she ever find high heels in this shoe size?

'What are you looking at?' she said unfriendly.

'Your shoes. They're nice.' I said, and felt incredibly dumb.

'Yes. They're US size 10, I can see your surprisement.'

'I bet you're not here to talk about your shoe size?' I asked carefully, not wanting to upset her any more. I thought it should be clear girls with size 10 wouldn't want to discuss their feet. It should probably be considered a handicap for a girl.

'No. I'm not. I brought you home after you went crazy this morning.'

'This morning? What time is it, then?'

'Don't overreact. It's just past noon.'

I sighed and got myself up. 'What happened? My memories are vague.'

'You got drunk. You started imagining things and you fainted. Calvin and I were there too. We took you and your pals home at the backseat of Calvin's BMW. You owe us.'

That was not what happened for sure. 'Haneru was there too. And some dangerous guys who threatened us. Even Serge was there!'

Yumna sighed deeply and pulled her right leg over the left one. 'No they were not, just believe me.'

'You are a dreadful liar. I possess those round things people call eyes, for your record.'

In reaction, she turned her face towards mine, drowning me in her spotless chocolate cream skin which smelled nearly as wonderful as Haneru's.

'You listen to me for once. I know the truth's different, but swear not to speak about it, please. Not another word. Please just believe that Haneru, Serge and those gangsters weren't there.'

'You can't just force me to believe otherwise!'

'Oh, I can.' Yumna said with a deeper undertone in her velvet voice. 'I'll tell you the following; if anything ever reminds Haneru or anyone else of that night, you have to put an immediate stop to dating her.'

'You spoke to Chen and Reon, too?'

A slight grimace played around Yumna's lips. 'Nope. They weren't as difficult as you were to – believe otherwise.' She rose up from her chair and drifted off quickly.

Next day at school things weren't like they used to be. Like Yumna had told me, Chen and Reon couldn't remember anything from the night out we had. Just vague details, and their descriptions made me wonder how much and how in anyway Yumna had messed with their brains.

In the breaks, Haneru wouldn't look at me. Every time I'd throw my glance at the table she was seated, she'd look away, as if she was embarassed. But what was there for her to be embarassed of?

The only one looking back was Melita, who was in school all the time now for some reason, even though she was beyond school age. She kept throwing me dirty looks until I'd gave up on making eye contact with Haneru.

The week went on like that. It was considerably boring and frustrating, not being able to talk to Haneru, being watched carefully all the time by this Melita person. And on top of that, my friends didn't remember anything at all, it was killing me.