1-3

After a seemingly adequate meeting with Alice and Girl A, we managed to design a simple poster then printed about 20 pages and displayed it throughout the school. In addition, social media pages of current student council were created, posting its first announcement while tagging anyone that’s have relation with the school. By this method, we could even managed to reach parents and alumnus.

All in all, we just had to wait for the public feedback tomorrow.

If you think about how’s people gonna react to whatever you’re doing, it is kind of worrisome. It indirectly instils fear into one’s mind. Humans are curious creatures. They prone to know their ability, what happens if they do something. Will the result side with them? Or does it simply make them regret?

You never know.

That’s why you have to know, but then if you haven’t known, you’ll be worried.

If that’s so, then you can avoid fall into unavailing mental state with one simple method.

That is, to never care.

People always question whether is avoiding to care even an honourable thing to do as a human-being. They just don’t try. The lack of trying is even less honourable. But once they’ve tried, it becomes addicting just like nicotine.

“As promised, we are going to have a movie night together!”

Although after listening to Girl A’s enticing confirmation for the plan tonight, I couldn’t shake the frustration of being tricked. I never wanted to become the president, it never caught my interest in the first place. Yet somehow I was driven to become one.

“Did you know these messed up things gonna happen when you insisted me to meet Ms. Claire?”

Looking up the sky, then turned towards me, she answered,

“Nope, not at all. I was just following the flow.”

Her eyes showed sincerity followed by an aura reeked only honesty. When I forced a suspicion look, she kept on insisting with a casual smile. Thereafter, I gave in and continued my focus on the road.

My house and school were in commutable distance as it would take me about 10 minutes to travel by train and probably around 30 minutes if by walking alone. Presently, we were just few minutes away from the train station, heading to my house. Father once asked me if I ever needed a personal driver to send me to school but I refused. Aside from the hellishly everyday crowd, getting on and off train made me feel alive.

“Well, what’s done is done. We can just see what’s gonna happen tomorrow.”

“Would you want to have dinner tonight?”

Dinner is something that I usually take on daily basis because I’ll naturally turn hungry at the end of the day. But thanks to the student council thingy, I didn’t seem to have appetite to eat proper dinner.

“Nah, let’s just have popcorn or whatever, and eat during the movie.”

Dashing forward a few steps, Girl A pointed towards the side of the road. The location of interest was a small 24-7 shop that had just started to switch on its night light. Teng Ning! The digital bell rang as soon as we passed through the entrance line and we saw only the storekeeper who just welcomed us.

The night was coming so we both preferred to do a quick shopping. After grabbing some snacks and small bottles of carbonated drinks, Girl A finally approached me at the counter with the goods. It’s common for me, so I thought without realizing, to leave things to her and I always wonder, why did I even do that? When my eyes picked up the goods she brought, I noticed those snacks were mostly my favourite.

“I think we’re good with these,” she said, transferring those goods one by one from the basket onto the table counter.

I didn’t imply any sort of green light yet as my eyes were attracted to the magazine section.

Noticed, the girl tilted her head to see the designated corner. A small “Oh” came out from her lips.

“—Today, a new volume of JUMP is released, isn’t it? I totally forgot about it. Let’s buy it too.”

Thus, she walked to grab a JUMP from the bookcase and promptly placed it on the counter. Then, she turned towards me and held her palm opened as if she’s asking for me to pay.

“Why me…?” I asked, confused.

“Because I don’t have money to pay it,” she answered with a casual smile.

Is that even a valid reason?

Despite having given such an irritating reasoning, I still handed her my card for the payment. You don’t really do cash these days, cards have that we call payWave. It really makes payment such a simple task. Just a quick tap and you’re good to go.

The same digital bell rang as we exited the store.

A little bit more walk, we arrived in front of house’s main gate which was located at quite a hilly residence. The houses constructed here were all having those ‘grand and rich’ feels to it but mine was quite unique as it had world-class ecstatic design. Everyone that ever came here will get wowed by the neighbourhood but they will definitely get overwhelmed once they’d seen my house.

It’s equipped with a very sophisticated security system. I just had to take my step as usual and the gate would open by itself. It wouldn’t work if it’s not my parents or me, or the girl beside me. At the doorstep, a sleek designed finger print scanner was placed at the sidewall. In order to open the door, I had to put my fingerprint in and if it failed to recognize the input more than three time, the siren would rang and notify the nearby police station.

It also had this vibration-movement sort of sensing tech that will most of the time, threatens any trampling attempts.

Going through the front gate, surrounding with mini-garden and a small fish pond, we entered the house.

Girl A came in with “I’m home,” albeit knowing there’s no one to answer the call.

What a useless thing to do.

“I’m thinking of watching the movie at the outdoor cinema, what do you think?” she asked.

“… I’m fine with either place.”

This mansion had two type of cinemas, one indoor and the other as mentioned by Girl A. Outdoor cinema was located at the other side of the mansion facing a golf field while indoor one was located at the second floor, somewhere at the center.

The first thing Girl A did after asking was gently carrying my bag and laid it against the wall together with hers right after entering the home cinema. She subsequently landed our snacks on a small table and slid off the curtains, revealing a vast view of the golf field. By the time it was opened, the sun had already set, having poles of artificial lights to appear in its stead.

From time to time, nearby billionaires will spend their time playing golf. Well, it’s usually lively during weekends and rarely during weekdays. As of now, it was really quiet.

She took out her smartphone, opened up an app then connected to the cinema screen via Bluetooth for streaming.

“What movie is this?” I asked before she hit the play button.

“It’s for us to enjoy!”

“You’d better not asking me to watch a horror movie… wait, is it a horror movie?”

I took a seat on the comfy sofa so did she really close next to mine. We were very close that our shoulder touched each other’s. Unlike being with Alice, I really didn’t mind her doing that to me. In fact, it’s common for me to be this close especially when I was having fun with other girls. It just felt superb. Not to mention, I could still smell her disappearing perfume.

The smell really last long huh?

“You’re still afraid of scary stuff?” she chuckled. “It’s really weird… being such a cool and dominant playboy.”

“People don’t call it ‘scary’ for no reasons.”

I tried to play it cool.

That’s right. Things are scary because we just have little knowledge about them. In movie, it depicts the scariness by masking the true nature of something. Scary face, albeit just being makeup, is scary because it’s very uncommon for humans to see such face in their daily life. It’s just unnatural for us and we don’t know the true nature behind the face. Normal-faced human beings will just do normal things but what about those monsters or ghost? Are they good creatures? Are they going to kill us?

We lack information on that thus it becomes scary, because it’s intimidating. Humans don’t really like involving themselves with unknown stuff. So people who like horror stuff just like to take the risk, in short, they’re suicidal.

I’m gonna admit, knowledge and information are very valuable.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a movie.”

Just a movie… eh?

In the area where only the screen’s luminous light shone, the intro had finally been played. By the look of it, it really was just a movie and it’s for us to enjoy, it’s for us to discover.

Discovering things are really excited, but at the same time, it’s rough. It’s rough to just go out of your comfort zone to discover things. Sure that’s not the case here because being with this girl really brings peace to my environment.

“You…--“

“I’m not just you.”

I was cut before I could continue. Then, she grabbed a bottle of drink and gulped it for few times. With the lid still opened, she passed it to me.

“—Watanabe Kina.”

Before accepting the offer, I calmly stared at the bottle. Thinking it was a chance for me to experience an indirect kiss, I immediately drank half the bottle. Of course, I made sure my lips touched the lids as much as she made sure hers touched the same thing.

Happy with what I did, she steadily laid her head against my shoulder and murmured,

“—Please don’t play dumb again, I’m your maid, right?”