So, apparently the remaining guy somehow got away, and when I asked him what I did, He wasn’t too eager to tell.I don’t know what happened, but whatever it is, it looks like it was pretty hard on James, he really doesn’t seem to want to talk about it. He turned back and continued what he was doing. God knows what happened during those minutes.

So, back to the moment when my memory kicks in again. I don’t know if I was leaning on someone or just lying down, but I stood up, and looked at James, who was standing there with the exact same experssion I’ve just described. He looked at me, than back at the ground that was now crimson. “Let’s check if everyone is okay.” he said. I followed him, and we checked all the classes there were: all of them full of regular teenagers, just like us, horrified. As we were checking everyone, a thought appeared on my mind: if we were the same with them, perfectly regular, why did we fight, and they did not? I played with this thought, bouncing all over my brain, also patting people on the back. We weren’t any braver. In fact, I was absolutely terrified because of the chance that I could die. I toyed with the question a bit more, flipping it like a coin. Heroism then? Doing what’s right? That really did seem to make sense, but when I checked if it my motivation in the first place, it didn’t feel any similar. As we were walking past some makeshift lockers and slow-moving people, I heard James: “What’s up with the frown?” I raised my eyebrows. “What frown?” He pointed towards my forehead. “You have been frowning for some time now. Anything wrong?” I waved the question off. “Nah, nothing.” I nodded towards the door on our left. “Should we go here now?” He nodded, not looking satisfied with my answer. We opened the faint blue door, and walked in. I started thinking again. I decided to check out the darker motivations. Getting to kill or fight? Well, that sure was fun, but the fear outpowered it. I walked past some more desks, finally getting to the other side of the class. There, a girl was crying. What was her name? Gina, right. I crouched next to her. “Hey, you okay?” She sobbed, and turned her head to look at me. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it before she could. She let herself on my neck, wrapping her arms around me. I embraced her and patted her. “Hey, it’s okay. They’re gone.” She sobbed, and squeezed me for second. “It’s not that.” she said between two painful sobs. I pushed her, and held her so that I could look into her eyes. “Than what is it?” She managed to pull together a faint but yet still painful smile. I watched her as two drops of tear washed across her face. “When they were in he-here, I-“ She let out a little sob. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “I realized that I h-had a lot of things I would r-regret not d-d-doing, if-“ She broke down to tears again, so I hugged her once again. I then remembered all I had heard about her: gossips of her crushes, and how some girls caught her crying at various places. I felt bad for the girl. She never got the opportunity to express herself properly. She took a step away from me. “if I had died right there.” I smiled to let her know that I understood her. “Then I guess you made some decisions right there.” She nodded, and smiled. I could tell that her mood had gotten a whole lot better then. She seemed a lot more...lively. “And I’m starting now.” Before I could say anything, she walked up to James. He turned his head to see who was coming towards him (though I knew he already could tell, that show-off) and right there, I understood what she had meant. She kissed James. I couldn’t help but let my mouth drop, smiling. I cupped my hand over it, and couldn’t help but silently laugh. Everyone looked at them. I heard people gasp and giggle. Now, as a rather more social girl, I knew that James actually was kinda popular among girls, you know what I mean. (If you don’t, you’re even worse than James lmao) Even though they weren’t that nice towards him, he had been the subject of a lot of conversations. Of course, I was almost always accused to have some romantic interest towards him. They couldn’t take us just be friends, could they? (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) (Pat, how the fuck did you do that? -James) Anyway, when Gina finally pulled back, she turned to me and did thumbs up with both her hands. I laughed. Then, I looked at James, knowing he’d really get confused by that. The look on his face. My god, was that the most hilarious thing I have ever seen! It cracked me up. I couldn’t help it. I laughed a lot. I felt my stomach hurt, but I couldn’t stop. Then, when I could finally take a breath, I looked around to see that almost everyone was dead serious, or talking about it. I could see aq lot of faces looking at me as if I was a weirdo (which they would be a bit right) and that made me laugh a lot more again. When I was finally done, my stomach hurting like hell, I walked up to James, who was still looking stunned, and took him back to one of the desks. I playfully poked his arm. “You okay? Well, you were complaining about being single forever and all that crap but damn, you were faster than me!” He looked down at the desk, doing the thinking thing with the eyes again. I poked him again. It was just enough to return him back to the moment. He shook his head, and looked at me. “What were you saying again?” I rolled my eyes. “Are you okay?” He laughed. “I most definitely am not!”, he said, in a happy voice. “But don’t worry.” I let go of my breath with relief, and stood back up. “Come on then, we still have some classes to check, and you can talk to your girlfriend later.” I said, offering my hand. He took my hand to stand up. “She’s not my girlfriend.” I chuckled, and walked towards the door. “She most definitely is.” He raised his arms, moved them like he was having a seizure, then he moved them as if he didn’t know what to do with them as he had owned them for just a minute, then put them down. “You know it doesn’t work like that. Not even remotely.” I tilted my head and smiled as we walked past a small group of crying students. “Then how does it work?” He sighed and rolled his eyes, and he had the rights to do so: I had made him explain this well over a hundred times. He quickly ran what our conversation would go like, and decided to skip that part: “Fine.” I nodded towards the door on our right, the wooden door standing there as if nothing had happened during the last 20 minutes and the blood stain on it was an everyday occurence. I pulled the door open as we walked in did exactly what we had done with the other classes, and continued our conversation. “Just the fact that I have feelings for someone -let’s say you- doesn’t mean that we have to be in a relationship. It’s supposed to be a two-sided thing.” He softly spoke some words to a group of girls who had piled up, crying. One of the girls looked up at him and nodded, tears running down her face. I saw him smile with pain, for which was kind of surprising for me to see that, and wipe the girl’s tears off her face. He bit his lip, and continued. “Both sides needed to be attracted to each other so that there is a healthy relationship. Otherwise, it’s your everyday simp boy and that one girl who uses poor guys.” I raised my finger to stop him, and stood still, calmly, as a boy let himself down on me, almost making me fall while doing so, crying. I gave a couple of pats on his back. My eyes locked in with James’ and I once again tried to understand how he didn’t insisted on not understanding himself. He always denied what were his obvious qualities, and insisted on being known as “stupid, useless” and “boring” while instead he most definitely was smarter than he himself had even believed in and had that charisma to draw people -especially your good old highly impressionable teenage girls- to himself. It was weird, how he managed people and his social life. Anyway, I popped out of those thoughts as the dude hugging me actually let himself go and slowly start falling to the ground. Some air came out of my nose, and I picked him up, trying not to fall down with him. I left him lying with dead-looking eyes on one of the chairs and checked to see what James was up to. To my entertainment, he apparently had been watching me with that flirty stance he had: Resting on a wall with an elbow supporting him, his body leaned towards the wall. I narrowed my eyes a little, and nodded him to leave the room. He cleared his throat. “Continuing from where we had left off, well, this means that Gina and I have nothing in between. Those are her feelings, and since I don’t have any of those towards her, we won’t have any relationship.” He shrugged. I laughed. “So what you’re saying is that you’re saving yourself for the real girl, right?” He stopped, and looked into my eyes. “Don’t.” He sounded tired, but that was his business, and I continued. “C’mon, why aren’t you two getting married already?” I said in my playful voice. “One, she’s not even my girlfriend. Two, we technically can’t get married.” He turned his face away from me, but I still could see that he was smiling. I laughed. “Whatever. Do you think the others checked her class or should her white knight come on in?” He slowly shook his head. “Let’s just-“ And at that moment, I heard the worst problem in my life -also known as my mother- across the hallway: “Patricia!”

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