❥ Chapter Eight

            “Teo, not today,” she said, standing up.

            “We need to talk about what happened last time,” I said, walking towards her.

            She was sitting by the bench in the courtyard again, this time, without her guitar. For the past few days, I’d been trying to get her to talk to me, but every time, she would just walk away or give a half-assed excuse. And no matter how much I’d like to give her some space, we need to finish this project. And what’ll we have to do to finish? I’ll have to find out what’s going on that’s driving her away from me.

            “Nothing happened. Maybe we should just work on the project separate—“

            “Mitsuki, stop trying to make up excuses. This is a project between partners. So whatever problem you have with me, just be blunt like you always are and tell me so that I can try to fix it and we can move on!”

            “Everything… and nothing is wrong with you.” I could see the tears begin to well up in her eyes, but she ran her sleeve over them, trying to stop the drops from falling.

            “W-What?”

            “Never mind, Teo,” she muttered. “I have to go.”

            Before she could take a step in the opposite direction, I reached forward and grabbed her wrist, causing her to abruptly stop. “Just… tell me, Mitsuki. Treat me like a stranger that you’ll never see again. Tell me why you seem to hate me so much right now.”

            “I don’t hate you. I never hated you, and that’s far from… that’s far from how I actually feel right now.” Mitsuki didn’t even turn to face me. She simply spoke to the thin air in front of her.

            “Then what happened? We were actually writing songs fairly well. Did I do something? Again, just… treat me like a stranger. You don’t even have to face me. Just talk to me as if you’re letting go of something, giving it to someone you’ll never see again.”

            “But that’s not what will really happen.”

            I hesitated before saying, “No… No, it won’t. You’ll probably see me again… But that’s the fun in pretending. You pretend it happened… and you forget it ever did.”

            “Will you forget?”

            “… Okay.” No.

            She seemed to relax, her shoulders dropping. In a blur of words, she said, “You’re just like him.”

            “Who?”

            “Akio,” she muttered. “You’re just like Akio… How you act… Your appearance… And that has to do with everything.” Without realizing, my grasp on her wrist relaxed, and Mitsuki pulled gently away before walking in the opposite direction, leaving me confused as to what my resemblance to this person had to do with anything…

❥ ❥ ❥

            “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a deep, romantic tragedy. You know, you should go to the Creative Writing department instead. I think some of the students are looking for some… interesting plotlines for stories,” said Yun as he penciled in some notes onto his staff paper.

            “Yun!”

            He sighed and looked up. “Kidding. If that’s what really happened… Think about it. Whoever this Akio person is, try to figure out how he’s connected to her. His name’s Japanese, so I assume he was probably someone close to her who lives in Japan. Judging from how she seems pissed off—“

            “Not pissed off! She looked… just depressed, I guess.”

            “Alright, so maybe they were close and something happened that pulled them apart. So she’s not on quite good terms with this person. And now that she’s met someone like Akio, she remembers their bad relationship with each other and can’t really take the memories.”

            “I don’t think that’s the whole story, Yun.”

            “Well, how am I supposed to come up with the whole story if I haven’t even met the girl yet? Of course it’s not the whole story, but it’s probably something like what happened,” he said, going back to his homework. “Go ask her.”

            “But I can’t. She’s still avoiding me.”

            “Then put her in a position where she can’t.”

            “And how do I do that?”

            “Teo, that’s what your brain’s for. I can’t do all the thinking for you.”

            I lightly punched his arm before standing up and tossing my unused books back into my backpack. “Whatever. See you later. I’m gonna go try to find her right now.”

            “Good luck,” Yun said, looking up for a second. “But… give her a bit of time. Seems like she’s not all too keen on telling the whole story. She really only gave you a sentence and a half to go off of.”

❥ ❥ ❥

            I saw her again by the bench, but this time with a girl. While the girl seemed to be happily talking, Mitsuki was expressionless, and her lips barely moved as they conversed.

            “Mitsuki…”

            She turned towards me and a quiet sigh escaped her lips. “Kyumi, can we talk later? I have to go finish up an assignment.”

            “Oh, sure! See you later, Mitsuki!” And she quickly walked away, nodding quickly at me as a polite greeting.

            “Who’s Akio?” I asked as soon as Kyumi was out of hearing range.

            Her eyes revealed her declining emotions, as did the rest of her expression. She always was an open book, as if she didn’t care what she revealed to others. But she was so secretive outside of her emotions.

            “Please… tell me. I can’t help who I am, and if I’m like this person, than… I’m sorry, but I can’t change that. But I do want to know who he is… who he was to you so that I can show you that maybe I’m not as similar to him as you think.”

            “You’re telling me to tell you my tragic love story plot line,” Mitsuki said, her voice merely a whisper. “And when I barely know you, do you think I should trust you with it?”

            “Trust is something earned… So why don’t I just earn it right now?”

            “Trust is earned over a long period of time.”

            “I can earn a bit of your trust right now.”

            “How?”

            “I’ll tell you my tragic love story plot line.” I gave her a sad smile as her eyes revealed the shock she felt in that small instance of whispered conversation.

            We sat down behind the bench as always, neither of us directly facing each other. Sitting in silence for a good five minutes, the both of us seemed to be bracing ourselves for what was the come. And really, that sounds more dramatic than it should be.

            “You don’t have to… Why do you want to know about me so much?”

            “Because…” And the reason at first was that I just wanted to get back to our project. In a few ways, I was frustrated with how we were unable to continue. But after seeing the look in her eyes, the depression and desolation, I realized that I wanted to know because… I didn’t want her to have the same emotions as I did, held within the small windows to who we are. I wanted to know so that I could fix what was wrong and erase the pain she hid. “Because I just do.”

            And I could tell she didn’t believe me. But Mitsuki nodded anyway, and waited for me to continue.

            I sighed quietly before starting. “I was eighteen… so the same age as you are now. At that time, I’d never had a girlfriend, never had close relationships to girls… the closest girl to me was probably my mom. I didn’t even have an ideal type.” I laughed, remembering how pathetic I seemed… and how pathetic I still seem. “And all of a sudden, every other guy’s ideal type girl on campus decided she wanted to become my girlfriend. So I convinced myself that she was my ideal type also, and fooled myself into feeling happy.”

            I paused to see if she had any reactions, but Mitsuki continued to look forward with an unreadable expression. “At first, it was like any other relationship: sweet and happy. But, like every seemingly perfect relationship, everything fell apart.”

            “And it was her fault, I assume?” asked Mitsuki.

            “I can’t fully blame it on her,” I replied. “I was a burden to her. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do as a boyfriend, and lacked many qualities… So she cheated. It started off with simple flirting. She stopped showing affection towards me, and barely cast a glance my way. I was too infatuated with her… no, with the idea of liking her… with the idea of falling in love. I was like a teenage girl who had fallen in love.” I snickered bitterly at the weak comparison. “And without warning, I saw her cheating on me in our shared apartment three years after the damned relationship started.” I looked up at the sky, darkening as nighttime descended. “I was foolishly in love with being in love for three years… and… it broke something inside of me…”

            “You can’t love now,” Mitsuki whispered, still looking forward. “Was she your first love? Can you call her that?”

            I thought on her question for a moment, allowing the silence to grow between us, before I spoke, my voice quiet. “No… No, I can’t. Because I never really loved her the way I thought I did. But the feeling of love was still there, and she broke that… she broke that part in me.”

            Mitsuki nodded. “It was just… infatuation disguised as love.”

            I took a deep breath and nodded, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in my chest. “I can’t believe that was only a few months ago,” I muttered.

            “Really?” There was a touch of surprise in her voice.

            I nodded again. “Yeah…”

            “You must still be heartbroken…”

            “In a way… I think I still am,” I said. “I’ve convinced myself… that I won’t love anyone. I won’t become infatuated, nor will I love… because if I do, and someone does that to me again… I don’t think I’ll be able to recover.”

            “I know… how you feel in a way,” Mitsuki replied, rubbing her arms as if a chill ran through her. She never faced me, but looked up at the sky as I did before.

            And it was when the tears were on the verge of falling from her eyes full of grief that I realized… her story could only have been at least ten times more painful than mine.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi my lovelies >< I know it's been way too long... I think over a month since I last updated, and I feel awful about that. The truth is that I've lost my inspiration for this story. I should've written an outline, but I didn't, and planned badly for this fic that I was totally in love with at first. I'm still going to finish this story, don't worry. I hate discontinuing stories. But it might take me a while to write chapters... And I'm not asking for forgiveness or for you guys to stay subscribed, or for you to keep reading, because in all honesty, it might take me another month for another update. I will, though, finish this fic. I'm determined! I still have the motivation, and it's from a while ago. I can't remember who said this to me about this story, but they said it was their favorite of all my stories. And I never thought this story would so significantly stand out, so I'm more than honored for that person to have said it was their favorite of my writing. Thank you! I'm sorry I can't remember who exactly it was, but just know that the little comments count for a lot :) I'll see you guys in my next update! Love you all~

-DespisedSecret

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