I stare at my phone, willing it to ring, even checking I haven't somehow broken it or switched it to do not disturb somehow but everything seems to be as it should be. So why hasn't she called? "Ken, hurry up, we're heading to the bar." Harrison calls from the door of the dressing room. It's nearly 4am and Jenny and I had a phone date an hour ago, but she didn't answer when I tried. "Kenji Ikeda, get your butt out here and take your sister drinking." Akira shouts, then almost a second later she's barging into my room and snatching my phone from my hand. "She's probably still asleep, she'll ring when she wakes up. Come on." "Ok, ok, fine." As soon as I stand up she passes my phone back, dragging me by the arm out of my room to cheers of "finally" from everyone else. I turn the volume and vibrate up full, keeping it in my pocket the entire night, pulling it out every so often to see if I've missed her call, but nothing and I can't help worrying. We haven't missed a call once in thre
"So, Kenji, you've been in the news recently when it was discovered you were in a relationship, anything you can tell us about the lucky lady?" Jonathan Ross' voice comes through the phone of the girls in front of me and without seeing it, I know that the show is showing a picture of him at the airport with his sister and her best friend."Ah, yeah, well, that's actually my sister Akira. Hi Kira." Kenji waves at the camera before turning back to the screen. "And the girl beside her is her best friend and actually Jamie's little sister, Charlotte. Neither of which I am dating.""Bet he's shagged Jamie's sister though." One of the girls comments and they both giggle."Ok, well, does that mean you're single then?" As though I'm watching it again, I can see Kenji laugh, his cheeks turning a little red and Jonathan spots it immediately. "There is someone, come on, tell us all about her.""Right, well, I can't really, it's still really early days, but what I can tell you is she's special. S
"Come on in, quickly." Jenny opens her front door, pulling me through and closing it behind her. She's gotten very good at doing that without being seen from outside which is weirdly impressive to me.Ever since I declared my interest in her on the Jonathan Ross show, I've been followed even more than usual, so I've upped the disguise to avoid being spotted when I come to visit her. I'm lucky it's cold enough for woolly hats and scarves so I blend right in."Fish and chips, I definitely want proper greasy fish and chips tonight. I might even get gravy too. Oooo or curry sauce." The voice in the hallway has her stopping on the spot, her eyes wide with panic and this I'm less impressed by. She's still keeping me secret from her friends, even the couple I accidentally met before. The voices get quieter as they go the opposite way and once we hear a door shut, she relaxes, tugging me along to her room and locking the door behind us."Hi." She finally smiles at me, breathing a sigh of reli
"Oh Jenny, I'm so disappointed, I thought he was just a one night stand. I was so proud." Luke grins as he dodges Cleo who is trying to shut him up. "I've renounced my manwhore ways, but I thought I had converted you, I was going to share tips and live vicariously through you.""Vicariously?" I grin at him, surprisingly relieved that Kenji meeting my friends went better than anticipated. "Did I not use that right?" He stops and Cleo manages to grab him, slapping her hand over his mouth."No, no, you actually did. I'm just surprised you used it at all." I catch the pillow he launches in my direction, then another and somehow a third between the two and toss them back, hitting him in the side of the head. "Don't mess with me, I'm happy and I've got mad ninja skills.""You do seem happy." Elsie walks into the kitchen and grabs a banana. She's very slowly coming around to us all and we make an extra effort to include her whenever she ventures out without Billy by her side."More importa
I wake up with a dead arm, my fingertips tingling but feeling foreign on my arm which is acting like it's doubled in size overnight and Jenny's housemate is singing loudly again as he walks past her room while his girlfriend tries hard to make him be quiet. I'm not sure why she still tries, I've only slept here a dozen or so nights and even I can tell it doesn't work, in fact, it might just make it a little bit worse. "I hate him so much." Jenny moans, curling into me further and releasing the pressure on my arm which is then swamped with the prickle of pins and needles as it comes back to life. "It's five in the morning... On a Saturday. It's like he has to punish those of us who aren't masochistic enough to voluntarily get up that early." "Shh he's gone now, go back to sleep." I whisper, stroking her hair with my normal, tingle free hand, loving the feel of her snuggled into my chest. It's been so good the last few weeks, we've hung out with her friends quite a bit and even her si
Kenji is not a morning person, if anything I would say he's an anti-morning person, he's happy to stay up until the early hours, but getting him out of bed before ten o'clock is challenging. He pretends not to notice when I'm trying to escape his clutches and when I finally manage to get up, he burrows deep under the quilt and fakes being asleep, therefore he apparently can't hear me talking to him. This also means that the first thing he wants to do when we get into town is to go and get brunch, which seems to be fairly difficult when he's also trying to keep himself disguised from being recognised. "Oh em gee, are you Kenji from Kokoro?" A woman shoves past me to sit beside Kenj as soon as he removes his scarf. "Nanishiteruno." (What are you doing?) Kenji shouts suddenly, standing up and taking my hand. "Daijōbu desu ka?" (Are you ok?) I have no idea what he's saying but I'm guessing it's Japanese and am incredibly impressed that he can speak it. I don't know why I never assumed
Jenny left early this morning for a class, from my room in the hotel, after we ordered breakfast and had it together in bed. I hadn't planned to, but I fell back to sleep once she was gone, waking up to the noise of my friends playing music in the communal space."Kenj, I didn't realise you were still here? Thought you'd gone out early this morning." Harrison said, a pen in his hand as well as his acoustic guitar in his lap. "I know we're meant to be on break for Christmas, but it's been a few weeks now and I was itching to play something.""Nah, it's all good, what've you got so far?" I sit on the arm of the chair and listen to the tune he's written so far. For the next few hours we're in "musicland", a place where nothing but the room being on fire could tear us away from what we're doing and I'm fairly certain even then we'd still be working out lyrics and chords while we watched the fire brigade doing their thing."What's going on for dinner? Shall we order in or go out?" Laurie a
I'm not normally the paranoid type, but I'm pretty sure people are talking about me. I've been in the library since my last lecture and about an hour ago there was an influx of girls filling the tables near mine. I'm trying to tell myself it's because it's nearly the last week before the Christmas break, but about three quarters of the people in here seem more interested in what I'm doing than the books right in front of them.When the same girl looks my way for like the fiftieth time, whispering something to the girl beside her, I don't care if it's paranoia or not, I know I'm too distracted to get any work done here and I'll have to risk there not being a party at mine so I can try to get a good chunk of my work done there.Packing up my stuff quietly, I hear the footsteps getting closer before I look up and see three girls, including the one who couldn't stop looking at me, standing beside me."Hi, you're Jenny Kaur, right?" The peeping Tom says, smiling from ear to ear. "I'm Rache