"Tock, tock," the door was being knocked repeatedly.
"Tock, tock," I could hear it in my half-asleep state.
"Tock, tock," I could barely open my eyes.
The soft bed enveloped my body with its warm blankets. I had a pounding headache. It was so intense that it felt like someone had used a jackhammer inside my skull. Amidst it all, I managed to hear distortedly:
"Come on, wake up. Breakfast will be ready soon."
I could recognize the voice of the person who was yelling and knocking without restraint. It was my teacher, who, in her brusque manner, was pounding on the door to encourage me to come out.
Door? Only then did my brain start working. Which door could she possibly be knocking on? As I got up and sat down, I realized that I was in my hotel room. The strangest thing was that I didn't remember ever returning there...
"Tock, tock." I heard two more knocks coming from outside the door, so I decided to respond by shouting:
"Yes, here I am. I'm almost ready."
"Alright." After that statement, she must have walked away and went to wake up other kids because I didn't hear her shouting towards my room anymore.
"What a racket. Can you all please be quiet..."
"?"
But what...
A faint voice emerged from beneath the covers, causing them to shift as a second person in my bed woke up. The second person also sat up on the bed, and as they rose, the blankets descended and settled on the mattress, revealing the face of the person in question...
"Yuto-kun?!"
My face, upon seeing his figure revealed from the bedsheet, left me perplexed and embarrassed. Surely my face turned completely red from surprise.
The boy was still groggy from sleep. He touched his head with his left hand and ran it through his hair. He seemed a bit disoriented as well, to the point where he didn't notice my presence or realize that the room wasn't his.
It took us a second or two, more or less, to start looking around. He moved his head from right to left a couple of times. It took a third turn for him to recall his surroundings, and after turning his head toward me...
"Ah!!"
...he realized the situation.
With the little gasp of surprise he let out, he abruptly moved to the edge of the bed and ended up falling to the floor due to the surprise his awakening had in store for him.
"Ouch!!"
He exclaimed in pain from the fall.
His face turned a faint shade of red, and amidst the confusion of the situation, he tried to lighten the mood by saying,
"Well... good morning..."
I returned his greeting,
"Good... morning."
"Well... how did we end up like this?"
He asked, accompanied by a slight chuckle.
"Good... question... I don't remember much from the previous evening. Or rather, I remember that we went to the lakeshore."
"Oh, yes, that's right. We drank that bottle of sake."
Ah, yes, we had gotten drunk...
The two of us drank an entire bottle of sake together. That explained why the memories of the previous night were so hazy and the pounding headache.
"I also recall another detail..."
Immediately after finishing that sentence, he averted his gaze, his face turning red again.
"Well..."
Just as I was about to ask what he had remembered, the scene of our kiss suddenly flashed in my mind...
I lowered my head, my eyes fixed on the bedsheets, consumed by the discomfort of that moment.
"And... why did we sleep... in the same bed?"
I asked, still looking downward.
"I remember bringing you here because you couldn't stand on your own... not that I was any better."
"Right! I remember that then, the first one to collapse onto the bed was you."
"Oh, really? Ahaha."
A few seconds of silence. The embarrassment in the air was palpable...
"Well, we could talk... about what happened yesterday at the lakeshore..."
I didn't let him finish his sentence, even though it was clear what he wanted to talk about.
"I think you should go. I'd like to get ready and freshen up a bit before going down for breakfast."
"Oh... alright."
He said so, but I could see a hint of disappointment on his face.
He got up from the floor and walked towards the door.
He put on his shoes and...
"See you later."
...he said with his back turned to me.
As he opened the door, he made sure no teacher or girl would pass by. Who knows what would have happened if it had been known that a boy and a girl had spent the night in the same room. Fortunately, there was no one around, so he left almost immediately.
Let's just say I wasn't in the mood to discuss the topic at that moment. I had experienced too many emotions in less than ten minutes, and I didn't feel like having that conversation, even though the idea of our kiss had made my heart race, but in a positive sense.
I began to think that perhaps, more than the embarrassment, my reaction was driven by the feelings I unconsciously had for him.
The real question now is: how do you listen to these feelings?