She turned and saw a group of girls sitting at the benches, one of them waved at her. “Come here and sit with us.”

“Oh.” Her eyebrows lifted and a small smile surfaced. She strode to the bench of the girl who spoke and sat down. “Hi.”

Maze, holding her phone, smiled at Midori. “Why did you stand there alone? Should have come here earlier.”

“Aha…” She chuckled, following the flow of getting introduced to the other girls. Actually, she knew them but she could never remember their all their name. If asked now, she would undoubtedly force herself to smile and pay attention to their talking to pick up their names.

Since she had nothing to say and couldn’t follow what they were talking about, she pretended to stare at her phone. She had been to school but her impression and knowledge of it limited to only schoolwork and education; Midori didn’t even know that there were club activities until high school.

Those girls were talking about parties, relationships, others’ behaviours, how one did in school and many others; those were all she could guess and there probably be a lot more she didn’t know.

The bus arrived.

Downtown, passing by the casino was intriguing for Midori. The building, if they were to go in there, how amazing.

They didn’t enter the casino of course, but the place that they went in impressed her no less than she expected.

“Hmm…”

Apparently, they were late? She heard that because they were late, the film that they were supposed to watch changed to this multi-film thing. She couldn’t remember what it was, only a slight impression was left that some of them were funny while one was disturbingly confusing.

What were the conversations that they had? She remembered that Badenah, Karolin, an acquaintance, and she had lunch together. The lunch that Badenah and Midori had was from the same place and it was huge, they tried to shove down their stomach when it was notified that it was about time to leave.

It was still cold and she was not really comfortable with her thick winter coat. She really shouldn’t have brought it with her. They were late and lost in the mall; where were they supposed to exit? Not only she and her friend(?), others including her French teacher was lost. They were looking at their French teacher and another teacher, trying to contacting the others.

Midori didn’t remember their speeches or what she spoke, but a teacher came back for them and they got back to school. They were supposed to be back way earlier (most of the other students were back to school hours ago) but only arrived at the last period.

“The movie was heartbroken, isn’t it?” Someone, one of her friend asked. They were going to the movie after the CIFF and Vannesia was the only one that didn’t go to the CIFF, but that didn’t lessen the fun. This was the first time she hung out with friends and actually felt happy with her friends. The last time, if she thought back, she kind of ignored her…former friend for her sister, they didn’t talk with each other anymore.

It was understandable why the girl gradually became friends with the girls that she couldn’t understand and they stopped being friends. She was a bad friend, Midori was.

“I…” Midori smiled, “I guess?”

“Midori, you didn’t cry? How??” Badenah widened her eyes and turned to Karolin, “Karolin is crying so much.”

“The end was so sad,” Karolin said and sniffed.

“Aha…” She glanced at the giant screen for a second and said, “I just... don’t understand it. This is the first time I actually watch a romance movie.”

They stared at her, “...”

What did they say?

“Let’s hang out again sometimes.” One of them said and they gradually left. Midori was the last one to leave the mall; some of them offered that their pickup would bring her home but her sister was coming.

She opened her eyes, on her bed she was. Her eyes moved to the corner and gazed at the bright laptop screen that was lightening the darkroom; the video on Youtube was still playing so it didn’t go to sleep mode. Sluggishly supported herself up and wrapped the blanket around her upper half while sitting up. She took the blue-ray protection glasses and put them on.

Midori yawned and started writing the story she was publishing on Moonquill. She then thought to herself:

It summer and I’m about to become a sophomore. I started this a bit late… Should I skip those events I planned to write about…? I don’t want to write about the time when I was still a freshman being a sophomore. If I was to do so, I’ll be writing something I forgot for the most part.

Should she skip it? There were many events that she wanted to tell— almost fainting in gym again but managed to not raise suspicion and not actually faint; how she thought about the book Power of Now; how impulsive Romeo and Juliet were from the reading in English class; how the school assembled the students and talked about relationships; how her All-City Orchestra concert went out (her mother and sister were late because they thought it would take long before she actually play and went later than the time she asked them to come... on purpose); how she had to walk home in the cool weather and agonized herself with itching legs for not wanting to be late to the last orchestra concert she would perform in her freshman year (she had to walk home because she had to be back in school at 5:30 pm. but her family were all working, her mother could only come to pick her up at 4:30 pm. Coming and go back would take more than 40 minutes, where was the time for her to get ready?

Well, I’ll just conclude the freshman year and summer like that and maybe...

Midori had a great time at Cedar Point in the summer, she went on the Dragger(?) roller coaster for the first time and it was awesome. After going on that, everything else was “doesn’t matter, I’ll jump right in,” and she did. That day, somehow the line wasn’t long and the longest she had to wait was around 40 minutes, most of everything else was around 5 to 15 minutes; some, she just walked the long empty line from the entrance to the launching place and off she went.

It’ll be out of nowhere. The last chapter ended with me going to the CIFF and this one would end with my fun trip yesterday? That’s months apart! ...Oh well.

She sighed and typed that in the document.

13 chapters and the volume ends, that is… short… This chapter really is just a summary, will the readers be… Ah, I don’t want to think about it…!!!

So much for her thoughts, Midori copied the document and pasted it to the actual website.