Hands In The Stars

7. Tormented

Ai felt herself drifting further and further away from reality with each passing day and before she knew it, it had already become autumn. Besides the few times she attended school, she barely went out of her room more than about once every week. She tried her best to avoid contact with everyone. She was forced to both listen to and feel her mothers violent panic attacks that occurred just about every second day. Jia would yell and hit at anything that moved. The violent mother made sure that Ai knew she was to blame for her brother's death, as well as her father, Yonru. The thing that bothered Ai more than anything though, was how she could feel her friendship with Datui fade more and more. The person she had always relied on and spend her entire life being so close to suddenly felt so far away and nothing she did seemed to help. They had always been so very closed but suddenly seemed to lose their firm grip on each other.

"Sooo..." Datui's voice finally pierced the silence, and Ai looked up at her friend to prove he had capture her attention. "You haven't really been in school lately, what's-" Datui began, but Ai cut him off.
"Well have you? I bet you haven't, even if you have, you're always too busy to go looking for me anyways." She told him off in a flat tone, which made Datui go blankly silent. Ai leaned back against the cold wall of the school building. The slight wind played with the edges of her hair. She looked up and stared at the plane flying slowly above them as the gray sky thundered with deafening noises. She sighed a bit and gazed around them, but there was nothing more than gravel and dirt to look at here. Ai had been spending every lunch break the past few weeks on the backside of the school building. Barely any students wanted to go back there in fear of the teachers thinking they were hiding to smoke, or do worse things, and contact their parents.

Ai would never even imagine doing something like that. It seemed like such a stupid decision, risking getting kicked out of school for the sake of a cigarette. She merely wanted to be alone. She hated the feeling of people observing her, but after Datui had found out where her hiding place was there was just no way of getting rid of him, she knew that. If Datui wanted something, he'd always manage to get it. He simply refused to leave, no matter what she'd try.

"Uh, so Ai, do you want to... Do something? Go somewhere?" Datui finally spoke once more, trying to break yet another prolonged silence as he fiddled awkwardly with his hair. "I'm up to do whatever you want, anything at all." He told the shorter girl but sighed when she merely gave him a shrug as a response. He kicked a stone across the road, and Ai followed it with her eyes before she slid her hands onto her thighs.
"I don't know, Datui..." She mumbled incoherently, not taking her eyes off the stone.
"Well I want to do something," Datui complained, putting a hand onto Ai's head and messing up her hair a bit. "I can't just stand here for an hour."
"Go and do something then. I'm not forcing you to stay here you know, you are the one that insisted on following me." Ai defended herself as she looked up at her friend with broken eyes.
"Yes, I know! And- And I'm not planning to leave." Datui crossed his arms. "You're not getting rid of me just like that, I'm here to stay. Any time I take my eyes off you for even just a second you always disappear and then I have to spend days trying to find you again!" He scolded Ai, lowering his eyebrows as he looked around the backyard.

Datui secured a hold of his trusty metal pipe that he liked to carry around with himself and fiddled it between his hands. His eyes froze on a somewhat tall guy standing a few meters away, his back against Datui and Ai. The stranger leaned an arm over the railing separating the school area from the small forest behind it. Datui got a bit surprised by the sight since he hadn't noticed anybody coming around the corner, but it was something that could satisfy his boredom for at least a few minutes.

He watched as the guy's long, wavy, dark brown hair played slightly in the wind, something about him reminded Datui a bit about Ai. Most likely the depressing, heavy aura that seemed to be surrounding both of them. The stranger slowly pulled his arm away from the railing and fished up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the dirty pink and purple bag hanging over his shoulder. The bag made Datui frown a bit over how out of place the colours looked, hanging over the shoulder of such a seemingly ordinary and gray person.

"I could work with that. You want to join Ai?" Datui mumbled with a small smirk after a few seconds of watching.
"What?" Ai mumbled back. She looked up at Datui, following his gaze until her eyes landed on the stranger in front of them. "Mh, well you go do that then, go get your lung diseases. It's not my fault when you get weirdly sick."
"You're being boring. There's a long time left until we start again, either way, you're just going to sit there the entire time? Well, I'll be back, have fun with your gravel." Datui gave his friend one last glance before he focused his attention back to the stranger once more and gradually made his way over.

"Heeey." Datui smirked, metal pipe in hand. "You got one left?"
The guy slowly shifted his head to look at Datui with a slightly puzzled expression. Datui towered a head taller than the stranger.
"Uhm, no, do I know you..? Did- Did we talk before? In fact, no you're not getting anything." The stranger's eyes scanned Datui up and down, then locked onto the girl leaning against the white granite wall of the school building. He quickly noticed the striped on their uniforms, marking the first-year student.

Ai stared right at the guy for a few seconds, then she walked up behind Datui and grabbed onto the back of his shirt. She peeked over her friends tall shoulder and towards the stranger.
"Datuiii." She mumbled. "Let's get away from here, we can go talk somewhere else. Privately, now, right now." She tugged onto Datui's shirt and watched him turn his head to look back at her.
"Can't it wait? Just a few seconds ago you acted like you didn't even want me close." Datui scoffed, but when Ai kept tugging on his shirt, soon wrapping herself around his thin arm. He just sighed and grabbed her hand, following her around the corner.
"What do you want now all of a sudden?"
"I don't like that guy. It feels like I've seen him a ton of times before, but I can't remember from where. Do you have to talk to him?" Ai asked Datui in a slightly distressed tone. "He's really strange and frightening, I think maybe Shun-"
"Theeere we go again." Datui cut her off, raising an eyebrow at her. "You're being way too paranoid. You just- You just think about all of that depressing stuff and then those weird thoughts come to you. You have to relax. Every single person you see isn't a threat to you, so just calm down already. Of course, you've seen him, we go to the same school. That's the broke last year guy that's dating the rich last year guy, everyone has seen them."

Ai glared at Datui for a long while before turning around and starting to make her way back to the front of the school.
"God, you're such an asshole. Fuck you." She hissed at him, not even bothering to look at him as he looked at her, her face starting to form a frown.
"Fine, be that way then." Datui grumbled in a low voice as he watched Ai leave. He turned and wandered the opposite way, back to where the stranger was still standing, kicking some rocks on the ground with the cigarette between his fingertips.

"What if I'll pay?" Datui walked up to the guy once more and watched as the other shrugged and handed him a cigarette and the lighter.
"Whatever, everyone seems to be having a bad day today. That's your girlfriend or something?"
"Eh... A little bit, I guess." Datui smiled vaguely. "Well, whatever. It doesn't matter, I'm Datui anyways. Aren't you that guy with the super strange name? You date a Dongcock, don't you?"
"It's Ethan and yes, I'm the guy with the weird name thank you very much." Ethan sighed, already knowing of the reputation that automatically came with being close to Edwin. He would forever be recognized as Edwin's sidekick, no matter what.
"...Ethan?" Datui chuckled. "Alright, sure thing, interesting name."
The yard was full of kids behind them. The day was gray, the clouds were taking turns blocking the sun out. As soon as one disappeared another one would come racing up quickly. Datui's comment made Ethan laugh a bit.
"What kind of way to greet someone is that? As if your name is much better."

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