Smile (Complete)

The broken puppet

"So what about tonight, Tharn?"

"Mm... haven't decided yet. There was no time to think it over, Naya."

Tharn's phone is periodically in "do not disturb" mode. Tharn is considered arrogant and withdrawn. Tharn has few acquaintances and no friends at all. So, when his parents informed him about moving to the island and changing schools, not a single muscle flinched on his face, glorified by his classmates as beautiful.

Tharn doesn't care at all.

Tharn has one desire: to finish school as soon as possible and move to the US. In two weeks at the new place, Tharn acquired the familiar and repugnant attention, the favor of teachers for a quick-witted novice and the glory of an unattainable fortress. "Some kind of unsociable person" and "always on his own mind"; "has he at least once smiled in two weeks?"; "let's forget about this asshole"; "you're just wasting your time" - by his second weekend on Island, he did not even raise an eyebrow at glances and whispers.

Naya.

A dreamy look and a firm conviction of her irresistibility. Perhaps the only one who still flatters herself with the hope of melting an ice cube named Tharn Thara Kirigun.

"Come on, Tharn! You have a year to study here. It's time to join your classmates!"

"How will a beach party help in this sense?"

"Come on, Tharn. Is it really fun to sit and stare at the phone screen for whole evenings?"

"Mm... I don't think you are so well aware of my leisure time."

"Well, okay," Naya presses her full lower lip in frustration. "anyway, we're gathering at seven."

Tharn nods and turns away with a bored look in order to go in his own direction.

He appears at the ocean shore almost at eight. To kill time. Nothing to do. From afar, Naya shines with a pearly smile.

"You've come! Great!" the girl's hand beckons him to take an empty seat next to her.

The sun loungers are full of young people, some just sit on the sand. Still passing by a bunch of classmates having fun with cocktails, Tharn notices an unfamiliar guy in a T-shirt with Sponge Bob and short, very childish shorts with ties. He's sitting with his back to him, but it just so happens that when Tharn passes by, the guy's head turns sharply and the first thing that catches Kirigun's eye is a stupid, completely idiotic smile.

"Did you like him, Type? This is Tharn, go get to know him-" sneers someone sitting next to the guy.

Tharn looks away, slightly accelerating, continues walking towards Naya.

Already on the spot, the girl begins to tell him something, Tharn, of course, listens to everything with half an ear. He turns his head and sees this Type again: it seems that the company has taken away some kind of trinket from him - either a keychain or a badge - and he is desperately, like a child, trying to get his thing back from adult guys.

"This Type is kind of a weirdo. He looks about twenty years old, but behaves like a twelve-year-old."

"He's not a weirdo. He's not okay... And he's not twenty. Seventeen, just like us."