章 33: One Sleepless Night...

Hayashi Sakura yawned in pure delight as she is now getting ready to sleep in her bed. She had already finished all her homeworks as early as possible and changed into her pajamas as well so that she could retire to bed early. All that hard work she is exerting at work really drained her energy up tonight.

Sakura stretched her arms for a while before letting her body fall straight to bed and positioned herself comfortably so that she could fall asleep right away. Yawning one last time, Sakura immediately closed her eyes before she finally felt herself being drift away to sleep.

"Go f-faster… Please!"

But not until her crazy, insensitive and sexually-active neighbors next door starts to make unnecessary moaning noises that makes her eyes snap open in an instant.

"Oh, come on! Let me sleep peacefully for now guys!"

To her annoyance, Sakura was forced to sit straight in her bed and begrudgingly bangs the wall with her fist. However, the couple next door were too tangled up into their own little world that they barely hear the noises that Sakura is making now.

Frowning, Sakura now totally gets up from bed and fetches her earplugs from her school bag. Once done, she goes back to bed with the earplugs placed on both ears while a relaxing music is currently playing on her phone to somehow help her get back to sleep.

As her neighbors next door continue with their endeavor, Sakura sees herself being awake all night as she frustratingly stared at the ceiling. Unfortunately for her, the relaxing music she expected to make her fall asleep didn't really work on her until the time came when those noises finally died down for what seems like an eternity for Sakura, as if her neighbors had heard her plea earlier.

Sighing an excruciating sigh, Sakura mutters to herself, "Finally! I could go back to sleep now."

Her now heavy eyelids have immediately closed under her command, and her mind is now being drifted back to dreamland where she already managed to go to a few moments ago.

Ring! Ring! Ring!

But once Sakura manages to go back to sleep, another distraction comes into her way…

"What now?!" she yells in frustration before lazily lifting her hand up to get her phone. She was about to turn off the alarm when she was able to have a slightly blurry view of the time on her phone screen.

Sakura's eyes swung open and her jaw almost dropped upon seeing what time it is now.

"It's already six in the morning?!"

***

Hayashi Sakura walked like a real-life zombie in the hallways of the Business and Economics department building while she was making her way towards their first-period class. She could literally feel her eyes drooping from time to time and her mouth constantly yawning that it makes her tired right now. Still, Sakura tried her best to stay alert for as long as she can.

"Good morning…" Sakura managed to greet her friends Nakano Yuna and Tanaka Ryo in a toneless voice devoid of any emotions. The pair are now in their seats right behind hers and instantly whipped their head to face the girl who just greeted them.

Yuna almost let out a dramatic gasp as she came face-to-face with Sakura's sleepless demeanor. To her astonishment, she pointed out, "Gosh, Hayashi-san! You look like a walking zombie right now!"

Sakura was too sleepy to care about the sarcasm in between those lines and mindlessly placed her bag in her chair before settling down comfortably. This is the exact reason why she avoided being with Alan on the train going to school today. She just can't let him see her dead-ass face right now.

"Blame my neighbors for being so incredibly loud in the middle of the night." Sakura still had that dead-tone voice and puffed out some air in frustration before placing both her arms around her to serve as her alternative pillow in the meantime.

"Wow. That must be tough." Ryo commented as he sipped his yogurt drink.

Sighing, Sakura replied, "Tell me about it." before placing her head on her cuddled arms and instinctively closed her eyes.

By the time Mori Ken arrives at their room, he immediately spots Hayashi Sakura sleeping soundly in her chair. With a confused look on his face, he turned towards Yuna and Ryo and asked them what is going on with the sleeping girl right next to his seat as he settled down in his chair.

"I don't know. Sakura mentioned some noisy neighbors of hers earlier that caused her to be awake all night." Yuna tries to reiterate what Sakura had told them earlier before she dozed off to sleep.

Confusion was then replaced with genuine concern all over Ken's face as he returned his gaze at the sleeping girl on his right.

Suddenly, some memories of them came flashing back on his head as Ken continued to stare right into Sakura's angelic sleeping face.

[Ken goes back from using Sakura's bathroom back in the days when they were still playing games in their house when he immediately spots the girl sleeping with her body still seated on the floor and her head lying down on their three-seater couch.

"Sakura-chan?" Ken tried to call out her attention, but the girl was too sleepy to notice his voice right now.

'She must have been tired from a half day's work selling their vegetables with her mother at the market.' Ken thought to himself.

He completely knows about their vegetable business that Sakura's mother started ever since she began cultivating their backyard and turned it into a vegetable garden.

Sakura would offer help from time to time and walked with her mother in the morning during weekends to sell their vegetables of different sorts. Once afternoon strikes, she and her mother returns home immediately with all the money they got from selling their goods and that's when he enters the scene a few moments after Sakura arrived and washed up.

Seeing her sleeping like this truly makes Ken in awe. For him, Sakura looks like an angel directly descended from heaven when she is being this vulnerable in front of him.

Some of her hair is now covering her face, making Ken reach out to it and tuck it behind her ears to reveal her full beauty in front of his eyes.

Before he knew it, that's when he started feeling his chest pound louder than he could ever imagine in his entire life…]

As Ken succumbs into his thoughts, his hand has already made its way to reach out for Sakura's hair that is slightly covering her face. For every seconds that passed by, he could literally feel his heart hammering all throughout his chest as his hand was getting nearer to her hair.

'What is wrong with me? It's just her hair, no big deal.' Ken tried to reason out, but as much as he would like to deny it, he could clearly identify these feelings that had once confused him in the past.

Just as his hand is already a few inches away from his former childhood friend, Sakura's chestnut brown eyes suddenly snap open as she feels the presence of their teacher who had just entered their classroom.

Before she could have a full grasp of what is going on around her, Ken returns his hand to his side in a lightning speed and turns his face away from the girl seated right next to her.