MSC (Rewritten)♡•~

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: Unknown Thoughts

Aki POV

The day after Christmas, I went out for the usual morning walk down my neighbourhood.

Before leaving the house, I fed my new guinea pigs, Nara and Yuki, cleaned out their cage and promised them a nice house by New Year's, and then I set out. I remembered Kenichi revealed the guinea pigs in the small pet carrier that he had kept in his room:

"Close your eyes". He had said, a cunning look on his face that filled me with distrust.

"I swear if you smash a cream pie in my face again-"

"Been there, done that. I don't need to do it again". He'd replied casually. I sighed and covered my eyes, before feeling the heavy weight of something being placed on my lap.

When I'd opened them, there they were: two brown and white guinea pigs, huddled together in a cage.

I don't remember ever telling him about my love for guinea pigs, after being best friends with one back when I was a lonely little kid. Of course, Haru must have told him about my obsession.

But it had been hard for me to get extremely excited about the gift. I loved them- and I gave Kenichi a big hug for it. But nothing seemed to be able to shake off the events that had happened the previous night.

Walking helped me to think. That's why I usually went to the girls' houses by foot instead of by car, giving me enough time to wallow in my thoughts on the way. I always seemed to have something to think about.

After I beat up Reuben at Amber's party, three years ago, there was a very big change for me when I went back to school that September. Reuben was part of a group of boys who were pretty well respected, and so people were shocked by the fact that scrawny little Aki had managed to tackle him down. Not only did this ruin Reuben's reputation, but it also seemed to give me quite an intimidating image.

As the years went on, I realised that my growth in height and my apparently permanently cold facial expression had made people quite nervous to be in my presence. Overtime, a lot of the boys gradually began to stop coming to me to hide their things, and in fact people stopped approaching me in general. That worked in my favour since the only reason they approached me anyway was for stupid reasons. There was still the occasional discreet bullying, but I could tell it was already harder for people to intimidate me.

I thought that we'd all managed to move on since then. Jem was getting therapy, I wasn't being bullied as much and ,well, Beatrice didn't seem to have any particular problem. But I hadn't realised how ignorant I'd been.

The latest event with Beatrice had opened my eyes to a lot of things. She had obviously been keeping things from us, afraid of telling the people around her anything that might make them judge her. It had led her to almost ending her life- unable to take on all the stress of being alone.

I felt terrible that I hadn't noticed the signs. We spent everyday together. Was I really that oblivious? Since that day that I finally managed to speak again, I vowed that I would protect all those who had been close to me, and stop relying on people to protect me. I wasn't able to protect Beatrice. And I could never forgive myself for that.

Beatrice and Jemimah needed to be my main priority from now on. I couldn't let anything like this happen to them again.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets, as I turned down a lane, and started on the street towards the mall. The naked trees seemed to glare down at me, their dried branches pointing towards me as I passed them. A cold gust of wind blew across my face, making me bury my chin further into my scarf. I hadn't realised how cold it was going to be today.