But that sigh stirred the air…and I caught a hint of a familiar scent. Then I sensed a presence—or breathing, or body heat—and looked at the chair next to me.
“Whoa!”
I yelped like I’d forgotten I was in a library. This apparently woke her—at least, I think it woke her, because she was slumped over the table just like I was, so she must have been sleeping, right? Anyway, she lifted her head and looked at me. I stared back, stunned.
“Hey.”
That’s all you have to say?! The thought that I had inadvertently slept next to Miki-san made my face burn up like a furnace. Meanwhile, she rubbed her eyes.
“Man, I’m sleepy…”
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
“Huh? Oh, right. I had something I wanted to tell you.”
Like WHAT? As I braced myself, I saw an ellipsis rise up over her head. She turned and faced forward, then glanced back at me out of the corner of her eye.
“This is a message for Zuka—I mean, Oozuka-kun: Keep acting like that and you’ll drive all the girls away.”
Why did she phrase it like that? Regardless, my only option was to nod. “Sure, I’ll…let him know…?”
“Well, see ya!”
With my confirmation, Miki-san jumped to her feet and hurried off.
“She’s crazy…”
The words left my lips in spite of myself.
That night, I couldn’t sleep a wink. My mind was filled with the smell of her shampoo and the sight of her brand-new shoes walking away from me.
I didn’t know if yesterday’s event had been a shock to my system or what, but Tuesday’s tests went much better than Monday’s. In first period, one of the test questions was about the difference between “thee” and “thou,” and since Miki-san had answered this question in class, I remembered the answer easily. Plus, the English test was focused less on vocab (which I sucked at) and more on reading comprehension, and I was fairly confident that I did well.
But no matter how many test problems I solved, I still couldn’t solve the mystery of what happened with Miki-san yesterday. She seemed in better spirits this morning, at the very least, because she greeted me with a smile. But when she asked “How are you?” in English, I once again replied with the world’s most boring answer: “I’m fine, thank you.” The mystery deepened with her smile.
Once again, she smelled like Bilien, which made me wonder if maybe her boyfriend had cheered her up. Needless to say, it was a depressing thought. And needless to say, Zuka checked in on me again, because he was a good guy.
“You okay? Sleep deprived or something?”
“Yeah, I was studying. Aren’t you proud of me?” I lied as we sat in the cafeteria after school and ate our food together.
“Hell yeah, I am! I went straight to sleep!” he replied, laughing. He was the honest type, so I could trust him not to read too much into anything.
“Hey, so, did anything happen with you and Miki-san yesterday?”
“Huh? Mickey? What about her?”
“I bumped into her on my way home yesterday, and she was acting weird.”
“So? She’s always acting weird. You know she asked me that same question again today? Like, dude, I don’t care if something’s different!”
He laughed again.
“No, I mean…she seemed kinda pissed.” I casually left out the part where I found her sleeping next to me.
“Really? Well, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. She’s nuts, anyway.”
“I mean, yeah, but…” Admittedly, this wasn’t the nicest way to talk about a friend.
Zuka never bothered to think too hard about Miki-san, proof that they’d established a foundation of trust over all the years they’d known each other, and at times, I deeply envied that. But while his utter lack of curiosity was generally something I appreciated, today I was kind of hoping for a hint that could lead to a resolution. That was how strongly Miki-san affected me as of late. But this was my downfall, and I foolishly pressed on.
“Normally she’s always so happy-go-lucky, so I’m kinda worried.”
“Really? If you ask me, she yells and cries all the damn time. This one time in junior high, she drop-kicked me for no reason!”
“Wow, I wish I could’ve seen that. I mean, uh…maybe she got in a fight with her boyfriend or something?”
“Well, aren’t you a saint! But for the record, no, Mickey doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“What?!”
I flinched so hard, my chair clattered against the floor, and my voice even went up an octave. Too bad I couldn’t see my own punctuation, because it was probably an exclamation point the size of a building. But that surprise only lasted a few moments before a warm, fuzzy feeling washed over me. Evidently my body and mind were more directly linked than I thought; my skin seemed to tingle, like all my worries were melting away. Reflexively, I let out a sigh of relief.
Oh, thank God.
But even if she didn’t have one at the moment, it was going to happen sooner or later—or maybe she’d had one at some point in the past. And even if she was single at the moment, I didn’t see it as my big chance or anything. But still…what a massive relief it was.
Then, as the aforementioned relief slowly faded, I remembered the friend sitting right across the table from me. I could only imagine what sort of expression my face must have made, because Zuka was staring back at me in wide-eyed shock, like I was some kind of zoo animal. A handful of question marks floated overhead.
But it wasn’t until those question marks started to morph into exclamation points and ellipses that I realized the gravity of my error. And I wasn’t overthinking it, either. Slowly but surely, Zuka’s expression shifted from surprise to a smile, growing bigger and bigger with each passing second until he was grinning from ear to ear.
Oh crap.
“Z-Zuka?”
“Bro…dude…dude! Bro!”
Evidently, Zuka had transformed into a Dudebro who could only speak Dudebro-ese. Then he reached out with his long arms and clapped me on the shoulder. He seemed downright delighted, almost like he’d found out his one-sided crush was mutual or something.
If only he’d teased me or made fun of me, I could have denied it. But instead he accepted it with enthusiasm, and so I was rendered unable to fight it. Still, I had no plans to confirm it as fact.
“Man…wow. Wow, man!”
Floating over this Dudebro-turned-Wowman’s head was a veritable mountain of ellipses and exclamation marks—surprise and acceptance, piled high.
“Dude, listen. I know for a fact that she’s single, because Looney told me herself. Apparently, she had the same idea, so she asked Mickey about it, but she totally denied it. Well, newsflash, Mickey! You can mock me about my ex all you want, but we’ll see who has the last laugh now! I had to bribe Looney with ice cream to get it out of her!” Having transformed back into an ordinary Earthling, Zuka launched into an explanation I never asked for.
“Shame you couldn’t get your money’s worth.”
“Fine by me! I mean, it was worth at least a hundred ice creams for you, eh?”
He grinned playfully. He nearly had me swooning, and I’m a guy.
Now that Zuka knew about my feelings, I had a sense he would prove to be a useful source of information. Whether I would be happy to hear said information was a different story, however.
“Hey, guys. Oozuka-kun, you’ve got a bit of green onion on your cheek. Y’know, you two make a cute couple.”
“Thanks, Looney! But if you can’t comprehend our manly friendship, then get outta here!”
From there, Zuka continued to smile to himself—all throughout his interactions with other classmates, and even while he was eating his ice cream. And seeing him smile made me smile, too.
As we finished our dessert, I could tell my head was going to explode from the embarrassment of Zuka discovering my crush on Miki-san. I announced that I was going to go study in the library, knowing that he would then decide to go run more laps. Sure enough, I was right. I felt bad, since I was technically ditching him on purpose, but I needed a little time to organize my thoughts.