Remembering Rain || ON HOLD

❦Part 18: Call me ❦

Most of the time Rain and I were studying. We spent so much of our time curled up with books in silence beside each other, honestly most of the connection we shared was through these empty beats of quietness. Be it in the library before school, seated opposite each other as the morning sun bleeds through the open window and onto his face, making his pale almost translucent skin appear warm in the light. I knew however that perhaps for an instance if I were to press the palms of my hand to his cheek that all I would feel would be a bone chilling cold.

I thought maybe if I'm cold and you are too that we can find warmth in each other I wondered maybe if I was born a glass half empty something in you could make me feel whole. I thought about all of this and immediately brushed it off, perhaps it would be ridiculous to cling onto my fleeting emotions for dear life. If I was being honest it was the most I had ever felt in my whole entire life, I felt like all along I had been living on autopilot before Rain came to the university and in turn awaked something long dormant in me. Something that was so comfortable in its slumber it would've been perfectly fine with things remaining as they were. But no such luck.

I had never felt anything like this before and it caught in my throat like tears did threatening to spill, like eating a spoonful of rice with nothing to wash it down. I spent a lot of my time trying to see myself through his eyes, I wondered what I looked like to him, did he see me in the same way the others did?

I couldn't stop thinking about the words he'd said to me before I feel like you're my first real friend, he said that he feels. He is not supposed to be able to feel anything because there's no way to go about saying politely that Rain has no heart. The heart is the core of who we are as human beings and so it only made me wonder both from an emotional and scientific perspective, what on earth he was using to care for me. What part of him he was using to feel for me.

I tried to take my mind off of him at first, Chihiro invited me to go for drinks and sushi with her and Natsuki downtown. I felt that Natsuki had never particularly taken a liking to me for whatever reason that was, I thought that perhaps she felt that I was infiltrating her friend group and trying to kiss up to everyone. I don't think she has ever grasped the truth, the grim truth being that I don't have any friends. And that this was the first time that I had ever had a chance to have them, perhaps regardless she thought it unfortunate that it had to be her own friends to show me kindness.

We sat down at a table in the corner of the noisy restaurant and began flipping through the menu, it was incredibly lengthy and so we just decided to order a little bit of everything and share.

"I'm craving sashimi." Natsuki sighed deeply, "I've been wanting to try this restaurant since it opened but I haven't had the time since today."

"Yeah this semester has been hell, we barely have any time for ourselves anymore. Is this what adulthood means? Becoming half a person and half a slave to the system?" Chihiro pondered rolling her eyes, "what's next paying taxes?"

"Worse." I disclosed dramatically, "paying rent."

"Oh what a nightmare." Hiro responded with equal amounts of sarcasm.

"Well that's rich coming from a millionaires daughter." Natsuki scoffed.

"My father wasn't always a millionaire." I reminded her.

"But he sure as hell is now." She insisted. "You're speaking about struggles you will never know anything about."

"Wow." I nodded slowly clearing my throat, "Okay, I'm sorry."

"Ummm, enough about that, do you think we should've invited Bimo and Xolani, they're blowing up my phone talking about how we're basically traitors to the nation for coming here without them." Hiro chuckled showing her phone screen to us,