So that was it, in the span of two nights, I had lost my best friend. To my brother. Sure, Iroh lost his best friend, but they still had months, years even, of training in the Forces together. They were sure to make up. However, Kimi had never been mad at me before. I might have been some-what bossy, but I had never meddled in her love life. I was usually there for support, never taking action. She, in turn, had respected my dating actions and decisions all these years. Somehow, I thought catching them in the act of lying was going to go over well. Note to self: People don't appreciate when you catch them lying. Or being tricked into confessing.

The next week was torture for me. Osamu, who usually made a snide remark about me during meals, was now acting as if I didn't exist. Our parents took notice, but they didn't like to get involved in our sibling problems, unless it got violent. That has never happened, actually. Mom tried to make everything better by announcing that we all had a very special surprise arriving in a few days. I didn't make a comment, Osamu didn't make a comment. Mom pouted a bit, disappointed that we weren't badgering or trying to figure out her surprise to us.

On Thursday, I was forced to attend a mother-daughter knitting club with mom. I never realized until that moment, but she and her friends often had clubs about things that they weren't exceedingly interested in. My parents' friends were all in the same line of work as my father, politicians or military personnel. The wives tended to drag their kids to the most boring meetings in the world. That's how Kimiko and I ended up in the same room that Thursday. While at these club meetings, we would always sit together and giggle at how bad our mothers were at knitting, yet their attempts were lovable and we really hoped they would someday be able to knit a sweater. But Kimi sat by her mother all night, her gaze on her lap. That was my only contact with Kimi.

As for Iroh, he had come to my window just once after the incident, but we only talked for a minute or two. I saw him by the shore with Taro the Friday after the knitting nightmare. I didn't move from my porch, which prompted Taro to ask why I had not joined them. Well, first of all... was I all of the sudden not invisible to the lot of them? They expected me to approach them, after years of being ignored? No, thanks. But Taro had at least been pleasant for the most part of those years. He had a sister who was only a year younger than me and he was always pushing for us to be friends. She's was kind of stuck up, though. Maybe if I could look past that... maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't be stuck inside the house all summer. But, it was really hard to look past her bad attitude.

That was literally my week, right there. Sitting by the porch and watching everyone run around the sand. I had just taken a bath, and was brushing my hair, when I heard a knock at my window. I immediately put my brush down and I jumped off the bed. When I peeked out, Iroh was looking up at me.

"Do you want to take a walk?"

I slowly nodded at him. He patiently waited as I put on some shoes then climbed down the window. My parents had gone to bed and they were not going to be looking in my room anytime soon. I didn't realize in how much need of some fresh air I had been until we started walking. We made small talk for a while, dancing around the subject of Osamu and Kimiko, but it was brought up after a while.

"Is Kimiko still not talking to you?"

"No," I replied, definitely not wanting to talk about it. "I'm not sure how to go about this anymore... it's not as if she's giving me a chance to apologize."

"If she doesn't want to talk, she should at least hear you out."

"Do I just show up at her house and say, 'you listen to what I have to say, or else'?"

Iroh found that funny, for some reason and he shook his head. "Maybe you shouldn't make it sound like a threat, but what is she going to do, plug her ears? I say go talk to her."

When we stopped, we were no more than three houses away from Kimi's and I could make out her figure on the porch. "You're sneaky," I said, glancing over at him.

"Or I'm just trying to fix the mess we made."