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They say that when you sneeze, people are talking about you.
.
.
.
Achoo! I sneeze with quite the startle, having caught the fever from yesterday's immediate yet unexpected sudden rainfall. Although my head is pounding like crazy and my throat feels like there is five different butcher knives heaved down it, I'm still unfortunately forced to come to school because it is the last day. Although Gakuen Alice last days are quite the contrary to movies like High School Music, they are still definitely fun, just not jump-on-tables-dance-like crazy kind of fun.
It's my fifth period—also known as my last—and throughout the whole seven hours of school I have been in so far, not one of them have I even been able to absorb any of the moaning or talks that the teachers have droned on about. Not that it'll actually be any important, anyway. My head continuously throbs and I'm forced to keep on blowing my nose with a tissue that has been reused by me almost a hundred times.
Just another reason to hate rain, right? Correct.
The clock ticks with a horrible, loud sound. We just watch it with an intense stare, looking at the seconds arrow furiously ticking away like crazy. Just a few more seconds and the bell will go. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
Everyone screams. Our teacher laughs and dismisses us from the classroom, telling us to have a good summer break and I can obviously see that she's pretty pleased herself—but then again, it's summer, who wouldn't be? I throw my bag over my shoulder but remember to have the handle to my other bag clutching on to my wrist, containing the jacket that Hyuuga leant me.
Hyuuga.
Oh, wow. Yesterday feels like such a blur compared to today and worst of all, it doesn't feel real at all and I probably wouldn't believe it if I didn't have his jacket with me. I mean, why would he kiss a girl like me? A plain, simple, boring girl who should not have anything to do with him. No, I shouldn't, so I still don't understand why I'm even bothering to go up to him and offer it back when I could have just done that yesterday night. Achoo!
Alice Diner is the one place that everyone—who is anyone—has to go after the last day of school. It's quite traditional and you probably will never see more than five empty tables on a Friday evening. Today it's even worse; loads of students are left without tables to sit in so a massive queue is held up. I, on the other hand, manage to get in early and take a table with Anna, Nonoko and Hotaru. We all sit down, order and begin to talk.
"I'm going to Hawaii!" squeals Nonoko in extreme delight; she claps her hands with a feminine squeak. "It's going to be amazing."
"You're all lucky, I'm not going anywhere. Stuck at home this year." The three of them give a shaky but pitiful laugh directed to me and give me a pat on the shoulder.
"It's fine, Mikan. We'll be loners together, because I'm not going on holiday either," Hotaru says, blankly like always.
"But aren't you-" Anna pauses, mid-sentence. Her mouth gapes open and I see the drool almost trailing down her tongue, eyes clearly darted at a figure behind mine. "I think Natsume's walking towards us!" No way; not possible. Not in this century, anyway. "Never mind, he wasn't, it's just probably my mind playing tricks with me today."
"I wish he was, though..." Nonoko mumbles, hands cupping her cheeks.
"That would just be amazing. Picture this. He comes over and says your name, and asks you to be his girlfriend out in the public. Now, wouldn't that be just the most amazing thing you could ever experience?" With her eyes in a daydream, Anna's eyes glitter and her mouth stays open in delight.
"Sounds like a fanfiction you would write, Anna..." Hotaru reminds her as we all laugh.
"But, just one problem. He would never do that, not with his personality anyway. He's more of the cool, bad boy type that doesn't speak very much. What are the chances of announcing that, all of a sudden, out in the public with hundreds of people watching?"
Achoo! I sneeze again.
"Bless you. You never know, Nonoko! Now stop complaining and just accept that there's a possibility of one of us going out with him!" Not me.
Nonoko smiles devilly. "Now imagine this. How do we know someone we know really well hasn't kissed him already?"
Achoo! Again, really?
"Bless you. Whoa. I never thought of that."
I feel my lips tingling all over again, bringing in the same chocolate taste that his lips brought me. I feel a warm shiver travel down my spine and my cheeks turn to scarlet with, not only embarrassment, but unexpected shock. "I-I need to go to the bathroom, I'll be right back," I say, only partly lying. I do need to go the bathroom, but only to cool down.
The cubicles are all empty and with no one else in here, surprisingly. I walk over to the mirrors and cup my reddened cheeks with my warm hands. For a while, I stay like that until I suddenly realize the bag for Hyuuga's jacket is wrapped around my wrist.
I want to go and give it to him.
The bathroom doors fling open and close with a quiet nose, but with my sweaty palms, I feel like they're two tons of titanic boats to push along an ocean. Making sure Hotaru, Anna and Nonoko aren't facing my way, I walk my way over to Hyuuga's table. It's the size of five different tables put together, with one side all boys and the other all girls. Being the busiest and biggest table doesn't surprise me at all!
Don't do it, Mikan. Just give it to your mum and she can give it to his mum afterwards. My mind thinks.
Meanwhile, my heart thinks differently as my feet carries me to their table and before I know it, I tap Hyuuga's shoulder. "Hyuuga."
His hair whips around, crimson-eyes gazing in to mine, softening a little, only until a few seconds after they stern up.
His eyebrows form an arch as I hold out the bag and put it in front of him.
"What's this?" he asks, almost pushing it away as my heart begins to pound almost so hard I feel like it's going to pound out of my chest. Does he not remember? Or is he trying not to remember? He said he didn't care about me giving it back to him and the embarrassment he could take, so then why act so clueless now?
"Your jack-"
"I don't want it," he interrupts me. What?
Amused eyes stare behind Hyuuga, looking at me pitifully and scan me with their eyes up and down, showing a slight frown between their lips. One of Hyuuga's stalkers, Sumire, has her lips formed in to a smug smirk that I almost imagine myself shoving down her throat and chocking her. "Didn't you hear me? I said-"
"I know what you said." But I don't take the jacket back.
"Natsume's got some obsessed stalker!" Mochu, the ignorantly stupid one shouts as he stands up and throws his arms in the air. I pull a face at him until Ruka tugs at his shirt and pulls him down back in to his seat, shooting a glare at his comment.
"She's a girl, leave her alone, Mochu. That's just low..." he mumbles under his breath, but still loud enough for us to hear. I ignore them both, and Natsume does too.
"Then take it," he says to me, eyes calm and neutral. That softening aspect of them disappeared a while ago—a few seconds after he saw me, actually. "I don't like repeating myself. Take it, Polka, and leave me the hell alone." My blood boils with rage.
"You want me to take it?" I say, arms crossed until I reach out for the hem of the bag. "Sure." But then, I grab his glass of diet coke. Sumire's eyes widen and I grin, looking back at her with a gleam in one eye.
My hand not only tips the diet coke on to his jacket—his $189 Abecrombie and Fitch jacket, may I remind you—but also his head. His wet, soaking with diet coke head. His poor, pretty head full of hair that drips and soaks with the dark, strong-smelling liquid. Everyone around me has their mouth wide open in disbelief, except myself. I raise my hand to slap him, but resist the urge in case I might be going too far.
"That's Mikan!" Nonoko whispers, yet loud enough for me to hear.
"That's what you get when you lie to me!" I shout, storming out of the diner, with eyes all on me. The waiters and waitresses have frozen to look at me, dishes mid-air.
I don't cry, my eyes don't water and my face doesn't go puffy with the extreme amount of tears because I'm not upset. I'm just angry and embarrassed. I'm frustrated and want to scream at a wall.
Immediately, I go straight home and hope for comforting words from my mum—I mean, who else would I go to? Not that I have any siblings to comfort me and my very own father has left us for a whole six months straight for a stupid business trip. My family sucks, sometimes.
.
I'm welcomed with a lecture from my own mother, who doesn't seem to be on my side. "Mikan Sakura Yukihara! I absolutely cannot believe your behaviour; did you really think throwing a litre of diet coke down Natsume-kun's head would really solve your problems? Why didn't you talk to him?" Ahh. So I see that Hyuuga has already snitched to his mother about our little problem. "I'd like an answer, thank you very much!"
I sit down on a kitchen chair and wrap my arms around my knees, burying my head between them. "I'm not going to talk to that low-life jerk, he lied to me!" I say with a muffled voice.
"How? Why?" I don't answer, until my head rises from my knees as something is knocked against them with a light tap. It's my iPhone. "Go call him and apologize."
"Mum, he made a complete fool out of me out in the diner! Why the hell would I want to do that?" I see my own mother's disappointed and apologetic face that just makes me go up and hug her, even though I don't. For a moment or two, I feel like she feels slightly ashamed to have such an unforgiving daughter. "Fine."
I put the phone neatly in my hand, and dial the phone number as my mum gives me a piece of paper with his number on it. It rings and rings, until I hear a deep voice on the other side. "Hello?"
"Hey."
"Polka?"
"I called you to say sorry." There's a pause between my sentence until I suddenly interrupt and say, "I'm sorry that you're suck an asshole who kisses a girl like it's worth nothing and promises that he won't be embarrassed by her, but actually does later on!"
"I wasn't embarrassed!" he shouts through the other line.
"Then what?"
"I...you just came at the wrong time to talk to me, that's all. I mean, there was everyone watching and-"
"See!"
"It's not my fault you're so sensitive, and by the way, I didn't promise anything!"
"Oh—just—go and do whatever you, want, prick!"
"But, Mikan, I like-"
I end the call with a click of a button and throw the phone across the tiled floor, smashing it with a loud sound. It cracks in pieces, shards of glass flying everywhere and worst of all, I know I'm going to be unable to get a new one with my current allowance. Mum stands next to me, arms crossed in rage and nostrils flared. Her forehead is creased; something about it all just makes me think she's not the most pleased woman in the world.
"You two are so immature!" she shouts, pointing a finger up the staircase—meaning I need to go to my room. I do as I'm obediently told and feel the guilt weighing up inside me, not for Natsume, for my mum who had to buy that iPhone for me.
I stay silently in my room, head buried in my knees until I hear footsteps coming walking up the staircase and the creak to my door startles me slightly, as I whip my head up and see a suitcase unpacked in front of my mother as she dumps it in my room.
"Pack your stuff, Mikan. You're moving in with the Hyuuga family for the month."
I feel my heart drop like there's a ton of bricks being weighed down on it.
Mikan's mummy is awesome. c:
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