Chapter Four

Aella frowned at the pile of homework that had accumulated in her binder after a day of school. Apparently, missing a day and a half of school added up. Not only had she missed a lot of work in class, but she'd also not done her homework. She blamed it on a certain boy in her class—she cast her eyes on a boy sporting a green Mohawk—who had forgotten to deliver yesterday's homework to her when she'd been in the hospital.

Stupid kid.

"Hey, Houshigawa-san!" a boy's voice called as she was turning around.

"Yep."

He was stocky with hair colored a putrid brownish orange. He stopped in front of her with a yellow folder held out in front of him. "Can you take this to the student council room for me?" He wiggled the folder for emphasis.

"Uh…" Aella looked around the classroom for an escape route—and found a short, bespectacled girl floundering under a table for a pencil. She blinked unsurely, wondering if it would be too cruel to tell the boy to ask her to do it instead.

"Sure, guess I can."

The boy smiled crookedly. "Sorry, just, tennis practice, y'know?" He didn't wait for a reply and ran off.

Aella watched him go, feeling the slightest inkling that he'd been lying. She sighed and slapped the folder repeatedly in her hand, then, shouldered her backpack and headed out of the room, kicking the pencil into the poor girl's grasping fingers on her way out.

She flipped uninterestedly through the folder—which, upon closer inspection, was filled with possible school events for the coming year—while blowing air out of her lips, a little amused by the creative ideas student council came up with and looking up every once in a while to ensure she wouldn't run into anything. She soon became so immersed in the ideas that she forgot to look up, until when she finally remembered to, she was already face to face with a pair of icy cobalt eyes.

Lips lifted upwards as Aella stumbled backwards, lips parting in shock, just as it was mirrored in her eyes. "Uh, um—hey, Niou-kun…," she said unsurely.

"Why so formal? I thought we were friends." Niou stepped after her.

Aella's mouth closed and then dropped open again as she struggled for words. Finally, she was able to scrounge up a reply from her suddenly-tiny verbal dictionary: "Uh…yeah, we are."

Niou smiled easily. "Mmm, nice seein' you around. How was America?"

Aella fidgeted in her shoes, and then began walking purposefully, though she had already forgotten where the student council room was located in the labyrinth that, in her eyes, is now Rikkai Dai.

"…Great. Very American-ish and…yeah." Real smart, Aella. Oh, where was her way with words when she needed it?

He only had to take a few steps to get ahead of her, and Aella's hoped that he would keep on going, but he turned around and started walking backwards. "Descriptive. Y'know, since you never bothered to call or anything, I never got to tell you the things that's been going on in Japan."

His words pelted Aella in the chest like miniature bullets so that she had to struggle to keep appearing composed.

"I joined the tennis team, y'know? Yeah, we went to Nationals twice. By the way, are you still playing tennis?" Niou's demeanor reminded Aella of a coral snake, as always. Seemingly innocent, like a curious friend, yet possessing a deadly poison.

Aella whirled on her heels and began walking aimlessly in the other direction, pointedly ignoring Niou while trying to act like nothing was wrong.

"The student council room is that-a way, just saying." Niou pointed in the direction that she'd just been walking.

"Thanks," Aella said, trying to smile, and spun around again.

Niou either didn't catch her smile, or he didn't feel like returning it. He stuck by her and said in a low, serious voice, "Why're you being so cold anyway? Not like I was the one who disappeared on you."

Aella stopped and gaped at his back while Niou kept walking. His demeanor had changed. His back was straight, exhibiting a kind of icy beauty, even though his hands were still tucked into his pockets. He seemed hurt to Aella, and it made her feel terrible.

Why is the student council room so far away?

Slowly, tentatively, she called to his back, "Yeah, I'm sorry about that, y'know, Haru. You're right about me being cold. I guess I just kinda felt guilty."

He didn't stop for a while, and for a moment, Aella was afraid that he wouldn't forgive her, that he would just keep on walking. Then, he turned and began strolling towards her with slightly skeptical eyes. They locked gazes—turquoise against pale blue—as he drew closer and Aella's eyes grew wider in anticipation for…something.

…But he walked past her, just barely brushing her arm with his own and making the hairs on it stand on end.

Aella waited for Hanako in her seat the next morning, fingering the folder protruding from her backpack. She never did get that to the student council room, she remembered, and considered dropping it off during lunch.

The door opened and Hanako, straggly-haired with heavy bags under her eyes, trotted in and dropped into the seat beside Aella. "Ugh!" she moaned. "You—" She stopped abruptly, having caught sight of Aella's purple nose. "You haven't had a very good day, either."

Aella looked up with tired eyes and offered her a dry smile. "Yeah. Dodgeball is a very dangerous game, did you know that?" She followed this with a laugh.

Hanako blinked. "I'm not even going to ask."

Aella's lips pulled upward despite her dreary mood. "Okay. But just so you know, I haven't been slacking off on our bet just 'cause I almost broke my nose."

Hanako groaned. "And I was hoping you'd forget."

"Hah-hah. No, not a chance." Aella then proceeded to remove a tray and a single teacup from her backpack in preparation for a recreation of something she'd read from a manga.

Nothing changed after that bump-in with Niou, although Aella would occasionally get a chilly feeling that someone was watching her from the shadows, between classes and sometimes even during them. She still hung out with Hanako, who was actually talking (or something like that) to Marui Bunta. She still stayed after school and wandered around the premises until her job began. And she never did join a sports team, not because she wasn't talented enough but because she just never bothered to.

Internally, something had changed though. She felt heavier now, and the weight was increasing day after day. It was that feeling Aella felt whenever someone entrusted her with a secret that she was supposed to keep from Niou, a feeling that Aella always gave into. Except this time, it wasn't secrets she was keeping from Niou, it was memories she was trying to keep from herself.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Hanako poked her forehead.

Aella blinked and looked up from her melting sundae in surprise, like she wasn't sure how she'd gotten into her present position in the first place. She and Hanako were currently lounging across from each other in an ice cream parlor, the other girl leaning forward with slender legs crossed and Aella with shoulders hunched as she slouched over her ice cream.

"You've been spacing out a lot since I got back from being sick."

It was hard to even pull her lips up into a smile now, but Aella somehow managed.

Hanako raised an eyebrow. "You're a shitty actress, you know that?"

"There goes my dream of starring in a big blockbuster movie," Aella said dryly.

"Please. They wouldn't even cast you as an extra."

Aella let her lips drop into a frown, and found that it was much easier than smiling.

Suddenly, Hanako's annoying new ringtone sounded from within her bag. She looked at the caller ID, and Aella could see her suppress a squeal. Her thumb pushed a button and she pressed it to her ear.

Aella withdrew into her thoughts as the words "Oh, Marui-san" left Hanako's lips. She prodded hopelessly at her ice cream soup and leaned her cheek against her hand. To be truthful, she knew exactly why she felt like this. She didn't know which was harder: breaking the feeble dam that she'd created for the onslaught of memories or to keep on rebuilding it.

Hanako emerged from her conversation with Marui long enough to ask Aella, "Hey, Marui-san wants to know if we wanna come to the grand opening of that pastry place downtown."

Aella yet again looked confused that she was sitting in an ice cream parlor. "Yeah, sure, I'm free," she murmured.

Hanako narrowed her eyes at Aella, but the prospect of actually going on an almost-date with her crush was too big of a proposal for her to stop and inquire about her friend's personal issues. Aella could solve those by herself, she figured.

"Yeah, we'll go," she said into her phone. "So, how's life?"

"I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose. Fire away, fire away. Ricochet, you take your aim—"

The song was cut off as Aella flopped over in her bed and flipped her phone open, looking for the time on the screen and deciphering the numbers to seven o' clock. Her eyes shot open and she flipped out of bed, dragging on the first clothes she could dig from her dresser. Then, she remembered that she still hadn't answered the phone and pressed the answer button, pulling it to her ear.

"Where are you?!" Hanako's shrill voice screeched. "We're supposed to meet Marui-kun today, remember?"

Aella blinked. "Huh?"

"You forgot!"

And then, Aella remembers the meeting she'd hazily agreed to the night before. She hadn't been thinking clearly. "I'm so sorry, Hanako," she pleaded. "I forgot that I'm working today."

Hanako took a breath to shout at her, but Aella snapped the phone shut and resumed pulling up her jeans. She tucked the cell phone into her back pocket as she hurried to the bathroom to splash her face with water and hastily scrub her teeth with a toothbrush. She skipped brushing her hair, deciding to untangle it on the bus, and on her way out of the apartment, she grabbed her maroon jacket and a comb she'd left on the table the previous night.

Aella caught the next bus that came by her stop and sat down, breathing heavily. Now, she had time to brood about how bad she felt—and she felt really, really bad. She doubts that Hanako will let her feel much better unless she apologizes—but, Aella reasoned, at least her friend would get alone time with her crush. Chances were that Marui didn't care much about her. Aella just hoped that he wouldn't think Hanako made unreliable friends.

Despite Aella's rushing and worrying, there was nothing she could do when her bus got caught in traffic. She groaned and settled back in chair. Really, she didn't have to take this shift. She was only working more to pay back the money she owed Sanada. Even though he'd said that it wasn't necessary, she knew that he would be expecting it, and she didn't want him to think that she was unable to pay him back, that she was weak.

Thankfully, the bus escaped and Aella was rushing through the doors of a trendy, western café in a matter of minutes. She tied her hair up into a loose bun and donned a disgustingly pink apron around her waist.

"You're taking orders today, Houshigawa-san," a nice lady in her mid-twenties instructed, handing her a notepad and pen.

Aella looked around for her boss, knowing that if he found out she had been late, there would be nothing she could do to prevent being berated. He was nowhere to be found. Probably still in bed from all that beer, she sneered.

As she set to work taking orders for the customers, Aella thought. First her thoughts were on the weather, on the blue, cloudless skies. Then she thought about Hanako on her first kind-of date with Marui, and felt accomplishment well up inside her. Of course, her train of thought then led her inexplicably to imagining how angry Hanako would be at her and what she would have to do to earn her forgiveness (one of these scenarios included Aella buying her a silver Porsche).

"Yo, waitress!"

An obnoxious voice broke into her thoughts. Aella looked around and spotted a group of shady, high school boys sitting in a corner. She went over to the one raising his hand imperiously, shot him a glare, and asked in a tense voice, "May I take your order?"

One of them, the one wearing a green hoodie, grabbed her wrist and jerked her down to sit next to him. "Why don't you join us?" he invited, slinging an arm around Aella's shoulder.

I wouldn't join you guys even if my only other choice was wrestling an alligator, thought Aella venomously. She broke out from the boy's heavy arm and stood up, standing hipshot with the notepad and pen in one hand and tapping her feet impatiently.

"Ah—don't be so cold," another boy teased, making a grab for her.

"Yeah, not a chance," she sneered. "Now, do you want me to take your order or not?"

The one nearest to her didn't answer. Aella traced his gaze to her wrist and tensed up. Sure enough, he lunged at her arm, but her reflexes were better and she was faster. Quicker than a snake darting at its prey, she maneuvered her hand and hit him hard in the forehead.

"You bitch!" he squawked, starting to leap at her.

His friends piled on top of him and dragged him out of the café before he got them banned. Aella was left staring at them with a hip jutting out and one hand hanging loosely at her side while the other held the notepad and pen.

She dearly hoped that that was the last she saw of them, the sleazy dirt bags.

Niou felt bored as hell. If he could take a field trip to hell, he bet five hundred yen that it would be the embodiment of boredom. Of course, hanging around with Bunta and his brown-haired friend was as close to a field trip to hell as he would get.

He'd only come along with Bunta because he figured that Aella would be here. He had even kept their place in line. But then he'd seen Bunta and the girl walking side by side through the crowd—Aella was nowhere to be found. Upon farther inquisition, he'd discovered that she was ditching.

Which was what Niou was going to do right now.

He stood up abruptly with a smirk decking his lips. "Sorry, Bunta, I'm gonna have to leave. Feel like I'm in the way." He switched between looking at Bunta and the girl, earning a small blush the girl. He spun on his heels and left, hands tucked in his pockets, back slouched, and eyes hooded.

"The bastard," Bunta muttered behind his back. "He forgot to pay."

Aella swiped an arm tiredly across her forehead, feeling the sweat warm and moist against her skin. It was the dinner rush now, and she was finally on her break—a well-deserved one at that. After working the morning shift, she'd gone home and plotted on how to get Hanako to forgive her. Then, all too soon, she had arrived for her shift during the dinner rush. She hadn't rested once after that. Until now.

"Seiichi doesn't look good."

"I know."

"D'you think…?"

"Renji, don't ask."

By this time, Aella had already looked up at the mention of the boy she'd met at the hospital. She saw Sanada with another boy take a seat in the booth behind her and call up a waiter to order. Her ears perked up as she listened for more news, but she heard nothing else.

"Houshigawa, please find these young men a table." Her boss called her over not ten minutes later.

Aella sighed, rolling her eyes with annoyance. She looked over and saw the boys from this morning, smirking triumphantly as they talked quietly to her boss. She saw one of them slip him a few hundred yen and grimaced.

"Oh, and you're assigned to be their waiter."

She got up and slouched towards them. "But I'm still on my break," she protested.

Her boss shot her a sharp look. "Houshigawa, you've rested enough. Now, c'mon, get to work." He smiled tightly.

"But I'm on my break. Can't you get someone else to do it?" She winced at how whiny she sounded.

His brown eyes sharpened. "Houshigawa, I'd like to talk to you for a moment, please." He gestured at a secluded corner of the room.

Aella groaned inwardly. She'd gone too far. Quietly, while shooting daggers at the group of boys, one of them who made a grab for her butt, she followed her boss to the corner, where he began to lecture her.

"Now, do you understand?" he finished.

Against her better judgment, Aella looked up defiantly. "No, I don't. It's my break."

Her boss fumed. His hands were clenched into tight, white fists. "Houshigawa, you will listen to me."

"But—"

His hand went up to slap her, and Aella flinched, expecting the sting to come down. But it didn't. She opened her eyes and saw that a slightly-tanned hand was holding the chubby, trembling wrist of her boss an inch away from her cheek.

Her boss broke away from the boy's hold. "Houshigawa!" he roared. "You're fired!"

Aella froze. No, no, no, it couldn't be. She needed this job! The boy—Sanada, she could now see—turned to her, took her wrist gently, and guided her from the café. Once outside, she turned to him and exploded.

"What the hell was that?! I could've handled him! You cost me a job! What is your problem?!"

Sanada looked shocked that she hadn't fallen to her knees and thanked him. He blinked once, twice—then: "Tarundoru! You were going to stand there and get hit."

"So? It was my choice! Why do you even care, anyway?"

That stopped Sanada. He didn't know why he'd helped her actually. Maybe it was because he'd originally thought that she was one of those fake, plastic girls, and seeing her actually work had surprised him enough to help her, to move without thinking. But he couldn't say that. Sanada didn't know how to reply.

Thankfully, he didn't have to say anything. With a last furious glare, Aella ground out, "Now if you excuse me, I am going to beg for my job back." She turned on her heels and marched back into the café.

Befuddled, Sanada stared at the swinging door and wondered what Kami-sama had been thinking when she put women on earth.

Then, he thought, Where was Renji?

Author: Another chapter up!

Aella: Whoopee…

Author: So, I included a song and a manga in here.

Aella: The first person who can guess the song or the manga correctly will get a chocolate bar.

Author: Not really. I'll just dedicate the next chapter to them probably.

Aella: Yeah. She'll give me the chocolate bar. Make it a Twix.

Author: Sure…

Aella: …

Author: Well, bye!

Aella: Stay tuned.