Never • l.gl

3

I hope whoever is bullying you stops. Or so help me, I will follow you to whatever school you study in and beat the crap out of him.
-log #141

On a typical day, we would do the same routine.

When one of us walks in, while the other is seated, already waiting, you would always ask 'how's your day' and I would answer 'shitty'. Then we'd start telling each other why our day was bad and one conversation would lead to another, resulting to random topics from school to 'the most dangerous animals on the earth' documentaries on YouTube.

But when I walk in today, you don't ask the usual 'how's your day'.
I know something is wrong.

I sit beside you and stare at you in silence, waiting for some sort of acknowledgement from you.

But when you don't even spare me a glance, I decide to prepare us both cup noodles, like what you do when I'm really down.

"What's wrong?" I ask as I head back towards you. You finally turn to face me and I'm about to smile, happy that you've acknowledged my presence.

But what I see almost makes me drop the cup noodles in my hands.

Here you are, plump lips stained with red and bruised, pale skin with purple and green patches of color painted on them, some around your right eye.
Your cute, gummy smile is nowhere to be seen.

"Holy shit! Wha..."
I trail off as I stare at you.
I can't help but feel my heart hurt. The words get stuck in my throat as I try to finish my sentence.

"Just the same old bully" You say, staring at the ground. I can see how much you don't want to talk about this.

But this isn't the first time I've seen you like this.
Usually, I would just stay silent. But for some reason, today, I decided to try and open up the topic a little more.

"Dude... you need to report this guy" I say, sitting down beside you. Your hand automatically reaches for the chopsticks that I offer and we eat in silence for a few minutes before you mutter.

"It's fine..."

I slam the chopsticks down on the table and stand up.
"No it's no-"

You cut me off as I speak. And that was when I understood the fact that there was still a barrier between us. Some odd, invisible barrier that separated us 'friends' from your actual daily life.

That was when I understood that our friendship was just something within the four walls of this small convenience store.

"-Can we please just... not..." you trail off, licking your lips after almost every word.

I sit back down and sigh.

We remain silent throughout the rest of the day and I leave the store, not even muttering a goodbye.