Summer's Promise
Chapter 12: "You always make us worry."
"Time's up," Kiyoteru announced to his class after the clock's long hand reached the number 6, the time being 2:30 pm.
All the students of Seiei Academy* just finished taking their final exam for the second trimester before the winter break. After their teacher collected their test papers and exited the room, the students were given free time before dismissal at 3. Classrooms were filled with students stretching, sighing in relief or stress, and students just chatting with their friends.
"How did you do, Gakupo?" Kaito asked, walking over to the purple-haired boy who just finished putting away his things.
"I think I did better than any tests I've done," he looked up to Kaito and smiled.
"Thanks to Megurine-san, huh," the blue-haired boy turned his eyes to the sky to relax them.
The two boys thought about the weekends they spent with the girls from the class next to theirs. After the onsen trip, they all studied together, usually in Luka's house. Of course, she led the study group and tutored her friends.
"Who would've thought that she can turn into such a beast though," teasing, Gakupo chuckled when he thought about how Luka had been very strict with the sample tests she had given them.
"The questions she had on the samples were pretty close to the actual ones, though," Kaito added as they both walked over to the classroom next to theirs.
The first few times that Gakupo and Kaito came over to their neighboring classroom, the boys from that class would always try to keep Gakupo away from Luka, which she still didn't understand as to why they did so. However, after getting used to it, Luka's class didn't even bother to try and stop them anymore. Due to their frequent visits, it was as if Gakupo and Kaito had already become a part of Luka's class. Kaito and Miku, too, have been so used to seeing each other every day, that it had become the norm, making them less shy around each other.
"Yo," Gakupo greeted, raising a hand up, as he and Kaito approached Luka's circle of friends.
"Shh," Ia raised her index finger to her lips.
Gakupo and Kaito noticed how the other students were quite silent with their conversations. The two boys turned back to the girls that circled around Luka's desk to find them giggling and adoring a sleeping Luka.
"She's…asleep?" confused, Gakupo quietly asked.
"Well, she did have to study twice as more than we did," Miku worriedly answered.
During the Saturday before their final exams, Luka had to attend the academic competition in the morning before she studied with her friends. As soon as the competition was over, she headed to meet her friends to share the news of her victory and also show them the trophy she received. In the first year high school division, Luka had easily grabbed the first place to honor her school after defeating the other students from the other five elite schools in the area. Too hyped to study, the gang went and celebrated Luka's success by going to a karaoke bar. The next day, however, Luka supervised her friends while they took the sample tests she had given them.
"I have a feeling that she studied so much for the competition that she just crammed every night for the finals," Miki stared at the sleeping Luka, her head levelled with the pink-haired girl's.
Just before anyone tried to dispute or even support Miki's statement, Luka began mumbling in her sleep.
"You're…wrong…Dad," Luka quietly said.
The gang leaned in closer to hear the rest of what she was going to sleep-talk.
"I'm…not…cramming," she continued, even making an awkward smile that obviously revealed she was lying.
Luka's friends sighed after the sleep-talking girl proved Miki's statement to be a fact. They couldn't say anything because, after all, it was mostly their fault that Luka didn't have enough time to study for herself.
Gakupo stared at Luka the whole time with a hint of concern in his indigo eyes.
"I told you not to forget about yourself, remember?" he thought, recalling the day he visited Luka at her house when she fainted from lack of sleep during the week of the festival.
"Jeez," the purple-haired boy placed his hand on the sleeping girl's head, surprising Luka's friends.
"You always make us worry."
Luka slowly opened her eyes to see a dark and empty classroom with only the orange rays of the sunset as the source of light. She looked up at the clock to see that it was 5:45. Before she could even get a hold of what was going on, a voice shocked her from her right.
"Good morning."
The previously-sleeping girl turned to find Gakupo with a kind smile on his face, his head resting on his fist and his elbow resting on the desk.
"K-Kamui-kun?!" exclaimed Luka, her eyes wide.
"I thought you'd never wake up," the boy laughed as he properly sat up, his body still facing Luka, though.
Pouting, Luka realized that she had fallen asleep right after the exams were collected by her homeroom teacher. Even though she tried so hard to fight it, her eyes ended up closing and staying closed for three more hours.
"Everyone already left because some of them had to get ready for vacation," Gakupo smiled as he looked at the rays of the sun.
"Oh, right. It's winter break starting tomorrow," Luka thought with a blank expression on her face.
Luka's mind was still blank since she had just woken up. Gakupo was aware of this because he knew that with the silence that continued to linger between them, Luka would've already began to start shaking in nervousness. However, she calmly just gathered her things and didn't mind the situation.
"The tests were easier, thanks to your help, Megurine-san. I'm sure we were quite the nuisance to you," Gakupo broke the silence as he got up before Luka could finish gathering her things.
With that, Luka reverted back to her usual self and began to stutter with her reply.
"N-n-no, not at all," quickly getting up, Luka answered.
Suddenly, she received a pat from Gakupo, making her blush and wake her up even more. Luka couldn't tilt her head up to see Gakupo's face, but by turning her eyes up, she could see Gakupo's head looking down. Luka felt his worry as if it was going through his hand to her head. She didn't want to jump to conclusions that he was actually worried of her, though.
"You always worry us, you know," Gakupo said as if he had read Luka's thoughts.
"I'm…I'm so sorry…Kamui-kun," Luka placed her clenched fist to her heart, feeling the pain of making her friends worry so much about her.
Sighing, Gakupo took off his hand from Luka's head and grabbed his bag. Walking towards the door, Gakupo erased the look of worry on his face to keep Luka from feeling anymore pain.
"Let's go home," turning around, Gakupo smiled at Luka.
Scratching her bed-head, Luka walked down from her room and into the kitchen to start the first day of her winter break. With eyes still asleep and mind still empty, the pink-haired girl walked towards the refrigerator like a zombie walking towards its human prey.
"Hey! That's cheating!" a girl's voice said.
"No, no, no. I just learned this technique," a boy's voice said.
Luka could hear two familiar voices that didn't seem to belong in the house's usual morning setting. However, she couldn't seem to pinpoint why exactly it didn't belong.
The two voices continued to argue as Luka poured milk in a glass while letting out a tiny yawn. After drinking half of the glass, Luka's mind began to start functioning and her vision started clearing as she slowly blinked. Turning her eyes from the counter and to the living room, she saw two familiar hair colors that finally answered why the two voices didn't seem to fit in.
"Huh?" Luka voiced out.
One of the heads that the pink-haired girl could partially see turned to her and quickly back to the TV.
"Good morning, Luka-chan," the girl's voice said.
"Wait," Luka muttered as she scratched her right eye with her fist.
"Miku-chan?!"
The scream echoed in the house, startling the two people that sat in the living room, playing on the game console.
Moments later, after Luka changed from her pajamas, she returned back downstairs and began preparing breakfast for three. After all, she had unexpected visitors.
"How did you two get in here, by the way?" Luka asked as she flipped the sunny-side up eggs.
"We saw your parents' car drive by on our way here, but we didn't see you, so we thought you should still be home. Then, your siblings were getting ready to leave when we arrived, so they just let us in," Miku answered, her eyes roaming around.
Luka's friends had been in her house a couple of times before, but they've always stayed in Luka's room since it was big enough for them. Therefore, the rest of Luka's house was a stranger to her friends. It wasn't anyone's fault that Luka's friends always stayed in her room since every time they came to Luka's home was because they needed to study.
"Your house is really nice, Megurine-san," Gakupo commented as he also looked around from his seat.
"Thank you," with a smile, Luka placed the plateful of food on the table.
"Itadakimasu."
With the TV turned on in the living room, the three didn't have to sit in silence as they ate the breakfast that Luka had prepared.
"Wow, this is so good!" Gakupo exclaimed after taking a bite of the homemade French toast.
"Th-thank you, Kamui-kun," Luka exchanged a smile of gratitude.
"Haven't you had Luka-chan's food before?" Miku asked, actually confused, since almost all of Luka's friends had already eaten her cooking once or twice.
"Actually, no," the purple-haired boy answered after drinking some of the orange juice.
He began to explain how he had left earlier from Luka's cooking class during the weekend before the school festival they held. He even talked about how he asked Luka to make a bento for him during the bonfire dance, making Luka blush because it was unbelievable that he still remembered their conversation from a few months ago.
"You fainted right before you could finish your answer. Ever since then, I never really wanted to ask you to cook for me since it would just make me feel bad, you know," kindly, Gakupo smiled.
In the back of Luka's head, she was glad that Gakupo was worried about her, but she was ashamed to make her friend feel something like that.
After they finished eating, Luka took out some photo albums and scrapbooks that she, herself, had put together to show Miku and Gakupo while she washed the dishes. The teal-haired girl first grabbed the most recent scrapbook, which was titled 'First High School Festival.'
The pages were colorful and full of neat decorations. Some pictures were actually glued down, some were stapled, and some were taped down by decorative tape or by stickers. All of the pages had captions that varied from a short sentence to a paragraph to describe the pictures.
"Wow, Ia-chan and Lily-chan look so cute!" Miku praised when she saw a picture of her two friends.
"Now that you mentioned them, where are they?" Luka asked, rinsing the plates.
Miku told Luka about how the Wakusei's and the Masuda's have gone on a winter vacation at Korea. The twin-tailed girl also added that Miki had gone back to visit her older brother in his university in Kyoto. Gakupo informed Luka about how Kaito went on a trip with his baseball team and that Gumi went back to her parents' hometown.
"What about you two, then?" asked the pink-haired girl who moved on to rinsing the forks they used for their Western-styled breakfast.
"Our parents are busy with work, so we can't really go anywhere," Miku answered, flipping over the pages of the scrapbook.
"Oh, same here," Luka added.
After she finished washing the dishes and cleaning up the sink, Luka wiped her hands on the apron she had on. She also removed the hair-tie that gathered her tresses into a high ponytail to keep it from getting in the way when she was cooking and doing the dishes. Neatly, she returned the apron inside a drawer. With the table also cleaned up, Luka walked to the living room to join her friends.
"So, what album are you guys looking at now?" looking over at the two as she walked from behind the couch, Luka saw Miku's hand reaching for a photo album that she didn't want to see.
Quickly rushing to Miku's side, Luka grabbed the album with terror in her eyes and embraced it against her chest, trying to cover it.
"Not this," she nervously said, breaking a sweat.
Gakupo and Miku gulped down to see a side to Luka that they had never seen. It was a side that Luka didn't like showing, but it would slip out at times.
That side of hers was selfish, only caring for her own feelings.
That side of hers didn't want to accept the truth, only wanting to see what was on the surface because that side was afraid of getting hurt.
That side of hers was always so terrified of getting hurt that it would seem weak.
However, that side of hers had always protected the girl with the pastel-pink hair from breaking.
"M-Megurine-san, we should walk around your neighborhood," Gakupo broke the frightening silence that covered the three of them.
Miku looked at Gakupo as if he was crazy. It was the 23rd of December and the wind outside was chilly, especially in the beginning of the day, but the teal-haired knew that it was best for them to get out of the house.
"I'm really sorry," Luka muttered before Miku tried to awkwardly add onto Gakupo's offer.
"Someday…I'll show this album to you," Luka looked up to reveal her teary, sky-blue eyes.
Miku and Gakupo looked pained to see this other side of Luka, too, because she looked vulnerable and hurting. They wanted to console her, but something told them that they've never felt what Luka was feeling about the photos that were sealed in the album. Again, Gakupo and Miku were worried about Luka, though they knew that worrying about her would make her even sadder.
"But right now…I can't show them to you," clenching onto the album, Luka got up and turned around to put it in a shelf.
"Right now…I don't want to see them," she thought as a tear slipped from her eye.
Author's note:
onsen- hot springs
itadakimasu- doesn't really have a definite meaning, but is said before eating meals
bento- homemade lunch box
*Seiei Academy is a fictional school created solely for this story. (It literally means 'elite' since it's a private school. Lol.)
Hello, minna-san! Mayumi Selnia here! I'm really sorry that I haven't updated this story in such a long time. I've been busy with school and also trying to finish up one of the stories I published before this story. Also, after re-reading 'Summer's Promise' and your reviews before I began writing this chapter, I took your advice in consideration about using too much romaji. So, I revised the previous chapters and also fixed the mistakes that I previously didn't notice. I decided to just use romaji when the English equivalent isn't really good enough to translate it. But yeah, if you have enough time to re-read so your minds can get back on track with this story, then feel free to please do so. Hehe. I'm really sorry that I suck, though DX Anyways, what do you guys think is in the photo album that Luka didn't wanna share with her friends? Don't forget to post a review! Arigatou, minna~ :3 -Mayumi Selnia-chan