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Chapter 6:

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"Hope. Even if just a flicker, it's still there."

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"Yo, Aoi-chan!"

The bubbly and familiar voice sent my hair standing as a pair of arms vaulted around me from behind, and I nearly fainted. Looking back tentatively, bright pink eyes met my own blue ones as a splash of red promptly dusted across my cheeks as on instinct, I began to squirm in a pathetic attempt to get away from the boy in who was currently holding me in a relentless and persistent glomp.

The blatant invasion of my personal space made me panic, and furthermore, it was him.

My throat feeling dry, I swallowed as I continued to squirm against the blonde in my own newfound anxiety, before opening my mouth to speak when something was suddenly shoved into my mouth and I gagged reflexively before closing my mouth, giving the chocolate that was suddenly shoved into my mouth a few chews. It was dark chocolate filled with strawberry jam, and it was no doubt the strawberry blonde's way of getting me to talk to him.

Swallowing, I struggled free before spinning on my heel, turning to face him as I gave a sigh. Despite my exasperated demeanour my cheeks felt oppressively warm and I had no doubt that I was blushing furiously like an idiot.

"W-What do you want, Nagisa-kun?"

Nagisa beamed at me brightly, seemingly glad that his way of shoving-awfully-nice-chocolate-into-mouth plan had worked out effectively.

Predictably, I met him when the Iwatobi Swim Club was still open and when I used to swim. Nagisa was impossibly good at the breast stroke, and while I was fairly good at that, I specialised more in the front crawl, but I was fairly okay in the breast stroke. For some reason, even though I was older than Nagisa by one year, he seemed to love picking on me for some strange, obscure reason. Maybe he thought I was a good victim for his relentless teasing, but his constant invasion of my personal space was embarrassing.

Wait.

Hang on.

I focused more on him and less on his invasion of personal space and I gaped at his Iwatobi High School uniform. Nagisa certainly had not entered Iwatobi High School, hadn't he gone to another school?

"Nagisa-kun... You transferred?" My voice sounded small.

"Yup! I'll be staying here until graduation!"

His reply was bubbly as usual, but somehow I felt that there was an eerie undertone under his cheerful voice. An undertone that felt suspiciously like 'I'm gonna haunt you forever!'

I gulped at the thought of of going through Nagisa's mischief every hour of the day. Maybe he had changed from the last time, but I didn't exactly relish the idea of blushing 24/7.

At least we were in different years. It would be a disaster if he was in the same year as me and became my new classmate...

Still, Nagisa was my friend, and I considered him to be a precious and (adorable) little guy.

Sighing in resignment, I gave him a small grim smile.

"Heh, welcome to Iwatobi, kid." Briefly, I patted him on his back (in an awkward fashion).

"Wah, Aoi-chan's acting cool!" His pink eyes shone with mirth as his lips curled up in a grin.

My face reddened and I began to push him along the corridor in an attempt to hide my obvious embarrassment, grumbling as I prodded him along.

"Shut up and head to class!"

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Lunchtime soon came, and like always, I went up to the roof in search of familiar burgundy hair. Or at least, I was about to when the vice-president of my class suddenly came running out to call for me.

"Minami-san!" Kosuke stopped, heaving over as he panted.

"Amakata-sensei wanted us to help with confirming everyone's current club activities!" He continued, pulling out the neatly-folded list from one of his pockets. My eyes landed on it with a sort of distaste, because surely that was the teacher's job? Unless all we had to do was pass the paper around and sign, of course.

"Kosuke-kun, let me look at the list." I held back a sigh as I took the list over... and there were just names. No clubs that needed to be ticked against, only a bunch of blank boxes beside a list with at least thirty people.

So now we had to write down everyone's clubs.

"Did she mention when she needed this back?" Hopefully, I glanced at the boy. It was lunchtime. School was two hours away from ending. If it was by the end of school, or by tomorrow, it was possible to just pass the list around in class.

Kosuke scratched the back of his head, ruffling his sandy hair.

"Actually... she said that she needed it in about thirty minutes." He admitted sheepishly, and I died inside.

Goodbye, lunch. It's time to rush.

I looked at my untouched bento in my hands, and I groaned. Who thought that it would be a good idea for someone like me to be class president in the first place. And seriously, sensei?

"Kosuke-kun, you're in photography, right? Good. Sign here." I scribbled the club beside his name and had him sign it.

"Good, good." I scribbled down 'Track and Field' beside my own name and signed against it.

Two down, and twenty-eight more youngsters scattered around the school to go.

"Kosuke-kun, take out your phone, please. It's time for some mass texting." The way I said it might have sounded like 'Class, take out a piece of paper, we're conducting a surprise test!', but then I took out my phone, punching in numbers and scanning down the list for people whose clubs definitely didn't change. Haru and Makoto weren't in any clubs, from what I remembered last time.

As Kosuke and I tallied our responses, I cracked my knuckle and furiously I began to write.

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"That sucked."

"Yes, it did."

"Think it will happen again?"

"I'm afraid so. Amakata-sensei is strangely frivolous when it comes to class affairs."

In a nutshell, those are the reactions of both Kosuke and I whenever Amakata-sensei leaves the two of us unexpected 'presents'- more like nightmares. Seriously, sometimes I wonder what she does in that office of hers (though I suspected that it greatly has to do with literature and books).

Kosuke looked a mess. His normally sandy-colored hair is weirdly ruffled up, his glasses were smudged, and he looked like a skeleton, mainly because he hadn't gotten time to eat both breakfast and lunch. I would say 'I'm sorry you had to go through that', but well, I go through that on a daily basis as well. It would have been strange if I said that.

So I amended my statement a little.

"I'm sorry we had to go through that." I sighed, and Kosuke looked like he still considered it strange.

He almost looked like he was ready to face-palm himself. Hey, I know I'm an embarrassment but that was brilliant.

"Sorry, Minami-san, but why are you apologizing? It's not like you're Sensei." He remarked, rubbing his hand against his forehead.

"Well, I'm sorry that we had to go through time and time again because neither of us have the guts to bring it up to Sensei." I amended.

Kosuke was silent for a while.

"Good point." He jerked his head, and wandered off somewhere. I wonder if he was walking off to the canteen for food, but I think he didn't know that the stalls in the canteen closed at 4, sometime after most lessons end, and it was already about 5.

(We had stayed back to fix some paperwork. Thankfully, it wasn't all pushed to me now. Being class representatives sort of suck, it meant more work, and more things to do.)

I let out a sigh. Gou was going to kill me for skipping out on her. I was starving. I was probably going get figuratively 'blue-ticked' on Skype by Matsuoka. Mother and father were in Australia, working their butts off. Amakata-sensei was probably going to pull more stunts like that on me and Kosuke. Puga was alone at home. Speaking of which, I should really hurry up on the way home.

I've never liked leaving Puga alone at home. I've always worried that something might happen to her and nobody else would be there. ALl these years, Puga was the only one who stayed by my side. Everyone else left. Even now, I somewhat have a friendship going on with Gou and her friend Hana, and I'm sort of acquainted with Haru and Makoto(more of Makoto, because he talked more.) Nagisa, the deceptively-cute and secretly-evil junior who loved to bug me, but I don't really have anyone to confide in, now that I thought of it.

It's probably why I began to surf the internet, or why I made a Skype account, because I hoped that it would help me not feel so alone.

(It did work, to an extent.)

Faltering in my footsteps, I walked past Gou's house to get to mine and I wondered briefly if I should drop in on her. But Puga was at home, all alone, so I decided to just head home and message her. Stopping in front of the gate in front of my house, I unlocked it and stepped in, closing it behind me.

Within seconds, Puga squirmed out of the small dog-door installed in our main door, bounding atop tiny little limbs. She let out a small bark and circled around me in tiny trots, before wriggling to sit in my lap. Laughing, I picked her up and set her inside, scratching her ears and throwing down my school bag, securing my valuables in my pocket and retrieving Puga's leash. First, I walked her around the house (the old, unused pool outside haunted me.) Then, I unlocked the gate and went back outside, shutting it.

Puga yipped in delight, and if I didn't know any better, I would say that she was laughing.

We walked around the parameter of the neighborhood, Puga bounding ahead as far as possible on the pink leash and on the other hand, my eyes were scanning the surroundings almost routinely, because Puga was my precious baby, and I won't let anything dangerous so much as get near her.

No cars? Check. No bicycles? Check. No stray dogs? Check. No people? Good.

I sighed, watching as Puga eventually fall back by my side. I didn't realize that it was getting dark. If this was I Am Legend or Until Dawn, I would have begun freaking out, but alas, we were just in a peaceful part of Japan. Not to mention, there were streetlamps that were extremely bright. Nevertheless, I didn't like to take chances.

As we passed the bend, I noted the spot outside the Matsuoka's house (aka Gou's house), and I couldn't help but fondly remember the time that I walked Rin home from my house, and his parting tips for me. Number one, talk more. I wasn't exactly social, I could talk but I couldn't socialize and make lots of friends. But I guess in that aspect, I wasn't so antisocial anymore. Number two, smile more. I smiled a lot more now, but sometimes I just smiled because it was awkward.

Walking past the Matsuoka's, we made it back to my place- the dark, dusty house in the neighborhood avoided, because it just looked creepy from only one person living in it. (Actually, my house wasn't that dusty, I cleaned it everyday.) It was more of an atmosphere issue. A lonely girl and her pug wasn't very inviting unlike, say, Makoto's house. His place was the kind were you wanted to stay forever, because of his bonded family.

I unlocked the gate to the said dusty house and closed the gate behind me, pushing a button that would light up the lights in the porch. Removing Puga's leash, she ran on inside as I began to do my round of housework and my homework for the day. Today was significantly more relaxed, because I got home earlier than usual. Most of the time, I have track, which usually ended at around seven in the evening. Those were the rush days that I had to forgo doing some chores if I wanted to finish my homework on time.

After finishing with the chores and bathing Puga, I was glad that I had only about five questions left after doing most homework in class discreetly. (Shush.)

It was only a matter of time before I toppled onto my bed and flipped open my laptop. It was becoming a routine for me, and I was happy about that, because a routine was something that probably wouldn't change. It would be a constant in my life, and to be terribly honest I was growing sick of watching changes around me.

I didn't check Skype immediately. Instead, out of curiosity I watched the first episode of this shoujo anime called 'Todoke no Kimi' I found a few days ago. Frowning, I wondered why Gou recommended it to me, because it did seem rather cliché in my books. I mean, it was cute and all, but I didn't know why Gou and Hana were gushing all about it before lessons.

And then I watched the next episode, and the next episode, and the next...

Damn. The main protagonist really reminded me of... me, last time. I didn't like the plot (I mean, seriously, don't you guys have homework?!), and I wasn't exactly attached to the anime itself, but the main character was awkward, misunderstood, and needed a friend. She reminded me of the old me, last time, and it really resonated with me. I could relate to her on a lot of levels, and I just found myself rooting for her along the way.

And eventually, I stopped watching, because the protagonist got what she wanted. She opened up, she managed to make friends...

(I sort of felt proud when I saw her opening up finally.)

Forcing myself to close the tab, I instead logged onto Skype, and gosh, Nagisa found my Skype. I nearly had a heart attack, because I was sure no one else would be able to find it, but well, he did. Now I had to deal with his teasing both online and off, but well, he's a nice guy.

Heading to my inbox, I looked over my unread messages and rubbed my eyes incredulously. Did Gou send me two messages from two accounts, or something? Why were there two Matsuoka's?

...Oh. Someone slap me. I must have lost my brain cells.

Scrolling down, I swallowed as my eyes focused on the name 'Matsuoka Rin' and '1 unread message' and the only thing I could think of was 'He actually replied?!'. My eyes widened and I found myself staring at his name for the longest period of time.

Taking in a deep breath, I decided that this could go both ways. This could be a snappy message for him telling me to leave him alone, or maybe this could be a message saying 'Hello'.

I prepared myself inwardly, and finally opened my chat with him. My eyes looked over the message I sent first.

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Hey Matsuoka! It's been a long time since we last talked, anything you up to?

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Underneath it, there was indeed a new message, from Rin himself.

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Hey, Minami. I don't have time to talk right now, but I'll catch up with you once I'm back in Japan.

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Woah. That escalated quickly.

There was a sort of fluttery, too-good-to-be-true feeling rising in my chest, and I stared blankly at the message. It took a while to sink in completely, and I couldn't help but wonder what he meant by that. Was he at the airport? Was he at home packing? The Matsuoka Rin I knew was open and cheery, but I ever did know much about him. This could really be seen by how one message from him was befuddling me.

But one thing was for certain.

I found a smile growing wide on my face, and there was this burning feeling of anticipation and pure, raw happiness soaring in my chest.

"He's coming back." I whispered to nobody in particular, the smile turning more into an excited grin. "He's really coming back."

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TBC.


And I finally updated. But well, Rin's coming back. Not immediately, but soon ^^

I'm sorry if you don't understand Aoi's jokes, she's kind of weird. But nevertheless, I hope that you liked this chapter.

If you enjoyed, do remember to leave a review, favorite and follow!

See you soon!

-Cyan Rubies