001 | Three Conditions
960 Words
The bench outside the main gate was Nora's spot. Not officially. Nobody had claimed it or written her name on it. But every morning she sat there before the bell with her journal open in her lap, reading yesterday back to herself, and at some point it had just become hers the way things become yours without you deciding.
She read the last three entries the way she always did. Quickly, quietly, starting from the oldest.
Had lunch with Hana. She ordered the salmon again even though she always complains about it.
Cried a little on the train home. Don't remember why. Probably nothing.
Good day. Nothing worth noting except that it was good.
She closed the journal and put it away.
Good days were always the hardest to write about.
Hana found her before the first bell, dropping onto the bench and bumping her shoulder instead of saying hello.
"You already read it?"
"On the train."
"Anything good?"
"You ordered the salmon again."
Hana groaned. "I keep doing that."
They walked through the gate together into the usual morning noise. Nora knew this school the way she knew most things now, from the outside in. She recognized the layout, the faces, the way the hallway smelled different near the gym. What she didn't have was the feeling of having actually lived through any of it.
Every morning was more or less the first morning.
She had stopped being sad about that. At least that's what she wrote in the journal.
She first noticed Caiden Yoo the way you notice a c***k in a wall. Not because it matters. Just because once you see it you keep seeing it.
He sat two rows behind her in Literature and never raised his hand and never seemed particularly bothered by that. Not rude about it. Just absent in the way some people are absent, like they made a quiet decision at some point to stop spending energy on things that didn't concern them and had stuck to it.
She had written about him once, three weeks ago apparently. Boy in Lit class. Yoo Caiden. Hana says he used to be different. Doesn't matter.
It didn't. She had bigger things to carry.
The ex-boyfriend situation happened after school.
She knew his name from the journal. Sora. Two entries, both short and deliberately flat. Sora texted again. Ignored it. Then a week later: Sora at the convenience store. Walked the other way.
She didn't remember any of it. But she trusted her own handwriting.
So when he appeared near the school gate that afternoon, hands in his pockets, looking like he'd been standing there long enough to seem casual about it, her body tensed before her brain caught up.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey." She kept her voice even.
"You never replied to my messages."
"I know."
He took a step toward her and without thinking her hand found the nearest arm, fingers curling around a jacket sleeve, and she said, "Sorry, we were just leaving."
The boy beside her went still for exactly one second.
Then he said, "Yeah," and that was it. One word. Flat and calm like he'd been expecting it, like this was something he did all the time.
Sora looked at him. Then at her. Something shifted in his face. "Okay," he said, and walked away.
Nora let go of the sleeve.
She turned to look at who she'd grabbed.
Caiden Yoo looked back at her. His expression wasn't angry or confused. He was just waiting.
"Sorry," she said. "That was a weird thing to do."
"Yeah."
"He's my ex. He keeps showing up."
"Okay."
She studied him for a second. "You're in my Literature class."
"Yes."
"Caiden, right?"
Something moved across his face. "Yeah."
She nodded slowly. Around them students streamed past, nobody paying attention to either of them. The afternoon light was pale and thin, the kind that made everything look slightly washed out.
"Can I ask you something strange," she said.
He looked like he considered saying no. "Sure."
"Would you be willing to keep pretending. Just for a while. Until he stops showing up."
Silence.
"I know we don't really know each other," she added.
He looked at the gate where Sora had been standing. Then back at her. His expression hadn't changed much but something in it had shifted slightly, the way a door shifts when someone presses against it from the other side.
"Three conditions," she said, before he could answer. "Don't get attached. Don't ask about my journal. And don't feel sorry for me."
A pause.
"Why would I feel sorry for you," he said.
She smiled, small and a little tired. "You wouldn't. Not yet."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Fine."
Just that. Fine.
She held out her hand. He looked at it, then shook it once. Brief and clean.
"I'm Nora," she said.
"I know," he said. "You sit two rows in front of me. You're kind of hard to miss."
She didn't know what to do with that so she just picked up her bag and started walking. He fell into step beside her without being asked and neither of them said anything else and the city moved around them the way it always did, loud and indifferent and not particularly interested in either of them.
She would write about this tonight.
She always wrote about everything.
But tonight she would make sure to get the details right. The one word he said. The way he shook her hand like it was the most ordinary thing. The fact that he didn't ask why, not once.
Those were the kinds of details that made tomorrow, Nora trust an entry.
The kinds that felt too specific to have made up.
- Writer
