“Only the school hunk still bothers hanging around him. If that were me, I’d have gotten tired long ago. Yet he acts like he’s above everyone. What is he putting on a show for?”
In a blink, I turned into a pest everyone wanted to step on, even though I never did anything wrong.
Even Calliope stopped giving me the smallest look.
At that age, barely grown, how could I handle that shame?
In the end, I couldn’t hold myself anymore. After studying one evening, I went to speak with Calliope.
She was still marking Arden’s wrong answers on his papers. When she noticed I had come, a light shock flashed across her eyes.
We walked back together, and I told her everything on my mind, asking why she treated me like that.
But when I mentioned that Arden purposely tricked me into going to the amusement park and set me up with the umbrella, Calliope’s face tightened.
She quickly cut off my words, saying, “I don’t get why you’re always so against Arden. He isn’t the person you think he is.”
“Since knowing Arden, I found you to be so jealous. He treats you nicely, yet you point fingers at him again and again, just because he is better than you?”
“Do you even know how high his fever was that day? Even after you left, he kept blaming himself, wondering if he said something wrong.”
I froze.
I never thought that after all our years together, Calliope wouldn’t even believe me a little.
“Rayne, this is the first time you made me feel so sickened. Are you so average that you can’t stand someone more capable?”
I couldn’t accept that those sentences came from her.
Maybe she sensed she spoke too harshly, because she stretched her hand out to pull my sleeve.
“Sorry… that wasn’t what I meant.”
But I already had no hope left.
I ran back home as fast as I could and shut myself in my room for the entire day.
After that, I no longer talked to her.
I drowned myself in schoolwork, wanting only to escape this place as soon as I could.
I still kept in mind how, when we first entered high school, I once told Calliope that I would for sure study at the same University as her.
But now, I only wanted to get as far away from her as life allowed.
During the whole second half of senior year, we didn’t exchange even a single sentence.
After the college entrance exam, Calliope came to see me.
She stood at my door carrying a bunch of jasmine blooms.
“Rayne, I spoke too harshly before. Can you let it go?”
“I still don’t want us apart. I’m giving you jasmine, don’t leave me, Rayne.’”
She swore that she would never let anyone hurt me again, that I would always come first in her heart. And in the end, I softened.
We planned to head to the same city.
While filling out the application, we sat shoulder to shoulder.
We both chose schools in the capital.
She picked Hanford University, and I picked an art institute.
I thought maybe we could keep living happily like before. But I was wrong.
I forgot to logout my account on her computer.
When I didn’t get into any college, I learned that my options had changed.
All my backup choices were swapped for Universities far beyond my score.
I slipped through the system, accepted nowhere.
And the only one who could have done this, with reason and chance, was Arden.
Because he also filled his form at Calliope’s home, and he could reach her computer.
I went mad. I went to him and struck him across the face right before Calliope.
Holding his collar, I shouted, “Why?! Why ruin someone else’s future?!”
