Claire didn't remember exactly how she had made it to her room that night. Her footsteps felt light and empty, as if her soul had been left behind in the stuffy Student Council storage room.
She sat on the edge of her bed, staring at her neatly arranged desk. The white envelope she'd crumpled earlier that afternoon now lay there in silence. The paper was wrinkled, just like the mess of her feelings.
Claire let out a long breath, trying to dispel the tightness weighing on her chest. She picked up the envelope, tore it into tiny pieces, then threw them into the trash can beneath the desk.
*It's over,* she told herself. *Everything's over before it even had the chance to begin.*
Just as Claire was about to lie down on her bed, the phone on her desk began vibrating violently. Its screen lit up, displaying Aru's name to the accompaniment of the loud default ringtone.
Claire's heart jolted. Her fingers hovered uncertainly over the screen. She wanted to ignore it, turn off her phone, and pretend to sleep. But years of being the place Aru came home to couldn't be erased in a matter of hours.
With a heavy sigh, Claire swiped the green button.
“Hello, Aru?” Claire asked, trying desperately to keep her voice from trembling.
“Claire! You’re home, right? I swear, Claire, I have to tell you right now!” Aru’s voice shattered the silence of her room through the phone’s speaker. His voice overflowed with excitement, brimming with more happiness than the boy could contain.
Claire squeezed her eyes shut. A sharp pain pinched her chest again, but she forced her lips into a smile—even though no one could see her.
“Yeah, I’ve been home for a while. What happened? You sound really happy.”
“Happy doesn’t even begin to cover it, Claire! I feel like I’m going crazy!” Aru laughed freely on the other end of the call. The faint rush of the night wind could be heard in the background, suggesting he was probably standing on the porch of his house, directly across from Claire’s.
“Claudia... she was waiting for me in the park near the gate,” Aru continued, his voice suddenly softening, thick with disbelief. “She confessed to me, Claire! Claudia made the first move!”
Thud.
Although Claire had suspected it since that afternoon in the storage room, hearing Aru confirm it himself felt like a sledgehammer crashing through her defenses. The air around Claire suddenly felt impossibly thin.
“O-oh, really?” Claire replied, clutching her bedsheet tightly. “So... what did you say?”
“Of course I accepted! What, do you think I’d turn her down?” Aru let out an excited chuckle. “You know I’ve been completely captivated by Claudia since the beginning of the semester. She’s popular, beautiful, and kind, too. Honestly, I still can’t believe a girl as amazing as Claudia could like an ordinary guy like me.”
Claire bit down hard on her lower lip. *You’re not ordinary, Aru. You’re extraordinary to me...* The words screamed inside her head, but what came out of her mouth was completely different.
“Congratulations, Aru. I guess all your efforts to admire her from afar finally paid off.”
“Thank you so much, Claire! You’re the first person I told,” Aru said sincerely. “I seriously feel so lucky today. If you hadn’t always reminded me to be confident, I might not have been brave enough to face Claudia like that earlier.”
Aru’s innocent remark became the sharpest blade of all for Claire. He thanked her without ever realizing that every bit of encouragement and confidence Claire had given him was rooted in a love she now had to forcibly kill.
“You deserve to be happy, Aru,” Claire whispered.
“Hey, why does your voice sound kind of nasal? Are you cold?” Aru suddenly asked, picking up on the change in his childhood friend’s tone.
Claire startled and quickly wiped the corners of her eyes, which were beginning to grow wet. “No, I’m fine. I just have a little bit of a cold from being exposed to the wind in the storage room this afternoon.”
“See? That’s what I’ve been telling you. Don’t push yourself so hard with all that Student Council work,” Aru lectured in the mock-mature tone that usually always made Claire laugh. But tonight, the humor tasted flat. “Anyway, take some medicine and go to sleep. I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning like usual, okay? We’ll go to school together.”
Claire gripped her phone even tighter. Go to school together? Watch Aru smile the entire way while talking about his new girlfriend? Claire wasn’t sure she could get through that tomorrow.
“Don’t pick me up tomorrow, Aru,” Claire interrupted quickly.
There was a brief silence on the other end. “Huh? Why? My motorcycle isn’t broken down or anything.”
“I... I want to leave earlier tomorrow. There’s a report I have to hand to Coach Broto before the bell rings,” Claire lied.
“Oh, I see...” Aru sounded a little disappointed, but quickly brightened again. “All right, then. But let’s eat seblak together during break, okay? I’ll pay. We can have a little feast to celebrate my new relationship status!”
“We’ll see tomorrow, Aru. I’m afraid I’ll still be busy in the Student Council office.”
“Aww, Claire, you’re always like this. Don’t keep pretending to be too busy for your own childhood friend,” Aru grumbled playfully. “All right, then. Good night, Claire. Thanks for listening to me talk this late at night.”
“You’re welcome. Good night to you too, Aru.”
The call ended. Silence once again shrouded the room, oppressive and absolute.
Claire slowly lowered her phone and let it lie on the bed. She gazed out her bedroom window. Through the gap in the slightly open curtains, she could see that the light in Aru’s second-floor bedroom across the street had just turned on.
She watched Aru’s shadow pass behind the window—a shadow belonging to the boy who had grown up with her, the boy who had occupied every corner of her heart all this time, and who now officially belonged to someone else.
Claire covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders began to shake violently as the sobs she had been holding back finally broke free without a sound. In the darkness of her room, Claire mourned the fate that had come too late, the courage she had never managed to express, and the beginning of the pain she knew had only just started.
To be continued...