The Dreams

Chapter Twenty Four

Finals were done and over with and Rina had still not reconciled with her mother. She did not feel ready to go back to living at home. Part of it was out of concern that she would end up trapped int he same sort of oppressive routine she had left to get away from. Another part of it was that she just could not deal with returning with her tail between her legs.

She was no better off than she had been when she left. She was not back in school. She had not found a job. She felt as though her mental health was a bit improved by being more free to do as she wished, but it was not something she could easily show to her mother to make a point. She just wished she had a job or something. Then she would feel better about staying at home with her mother again.

Instead of going home for the entirety of winter break Hibiki invited her to come home with him. She had not even told him about her hesitation to go back home once the semester was over when he asked her to go home with her.

Of course, she readily agreed because it got her out of an awkward position. Only when she thought about it did she start to feel a bit nervous. She would be meeting his family. She would be spending the winter holidays with them — even if she would probably try to go home to see her mom for Christmas she would still be with them the rest of the time. That was a lot of personal time with new people. These were not just any new people either. These were the parents of her serious boyfriend, her first ever serious boyfriend. She would have to face them knowing that she had been sleeping over in his apartment for the past ten days. Not knowing them at all she did not know how they would take that kind of information.

She hoped they would be okay with it seeing as they were okay with her coming to stay with them for pretty much the entire month long break. Then again, she had been too nervous to ask Hibiki about what the sleeping arrangement would be at his parents home. Once she thought about that she realized that the sleeping arrangement would probably tell her a lot about his parents and what they thought of their relationship, and how okay they were with young adults having serious relationships in their presence. If they were in denial about their son being an adult and capable of having adult feelings about someone she would probably be relegated to a guest bedroom of some sort, but if they were more open to the idea of him being a grown man in an adult relationship then they would probably have the option of sharing a room. She did not know if she really wanted to know how they felt about their son being in an adult romantic relationship, but she was at least slightly curious to see how Hibiki would handle it all. She knew she could count on him to shield her from anything that was too terribly upsetting. That's not a problem she expected to have. As far as she knew Hibiki's parents were wonderful people. She had no reason to think otherwise because obviously they had raised a wonderful son.

The more she thought about it the more nervous she got. Since she did not have all that much stuff with her — she was really starting to miss the things she had not bothered to pack when she left home. It did make moving around from place to place a lot easier, but she had to wonder if she had the right clothes to get her through the next month. The seasons were changing and she did not know how much she would be expected to dress up. There was not much she could do about it at the moment though so she instead focused on helping Hibiki pack up.

That was a depressing thought. If things never improved with her mother she might be doomed to live like a vagabond between semesters, at least until she had a decent job and could afford to have a permanent place to stay and enough money to actually fill that space with the comforts of home. For now that was outside of her reach. She would have to be content with staying with friends for the time being if she wanted to continue to live away from her mother.