‘That’ Side Character Chapter 4: Apathetically Caring

Then he suddenly had a thought.

“Her voice is loud. She’s close. Where is she??”

Slowly, he pulled the pillow off his head and looked up at the widow to his backyard. 

“Kenma!!! Come on! You’ll be late for school and get a detention. Like me! I’m in there so often I may as well just live in that room,” you shouted. 

Gingerly he crawled along his bed to the window and glanced down over the sill into his backyard.

There you were. Standing there with hands cupped to your mouth… on his grass.

You saw his head slowly rise up from his window sill and you couldn’t help likening it to a cat with its ears back, peeking out at something outside. 

“Kenma! I can see you!” you called happily, waving at him. 

He shrank back down and you laughed.

“Come on, get out here! I’m not leaving until you do! I can sing the national anthem for you? Will that help? Actually, wait! I just learned the Australian anthem. Wanna hear it? Here it is! AUSTRALIANS, ALL LET US REJOICE! FOR WE ARE—,”

Just as soon as you had started, Kenma appeared at his back door. 

“Oh, you’re here,” you said with a smile, “let’s go!” And you turned to the brick fence of his yard and sized it up, ready to try and clamber over it… but Kenma’s voice stopped you.

“I’m going through the front door.” 

And with that, he turned and walked away, closing the door behind him and then locking it.

“Well… looks like I’m going over the fence then,” you said out loud to yourself.

You turned and jogged away from the fence in question, then turned and sprinted back towards it, full tilt, and jumped.

Your fingers missed the top of the bricks and you slid back down, grazing your arms in the process. 

“Damn it,” you grunted, dusting your palms off and looking at them to see if there was any blood from them being scraped on the bricks, but they were fine, so you tried again, and missed again.

Kenma, had walked out of his front door and had locked it behind him, then headed around the corner of his house to take the short cut across the back of the oval, expecting to see you waiting there for him on the other side… but as he walked along, PSP in hand, he suddenly realized that you weren’t there.

“Kenma!” he heard you shout, then he heard you banging on his back door. 

“Over here,” he called apathetically.

There was a break of silence, then you replied.

“Oh, you’re there! I’m gonna chuck my bag over first and then I’m gonna jump,” you called, your bag hurling over the fence and nearly clocking him in the side of the head as it plummeted from the height.

He jumped back and looked up with annoyance at his brick fence, wondering what he did to deserve your bumbling self suddenly thrust into his life.

A split second after your bag had landed, he suddenly saw your hand and a leg as you threw yourself up on top of the wall.

“Hey!” you greeted brightly, smiling down at him like nothing was happening, “I swear this fence is bigger on this side than it is on the other side. I can get over the other side easily but this side—,” you grunted, “is harder.”

Swinging both legs over, you swiveled on your tummy and slid down a little way and then dropped down onto the ground with a hiss of pain.

“Ouch,” you whispered softly, looking at your hands and forearms and seeing the scratches and light bleeding from scrubbing your hands and arms on the brickwork.

Kenma had gone back to playing his game.

You looked at him, then picked up your bag from the ground and slung it over your shoulder, arms still stinging with pain.

Silently, you turned and Kenma fell in step beside you and you headed to the half fallen wooden fence together at the back of the school and jumped over.

The pain in your arms had subdued you a little and you said nothing else to the blond classmate as you crossed the oval, then you parted ways to go to your lockers.

Kenma had just finished his level and turned his PSP off to get his books from his locker when he remembered that you hadn’t said anything to him from the walk that spanned the oval to the stairs, and he stopped and looked down the hall towards where your locker was.

You had pulled your books out and had them in one hand as you looked down at the forearm of your other hand, pulling a face at it and shaking it.

Kenma sigh with annoyance.

“I can’t ignore that she’s hurt her arm,” he thought, getting his books and tucking his console in his pocket.

He closed his locker then walked back towards you.

You were too busy thinking about getting to class that you almost ran into him, while still looking down at your arm.

“Oh!” you exclaimed when he stopped you.

“Let’s see,” he said, taking your wrist to turn the underside of your arm up to him.

“It’s fine,” you said.

“No, it’s not,” he replied, looking down at the pretty decent length of brick grazing that ran from your wrist to the crease of your elbow, “you need to go to the nurse.”

“Nah. It’s cool,” you said, shaking your wrist out of his grip.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Sting? Yeah. Stings. There’s only been one other time where I’ve hurt my arm, like, this bad before… ok maybe two times, but it’s fine. Let’s go.”

He grabbed your wrist again and you stopped.

“No. Get it bandaged or it could get an infection or something,” he said, pulling you in the opposite direction of the classroom towards the nurses office.

You complained all the way, but you begrudgingly let him take you there, hanging your head as he pulled you to the nurses door and stopped.

You were expecting him to knock, but he didn’t, and you looked up at him to see what he was doing but he was just standing there staring at the door.

“Why aren’t you knocking?” you whispered to him, “you know what? Let’s go. I’ve already told you heaps of times… it’s fine. It doesn’t need a bandaid or whatever.”

“You knock,” he whispered back to you.

“No, I don’t want to,” you replied in a hushed whisper, “the nurse doesn’t like me so let’s go.”

Just then the nurse opened the door and saw you both standing there.

“I thought I heard voices,” she said, looking from Kenma to you, “what do you want?”

“I’m fine,” you said brusquely, “let’s go, Kenma.”

But as you turned and pulled away, he held you firmly.

“She hurt her arm,” he said softly to the nurse.

<<< ‘That’ Side Character Chapter 3: Y/N, Sticks Like Glue

‘That’ Side Character Chapter 5: Nurse Kenma >>>