"Oh!" I exclaimed. "I remember this!"
We were back in my middle school classroom.
This time, all the students were sitting on their respective chairs and tables. In front of the classroom was a whiteboard and a teacher waiting for a particular student to answer her question.
"Who is he?" Death asked curiously.
"Crash, the first person I fell in love with," I said, feeling a little giddy at this childish memory. "Or at least, that's what I thought I felt towards him."
"It was most likely just infatuation." Death shrugged. "A middle schooler can't possibly know the depth of love."
Crash was a typical varsity player; he rarely attended class and always gave the "I was training" excuse whenever his teachers questioned his perpetual absence.
He was once gone for three consecutive weeks, but he was given leeway for "bringing glory to the school," as the teachers would say.
He was muscular and well-built at such a young age. To be honest, he looked like any other kid in the room. He wasn't spectacularly handsome; he just had a pretty muscular body.
He also wasn't intelligent, and he's the type of groupmate who won't participate in the activity but will demand you to put his name in the group output anyway.
"He seems like a shitty person," Death noted.
"He truly is," I agreed.
"Crash!" The teacher sounded impatient. "So, what's the answer to my question?"
Crash was panicking.
He hadn't been listening, so not only did he not know the answer, he didn't even know the question itself. He turned towards me, his seat-neighbor, and talked to me for the first time.
"Psst. Hey!" He whisper-shouted and gave his best impression of puppy eyes. He was asking—practically begging—for my help.
That was the first time since middle school started that someone dared to talk to me. To say that I was elated was an understatement. I didn't even consider the punishment should the teacher catch me coaching him. I just gave him the answer.
"Spices", I whispered.
Crash repeated what I said, surprising our teacher. She stared at him suspiciously. When everybody knows you as the brawny-but-not-brainy type of kid, it makes sense to expect that kind of reaction. Seconds passed, and Crash was starting to look visibly nervous.
"You must work hard to balance your studying time and training, Crash. Good job!" The teacher praised him. "Now, let's go to Evangeline. What do you call…"
My younger self stood up and answered our teacher's question quickly. I was still in my obsessed-with-grades phase, naively believing it was the only thing that could get me closer to Granma. Of course, no matter how hard I tried, nothing I did was ever enough.
But returning to the memory, Crash looked at me as I sat back down.
"Thanks, Vermillion; you're good at studying!" He whisper-shouted again.
I honestly had no idea how our teacher didn't hear that; our classmates could probably hear him from the other side of the room. His last comment made me feel a certain way, though. Blood rose to my face and all the way up my ears.
"Wow," Death faked amusement. "This guy just gave you a half-assed compliment, and you became a blushing mess. Why would you have a crush on a pathetic excuse for a student?"
"In my defense, this is the first time in a while that someone showed me appreciation," I answered rather brusquely.
"I would've given you more appreciation than you need," Death muttered.
He must've thought I wouldn't hear him. But I did.
Death seemed kinder than I thought a personification of death would be.
"So that was your first exposure to romance. I get it. Now, get to the part where he dumped you."
I take that back, he's an asshole.
"Why are you already assuming that he will dump me?" I feigned hurt.
"You said that he was your FIRST love," Death pointed out. "There will likely be a second love, which means the first one will break your heart. Am I not right?"
I gave him a long look. I wanted to argue, but he was right.
Accepting defeat, I could only roll my eyes. "Anyway…"
So that's how young-and-dumb me started to fall for Crash.
Ever since that day, I started to notice him more often. I noticed how his laughter was funny (he sounded like a screeching dolphin), how his T-shirt clung to his skin (he does a lot of training), and how often he was absent from class (which left a gaping hole in my heart because it made me miss him).
When he was in class, however, I always ended up staring at him when I daydreamed.
His presence kept giving me this weird foreign feeling in my chest, and I quickly became addicted to it. I started to like him more and more each day. The more I obsessed over him, the more helpless I became.
"You sound like those weirdos who hyper-fixate on their crushes just because they received the slightest bit of kindness from them," Death said.
I wanted to argue that I wasn't, but honestly, I was.
Maybe I still am.
The In-Between changed its shape again. Instead of my middle school classroom, we are now inside a supermarket. It wasn't its usual supermarket-y self, though. It had red heart balloons everywhere. Chocolates lined the forefront shelves, and the prices were rocket-high.
"It seems like Valentine's Day is around the corner," Death commented.
I nodded. "I had been saving up for this Valentine's for a while. I wanted to confess to Crash and see where that would take me."
"How about some Belgian chocolate?" The younger me said to no one in particular while scanning the chocolates on display.
I was looking for the best/most popular brand, and after combing through the entire aisle, I finally found the perfect chocolate. It was the assorted type of chocolate box, with twelve pieces of different flavors, ranging from caramel chocolate to almond white. I was about to put it in my cart, but my eyes bulged when I saw the price.
"THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS?!" I shouted, making everyone in the aisle stare. When I realized what I'd just done, I awkwardly smiled at them. Thankfully, they returned to their merry ways.
"What?!" Even Death was surprised. "That's outrageous!"
"Okay!" Death and I watched as younger me gleefully placed the ridiculously expensive chocolate in her shopping cart.
"W-Why would you do that?" Death looked like he was questioning all of my decisions in life.
"Because my classmates kept going about having boyfriends…" I felt I needed to defend my younger self. "And well, I got jealous."
Death facepalmed.
"I liked him, at least. That's what I thought at that time." I explained as my younger self skipped giddily to the checkout line. It was there that I thought of my 3-phase 'foolproof' plan of attack. Buying the chocolates was Phase 1.
"Phase 1?" He eyed me skeptically.
"He's a famous athlete at school, so I understood the competition would be tough. I needed an advantage over the other girls, right? So I decided to save some of my allowance and get the most premium chocolate I could find."
"But still—" Death looked bothered. "Is that reason enough to waste money on something that's technically a block of sugar?"
"Hey!" I pouted. "I was young and in love."
"No," Death shook his head. "It looks to me that you were young and desperate."