003

The brown-haired, blue-eyed twenty-year-old guy stared hard at the yellow walls decorated with pictures of cakes around the Anne's Delicious Cakes at The Droveway, Hove. He had been there with his two other guy friends for almost an hour, waiting for their two other female lecture mates to show up. They were all getting tired of waiting, feeling bored.

“My hot choc is finished and the three cake slices are all in my belly,” Matsumoto, the only Japanese out of the three, commented to his other two friends. To make it easier for other people to call him, he nicknamed himself Matt, which was not even his idea in the beginning since it was his lecture mates who started calling him by that name. “Where are these girls??”

The other guy with the blond hair, who is also an American, Brian spoke up. “Who knows… if they’re not here in 5 minutes–”

“Yo, I see them. That’s Sarah,” the brown-haired guy interrupted as he saw two girls entered the café at the entrance door. The rest of the guys turned to the door to look. They all knew Sarah but not the other girl she was with, although they were all set up together to work on the assignment they had which was planned by Sarah. “That other girl was supposed to be Nurul Nisa, as what Sarah told me.”

Sarah said something to Nisa as they both looked around the café, looking for the three boys but did not seem to see them. Matsumoto just looked at them. “They can’t see us here. We seem to be hidden or something.”

“I’ll go.” At that, Brian and Matsumoto looked at their friend getting up from his seat to go and get the girls. Still standing, Sarah and Nisa looked clueless. Then Sarah digged into her white purse to get her cell phone to make a call while Nisa just looked around.

The guy who went to approach them stood behind them, trying not to be noisy in doing so. “Yo,” he whispered to Nisa’s left ear from her back, resulting in quite a shock out of her that came out as her mumbling something out to him, fast-paced as she turned around to look at him.

“Yah!” Nisa yelled out when she saw him. The guy grinned at her. Apparently, he was a lot taller than her, as her head did not even reach the height of his shoulders.

“Whoa, chill there miss,” he said to her, glancing at Sarah who had turned over to look at Nisa and him when she heard Nisa’s loud voice. “You girls are way, way late!” His grin suddenly faded away. He was then glaring at both of the girls, expecting an apology and a reasonable explanation.

“Okay, Pen, I’m sorry, really, I am. I woke up late and later we were stuck in a traffic jam. Really, I’m sorry. I know you guys all have your own stuff to do. I didn’t mean to slow you down. It won’t happen again,” Sarah went up to him, doing her explanation. The guy let out a long sigh after that, not really knowing what to say anymore.

“Well, come over.” He invited the girls to follow him and walked over to where all the guys were seated at originally. “Really don’t wanna comment on it much anymore, since we’ve been tired of waiting. Just don’t do it again.”

Sarah replied with a short “Sure” as Nisa only nodded, feeling quite bad as well. She felt even worse, as she did not really know the guys who were all Sarah’s friends, not hers.

When they got at the table, Sarah apologized to the other boys. She sat with them, joined by Nisa and Pen.

“No sweat, since you’re already here. We’ll go on with it now,” Matsumoto told them. “Then, you’re Nurul Nisa, huh?” He looked at her with a friendly smile. Nisa suddenly blushed, as at that moment everyone looked at him.

“Ah, yeah.” She nodded. “Just call me Nisa.”

Pen smiled at her. “We won’t eat you so relax.”

“Yup,” Brian sat up straight to talk to her, as she stood just opposite to him. “You know our names, right?”

Sarah got a surprised look on her face at that question by Brian. She had forgotten to introduce them to her or even told her who is who. “I forgot ‘bout that. From left, Pen the wacko, that’s Brian and Matsumoto, we all call him Matt.”

“Or you can call him Pencil,” Brian joked, laughing at Pen.

Oh man, haha, here it goes again, Pen thought to himself. “Yeah sure.” Pen threw his tissue at the man, as he grinned at Nisa. “You know my real name?”

Nisa widened her eyes, looking like a blur, as she saw Sarah smiling at her. “Not really… Sarah told me nothing much…” She glared at Sarah.

“Well then. My name’s Pennsylvania McCain… most people call me Pen, but there are others who call me other names like Pencil like Mr Nice Guy, Brian here.”

“Yeah, and this is like Mr Stationery,” Brian replied.

“Come now, it’s not good to say so, B,” Sarah commented. “You can call him anything you like, Nisa, for this Brian guy. He’s really no nice guy.”

A sweet smile appeared on Nisa’s face. “Cool, sure.”

Matsumoto just sat still at his seat with a smile, as if analyzing every one of them there. “The names thing, done yet? Can we move on?”

“Yeah sure, sorry guys we were late,” Nisa said.

“Nah… now then... let’s begin!” Pen declared. They all gathered the papers on the table to get started on their assignment.

Here we go. Another good start to things, Pen thought to himself again.