One day collapses into another, until Aoi is standing before their designated meeting place. Her ears are ringing, her vision is distorted, perhaps she should be worried, but it is nothing to be worried about. The worst that could happen would be her fainting. And that has occurred so many times already that Aoi is able to see it coming now, and sit down on a bench, before her head has a chance of cracking itself open, like an egg across concrete sidewalks.

Aoi wishes she could take her phone out and start playing stupid mini-games to pass the time, because the young man she remembers as The-Idiot-Whose-Name-I-Didn’t-Even-Get is late. She can’t though. She knows very well the veins in her eyes will not withstand the light. They will leave red trails behind with a dull ache, inside the whites of them, should she cave and scroll through the device that sits in her pocket—charged at a full battery—for more than a minute or two.

The young woman blinks and shuts her eyes until she does not desire a distraction anymore. There’s no way she’s going to touch it, she thinks. Not today—at least, she hopes it will not be today. Having need her phone would mean there is an emergency. And that would be bad for the young woman, in more ways than one.

Aoi recalls the pain that said emergencies entail and shivers.

She also glosses over the other kind of misery that lives in her mind, too, whenever she listens behind her living room’s door, to her parents crying over medical bills they are forced to pay each month.

The young woman sighs. If only she could work part-time, she thinks, these problems would not have to exist.

Someone taps her on the shoulder. It feels like needles are running across her skin. She jumps on the spot, then turns around to face The-Idiot-Whose-Name-She-Didn’t-Even-Get. “You think you’re funny?” Aoi is frowning again; she cannot help it.

Damian holds his hands up by his face. “S-sorry!” he blurts. “I swear I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“Whatever.” Aoi shoves her hands into her pockets. It’s a weekend, and the crowds around them keep on expanding. The sight hurts her eyes. She wishes she could go home, to stare at a blank wall for an hour or two.

Instead, she enters the café.

“You weren’t, uh… caught, right?” Damian asks her, as he follows right behind.

She wants to shake her head, but it would temporarily mess up her vision a little more; Aoi settles for a shrug instead. “The teachers didn’t doubt me for a second,” she says.

“Ah.” Damian’s laughter is awkward. “But the students did?”

Upon hearing his words, Aoi stops in her tracks. “Yeah.” She does not mean to sound so upset when she speaks the word, yet, it still comes out all wrong. Broken. Twisted—like what her peers tell her on the daily.

Damian wraps his arm around her shoulder. He swings the both of them from side to side. The young woman thinks that she is going to puke. “Come on,” he tells her. “Don’t cry, the aliens will be here for us soon. Then, we won’t have to deal with this crap anymore.”

Aoi steps away from his touch. “I doubt that,” she says, despite being ever so thankful for the distraction. The false hopes. Crying would have been a humiliating experience, in her eyes; especially in the middle of a café. It would have also blinded her. And being blind—in Aoi’s opinion—is a bit of a struggle, especially when one is trying to cross a road outside.

“The cake’s on me!” Damian suddenly declares, as he points to himself with his thumb and a closed fist. “Consider it…” He averts his gaze from hers, then scratches the back of his head. “A token of my apology.” The young man clears his clears his throat. “Seriously, I’m really sorry if you got bullied because of me.”

While he ushers her into the line, Aoi huffs. Her grip tightens against her backpack’s thick, yellow strap. “I already brought food with me,” she tells Damian. “I don’t need your cake.”

He leans into her space once more, then purses his lips together. “It better not be those drinks again,” he mutters, in a tone devoir of any trust and filled with various suspicions.

Someone leaves the line that leads to the counter. They both take a step forward. “What’s wrong with my drinks?” Aoi asks him. She reads the menu propped up before them on the café’s wall, once, then twice.

“I mean,” Damian cringes. “Nothing’s inherently wrong with them, per se, but it’s not… real food, you know?”

Aoi has changed her mind—she decides she does not want to be here anymore. No matter how cold the wind is outside, getting out of this café that has grown stuffy to her lungs suddenly becomes her top priority.

She doesn’t bother warning Damian. She steps out of line and speed walks away from the bar that smells like sweets and hot chocolate.

Damian watches her leave with an ache in his chest. It finally occurs to him that he never got Aoi’s name. Up until now, he’d been thinking of her as The-Girl or That-Girl.

And despite what That-Girl has told him, he still orders two cakes and two drinks; Damian figures she is merely being stubborn. He wants to make her feel more at ease. He wants, to apologize.

With his food in hand, he soon walks outside to join a shivering Aoi’s side.

The first thing the young woman does is throw a death glare at the treats pinched between Damian’s grasp. She crosses her arms, then tucks her chin deep into her scarf. “Congratulations,” she tells him. “You just wasted your money.”

“Ah,” Damian perks up, then snickers. “But who says it’s for you?” he asks her. “Maybe I’m just really hungry.”

Aoi feels her face flush red. She frowns. “Either way, one of those hot drinks are bound to get cold by the time you finish the other if you’re standing out here. You shouldn’t have ordered them at the same time.” Idiot, she thinks, though, this thought, she does not say aloud.

“Yes, what a shame!” The young man lets out an exaggerated sigh. He rolls his eyes and hands Aoi one of the drinks. “I suppose you’ll just have to take one of these away from me, then.”

Although Aoi understands Damian is doing this all in good fun, she finds herself tiring at the mere prospect of his joke. “Sure,” she releases him from the weight of one steaming, chocolate milk. “But I won’t drink it.”

Damian groans. “Crap…” He brings a palm to his forehead. “I knew I should have gotten something caramel flavored instead! You didn’t seem like the chocolate type.”

I’m not any kind of type, Aoi hold herself back from saying the words. At least, she isn’t anymore. “You should just give my ration to a homeless man and consider it your way of atoning for turning my reputation into something less than commendable,” she says.

Damian blinks. “You sure?”

Aoi nods. “It was a nice gesture, but I won’t have any of it, sorry.”

The young man’s features wilt into an expression of sorrow. He wonders what he has done wrong. Then, he asks himself if Aoi could possibly be allergic to whatever’s in these snacks, But if she were, wouldn’t she have told him already?—at least, that is his reasoning.

He settles on believing that she isn’t fond of chocolate instead. It is a pill that is easier to swallow, after all. Easier to understand. “Hey,” his attention wanders across the road, to where a homeless man is indeed napping on a bench in a nearby park. “Your summer holidays, they’re coming up in a few weeks, right?”

Aoi narrows her eyes. She does not understand where Damian is going with this. “Unfortunately, yes,” she tells him. “I won’t be nagged on the daily by my lovely, and extremely considerate peers.”

Damian watches as the light next to the sidewalk readies itself to turn green. “Come find the aliens with me,” he says the offer with such confidence, that Aoi almost believes what she considers to be his rather preposterous claims.

She grabs her elbow and gives it a squeeze. “I thought you were done with the jokes,” she mumbles. Yet, as Aoi readies herself to walk past him and call it a day, Damian reaches for her wrist and tugs her back. “W-wait.”

The act itself is not a violent one, however, the young man is very hands-on, and for someone like Aoi—who has a body that does not know what it is like to be free of pain anymore—it hurts. Much more than she likes to admit.

She winces. And, if he has noticed, he has pretended not to, she thinks, for Damian immediately smirks.

Then tells her, “I’m not kidding.”

The light at the stop walk turns green. As crowds of strangers meld into one for the instance of a second, Damian tells Aoi that he’ll be back in a moment, before he runs off to feed the homeless man.

The young man reminds her of a hurricane. Of the sun and all things bright. Past summer days, when everything in her life was still okay.

When control was a word Aoi still associated with herself.

He reminds her of her a hurricane. This scares Aoi—because she is no storm. She is but a mere, feeble structure next to him, that could be knocked to pieces with each passing gust Damian throws at her.

He reminds her of a hurricane. As he runs back before the lights have a chance at turning red again, he bends over to catch his breath. He rests his hands against his knees.

Damian huffs. One, two, three times—then, he looks up to ask Aoi: “By the way, what’s your name?”