Destiny Calls

Chapter Two

I got ready early the next morning. As I slipped on a fresh uniform, I hoped that I’d run into Kairi before the bell rang, before we would have to go to our separate classes. Due to being a year younger than I, Kairi didn’t share any classes with me, so I knew I’d have to catch her before school started if I wanted to talk to her.

She had become infamous for being early, busy socializing with the other students and organizing her homework and folders for her morning classes. I had become infamous for tardiness, oftentimes stumbling into class with tired eyes and unfinished work. God forbid anyone try to talk to me; they wouldn’t get anything more than a grunt or dismissing wave of the hand, and that was if they were lucky.

So when I walked into the teeny school 15 minutes before the bell, I got quite a few strange looks. A couple people did double takes; the beast herself was up and walking around at this time in the morning? And she wasn’t even complaining about it? Unbelievable.

I searched everywhere I could, asking anyone who would listen if they had seen her (I was met with raised eyebrows usually; “It speaks with words and not grunts? Wow.”), but I was left at a dead end. The one time I had actually bothered to show up on time, the social butterfly was nowhere to be found.

Defeated and slightly annoyed, I went to my first class 5 minutes before the bell. My teacher raised her eyebrows and smacked her lips before walking past my desk. Teachers never liked me much. Maybe it was the sleeping during lessons, maybe it was the apathy towards any sort of work, maybe it was the blatant disregard for anything they told me to do. But who knows, it could really be anything.

I didn’t concentrate on any of my lessons the entire day (well, even less than normal). Instead of sleeping, my mind raced. I remembered. I remembered Sora. I remembered his brown spikes and large blue eyes. I remembered how he had always been much shorter than me and how I often teased him for it. I remembered that he was the reason I had a thin faded scar on the right side of my forehead (he hit me in the head far too hard with his wooden sword when I was 7 and he was 6. I never quite let him live it down, and every time I brought it up he’d feel guilty, even though I was always just messing with him). I remembered his stupid little kiddy crush on Kairi and how it was obvious to everyone but her.

I doodled his name all in my notebook, and when I ran out of pages I wrote it on my hand. Large black letters, scrawled in my messy, tilted handwriting. I wrote it dark, hoping the name would burn in my brain and I wouldn’t have to forget again.

Sora Sora Sora.

The day could not end soon enough. When the final bell sounded to signal the end of classes, I was the first person out of the school. I rushed to the beach as quick as possible, dropping my black messenger bag onto the ground and sitting on the sand, crossing my legs out in front of me. I loosened the tie around my neck, causing it to hang low beneath my chest.

By the time Kairi showed up at the beach, I had kicked off my black loafers, rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, unbuttoned the first three buttons for comfort and pulled off my navy blue knee-high socks.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Kairi said, standing over me. She dropped her bag next to mine.

I glanced up at her and smiled. “Sora.”

She smiled back. “Yeah, Sora. Sora.” She crouched down next to me and tugged lightly on my long braid, smiling wider when I swatted her hand away. “Hard to believe we forgot him.”

“You remembered him last night too?” I squinted my eyes to try and keep out the sun. Pieces of loose hair that had fallen out of my braid whipped in front of my face, manipulated by the island breeze. I briefly wondered why I let my hair grow all the way down to my lower mid back before pushing the bothersome strands out of my face.

“An hour or two after I left your house actually,” she murmured, pushing her cherry colored hair behind her ear.

An empty silence hung in the air as we both remembered how I’d acted towards her. I fiddled mindlessly with the silver nose ring in my left nostril. A nervous tendency. “Look, I’m—I’m sorry that I… Look, just—“

“Don’t worry about it,” she waved me off and placed a hand on my shoulder in the motherly way she always had. “I don’t blame you. I guess I sounded kind of crazy.”

“I won’t correct you,” I said, remembering the dream I’d had last night. Or rather, flashback. Strange to think I’d forgotten everything.

She laughed lightheartedly and reached into her bag and pulled out a small bottle with a cork. I raised my eyebrows and she smiled, shaking it lightly in front of me. “Thinking of you wherever you are,” she recited.

“You really think he’s gonna find that?”

She placed the bottle in the ocean and we watched it float away in silence. It floated slowly, sometimes getting knocked back to shore by the waves before being dragged back into the clear blue water.

We sat there for a long time, and I began to think; how could I have forgotten one of my very best friends? How could I have forgotten about the boy I’d acted as an older sister to? The boy I’d grown up with?

Rubbing grains of sand in between my fingers, I remembered Riku, Sora and I as kids. We were competitive, sure, but we still liked each other plenty. Even though I was snarky and Sora was a baby and Riku was a pill, we always had each other’s backs. We were the three musketeers. Inseparable.

Kairi and I sat on the shore of the beach like that for a long time, looking out into the horizon long after the bottle had floated out of eyesight. We stayed there in silence for an eternity and a day, until the last remnants of sunset lingered to the sea. The waves were sparkling orange before I ever got an answer to my question.

“I know he will.”

 Short update just because I can. Don't fear, the story will be picking up soon, within the next couple of chapters. I prooooomise!