Nicole’s POV

            “It’s already lunch time. I wonder why Hara isn’t here yet.” I looked around the foyer of our school with futile attempts to spot her. Hara never showed up late, and she would rather be dead than absent on a school day. Of all the people I knew, she whose academics meant the world would never skip—not once.

            “I bet she’ll show up before last period anyway.” Seungyeon shrugged, not giving it too much thought. Winter break ended today and no one seemed to be ready to switch back to studying mode. Maybe it was the lack of sunlight lately that kept us a little gloomier than usual, but I remembered that lunch time didn’t use to feel so boring and empty.

            “What if something really did happen to Hara over winter break?” I suddenly interrupted Seungyeon’s peaceful carrot munching with a disturbing thought. Since that Christmas party, we never really kept in touch like good friends should. I was starting to feel guilty that we weren’t being reliable people for Hara who only had us to share her feelings. It was in that line of thought that I discovered the possible issue. Neither of us took her seriously, but the problem was that we didn’t know when to.

            “Something like? Over-exercising?” Seungyeon said light heartedly. She continued eating, but I could tell she was now thinking of something deeper than what she had just commented. In my mind I listed each symptom Hara explained back during the Christmas party, but no particular issue came to mind. We just weren’t educated to deal with these kinds of situations. What kind of sickness involved severe weight consciousness and over-exercising? The signs seemed all too familiar, yet I couldn’t put my finger on anything specific.

            “Is it even possible for exercising to be unhealthy? She said she has an obsession with exercising. Isn’t that a good thing?” Seungyeon was putting her own pieces of the puzzle together, and it just didn’t quite line up with my own thoughts.

            “Anything in excess can be bad, can’t it?” I reminded her. She nodded silently and drifted back into her own train of thought. As we tried to conclude with a verdict, I could feel a pang of worry mixed with guilt rise up in me. If it was something serious, and if she really did hurt herself because of it, then it would technically be our fault to a degree for not acting on it. We’d been friends with Hara for so many years that we didn’t want to accept that she was changing, so we brushed it off.

            “I really hope she’s okay…” Seungyeon finally mumbled, finishing up her bag of carrots and tossing it into the trash can beside our bench. The bell signaling the end of lunch time finally rang, and Seungyoen and I parted ways. A part of me hoped that I would see Hara in my next class, but the realistic part of my mind wanted me to believe that she probably wouldn’t be there.

Hara’s POV

            “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” My mom asked for the fourth time. I nodded at her confidently and held my backpack close as she pulled up by the curb in front of my school. It seemed like winter break had only been a few days long, yet I knew I had wasted an entire two weeks unproductively. If I could re-do the last few months I would give almost anything to, but I also knew that this kind of hopeless and wishful thinking was unhealthy.

            “You’re going to be taking the bus home with Seungyeon then?” My mom confirmed as I gave her another nod response. I pushed the car door open and hopped out. It had been a while since I felt so sure of my footing and a while since I could stand amidst the falling snow without feeling unbearably cold or dizzy. As my mom drove away, I waved and walked towards the front doors. Pulling them open, I felt a welcoming gust of warm air hit me and embraced it graciously. My body did not take unreasonably long to shake off the coldness of the outdoors anymore, and I did not have to be self conscious of my stomach growling in class either.

            I headed to my next class without dropping by my locker first. I was already fifteen minutes late, and I was starting to feel stressed for having skipped all my morning classes. The door was wide open and I could see Nicole sitting in our desk arrangement by the window, scribbling words on a piece of paper. After a deep breath, I walked in and handed in a late slip to my teacher who nodded and motioned for me to sit down and start the journal response on the board.

            We had a peculiar teacher for English this semester, and I had to admit he was also one of my favourite teachers in the history of my school life. He would get us to ponder topics that go beyond our own comfort levels, to question our own beliefs and shape our outlook on life. His lessons were fascinating, meaningful, and what I liked about this class was that there was no one right answer. After pulling out two sheets of loose leaf and a sharpened pencil, I looked at the board to find the response topic: What is your definition of a healthy person?

            A healthy person? To me, after all that I’ve been through during winter break, I’d have to say that a mentally healthy person is someone who can appreciate who they are without needing to feel satisfied by senseless comparisons with other people. To be physically healthy, they must keep a consistent weight relative to their age and height and exercise quite regularly but know their limitations with it. They should eat regularly with a diet that consists of foods that can provide nutrients the body can use to its fullest ability, and most of all, a healthy person should allow themselves to feel happy even if odds are against it.

            “After you’re finished, place your response on my desk and begin your novel reading where you left off before break.” Our teacher instructed, taking a sip of his afternoon coffee. Sometimes I wondered if it was all the caffeine he consumed everyday that gives him such abstract ways of thinking, but I never cared to find scientific proof to support this. Typical of Nicole, she was the first to get up and submit her paper. She always did finish assignments the quickest, not that it guaranteed her to get the best mark.

            “Where were you all day?” Nicole whispered to me. Her voice could not be heard by the teacher over his whistling coffee maker, and he was reading our study novel. Chances of him bothering with our hushed conversations were slim.

            “I was actually seeing a doctor…” I begin to explain, and suddenly Nicole’s face fell. It looked as if she had seen a ghost, which confused me even more because I had noticed that my face has gotten a lot less pale since I started eating again.

            “Oh my god, Hara! Please tell me it’s nothing big…” Nicole pleaded as she bit her bottom lip anxiously. I sighed with a smile and rolled my eyes. It was a pretty good feeling though—knowing that your friend truly cared.

            “It’s rather good news actually. By the way, I’m really sorry about what happened at the party—“

            “Don’t worry about it!” She interrupted me with a smile, now breathing more evenly. I felt like I should tell her the details of my own rehabilitation, but it all happened before I really found out what had happened. My doctor guessed that it was early stages of Anorexia Nervosa, but the reason I never recognized it earlier was because my symptoms were unique compared to the conventional form of it. As scary as it sounded, I was glad that I was able to stop it from progressing and recover in such a short time. I’ve heard stories of girls who let their lives be bound to their own disorder for years, and after lengthy and pricey rehabilitation, they still found themselves often returning to their impulsive habits. I had pretty high hoped that I would not be like that.

            “I’m just really glad that you’re okay.” Nicole finally sighed with relief, smiling widely and genuinely that it almost looked angelic with the sun seeping through the window above her head. With a confident and more optimistic outlook I agreed,

            “Never better,”

A/N: Cheers to the conclusion of 1 of the shortest fanfics I've ever written! I can't believe I dragged it on for so long too... i'm so sorry XD! Thank you to all my readers all this time and I really hope that this anfic was able to give you some basic awareness of the seriousness of Anorexia and maybe even spur some itnerest for you to learn about this disorder in more depth than I've gone with this story ^^!

Please leave me a comment about your experience with reading this? I'd love any feedback I can get!