[Love Circle]
CHAPTER TWO
The dormitory's window was fully open, which exposed the peaceful grounds of the summer academy. The late afternoon sun glimmered under the orange haze of clouds as it began to sink lower and lower towards the darkening hills.
Meanwhile, a quiet and content Roxas lay peacefully atop his clean bed sheets, with legs waving back and forth in the air as his eyes quickly scanned the comic pages of the newest volume of samurai manga by his favorite mangaka. The way samurai obeyed their code while at the same time gracefully fighting against malicious forces that sought to take over their country mystified the dirty blonde boy. And it was times like these sprawled on a bed with manga did he begin to wistfully wonder if the real world could be like this fantastical story, where everyone was strong, perfect, and incredibly skilled…
Suddenly, a loud electronic beep boomed throughout the entire academy's premises. The speaker that was tucked snugly up against one of the wall's corners made an annoying static sound before a blaring voice came onto the speaker.
"Attention students," the voice started, "Dinner is now being served in the cafeteria. All students please report to the café immediately."
Roxas sighed and took one last look of his manga before tucking it under his plump pillow. It was times like these that he hated his parents for making him such an obedient boy, despite being in his teenage years, where most people his age were rebellious and, frankly, could care less about rules.
He hopped off his bed and lazily slipped his feet into his shoes before creaking out the empty dorm room and towards the cafeteria. The hallways in the boy's dorms were a ghost town as well, as most boys his age were probably outside or in one of the multiple gymnasiums, playing sports and the like.
But, unlike most boys his age he was different, and liked the thought of curling up on a sofa or a bed and read a good few novels and manga. He wasn't much of a rowdy kid, but instead a shy one. If he had the choice between English or PE, he would gladly take English any day. And if it was between art or basketball, he wouldn't even need to think about his answer to that.
However, the cost for his individuality had greatly cost him. Because of it, he was a social outcast – usually dubbed the "art freak" or a variant of it.
But Roxas didn't mind. He liked art. And he wouldn't give it up for the world.
Just as he was taking his first step into the crowded cafeteria, however, his eyes caught sight of a familiar brunette girl who was crowded around with her usual gang of sporty friends…
Immediately, the thought of the lacrosse incident popped into Roxas's mind and his self-conscious personality made him blush. His body began to freeze up, and his cheeks flushed to a rosy red. He shuffled away from the group of jockey girls, hoping that they wouldn't spy him.
And unfortunately, one of the brunette girl's friends saw him as he helplessly tried to scuttle away.
"Hey," she snarled, pointing a slim finger at him, "Aren't you that guy that was staring at Ollie?"
Instantly, her gang of lacrosse girlfriends turned to where she was pointing and their eyes seemed to simultaneously light up with surprise. And, to make things even worse, tThe last person to turn to look at him was the brown-haired girl herself.
Great. Just great.
The girl's green eyes fiercely flared with animosity at the sight of him, and her eyebrows furrowed into an intimidating frown. Of all the things Roxas had wished, it was to see her actually look normal whenever she set eyes on him (that is, if she ever would again...).
"It's you," she said with angry, pouted lips. "That weird kid."
Roxas shuddered at the girl's words as they stabbed him hard in the chest with each and every sound, like bullets to the body. He looked around, hoping that other people weren't watching. And thankfully – if this was the only thing that would be helpful – nobody that was considered "important" was around.
"Is staring at girls what you really like to do?" she continued to rant in her savage voice. "Because if it is, I'd advise you stare at someone else. 'Cause you give me the creeps."
Any normal boy would shrug this off as harmless insults. But Roxas felt like crying.
He shook and shivered as this girl's words ripped him limb from limb, leaving him completely vulnerable and exploited for humility. He quickly looked down at the floor, his sandy blonde bangs covered his eyes from the embarrassing shame this girl was putting him through. He felt like crawling into a small corner, where nobody would ever find him as he cried.
I mean, it wasn't everyday a guy got brutally turned down by the girl he actually...liked…
"Hey, Brownie-Twirls!"
The brunette girl swung her head around to see who dared interrupted her from chewing out a poor helpless soul. What stood before her just a few feet away was a muscular-looking teenage boy, who was smirking under his black beanie.
A gangster, at the looks of it. And a badass one, too.
"It seems that you forgot about our rematch."
"'Forgot'?" the girl repeated. She let out a small laugh at the word. "You're the one that should be asking me, anyway. The way I remembered it, you were the one who was begging for mercy."
The girl's friends giggled and looked at each other comically. Apparently to them, this tough-looking guy was all talk and no action.
The guy, clearly pissed off with the girl's remark, advanced a firm foot forward, bringing out a fist to emphasize his anger.
"Why you little-!"
"You want some?" she taunted, putting her hands on her hips cockily. "Come and get it."
And – to Roxas's surprise – the guy had taken her offer.
Within seconds, the brunette and gangster were already on the marble floor, punching and smacking each other with full-force fists and feet. It was also within that short period that a ring of people from outside the cafeteria had come to gaze at this violent spectacle, cheering their fight as they pulled each other's hair and slapped each other's faces until blood spewed.
"O-lette! O-lette!" cheered a couple of guys that stood right next to him. Their cheers and dog-like whoops went down another octave when they saw her swipe of the gangster's beanie off and give his head a blow to the skull. Olette's friends were also cheering for her as they screamed in high-pitched squeals to hit him in the tenders. (Roxas could feel a shiver run down his spine when he heard that.) The blonde ruffian wasn't backing down, though. He also had done some significant damage to the tomboy. Frizzled up hair, three red scratch marks on her left cheek, and even a huge blow to her stomach, which was sure to be swollen for a few weeks.
Roxas, who'd had a front-row seat to this happening, was frozen in place as he had been just minutes ago, when the brunette had been yelling at him. It wasn't until he saw an authoritative figure rush down the dormitory's stairs that his brain started to signal the "escape" message. He quickly pushed his way out of the crowd and darted into the cafeteria, which wasn't as noisy as it had been just a few minutes ago.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to act cool as he headed towards the sandwich bar. As he told the cafeteria lady what he wanted in his food, though, the sinking feeling of rejection just didn't seem to whither away.
"Anythin' else?" the lady asked. Her eyes, which were heavily coated with a ghastly shade of light blue, drooped under her baggy eyelids as she looked forlornly at Roxas, who was clearly terrified by her.
"U-Uh, no," he stammered.
The lady looked away as she put his sandwich on a porcelain plate and shoved it at him.
"Don't even think 'bout not paying," she snarled.
Roxas's eye couldn't help but twitch with horror.
"Y-Yes ma'am!" he replied as he whizzed over towards the counter. The cashier, who was a late adolescent, eyed Roxas with an annoyed look as he fumbled for some bills in his wallet.
"Will that be all?" he sighed monotonously.
"Yes," Roxas said, finally finding the right bill and handing it to the guy. As he gave his money, though, he heard a voice pipe up from beside him.
"Hey, where's the service with the smile?"
"Does it LOOK like I'm happy?" the cashier snapped back. He turned to who the smart-aleck was, his eyes soon narrowed into thin, tight slits. "Oh," he hissed, "It's you."
Roxas turned to see who this "nasty" boy was, only to find out it was a spiky-haired roommate of his.
"Well, well, well," he smirked, "Looks like you're the one who's making us pay for this slop, eh?"
"If you don't like it, then don't eat it," he jeered back.
As the two started getting into a fight, Roxas just couldn't help but think he was a fighting-magnet. First, the physical brawl between Olette and that guy (though the noise had died down significantly from outside, he noticed) and now this one between his roommate and anti-social-looking cashier. Was today Fight Day or something?
Roxas decided to, again, leave quietly and choose somewhere nice and peaceful to sit, where he was sure a fight wouldn't occur. He scanned the tables, which, to him, appeared to all be occupied.
He found a spot on a long extravagant-looking oak table, where he sat on the edge farthest away from a clucking clique of girls on the other end.
Perhaps he wouldn't be much of bother to them, since all they were doing was just talking…
Roxas settled himself into a comfortable plush seat, he was about to take a bite of his sandwich (which, he thought, wasn't slop and was actually great food compared to what he got back home) when someone put a hand on his shoulder.
"Hey!"
With his sandwich inches from his face, he turned around to see an auburn-haired girl, who was gazing down at him with her peppy and bright blue eyes.
"What's up?"
Embarrassed, he put his sandwich down, already expecting the girl to desert him once he'd finished putting his food down on his plate. And, to his surprise, she not only stayed, but actually walked over to take a seat across from him.
"Oh, eating? I already ate, but I'll wait for you."
Roxas, still lost for words, looked from his lumpy sandwich to this girl, brimming with smiles and sparkles and over-cheeriness.
"Uh…"
"Oh, maybe you don't remember me," she said, laughing as she pushed a stray hair from her face. "I'm Kairi," she explained, putting an elbow on the table as leaned her head against it. (Apparently she was already getting comfortable!) "I'm that girl in your art class. Remember?"
"Oh, yeah," he said, mustering a shy smile. "That's right. You're the girl that sat next to me."
"Yeah! The one that loved your drawings, too."
Roxas almost blushed and gave a nervous, soft laugh.
"You really liked them? Really?"
"Of course!" she exclaimed. She raised her head and banged her hands forcefully on the table, making him and the girls on the end flinch. (The girls on the other end, however, gave Kairi some evil-eye looks, which she, of course, ignored.) "And, now that I mention it…do you think you could draw me?" she asked, clasping her hands. "Please?" she begged, leaning over the table to deliberately get closer to him.
He instinctively backed away from her advance and looked at her uneasily, since he rarely dealt with girls as outgoing and social as her.
"Uh…well…I…don't know," he said in between long pauses. His eyes traced away, hoping he could use an excuse to escape from this pressuring scenario.
And, to his surprise yet again, along came a diversion.
"Hey, aren't you that girl who was sneaking into the boys' dorms?"
The girl's head whipped around to see the spiky-brunette and his plate looming over her hair-sprayed head. She blinked her round eyes up at the plate's shadow in wonder.
"Oh it's you," she blinked. "The lost one."
To Roxas's surprise, the guy didn't have a comeback, like he'd expected. And, better yet, this girl had snuck into the boys' dorms?
"You snuck into the boys' dorms?" Roxas repeated, baffled.
Kairi quickly swung her head back to face Roxas, a sheepish smile plastered on her face, which was contrastingly different from the happy, confident she'd given him before his roommate appeared.
"Hee," she giggled nervously. "I guess I did...But, it wasn't that big of deal. I mean, I didn't go into any of the rooms or anything…-!"
"Or did you?" the boy questioned, setting his tray next to Kairi's as he took a seat next to her. "You were in a rush, if I remember." He glanced across to see Roxas, and his eyes lit up with shock and happiness (but there was definitely more shock, Roxas noted). "Oh, Roxas, hey! Didn't see you there."
Roxas gave an awkward smile and stiffly shrugged nonchalantly. "Y-Yeah. Hey, Sora."
"Sora, eh? So that's your name? It's pretty girly, since you're named after the sky," Kairi remarked, thankful she'd come up with a successful put-down.
"Well what's yours?"
"She's Kairi," Roxas blurted. His peripheral view, however, showed a slightly disappointed Kairi, whose lips tightened in dismay.
"Well, I'm not a big name-fanatic, but who would name their child after an ocean village? I mean, geez, that's crazy."
As Kairi opened her mouth to make a retort, Roxas's senses could already feel a fight coming soon. And before Kairi could even utter a word, he'd scooted out of his seat and briskly made his way to the cafeteria doors, ditching his sandwich and a very saddened auburn girl, who, apparently, was now stuck with a troublesome boy.
-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-
"Get me a latte, Namine."
"And for me some crepes."
"Oh, and I want some of those squishy things!"
"S-Squishy things?"
"Oh, Namine, seriously! You know which ones I'm talking about! It was the one your father was eating."
"Oh, you mean jin doi?"
"Don't be a smartass you little twerp! Just go and get them! God!"
This conversation had been going on for far too long. It was a pointless, utterly meaningless, and, frankly, a stupid discussion. And it was beginning to sound like an earache.
Riku glanced over at a nearby plastic sign that was hanging on a wall above the computers. It clearly read, with big red capital letters: "NO DRINKING OR EATING IN THE LIBRARY." Were these morons comprehension-challenged or something? Rules were meant to be followed. Else, why would they even exist?
His eyes slowly trailed over towards the helpless blonde girl the other girls were torturing. Clearly this girl had no backbone of her own as her pale legs were turned inwards and her hands were clasped tightly against her body. She was shivering and shaking with fear as the girls continued to harp and holler at her.
Disgusting.
"What are you doing just standing there? Go get them!"
"Are you really that useless, Namine?"
"God, Namine! You really are helpless!"
Tears were already starting to form on the girl's pale cheeks, and she quickly turned around to wipe them away. Although, it was pretty obvious the other girls had seen her tears of defenselessness.
"Go!"
A girl with long curly hair rose from her lounge seat and pushed the light blonde into one of the library bookcases. The girl's forehead banged against the bookcase's hard metal and collapsed to the floor in a heap.
"Oh, God, here you go again," sighed the curly-haired girl, rolling her eyes as she stooped over to look down at her helpless piece of prey. "Get up already. Stop playing whimp and get us our freakin' food!"
There was a small whimper from the carpeted ground and the girl covered her face with her skinny, bony arms. Apparently, the only thing important to her was her dignity. (Which, Riku realized, she had none of.)
"Hey, is something the matter over there?"
"Oh shit!" yelped one of the girls from her seat. "They're coming!"
"You're lucky today, Namine," the curly girl smirked. "But next time, you won't be."
The girl didn't reply or squirm as the girls tramped over her as they made their grand escape before a woman came over to the scene. And, to Riku's astonishment, the stupid woman didn't even see her splattered on the floor with her arms on her face.
Once the old hag left, Riku turned back to look at his computer screen. Now that all that commotion was gone, there wasn't much to complain about. His eyes blinked at the screen once, twice, and then thrice. Why didn't his mind understand any of this information all of a sudden? No matter how many times he re-read the words on the screen, they weren't making any sense at all.
His eyes instinctively shot over towards the girl on the floor, who was still on the ground, silent and completely still.
He then turned to look back at his screen, this time a little bit too desperately, as he didn't want to get into anyone's business. After all, he didn't like it when anyone got into his business.
Sighing, he logged out of his account and slid out of his seat and started towards the girl, who was still lying there as stiff as a statue.
He loomed over her, his shadow cast upon her frail figure. Still, she didn't notice. Or, maybe she did, it was just that she wasn't reacting to it.
His eyes narrowed, and – even though it was a bit cruel – he lightly nudged her body with his shoe.
She shifted to where his foot pushed her towards, but her mouth still did not cease to speak.
He blinked blankly.
"Hey, you," he said, "Get up."
Realizing that this voice belonged to someone foreign, she slowly unveiled her face with her arms, her blue eyes widening as she saw a tall, serious, and somewhat intimidating figure look at her from down below the ground.
As he looked at her face, he noticed a huge black and discolored bruise on her forehead. He squatted down closer to her eye-level and took a white handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.
"I know it's not going help that huge bruise of yours, but here."
-tO bE CoNTiNuEd…
Side Note 1: "Jin doi" is a Cantonese rice pastry with red bean paste inside. It's the equivalent of a sesame dumpling.
Side Note 2: Olette's friends call her "Ollie" in this story. I'm sorry if you thought that was someone else. I call her that, so I figured why not add that here?
SHANA'S NOTES (AND LOVE):
Haha, I know, I know, you can hit me. (Well, not literally. But you can type it, if you want to.) My updating has been horrific, and it probably has torn your eyes out by now. My deepest apologies. The way I roll nowadays is if I get inspired for a specific story, then I'll write a new chapter for that story. And if I don't, then I just…well, you know. But thanks for reading this! Seriously, your comments really drive me to update and write! If it weren't for you guys, gee, I don't know what I would do. I probably wouldn't be writing, I guess. But I really love you all, so hugs and cookies for YOU all! So, please, if you can really take a few minutes of your awesome lives, please review. It means a lot to me. Thanks,
-Shana-san
P.S.: Extra love to anyone who knows why Olette is nicknamed "Brownie Twirls".
PREVIEW OF A NEW CHAPTER OF KHHS! (OH EM GEE!)
"Don't play around with me!"
He thrust the blonde against the rows of metal lockers. The boy's head landed hard on a nearby lock, yet his eyes remained steady and unfazed by his sudden act of violence.
Annoyed, Hayner spat as his eyes glared into deadened eyes of the other.
"You want some more?"
The blonde didn't reply to the offer, merely blinking as he reflected the same, indifferent gaze.
Suddenly, Hayner threw a blow at the boy's face, making his head swerve in the direction the aim took. Olette screamed as she tried to intervene, while Pence merely stood dumbly, paralyzed and utterfly baffled by what he just saw.
There was a cough, and then a small puddle of blood between the boys' feet.
He smirked and then eyed Hayner challengingly.
"I don't really like to fight, but if you keep this up, I might just get serious."
-to be continued...
TUNE IN FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER OF KHHS!