This is a slice-of-life story about friendship, romance, love and everything else.
This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or a...
It takes John Aguilar a while to realise that the rhythm-less tapping he's hearing has nothing to do with his dream.
Tap... tap... tap-tap-tap... tap...
Sleep leaves him slowly, the details of his bedroom seeping into his consciousness bit by bit through a thick layer of fog. His furniture is shadowy shapes, gradually morphing into a dresser, a desk, a television, and some clean clothes he forgot to pack away that are still stacked on the floor.
Rather than disappearing with the last traces of sleep, the tapping, if possible, grows even more persistent, and giving up on re-capturing his fleeing dream, John reluctantly rolls himself from his bed.
Roll is the correct description for his action since his bed is just a large mattress on the floor. It's not because he cannot afford a bed; he simply prefers it like this. A bed on the floor is convenient for surrounding himself with snacks while playing on his gaming console set up with the TV on a low cabinet at the foot of the mattress. It also lessens the possibility of serious injury while playing with his friends, and it turns violent. Falling from a mattress isn't as bad as falling off a bed.
The source of the tapping seems to be located in the vicinity of his balcony. John crawls a few steps towards the wall of windows and gets to his feet with a groan, pulling the curtains aside and sliding the glass door open in one fluid movement. He immediately gets hit in the face by... a frozen pea if the evidence scattered all around his small balcony is anything to go by.
"What the hell, Floren?" he growls, rubbing his cheek.
The old, red-brick apartment building in which John and Floren's families each rent a unit is built in a narrow U-shape, with two apartments per floor. The bedrooms of these apartments face each other over a thin strip of garden consisting mostly of tangled weeds and thorny bushes. Poor man's landscaping, as his brother-in-law calls it.
Floren Weaver is standing on the balcony opposite John's. She's fully dressed in her navy blue and white school uniform, holding a bag of frozen peas in the crook of one bent arm and a couple of peas in her other hand, raised, cocked and ready to fire. As usual, she looks waiflike and delicate, her brown hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail behind her head.
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"Hi Johnny!" she grins cheerfully.
As far as John is concerned, Floren is the most annoyingly, persistently cheerful person on the face of the planet. The only person he knows who could possibly compete with her at being infuriatingly jovial all the time is his friend, Jared Hunt.
It's strange because Floren's life is nothing to be jolly about, and Jared's life is not all that much better.
"Sorry to wake you, but I think I left my science textbook in your room, and I really need it."
"Why didn't you just come and get it?" John complains. In contrast with Floren and Jared, John is probably the most apparently irritable person alive. Apparently, because underneath his eternal dark, angry scowl and grumpiness (his protective armour), a vast capacity for kindness lies hidden... and he prefers to keep it that way.
