Dear Tokyo

Week 17-18

School started up with three weeks left until the end of the fall semester, which meant we were reaching the end of our syllabus and would spend most of the time revising and cramming for final exams. Today, we were preparing for the oral test. Unlike the one we did for midterms, this time, we were allowed to choose our own partners.

Before I could even begin to wonder if Arnaud was going to ask me to be his partner since we were next to each other, Jiho swivelled around in his seat. I blinked at him. If he wanted to be with me, he had to say so out loud, but then my gaze slipped onto Ingrid just behind him, who was leaning sideways from her seat in the first row in front of Jiho to make eye contact with me.

I heard the saboteur in me ask her, "Partners?"

She nodded and Jiho quickly looked at Arnaud and somehow they paired up, too. I sighed. I spent the rest of the lesson warring with myself. I was glad to be Ingrid's partner and to not have given into the whims of a crush on a boy, but I was left pondering the now hypothetical scenarios of what could have become of Jiho and I if I hadn't chickened out.

Edu had gotten a job as a waiter at some Spanish bar in Ginza so, instead of going home after lunch, he roped me into going to the library with him to kill time so that he could leave for his shift straight from campus. I only agreed because Mona had figured out which room Jiho and his friends used in the library to study, and Cat and Ingrid came as well out of solidarity.

The library had three floors. The top floor mainly had computer rooms for classes and single desks for studying, the ground floor held the reception desk and the computer rooms that were more for individual use and printing, and the bottom floor was split into a silent section of tables splayed amongst bookshelves, a large conference room for group work, and the room next to it that was basically there for if you had brought food with you. This was the room that our group set up camp in and from which I would be able to see Jiho walking to the conference room, since the partition separating it from the rest of the library was made of glass.

"You are such a stalker," Edu said, watching me watch the window.

"And you have to wear a fedora for work." I looked at him. "What's your point?"

Cat snorted.

"If you're just gonna sit there and do nothing—" Edu laid his arms on the table to use as a pillow for his head—"you can at least scratch me."

I rolled my eyes. "I am not doing that on campus in front of people."

After a few minutes with Jiho nowhere to be seen, I resigned to opening my textbook. It was an awkward interval in the period for him to arrive now. He probably wasn't going to show up at all today.

We had two and a half hours to kill until Edu had to leave for his shift. Staying on campus this late was a marked difference from my university experience in Sydney, where I had made myself scarce as soon as class was over. It was nice to be someone with something else to do other than go straight home, even if it was just pretending to study in case I caught a glimpse of the cute boy from Japanese class, and it was nice to have friends to do it with.

Ingrid and I worked on our script for the oral exam for an hour before the words began to blur together and we decided a break was in order. She and Cat scattered off to the bathroom and I stacked my books together to rest my cheek on.

Edu's hand found my hair. I tried not to stiffen, lest it give him the wrong impression and he removed it, but I wondered what had gotten into him. He was always begging for scratches, not giving them. He patted my head and ran his fingers through my hair for a while and I closed my eyes, my whole body relaxing, until the girls came back and he stopped.

None of us were in the mood to keep working on school stuff so we just talked and joked around until it was time to leave. Edu elbowed me in goodbye as he parted to take a separate train. I could only assume that he was more comfortable being around me now that he thought I had a crush on someone else and I was happy to let him believe it even if I knew what I felt deep down and didn't believe it myself.