Getting ready for school had always been a great struggle for Mai. She would usually set multiple alarms on her phone to try and wake her up every five minutes, and eventually after turning off the fourth one, she would end up having a cold shower forcing her to wake up.
However, today she was quite awake, for some reason although her body felt well rested, her mind did not.
'Was it something to do with that strange dream I had yesterday?' She started to wonder, but that memory led to another. It was the first day she would be going back to school and running into him again.
'No! No! No! I don't want to go to school today.' She screamed and jumped back in her bed sticking her head into the pillow.
She was sure by now everyone in the whole village of Simple would know about it by now. With its small population of only around a thousand people, everyone knew everything about each other.
"Mai, will you get your small little butt moving!" her mother shouted from below. "Simon has been waiting outside for five minutes already."
She couldn't delay the inevitable, no matter how much she wanted to go back in time and change the past. Rushing downstairs, Mai quickly grabbed a slice of bread and a carton of milk before rushing out of her door only to see a short blonde haired boy with his bicycle waiting for her outside.
"Hey, Mai, did you have a good birthday?" Simon asked, waving with a smile so great that it made him look like a little pomsky. Immediately when Mai saw this she felt better and had the sudden urge to tap the top of Simon's head who was about the same size as her.
The two of them got on well, Simon's parents were friends with hers, and the two of them grew up together. Mai treated Simon well, always looking after him when he would get bullied by older kids since he was short for his age, and saw him as the little brother she always wished and wanted. Alas, her parents only ever gave her an annoying little sister.
"Yeah it was okay, but I had a horrible day yesterday." Mai replied, as she proceeded to get on the back of Simon's bike.
"Oh right, is this about Chris?" Simon asked as he started to peddle away to school, but his feet started pedaling faster as he could feel a fire burning up behind him after asking that question.
"I'm so stupid!" Mai eventually screamed. "I just thought it was the right time, you know we had been working together on that school science project and we both seemed to get on well, and then when the project was over I knew there wouldn't be many chances to go ahead and meet him again."
"So you decided to say… 'Oh, Chris, we had a great time working on the project together, so maybe you and I can work on a relationship project, together?'" Simon said, trying his best to imitate Mai's soft voice.
"What?! I didn't say that, where did you hear that from!"
"It's just what I heard online, well read to be accurate."
As expected, Mai's worst fears were coming true as rumors had already started circulating in this little village and she was sure they would soon go out of hand.
"Don't worry Mai." Simon said. "I've heard that Chris has never even had a girlfriend before, so it's not like you're the only one he's rejected, maybe he even swings swords."
"Swings swords?" Mai looked at him with a confused expression, unsure what his potential hobbies might have to do with her.
"Oh you poor, kind hearted girl." Simon sighed, speeding up going off to school.
On the short journey to school, Mai couldn't help but think back to the dream she had. Not only did they have a relationship in that dream, but they had even been married. Yes, it was regrettable that he was dead, but more importantly to the current her, if it was real, how did Mai get him to say yes?
As they got closer to school, the other students and mainly the girls started to look towards Mai, and they could be seen whispering.
"Wow, do students in this village really have nothing better to do than talk about what happened between you and Chris?" Simon pointed out, parking up the bike. "You should just ignore them, it's just some Highschool gossip. Things are bound to die down after a week or two. There will be something else that everyone talks about soon. If you are really worried, I could always confess to you and then that would be the new rumor passed around."
"Please." Mai replied. "If a new rumor does go around, I don't want to be the centre of attention for it, and you may not know this but you have your own fan club of girls that are lining up to ask you out as well."
"I think you used the right word, they like me because they think I'm cute, not because of me." Simon replied.
Heading into the classroom. Mai stood outside her classroom door for a few seconds and even now she could hear someone talking about her.
"Can you believe she asked out Chris? If he wouldn't go out with me then why does she think he would go out with her?" A high pitched voice argued.
"And to do it infront of everyone in the class! Does she really think she's so pretty that she can just publicly ask someone out like that?!" Another voice chimed in.
"Hmph, she has that Simon guy wrapped around her finger and probably thought she could do the same with Chris." A third girl badmouthed Mai.
Clenching her fist, she had enough. She didn't care what people said about her, but getting Simon involved in this was where she drew the line. She hated that now her rumours were involving others. She opened the door and was ready to give the girls a telling off.
Walking into the room, She looked at the three girls in the front of the class that were talking bad about her, and unsurprisingly it was Vicky, the class diva, and her two friends Sandra and Naomi.
In the past they had never really had any bad run-ins with each other, but they did have a bad attitude when it came to school and everything else with it. The pretty girls from the village, and the one with the biggest head of them all was Vicky, who had been scouted as a model.
She regularly went to the city and came back with the latest Bannel handbags and more. Seeing this the other two latched on like leeches.
'Mum said that the first important thing is studying, and here we have the stupidest girl in the class being the most successful! Explain that mum!'
Walking up to her, the reaction for the girls was not one they were expecting as all three of them started to blush. It was clear that their little chit-chat wasn't really meant for her, and when she turned around she could see Chris standing there behind her.
The first thing she noticed was his soft green eyes that looked as if they had no emotion, but at the same time had a history, stories to tell. There were countless times where Mai would just look at them and be lost forever daydreaming.
"Mai, I wanted to say I'm sorry for turning you down like that yesterday." Chris began. "You're a really pretty girl, you're actually fun to be with and you make me laugh like no one else. I think you would make a good girlfriend… for someone else someday. It's not you, it's me. I'm just not looking for a girlfriend right now. Hope you can understand."
And just like yesterday, he didn't give Mai a chance to reply and just went to sit in his seat at the corner of the class staring out the window.
He sat down, and looked outside comfortably just like he did every other day as if it was a normal day for him.
'No, why did you have to do that? Why did you have to be so nice to me when turning me down? Are you an idiot! Are you just making me fall for you more? I need to hate you to forget about you!'
But Mai realised this would be a hard task with the two of them being in the same classroom. Sitting at the front row, the furthest away from Chris, she wondered if the two of them would ever have any more interactions after today, the sad reality was there probably would never speak again, and her first love would be just that. A first love.
The male teacher, Mr Hilston entered the room, pushing his thin round glasses back on top of his face. He stood at the front of the class and didn't start taking the register like he usually would. Instead it looked like he had some type of announcement to make.
"Alright Class, pay attention, I know it's unusual and late in the school year but we have a new transfer student coming in today! As you know our class has the lowest number of students."
"And the stupidest!" One of the students shouted out, making the rest chuckle.
Mr Hilston sighed, and looked at Mai, his saving grace. Although the rest of the students in the class got quite horrible grades, the girl more than made up for them, getting the highest grades in the whole school.
"Please welcome your new student, Shirley Whitwaker." The teacher announced with his hand led out to the door.
When the door opened, a stunning girl with long brown hair walked through the doors.
'No, wait…' Mai thought as she saw her, and when she turned around and could see her face clearly, Mai's hands were now trembling.
"Hi everyone, my name is Shirley Whitwaker and I hope to get on with you all." She introduced herself with a small curtsy, making her all the more charming in the boys' eyes.
The girl she was looking at, who she should have met for the first time in her life… was the same girl she had met at Chris' funeral in her dream!
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