“Heeeeey! Are you going to open up, or what?” a muffled voice calls out to me.

Even though it’s muffled, there’s no other person who could have more of a perfect timing than her.

But… 

Why do I hear her voice coming from the balcony?

Sitting up, I glance towards the window sliding door and my eyes widen in disbelief.

“Why… are you on my balcony?” I mutter under my breath as I stand in shock and she reacts by acting out not being able to hear me through the window.

I drag my feet to the door and unlock it from the inside.

“Phew! I thought I was going to freeze out there! I thought you knew I hated the cold? Why did you keep me waiting?!”

Her raised voice snaps me back to my senses as I rub my eyes a couple of times as I still can’t fathom the fact that she was on my balcony.

“How did you…”

“End up on your balcony?” she finishes my sentence, I nod. “I jumped.”

“Excuse me, what? You… jumped?”

“I jumped,” she repeats as if I never heard her the first time.

I squint my eyes at her as I can’t find myself to believe what had just come out of her mouth.

“I’m kidding. I climbed down.”

“I don’t know how that’s any safer! You live on the eighth floor and I live on the seventh! What made you think doing that was a good idea?!”

She recoils as I scold her for her recklessness, but of course, I’m talking to Alexis. With her, things I say to her go in one ear, and out the other. Heck, I’m not even sure if it goes in an ear in the first place.

“Ah, forget it.” I give up after only a couple of seconds. “Since you did something like that, I worried for nothing.” I continue as I jump in bed and wrap myself in my thick blankets. 

“What do you think you’re doing? Aren’t we supposed to be somewhere in about an hour?”

She reminds me with a soft giggle, to which I reply with a tired groan.

“Wake me up when we’re about to leave. I had quite the day today.”

There’s nothing about today that I can consider normal. I’m convinced my everyday life was turned completely around, over the day.

“I’m sure you did! Alrighty then, I’ll do just that. Get some rest for later, I’m sure you’re going to need as much of it as you can get.”

She’s right, especially because of that blunder in the group chat earlier.

I should probably start working on what I should say to explain my way out of this misunderstanding. There’s so much to think about, and so much to do. I just want to sleep all my problems away, is that too much to ask for?

“Say, Mikey,” Alexis calls from the kitchen. “You haven’t eaten anything today, right? Do you want me to make some food for you before we head out?”

“Sure, maybe something light. Since I have to make some space for my strawberry milkshake and waffles for later.”

I can’t fall asleep with my mind racing around like this. It made me lose my drowsiness too.

Since there’s no point trying anymore, I wait for Alexis to strike up a conversation to wave away the silence. Which she does, as if on cue.

“So, aren’t you going to tell me about your day?”

“My day? Ahhh, I don’t even know where to start.” I sigh.

“Where else than the very start, of course!”

The very start, huh, I suppose I can do that. We do have some time to spare before we need to get going.

I clear my throat and sit up against the wall. “I was surprised to not get woken up by you this morning. Because of that, I barely woke up on time and made it to school before the gate closed. I haven’t run that fast in my entire life. I don’t even remember when the last time was.”

Now that I’m remembering the events of this morning, I can’t help but be impressed by what I managed to achieve. I’m surprised I didn’t pass out on the way from exhaustion. My legs suddenly twitch in pain, probably because I mentioned the strenuous activity I had to go through earlier.

“Other than that, everything else was normal, or at least, for a short while—” I continue before quickly cutting myself off.

“What do you mean by ‘a short while’?” She asks as I see her taking a spoonful of what seems to be soup.

“I guess you should already know by now that there’s a new transfer student.”

“I did see that! Hey, hey, what’s she like?” She energetically hops on the spot as she inquires about her more.

She puts me in a spot where I’m in no position to answer.

What is there to say about her other than being an absolute pain in the neck?

“You’ll meet her later anyway, you’ll be the one to judge for yourself. I, for one, don’t like her.” I say what’s on my mind.

“Haha! That’s so you! You hate everyone even though they haven’t done anything to you. You should learn to be more trusting of others, Mikey. You’re not going to get far when all you have is yourself and a few others.”

She isn’t wrong. But she isn’t entirely right either. 

It’s not like I don’t trust people enough to like them, but more like I push others away whenever I feel like they would be detrimental to my way of life. 

Compared to Alexis, my way of living my life is completely different. While I’m here casually minding my own business with my normal routines, she tends to have a more sporadic one. This is why being with her is mentally and physically draining. 

But since there aren’t many things to say to her to be left alone, I always end up getting dragged around wherever she goes.

It happens way too often to the point where it feels normal. Sometimes, whenever she’s feeling lazy, I often find myself mentally preparing myself to get dragged around, but when it never happens, I am left with a weird feeling.

Oh yeah, speaking of weird. I should probably tell her about it.

“One more thing by the way—Ah.” I stop myself from continuing as my common sense catches up with me. Saying that I can’t hear the new girl's name might label me as weird.

But of course, as if she had her ears perked up the entire time, she refuses to be left in the dark.

“Aw c’mon! Don’t leave me at that! Didn’t you promise me that you would finish everything you say?!”

“Okay, firstly, you forced me to agree and I don’t think that counts as a promise, and secondly… you’re going to call me weird.” I hold my breath as I honestly don’t think that I should really tell her about this, but some part of me is telling me that I should.

“Come on now, surely it can’t be that bad for me to call you weird.”

“Well, I think you would. Anyways, do you want to hear it?”

“Duh!”

Here goes nothing.

“I don’t know her name.”

She raises an eyebrow at me from where she’s leaning from. What’s going on inside of her head is clear, or at least I thought.

When I expected a scoff followed by a fit of laughter, she instead expresses a concerned look as she burrows her eyebrows.

“What do you mean, Mikey?”

I swallow, “I can’t hear her name.” and repeat.

“No, no, I heard you the first time. I just wasn’t sure if I heard it right. You… don’t know her name? I’m sure she introduced herself to the class when she entered the classroom, right? You were probably spacing out as usual when she did.”

“I suppose that’s a possibility. But, have a look at this.” I get off of my comfortable bed and walk towards her with my phone in hand. “What can you see?”

“Uhm, that’s just the group chat. It looks perfectly fine to me.”

“Her name.” I point at the blank space above her message. It’s where the name or nickname of the person is shown. “Can you see her name? Can you read it out?”

She nods and—

“                            ”

—nothing.

I stumble back onto my bed with my mind in a daze. Just as I thought, I really can’t hear her name. But that begs the question.

Why?

“Are you sure you’re just seeing things, Mikey? Or perhaps your lack of breakfast has taken a toll on you?” she cheekily smirks and lets out a soft laugh to lift the mood.

“So… you don’t think I'm weird?”

“Weird? Weird is a… weak word. I think senile would be a more suitable word. But to be real honest with you, my take on this is that just your body is telling you to stay away from her. Even your mind is subconsciously blocking out her name.”

I never expected something so logical to come out of her mouth. Maybe I am going senile even at such an age. 

Why is this happening to me…

“I suggest not diving too deep into it with what little information you have about this and focus on something else like, tadah! Food’s ready!” She walks over to the Japanese-style table in the middle of my room with a bowl in each hand. “Let’s have a quick snack before going to the cafe, okay?”

She sets down the bowls and takes her seat. 

“What are you waiting for? I can’t eat two bowls of soup, you know. The way you’re staring at me is giving me the creeps.”

I was too busy trying to wrap my head around things that I failed to notice the elephant in the room.

“By the way, why did you decide to cut your hair?”

She slams her fork on the table causing not just the table and bowls to jump, but me too.

“Finally! I was worried you weren’t going to notice it since you had your mind on that girl for the entire time! I legitimately thought that you didn’t care at all…”

Woah, what’s with the sudden change of attitude? Was I supposed to say something about her hair earlier?

If I had known that she would react like this, I would have asked about it first.

But of course, being oblivious and failing to understand the thought process of this girl, heck, females in general. I continue talking, hoping that it would change her mood slightly.

“What made you want to cut your hair all of a sudden? If I recall, you’ve always kept your hair long, even as a child.”

“Does there have to be a reason for my actions?”

“If I recall, you’re the one who always says ‘There’s always a valid reason for everything’.”

“I— Okay. You got me there. But still! I just wanted to change things a bit, you know? You could say that I was getting bored with my unchanging hair. I even wanted to dye it… would red have been a good choice?”

Her words right now aren’t adding up to the things she had said earlier.

She always loved her hair no matter how unchanged it is. The way it used to fall gently on her back whenever she jumps, hops, and skips. Not to mention that she would always use it to slap me if I say something unnecessary.

Well, at least now I don’t need to worry about getting slapped anymore.

“Red? Who are you and what have you done with the real Alexis?”

“Am I not allowed to change my look now?!”

I take a sip from the bowl. “That’s not what I meant. I never even said that. I just found it odd that you’d want to change your look all of a sudden. Did something happen?”

“Huh? Nothing happened. What made you think that something happened to me?”

“Well, from my observations of other people, and a bit of useless research here and there, people, usually girls, tend to change their hairstyle when something happens to them. Like for example, a rejection or a break-up.”

She stares at me for a while, probably trying to understand and figure out what I had just said. After a while of ‘trying’, she shakes her head and raises an eyebrow at me.

“My, my, you really did do a bit of research into this. I commend you for that, but I'm afraid you’re wrong. Me? Heartbroken? Rejected? As if that would ever happen, Mikey!”

Again, she isn’t entirely wrong.

She has everything a guy could wish for. She has the personality that would make anyone want to chase after her, the charisma that would instantly make people fall to their knees, and not to mention that she can cook anything too. And people say that perfection only exists in fiction.

If you were to see the girl sitting in front of me right now, you’d think otherwise.

Oh. So that’s what it is, huh…

I wonder when I started feeling this way towards her?

“Shall we go now?”