The largest question in Kokona's mind as she made this vow to herself, however, was how she'd actually go about it.
The club activities went on in a rather grim fashion in light of this, the death of a well liked member of the club hanging heavily on everyone's minds.
Though they did well with acting, something inside Kokona made her realize that, beyond the feeling of mourning, that it all just felt off to a great extent.
In addition to Dorama's death making it harder for everyone to concentrate, he would usually be the one trying to keep as jovial an atmosphere to the room as he possibly could, and he was apparently so good at what he did, his absence warranted the room having a rather empty feeling to it.
It took a large deal of time before people got into the meat of things, but in the end, more than three fourths of the members of the club either didn't come at all, or left early.
Realizing this trend, Kokona eventually decided to announce that club activities were over with a long period of time faster than before, her soon being left alone with the sole foreigner standing in her presence, him watching the doors and her dutifully, although he had a bored, albeit still serious, expression on his face by the time everyone left.
"Are you sure about closing shop early?" Kai asked her.
"Yes." Kokona sighed heavily. "Everyone's not feeling up to practicing. They're too wrapped up in what happened yesterday."
"It doesn't help that it doesn't feel anything like it felt to be here yesterday." Kai admitted, looking towards the ceiling. "It's almost like this place has lost a lot of the life it used to have."
Kokona nodded.
If even someone who wasn't in the club to begin with could see how greatly things had changed in a single day, then it wasn't a stretch to think that everyone else felt the exact same way, if they didn't get the same impression on an even larger scale.
"Do you plan on going home soon?" Kai asked her, him sitting on a chair while holding his head.
Acting had never really been something he'd been interested in, he thought to himself.
The largest reason he ever even entertained the thought of joining was due to him wanting to be there to support Kokona more easily.
He only realized then, when the club had reached its lows, that acting itself wasn't an especially good fit for someone like him.
"I'm not sure honestly." Kokona's voice brought him out of his lapse of thought, him realizing she'd taken a few moments to respond.
"Was there something else you wanted to do before going home?"
"No, not especially." Kokona shook her head. "I just want to be sure YOU'RE ready first, is all."
"Oh." Kai smiled faintly, then waved a hand. "It's fine. We can go whenever you feel like you're ready."
"Do you want to tell your club you're not going to come?"
"That'd be for the best, yeah." Kai nodded, rising from his seat and getting a an almost imperceptible cringe on his face as he went back to his feet.
With this, both leaving the room signalled the room returning to silence as Kai walked towards the club that sat directly next to the Drama Club, him mentally preparing himself to explain his situation to them.
If all went well, they would understand him completely, he thought, him grasping the handle to open the door and pulling it open, him not noticing the sound of drums beating until he opened the door and peered inside.
What he saw upon doing so made him freeze in place as he saw his club members there, all wearing black hooded cloaks that were baggy enough to make it so that, if it weren't for their shoulders, they would be indistinguishable from one another by gender.
One member sat cross legged next to the center pentagram rug, beating in a fixed manner on a drum Kai never realized the club had, the remaining members of the club sitting on their knees as they chanted something he didn't understand, hands raised to the sky as they did so.
He stared with a frozen face for a long moment, before he pulled his head back into the hallway, closing the door slowly.
"What's wrong?" Kokona asked, not seeing what Kai had and only hearing the drum. "I thought you were going to tell them you weren't going."
"I'm not going in there." Kai said, his voice flat as he spoke, face frozen in an unnerved shock as he stared at the door. "They've already started doing some Satanic looking stuff. I don't know if I can even talk to them at this point."
"Are you REALLY surprised?" Kokona asked without thinking, staring at him with a look that lacked sympathy. "The room has massive pentagrams on every wall. You can hardly call them doing stuff like that unexpected. Especially with how the club's called the "Occult Club" for a reason."
"I didn't even know what the word "Occult" meant when I tried looking into this club." Kai admitted softly. "I just read the description that my teacher gave me of the club and I thought I'd be interested, since it said it centered around supernatural things. I only thought to look into a dictionary to figure it out AFTER I joined. I almost wish I had done it sooner."
"Did you ever think of just quitting, if you're that against going?" Kokona asked, an eyebrow raised. "I mean, it'll probably look bad, given that you just joined yesterday, but it doesn't even feel like you were ready to join this sort of club, from what I can tell."
"I was not." Kai said, the "I" in his confession drawn out a bit, glancing over to Kokona while placing his forehead against the door, his expression that of mild tiredness and a hint of regret. "But it made the Club President so happy that I'd feel bad if I just left like that."
"You shouldn't always be sacrificing your happiness for other people." Kokona told him.
"What do you mean?" Kai asked, him looking a bit confused.
"I can't say you ALWAYS do it," Kokona added, crossing her arms, "but... you've done that a lot for my sake since yesterday. Based off the fact that you only joined yesterday, I can only guess you go out of your way for other people a lot."
As he lifted his head from the door, Kai's expression said the truth well enough that she didn't even need a verbal affirmative.
"So... don't make that a normal thing, alright?" Kokona continued. "I don't want to see you end up being sad or worse because you wanted to make someone else happy. Someone not being happy isn't the end of the world."
Kai crossed his arms as he looked away in thought, the worried undercurrent of Kokona's words getting to him.
"I know." He said quietly. "But I just want to point out... people being happy usually makes me happy. Is that weird?"
Kokona shrugged.
"It can be a good thing I guess, as long as you don't need other people to be happy before you can be happy yourself."
"I guess it's a bad thing then. If someone feels sad, I usually feel sad, and if someone feels afraid, my mind kind of goes into overdrive trying to keep them feeling calm again." He gave a sad, bitter smile. "I guess it's not normal."
Kokona stared at him for a moment.
"It probably can be." She said honestly. "It's just not a good thing to have your emotions link up exactly to how everyone else feels at any given moment, especially if someone's depressed or something. Though," Kokona crossed her arms and looked away in thought, "being able to do that can be a good thing as well."
She mentally sighed as she found the contradiction in her own words.
"I guess... the important thing is finding a balance for the two. You can't be too sensitive to everyone else, but you have to be careful to not be insensitive at the same time."
A small smile came onto Kai's face at this.
"Life can be complicated with all the things you have to balance sometimes." He commented with a hint of laughter in his voice, and Kokona managed to smile back.
"Yeah. That's how life can be."
With Kokona's affirmation came the sound of a small growl, and Kai gave a surprised look, before it meshed faintly with embarrassment as he flushed, him looking down at his stomach almost apprehensively from it making the sound.
Kokona gave an equally surprised look, her about to ask if he'd eaten yet before stopping herself at the last second, her remembering that he'd offered her his lunch.
"You must be pretty hungry, considering you didn't eat lunch." She said, expression tinged with guilt.
"I am to be honest." Kai said, looking a bit away as though ashamed of himself for being hungry.
Kokona turned to face the opposite end of the hall, the girl glancing back to him, "Let me make it up to you, okay?"
Kai's expression perked up in response, a questioning expression on his face as the girl in front of him started walking forward, him realizing after a moment that she was trying to guide him somewhere and following suit.
In silence, they passed two rooms before Kokona stopped in front of the Cooking Club room, her opening the door and looking to her right, Kai stopping next to her.
"I'll make you some food from inside here." She managed to smile at him. "I'm not sure if you'll like it or not, but it's the least I can do, considering how much you're trying to do for me."
The blush in Kai's cheeks, which had only just started to come out, came back again with a vengeance at these words.
"That's kind of you. If you don't mind making food for me… I'm sure it'll be good." Kai said, rubbing the back of his head in a semi-awkward fashion.
"You'll have to see for yourself then." Kokona looked inside the room, leaving the door ajar for him.
"Are you sure it's allowed though?" Kai asked, poking his head into the room but not entering.
"Yes," Kokona said back to him, the room so familiar to her that she didn't even need to look around herself to know where she was going, "I've been coming in here with my friends for months now."
"Ah. Alright then." Kai said.
Kokona had reached and opened the refrigerator in the club room before she realized that, even with her assurance that their being there was allowed, Kai still hadn't come inside.
She glanced over to him, seeing that he looked a bit uncomfortable.
"What's wrong?" She asked him, and he seemed to grow even more uncomfortable as she spoke.
"It's nothing." He said, though his expression said otherwise.
"Is the way the room's painted bothering you?" Kokona asked.
The choice in color had been a point of controversy for some inside the club in the past, and a part of her felt she wouldn't be surprised if Kai was a part of the group who were against it being so pink.
Kai paused briefly, and he nodded faintly.
"I don't really like the color pink all that much," he admitted, "but... that's not the reason I haven't really come inside yet."
"Why haven't you?" Kokona asked automatically.
"Well," he crossed his arms, his expression becoming rather awkward, "it's an issue I've been hiding for the past hour or so, but... I sort of need to use the bathroom..."
Kokona blinked at him in surprise.
"Why haven't you gone, or even said anything, before now?"
Kokona had asked this without thinking, yet, the second the words left her mouth, she remembered the last 48 hours of her life, how her life had been endangered three times in that timespan, and how the one who'd saved her each time had been the person standing before her at present.
"Is it because you're worried about Aishi?" Kokona asked, her voice less surprised in the midst of her realization, tinged with more worry than shock.
Kai didn't seem to mind her questioning his logic, and only gave a solemn nod in response.
Kokona's eyes flickered with understanding.
"It'll be fine." She told him. "Just run there, do it quick, and run back if you'll be worried."
Kai seemed hesitant to do this.
"It won't do anything to worry about it and have yourself wait until I'm home to do something… like that." Kokona added when he saw his look, trying to play off the awkwardness of the subject by forcing a smile onto her face, this doing nothing to help her. "Besides, it'd be hard to keep your dignity if you were trying to be some knight in shining armor and you ended up peeing yourself, right?"
Despite her joke being made in poor taste, Kai managed a smile.
"Knight in shining armor… never really thought about it like that." He noted, expression thoughtful as he spoke, him too speaking without thinking. "I always thought of myself as an assassin with a good heart."
"Where'd you get the idea of being an assassin from?"
Kai blinked, realizing what he said, before he decided to roll with it.
"I come and watch my targets from the shadows," he said in a faux dramatic voice, "Hell bent on defeating my foes with the night as my disguise."
Kokona snickered faintly, bringing a hand to her mouth.
"Weirdo." She said, though her smile and voice filled with laughter letting Kai know his deliberate usage of his own weirdness had its desired effect. "Just run to the bathroom. It shouldn't take too long."
Kai's smile faltered at this, before he nodded reluctantly, him closing the door and walking away quickly.
As Kokona returned to making the food to make up for his lost lunch, Kai took to doing a quick jog as his footsteps echoed faintly in the mostly silent halls, him trying to ignore the pain each step caused him from his still healing burns, his expression being somewhat irritated rather than pained, largely due to the fact that the only available bathrooms weren't on the corner of the building he was in.
"Not the tell the architects how to do their jobs," he muttered, "but why put all the bathrooms in that one vertical space of the school?"
As he passed by the faculty room, a teacher that heard his footsteps, while entering said room, looked back out to him, and after calling after him, she said, out of reflex, "Don't run in the hall!"
Kai slowed down quickly at this, looking back to the teacher and nodding before turning around again, now doing a speed walk instead, him only stopping when he heard the nurse's voice behind him as he passed her office.
"Wait, I've been looking for you." Her voice called out, and he looked back at the pink haired woman in curiosity, before he realized what he and Kokona had almost forgotten to do in light of the day's less than pleasant events.
"Oh, hello Nurse." Kai said, mentally hitting himself for forgetting what the nurse wanted to do with them despite his burnt feet hurting for most of the day. "Sorry, I forgot to come back to you for the ointment treatment."
"It's fine." The nurse said with a kind smile. "Do you know where your friend is?"
"Yes, we'll be coming soon." Kai assured her. "I'll go tell her after we get all of our things ready. Is that okay?"
"Yes, there's no rush." The nurse assured him.
"Thanks." Kai nodded, before he rubbed his head slightly, "would it be possible to get the ointment and apply it ourselves? I don't want to be burdensome on you. I'm sure you probably have plans to be made sometimes as well."
"Don't worry." The nurse waved her hand in show of denial. "I only want to make sure it's done right."
Kai considered the burns on his legs.
He imagined he'd probably have a harder time putting the ointment on himself if he could barely keep himself still when someone else was doing it.
Perhaps what Kokona had said was right, he thought.
Sometimes, taking on all the burdens by himself wasn't a good thing.
Not to mention that if he tried to reject her offer of help, despite wanting to help people all the time (helping to prevent Kokona's suicide attempt had become easily his highest priority, after he ascertained that both the girl who'd been in his dream and the one he met on Monday were indeed the exact same person, for possibly this reason and his religion requiring him to love everyone to some extent), he would be a hypocrite if he couldn't even let the inverse to happen.
With this in mind, Kai nodded.
"Okay, thank you." He bowed his head slightly. "I'm grateful to you. We'll be sure not to keep you waiting in the future."
"You weren't given an obligation to come here, so don't worry about it." The nurse shook her head.
Kai nodded, then turned, jogging the small distance to the restroom and doing his business, him leaving with a sense of satisfaction, walking quickly and hurriedly back to the Cooking Club.
Upon returning there however, Kai would pause as he found a sight that he found strange.
His gut had been right; someone HAD come to see Kokona.
He wasn't sure how to feel about this fact however.
On the one hand, he was, needless to say, relieved when he saw that it wasn't Ayano that stood there at that moment.
On the other hand, it was due to the method of this, how the person in front of him had proved his gut feeling right by, that he had mixed feelings to begin with.
Said person was a purple haired boy who stared through the crack of the reopened door Kai himself had closed on his way to the bathroom, a blush on the boy's face as he looked inside, the front side of his body pressed against the wall as he peeked through the crack.
Kai slowly raised an eyebrow at the purple haired male, who, despite his hurried speed walking, hadn't noticed that he was watching the guy watching who he could only assume could be Kokona.
Deciding not to sound weird, the foreigner walked forward, clearing his throat to make sure his words would come across clearly before he spoke.
"Excuse me?" Kai asked the person, tapping him lightly on the shoulder to get his attention as he walked behind him.
The young man jumped at the sound of Kai's voice, whipping around hurriedly as Kai, too, jumped back in surprise, the purple haired man's expression flushing more greatly due to sheepishness and surprise as he pressed much of the backside of his body against the wall.
"Sorry," Kai said, hands raised faintly in surrender, "I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's fine," the person said in response.
"Do you mind me asking what you're doing?" Kai asked, voice a bit awkward.
"Oh, uh…" The boy gave a surprised look, then somewhat stammered with his words. "Well…"
Though this person's voice sounded a bit strange in contrast to all of the other people he'd come across, Kai knew he was no one to talk, given his accent, he thought.
"Were you looking in at Haruka-senpai?" Kai asked, peering around the boy and looking through the crack, seeing Kokona standing there with some small hot dogs cut up in a way that made them resemble tiny octopuses.
"Y-Yes…" The voice of the young man brought Kai's gaze back at him, the person's voice a bit embarrassed.
"Do you mind if I ask why? You honestly looked a little weird a second ago." Kai asked him. "Almost like you were…"
Kai trailed off, him not entirely sure how to describe this person's behavior.
He honestly felt like "stalking" would be a good word to describe it, but he wasn't sure what to make of what he'd seen.
What he'd been doing had been weird, regardless of that, Kai thought.
"Oh, sorry about that." The young man replied before Kai could find an appropriate euphemism. "I just wanted to see her is all… to make sure she was okay."
Kai mentally raised an eyebrow.
Had someone told this guy about their leg burns?
Or was it just an innocent curiosity?
"Why not just ask her?" Kai asked, him looking at the male in front of him strangely. "You won't be able to tell by just looking at her through a cracked door, would you?"
"I… I suppose not." He flushed again and crossed his arms in response. "But… I'm not sure what to say."
"Just ask how she's doing. That should be enough, right?"
"It'd probably feel awkward." He responded.
Kai grasped his chin in thought for a moment.
"What if I were to introduce the two of you?" Kai asked. "Surely it wouldn't be as awkward that way, would it?"
The person blinked in surprise.
"A-Are you sure?"
"I am." Kai nodded, giving a vibrant smile. "I admire someone like you, for wanting to see how someone's doing. I don't want anything like awkwardness to get in your way."
"I see." He smiled with a mixture of gratefulness and nervousness. "Thank you."
"Could I ask your name though?" Kai asked, flushing faintly as he scratched his cheek. "I don't think I'll be able to introduce the two of you if I don't know it…"
"Oh, yes." The young man nodded, then rubbed the back of his head. "My name is Soma, Riku. And… she might already know me, since we're in the same class…"
Kai's eyes lit up in realization.
"Ah, I see. It's nice to meet you, Soma-senpai." He bowed faintly to him as he greeted him.
Riku didn't seem to like this however.
"Uh… could you not bow?" He asked Kai, who raised his head and gave a curious look to him.
"Okay. Why not?"
"You're not supposed to do that for people in the same social class, are you?"
Kai stared at him weirdly.
"Uh… I guess?" He shrugged. "I mean, I was only bowing a little since you're my upperclassmen. I just wanted to show you proper respect is all."
Granted, he was still trying to get into the habit of calling Kokona "Haruka-senpai", but that was out of trouble for going from seeing her as his friend "Kokona" to his senpai rather than a lack of respect.
She'd certainly earned his respect at the very LEAST, with the spectacle she'd put on the night before, he thought with a mental grin, stifling the impulse to laugh at the memory.
"That makes sense." Riku said, hands behind his back. "I'd rather you not do that though."
Kai shrugged once more, his grin falling.
"Okay." He became pensive again, before looking at Riku. "Should we shake on it?"
"If you'd like." Riku smiled, reaching his hand out, Kai doing the same and wrapping his fingers around Riku's hand, Riku doing the same.
"My name is Nasir, Kai by the way." Kai told him. "I'm a second year here."
"It's nice to meet you Nasir." Riku replied, them shaking hands before pulling their hands away from one another.
"Same to you." Kai said, hoping not repeat Riku's words after having said them once already. "Now, let's introduce you to her so that you won't have to resort to stalk… acting weird." Kai mentally hit himself as he realized he corrected himself a second too late.
Curse the tongue, he thought to himself as he remembered the Bible verse talking about just this sort of thing, the untamable evil that revealed the abundance of one's heart.
Riku raised his eyebrows, him seeming to realize what Kai had been about to say, and was flushed, expression nervous.
"I was just nervous about talking to her is all…" He mumbled faintly.
Kai nodded, deciding not to point out that this didn't mean that it was fine to just stare at someone in the way Riku had been.
He instead turned to look at the door, grasping the handle and sliding it back open fully.
"Kokona-senpai?" He called, the girl looking up as she saw him smiling happily towards her. "There's someone I want you to meet."
Kokona raised an eyebrow.
"Really? Who?"
"My friend Soma-senpai," Kai turned, looking to Riku encouragingly, stepping aside for him and gesturing for him to come into view.
Riku, with a strong blush on his face, walked in front of the open door, him smiling nervously and waving.
Kokona gave a surprised look.
She'd been half expecting someone who wasn't already in her class, she thought to herself.
"Hello." She said, smiling anyways and waving back at Riku.
"H-Hi." Riku said in response. "How are you?"
"I'm doing fine. Just waiting for this week to be over." Kokona said, her smile masking the tiredness that fueled this statement.
She could sit at home and sleep the rest of the week away if she could.
"That's good to hear." Riku said.
Then he walked away.
Kai stared after him as Riku did this, expression a bit surprised.
It seemed as though Riku's worries had proven themselves to be right after all, he thought.
"Wait, Soma-senpai," Kai reached out to him, walking after him, and Riku stopped before he could touch his shoulder, "don't you want to at least say goodbye?"
Riku looked back at him, and Kai blinked as he saw his face again.
Sweat had started to form on his face, and his purple eyes were tense and nervous.
"Y-Yeah. That would be a good idea." Riku walked past him, standing in the doorway again and waving Kokona goodbye. "Have a good day Haruka."
"You do the same Soma." Kokona nodded, and with this said, Riku walked away again, Kai watching him out of the corner of his eye but not saying anything, Riku not saying anything to him as he left.
"Oh well." Kai muttered with a mental sigh. "Guess he was more awkward than I gave him credit for…"
"Is he okay?" Kokona asked as Kai reentered, him closing the door behind him.
"He's a bit nervous, as far as I can tell." Kai said thoughtfully, hand lingering on the door handle as he gazed slightly after Riku again. "I wonder why? You're a pretty approachable woman, as far as I'm concerned."
Kokona looked at him warily.
"Meaning... What exactly?"
He looked up at her, "I'm saying it's not hard to talk to you. You're friendly and beautiful, so I'm wondering why he's nervous."
He looked down in thought.
"I wonder if he was scared of giving you the wrong impression, because you look so beautiful?"
Kokona blushed faintly, staring at him.
Catching her eye, Kai looked back at her, expression a bit worried, "Is that a weird thing for me to say?"
"Honestly, I'm not even surprised you'd be willing to say that to me at this point." It was Kokona's turn to look away. "I'm just surprised you're saying things like that, knowing I like someone else."
"?" Kai tilted his head. "Are you saying because there's a guy you like, I shouldn't tell you you're beautiful?"
"It's weird." She replied simply.
"Maybe I'm just a weird person after all." Kai shrugged his shoulders. "I should be able to tell my friend she's beautiful if I see them as a beautiful person, at least from my perspective."
This wasn't to say that he actively sought out the chance to call her beautiful, he mentally added.
He just had such a brutal honesty streak that he lacked much of a filter of his thoughts.
Though, granted, he may have found more inspiration to compliment her in this regard when he considered the fact that he was currently trying to prevent her suicide attempt from happening.
Some people committed suicide because they were never complimented or smiled at by anyone.
Though, he, admittedly, never actually smiled or complimented Kokona based on these facts.
All of the happy smiles he almost always had when he saw her, the compliments about her appearance (most of everything he'd done in relation to her in actuality), had all been out of genuine love and caring he felt towards the girl in front of him.
He paused in thought.
Perhaps THAT was why he'd ever had the vision of her about to commit suicide to begin with, he realized.
Had God, or some angel, or something, shown him that moment, where Kokona was likely at her darkest hour, so he could try to help her to prevent that?
Was the friendship he'd made with Kokona the result of something… MORE than just him wanting to help her?
Could them meeting and befriending one another be the result of, dare he say it, a higher power who WANTED them to be friends?
At that moment, Kai was unsure.
He'd like to think of it that way though, he realized with a growing smile, cliché as the belief might've been.
"Maybe," Kokona's voice brought him out of his thoughts, her crossing her arms as she looked to the octodogs she'd made him, "but that's just going to make people get the wrong idea about how you feel about me. Even I'M not sure if you mean things one way or not."
Kai's smile turned bitter at these words.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to add any more ambiguity to it. Maybe I just find that you're just that attractive though." He shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows."
Kokona cracked a small smile in response, and the bitterness faded from Kai's own.
"Now then," he walked forward, looking to the bite size pieces of food in front of him, "what do we have here on the menu?"
"They're octodogs." Kokona said while looking at them. "I'm sorry if it isn't much, but this was a quick and easy thing to make. Unless you want me to make you something else?"
She looked cautious, as though she imagined he would have liked something else, her being unsure of whether this would be to his liking or not.
Kai didn't seem to notice her expression however, instead studying the octodogs.
"Aww," he said lowly, "they even look like cute little octopi…"
As he smiled at the sight of the octodogs, Kai realized something else as he said the "octopi" in English.
"Wait… is it "octopi" or "octopuses"?" He wondered briefly to himself.
"Hm?" Kokona stared at him in confusion.
"Oh," Kai looked at her and waved a hand, "sorry, just wondering about what the right plural word for "octopus" is in English. Don't mind me and my ramblings. English can be a weird language to learn."
"Would you say it's worth it to learn it?" She asked curiously.
"It depends on where you go." Kai replied with a shrug. "I know two different languages pretty fluently, and I'm getting the hang of a third one as we speak, but a language like Arabic is a pretty useless one to know, especially given the fact that I'm not even a Muslim, if there's no one around who even knows how to speak it."
"Why did you learn it at all if you never needed it?" Kokona asked while giving him a weird expression.
Kai glanced away slightly, "Someone I knew kind of forced me to," before looking up at her, "I do know two more languages, but I'm not sure they'd even be in use in this part of the world."
"Oh really? Which ones?" Kokona asked.
"I know Pashtun and a little bit of Dari." Kai answered. "But like I said, I never really got to speak them all that much after one point in my life, so I can't say I'm really fluent in them. Go figure."
Kokona gazed at him curiously, Kai looking back at the octodogs.
"Might I ask how you make these?"
Kokona snapped her gaze back to the octodogs.
"Oh, well, it isn't that hard."
"That's good to know." Kai picked one up, examining it closely. "I almost feel bad for eating these little guys though… they're so tiny and huggable…"
"Don't hug your food Nasir." Kokona said without thinking, her surprised at herself when she realized she'd done this.
Usually, she was more reserved about what she wanted to say, especially considering how self-conscious she could be.
She imagined that he didn't mean them to be literally huggable, but that they were simply that cute.
Despite her thinking this, the way Kai pouted made her find doubt in her own belief in him, him seemingly unaware of this.
"I wasn't going to do that…" He muttered after a moment.
She couldn't help stifling a giggle to herself then.
"As weird as you can be sometimes, I wouldn't put it past you." Kokona laughed, before crossing her arms. "Now come on, eat your food instead of ogling it."
"Very well." He wrapped his hands together in a short prayer before he ate despite these words, and when he finished, he reopened his closed eyes and smiled, putting the octodog into his mouth and beginning to chew.
The flavor was one that he was unfamiliar with, having the flavor of what Kai could only describe as a raw sort of beef.
The raw beef octodogs actually tasted better than Kai had envisioned, he thought with pleasant surprise, a smile gracing his lips, him already taking a second one off of the plate Kokona had set for him, her subconsciously smiling the entire time as she saw how greatly he enjoyed what she'd done for him.
Though the meal itself only took a couple of minutes, Kai smiled gratefully to Kokona as soon he finished, and, by that time, Kokona was waiting on bated and nervous breath to hear his verbal confirmation that he indeed liked what she'd made for him.
He must have read her thoughts somehow, as the first words out of his mouth were content, "Thank you very much for that. I enjoyed it a lot."
"I'm glad to hear that." Kokona beamed, her looking to the empty plate. "Usually, people eat only a few of them at one time, but we both know you're pretty hungry. I'm just saying, for future reference, it's meant to be a snack food, not a regular meal. I don't want people looking at you weird."
"People already look at me weird." Kai pointed out, though he wore a broad smile despite this. "Between me getting stuck in the maze, talking weird, and complimenting you, a lot of people have probably got it in their heads I'm a weirdo."
"Yeah." Kokona said dryly. "It's not even a question of whether you're a weirdo or not anymore. It's a question of how big of a weirdo you are."
"I acknowledge that," Kai said, "I'm trying to fix it, with… mixed results."
She slowly began to lose the ability to care about being weird herself as she adopted the position of salute from the anime Attack on Titan.
"Then let your friend Haruka-senpai tell you how not to be an even BIGGER weirdo." She said, her right arm bent and her right hand curled into a fist over her heart.
Kai chuckled faintly.
"You're being a bit weird yourself, aren't you?" He pointed out.
"Only because you're rubbing off on me." Kokona crossed her arms at him, before remembering Dorama, her smile faltering faintly, but her keeping it up regardless.
She'd probably done the whole salute thing because of how he'd acted towards the former president of the Drama Club, she thought to herself.
In that time, when Kokona was a bit more of a rookie in the club, she could remember how the old president had talked to him about how melodramatic he acted.
At first, he said he was only doing it for fun, until eventually, it became like a normal thing for him to act so zany and strange, swapping persona for persona according to how he felt in any given situation.
At one point, he'd apparently become a fan of Attack on Titan, with him giving out the salute whenever he wanted to make it clear he had made a goal he had in mind his personal mission, and, despite his weirdness, his overall extroverted nature made him a well-liked member of the Drama Club.
Kokona was secretly jealous of Dorama during that time, when he could so easily become a popular person among a group of people by simply being himself.
Yet, like all the other people in the Drama Club, they'd eventually started to like him a great deal, to the point that his presence could be felt in the club in contrast to when he was gone.
If she hadn't known him personally, Kokona was rather certain she'd envy Dorama a great deal for how he could be so popular, yet fully be himself in the process.
He hadn't been like her, who struggled to find and, from there, maintain, friendships for the majority of her life.
One of the reasons Kokona valued Saki so much was because of how she had been the first person not to bully or tease Kokona during that time when she refused to go to school because of how relentlessly everyone bullied her.
Because of that, when Kokona's mother had given her the inspiration to keep trying, and to ignore all the people around her, Saki had become her first and closest friend.
Kokona's smile grew faint as she thought back to this time.
It was strange, really, how they could ever be friends for so long, Kokona thought.
Needless to say, Kokona wasn't the least bit saddened by the fact that they'd been friends for nearly over a decade – it was quite the opposite, in all honesty – given that it was incredibly rare for a person to ever maintain a friendship past elementary school, and even in those cases, when they were so close, but she often wondered if she was a burden on Saki, socially.
Their band of friends had different likes and dislikes, as with any group of people, and Saki tended to be the primary reason for it being as cohesive a group as it was then.
With a flicker of sadness entering her expression, Kokona mentally realized that she most likely WAS a burden on Saki.
So many things Saki had done, she'd done in Kokona's interest, even going as far as begging administrators to keep them in the same classes, if it were at all possible, always being that helpful person to lend a friendly ear to her problems, never asking for anything in return.
Saki had been like the sister she'd never had, Kokona thought with a bitter smile.
"Are you feeling okay?"
Kai's voice brought her out of her thoughts, and Kokona quickly nodded.
"Yeah… I just… I was just thinking about Saki."
"Miyu-senpai?"
Kokona nodded again.
"What about her? It looked like you were pretty deep in thought."
"Yeah," Kokona agreed without even trying to deny it to herself.
She once again had forgotten the rather gruesome habit she'd formed of merrily forgetting her problems so easily, she thought to herself with a mental sigh.
"I was just thinking about… how good of a friend she's been to me." Kokona spoke, her voice sad. "I kind of feel bad, since she's always been such a good person, and I never really told her how much I appreciated that part of her."
"Well," Kai smiled up at the ceiling, "now you know what to do the next time you see her."
The melancholy of her smile faded, and she nodded, determinedly.
"I also want to thank you." Kokona added. "You've been a good friend too, even if I tried pushing you away at first."
Kai flushed, then rubbed the back of his head.
"Don't mention it." He responded simply. "I've only been doing what a friend would."
Kokona's smile became nostalgic as she thought back to when she'd first acknowledged Saki as her friend at Kai's words.
During that time, Kokona had been sitting to herself at a bench at her school before a field trip.
One of the rules of most field trips had been for one to always have a buddy partner with them for the duration of the trip, and Kokona, due to lacking friends who would seek her out as a potential buddy, simply sat in a secluded space to herself, waiting for the one who had the unlucky displeasure of being her buddy for the trip get forced onto her so they could get things moving along.
She remembered how it had been a relatively warm day then, despite the fact that rain had stopped falling only minutes ago, leaving behind the faint stench of acid in its wake.
Kokona, along with many other students, wore a school issued jacket despite the warmness of her surroundings, her trying to pass the time by aimlessly drawing whatever was on her mind.
By that time, despite Kokona's mother telling her to keep trying, she'd somehow known for certain that, if she did try for the trip, she'd just spend half the bus ride perpetually failing to get into a conversation her trip buddy would have, normally with another pair of students who were their REAL buddies.
As a result, she was understandably lacking in excitement when a cyan haired girl had come to stand in front of her curiously.
"What are you drawing?" Saki leaned forward to see the picture, yet Kokona didn't even react after a moment.
"I'm just drawing a cat." Kokona replied, her knowing the drawing sucked but still trying to preoccupy herself.
"That's cool." Saki said faintly, and in hindsight, Kokona was surprised by how mistrusting of people she'd become, to immediately assume Saki was going to follow up the compliment with an insult.
When none came, Kokona would relax her tense muscles uncertainly, Saki watching her draw the cat in simple, innocent curiosity.
"Do you have a buddy?" Saki asked, her voice hesitant.
Kokona mentally sighed.
It had been Saki's turn to do the deed, she thought then.
"No." She said, though her voice and expression were both knowing as she looked up at Saki. "Are you asking me because all your friends don't have one?"
Saki gave a surprised expression.
"But… you're my friend, right?"
Kokona's expression reflected Saki's.
"Why would you say you're my friend?"
"Because we are." Saki said, though the uncertainty remained on her face due to Kokona questioning it. "Don't friends choose each other for buddies for trips?"
"Yes. I just don't get why you're asking to be my buddy though." Kokona clarified.
"I'm just doing what any friend would." Saki said, and Kokona's eyes widened faintly.
"O-Okay then…"
When the time came for the people without partners had to be paired together, the teacher was surprised, but pleasantly so, when they'd realized that Kokona hadn't been weeded out that time.
At first, Kokona was skeptic of Saki's intentions, but that skepticism and suspicion generally faded away as time passed, when the idea that maybe, just MAYBE, Saki would've been completely different from all of her past partners came to her mind.
And for the entire trip, through and through, Saki had proven that idea right.
It was only when she returned home, greeted by her father, that she realized how broadly she'd been smiling on the way home, in contrast to the blank expression she always wore.
For the first time since going to school, Kokona had had fun with her buddy.
That day had marked their friendship, and looking back on it all, Kokona was amazed by how little they'd changed, both her and Saki.
It was in the memory of this that Kokona found it within herself to smile happily.
"I hope we can be friends," she said in the present to Kai, "for a long time."
"Same here." Kai nodded faintly.
After leaving from the nurse's office for "a good, hard rubbing" as the nurse put it, and leaving the school, the walk home was like the morning; relatively quiet.
When she finally entered her home after saying a short farewell to Kai, Kokona looked around the house a bit and sighed softly, walking forward and looking into the living room.
"Dad?" She said softly, and she saw the man himself looking up at her while cleaning after himself.
He looked rather weary and stressed, eyes a bit droopy, but his face lit up upon him seeing her.
"Hey Kokona." He said, voice tired. "How are you doing?"
"I'm doing a bit better than usual." Kokona said, smiling faintly.
"Were you with one of your friends?" Her father asked.
Kokona nodded firmly.
"Was it Saki by any chance?" Her father asked her.
She blinked, then shook her head.
"No, why do you ask?"
"Her mother just called a few minutes ago." He said, looking to the phone. "She said she was getting a little worried, since Saki had promised she'd come straight home today, instead of going for club activities."
"Oh." Kokona shook her head. "I don't know where she is. I haven't seen her since this morning, to be honest."
"Are you sure?"
She nodded.
"I see." Her father gave a short sigh. "Well… her mother's a bit worried. Do you think you can call Saki, to check where she is?"
Kokona's smile faded with worry, but she nodded, her pulling out her phone at that second and calling Saki's phone number.
It rang several times, but there was no answer.
When Saki would wake up, she would feel incredibly drowsy.
Looking up slowly, she'd look around herself, finding that she was in a dark room she didn't recognize, her so loopy that she couldn't react appropriately.
She only looked down at the feeling of her leg getting bound to something, Saki staring down at the girl in front of her, before her eyes widened in realization as she tried getting up from the chair she sat in in that moment, only to realize her other leg, arms and abdomen were tightly wrapped up in rope.
"W-Wha…?" Saki said intelligibly, the girl who looked up at her making her stare back.
Ayano said nothing to her, grey eyes empty as she focused her attention back to Saki's leg, her tightening the rope around the chair leg before she rose to her feet, her looking tired and sweaty.
"Wh-Where… am I…?" Saki asked.
Ayano gave no manner of response, only turning away, her too exhausted to even muster the will to answer, her climbing up the steps as Saki whimpered faintly, fearfully, trying to ask the same question again to the girl's back, her not caring as she ascended the steps, going to bed on account of it being well past midnight at that point.
A/N: Aaaaand done.
I honestly thought I'd have this up a while ago, but I more or less wanted to just wait for the "Matchmaking" video to crop itself up before writing any further.
But, like a lot of things I've realized while writing this story, I somehow very accurately predicted things would be a certain way.
Most of the other "things" include the "death by fire" murder method, the fact that Kokona finds the Occult Club creepy, that Kai wouldn't (deleted due to spoilers), among other things.
However, as I write this, I must honestly say I've also found myself getting caught up in roleplaying on the one active forum for Yandere Simulator.
It uh... got a little chaotic on that end, and the chaos drew me deeper in.
So that's the primary reason half of this thing wasn't written over the summer, in all honesty, other than me taking classes so I could graduate from high school earlier. (Yay!)