Imperfect Life: Arc 7

Chapter 26

Crys slowly woke up in the morning feeling much groggier than usual. She sat herself up in bed and rubbed her eyes. She felt pretty annoyed about the encounter with Seinhou from the night before, but at this point she felt too hopeless to even be distressed about it. Instinctively, the next thing she did was reach for her phone to shut off her alarm. The only problem was that there was no alarm, and on top of that, no phone. Crys kept blindly swatting the bedside table to nab her nonexistent phone for a bit before giving up and actually looking for it properly. It didn't matter since it still wasn't there. Confused, Crys got up out of bed and searched around her room. Brandon knocked on the door a few minutes later, snapping Crys out of her search.

"Crys, you ready to go?" Brandon asked. "We're gonna be late."

"I can't find my phone." Crys said back.

"We can look for it when we get home, we need to get to school." Brandon replied.

Crys thought for a moment, then decided it would be better to just search later when she had more time. "Okay," she said, "I'll meet you downstairs in a minute."

Brandon have a nod, then left the room.

Crys took a deep breath, then started getting ready for school.

Meeting up with Brandon downstairs, Crys was just about to walk out the door with Brandon when she had noticed something off.

"You're forgetting something." Crys said flatly.

"What?" Brandon asked, clueless.

"Your jacket?" Crys said back.

Brandon took a few moments to register what Crys said. "Oh, right." Brandon said, sounding a lot less concerned than Crys had expected him to be. He casually went up to his room, put on his jacket, then headed out the door with Crys.

Crys found it odd that Brandon would forget his jacket so casually. It had happened once before, but he wound up being worried sick when it happened. Now he was just mildly careless about it. Crys mentally shrugged it off, chalking it up to it being an off day.

"You seem to be in a better mood than usual." Brandon noted.

Crys sighed. "Losing my phone took my mind off of things." She said, sounding a bit gloomy.

"Oh." Brandon replied.

Crys was about to speak up again, opening up her mouth to say something, but before any words could come out she decided against it. She had a bad feeling, one she couldn't quite describe, even to herself. All she knew is that that feeling told her to keep quiet, and so she did.

"Were you gonna say something?" Brandon asked.

"Yeah." Crys said, caught deciding between lying and being completely honest. "I just uh, I didn't sleep well again last night." She settled on a half-truth.

"What happened?" Brandon asked.

"Tossing and turning. Nightmares. That stuff." Crys jumped to lying.

"Hopefully tonight you can get some proper sleep." Brandon said.

"Yeah," Crys replied, "that would be nice..."

The two friends kept walking to school. Crys wound up going quiet, and Brandon didn't speak up much, so the trip was spent mostly in silence.

Getting to school, Crys made her way down the hallway along with Brandon like usual. Unlike usual, however, Crys had her head in the clouds, wondering about the encounter she had had with Seinhou the previous night, along with where her phone could've been. She kept walking without paying attention to where she was going until she bumped into the side of someone, a bit hard.