More Than Anything Else (Tooru Oikawa)

Swing

Judging by the squeals of delight on the other end of the phone, I can tell my best friend is ecstatic. I fake a few laughs and reply to her when she asks me questions. We finally hang up and I slump on the swing, my head hanging low as all the emotions from the past two weeks come out; from my dog, to my grades, to this ordeal with Daichi.

Tears roll down my face as I sit on the swing, gripping the chains tightly. I shouldn't be crying because of something like this. Why can't I just get over this. This shouldn't be that big of a deal, so why am I so upset?

"Hey are you okay over there?" A voice reaches my ears making me wipe my tears and look up.

I see the boy from before walking up to me. He looks about my age with fluffy, medium brown hair. He's tall and rather attractive, wearing a school uniform from another local school. I can't remember which one at the moment.

"What? Yeah, I'm fine," I tell him quickly, flashing a fake smile, something I've been doing quite a lot recently.

The boy narrows his eyes studying me. "Look, I may not be an expert on women's feelings, but I do know that when a crying girl says she's 'fine,' she's not."

"I wasn't crying," I shoot back.

"You were balling your eyes out, sweetheart. Just admit it," he scoffs with an eye roll. "Even my nephew could tell."

I glance at the young boy pulling himself up on top of the monkey bars and crawling across them.

"Be careful, Takeru!" he calls to the boy, then looks back at me, his hands on his hips as if waiting for me to respond.

"Okay, I was crying," I mutter. "What's it to you?"

"What were you crying about?" He takes a seat on the swing next to me, still keeping an eye on his nephew.

I'm about to spit out another defensive retort when I stop myself. This guy goes to a different school, and I've never seen him before. I could spill everything to him, and nothing would get out. We are perfect strangers, and I'm probably never going to see him again. He could be a good person to vent to.

I take a breath. "A lot of things," I say softly. "Its stupid really."

"If it made you cry that much its not stupid," he comments. "So what happened, if you mind me asking."

"Well the first thing that's been eating away at me for the past couple weeks is that my family needed to put our dog down two weeks ago," I start.

The boy next to me sighs sadly. "I'm sorry. That must have been difficult."

I just nod. "Well, because of that my grades slipped since I had two big exams a couple days after that." I draw patterns in the dirt with the tip of my shoe as I speak.

"Didn't you talk to the teachers about it?" he asks me. "Surely they would have let you take the exams a day or two later so you have time to grieve."

I just shake my head. "That's not right. I can't just cry my way out of difficult things to make my life easier," I say.

"Isn't that what you were just doing?" He pushes himself off a bit, making him swing slightly.

"I wasn't doing it to get pity," I answer. "I just needed to let off some steam."

"I get it," he nods. "You can't keep your emotions bottled up for too long or else it could drag you down."

"Yeah, I need to study a lot more now to pull my grades back up if I want to become a oncologist," I comment.

"You wanna be a oncologist?" The boy looks at me, cocking his head to the side.

"Yeah, but I won't be if I can't get into a good college," I add.