STARLIGHT

17. Milkshakes and Blushes

"Neori, seriously, you stole her lyrics?" Saomi asked.

"Well, I didn't mean to," Neori responded, looking sullen, "Look....I....I just picked that paper up from the floor. I didn't know it was hers. And I just pocketed it and later, Sensei asked me to come up with lyrics. I couldn't have come up with my own, I mean.....come on, Saomi, do I look capable of writing lyrics? I just sang what I remembered from that paper that day. I didn't want to look like a fool. You were playing so well and I....I wasn't ready to give up on Sensei's hope for me....not yet," she explained, while sipping on her milkshake.

"Oh Neori..." Saomi sighed as she gulped her special milkshake as well, "it's not your fault, it's alright. Well, at least you didn't use those for our performance at the ceremony. Keya would've freaked out while we were on stage!"

"Yeah....but I'm not that bad of a person alright. I won't use stolen lyrics for a performance on stage! That I managed just because your brother did most of the work," Neori confessed.

"It's alright, don't be too hard on yourself. You did a lot of the work and they were really good. But that's not the problem right now. The current problem is....we almost had Keya. And now she's slipped out of our hands," Saomi sighed.

"Yeah...and after all that putting up with 'Purple and his pals'," Neori said animatedly, putting up finger quotations.

Saomi smiled a little as she took another sip.

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"I have no idea," Neori responded, finishing her own drink and taking some of what was supposed to be Keya's had she not stormed out before Neori could say anything, "these milkshakes though are really something."

Saomi slowly shook her head and smiled at how naive Neori was.

Neori continued drinking her milkshake when she looked up and almost choked.

"Oh my gosh! That nutjob shows up here!" Neori said beneath her breath, her eyes fixed on someone behind Saomi.

"What? Who?" Saomi turned back to see who she was referring to.

"One sec.....just.....one sec," she said, rising from her place to go up to the said nutjob, "Well hello..." she greeted sarcastically.

An innocent-looking face of a boy turned to her. His eyes grew wide in a second, "Ne...Neori...hey".

"Way to go, hey," she said, arms crossed.

"Look, let's not talk about what happened, alright?" he said, voice cracking a little as he stood up in front of her, clearly out of fear.

"No no no, Mister. We are going to talk about what happened. Not because I care about whatever you're doing. But because 'you' cost me my 'phone'."

"What?" the fearful boy, a little taller than Neori, asked in confusion.

"Oh now you're short of hearing? You got my phone taken away! Which part of that sentence is not clear, eh?!!!" she said, her voice louder than any other person's in the cafe.

Saomi looked in astonishment, unable to comprehend what was going on.

A little more shouting, a few more questions, slight arguments and Neori went straight to the counter, said something to the manager and stormed back to their table, finished the other glass of milkshake in one gulp while standing and said, "Let's get out of here."

Saomi, having no idea what just happened, followed Neori out of the building, "What was that all about? And don't we have to pay?"

"That nutjob's paying. I made sure of it," Neori replied, now slowing down her fast pace.