I don't have friends. The last person I called 'friend'- I lost today. It isn't because he moved, graduated, switched schools or died. What I had believed to be a 'friendship' was just a mockery, you see, behind my back he liked to make fun of me with all of his friends. I hadn't known this, until he decided to be upfront to my face. Not in the sense that he told me they all disliked me for being different. He was trying to make them laugh- knowing full well they didn't like me, and I didn't like them, by humiliating me. That was the last straw. I was tired of being mocked for not being the same as everyone else, what was so ideal about being 'normal'? Why be like everyone else, when you can be an individual? I'm sort of proud, for what I did to 'thank' him for the false 'friendship'. Something in me just snapped, my hands balled into fists, eyes narrowed, and I shouted out at him every last thing that had annoyed me through the years of enduring through his company. "God, do you morons ever grow up!? I mean, all you do is pull the same stupid, immature pranks that nobody gives a damn about! You look to the other idiots in your group to make sure they're laughing with you- because you're all so stunned and stupid you may as well have a few extra chromosomes!" the shock on his and the clique he called 'friends' face was priceless, but I didn't stop there. And maybe I should have. I don't exactly regret what I said, but it did land me in the counselor's office, only after I explained to the principal the current situation, so he wouldn't call my parents. He did believe me, because of the fact that my school record doesn't have any strikes against it. In fact, I think this was the first one.

"Yukiteru Amano." my guidance counselor folded her hands neatly, smiled at me with what wasn't exactly a false sense of kindness, atleast..not that I could tell. "You had an outburst today, may I ask why?" I stared at her name plaque while she spoke to me, trying to summon up some form of an answer. Maybe it had been from accumulated years of bullying from elementary school, middle school and now into highschool. People didn't like me and why, I didn't know. In the very beginning, I had tried to make friends, be friendly..but somehow they all decided that I was beneath them. It hadn't attributed to my social skills, or lack thereof. My attention was forced from my thoughts as she cleared her throat in a polite manner, and repeated the question.

"I.." I finally began to speak, my former bout of being abrasive was clearly gone, as I was nervous to speak with her. I always had anxiety when it came to these kinds of things, speaking to adults/faculty at school. "thought he was my friend, but he decided to throw me under the bus so him and his herd of annoying friends could get a few laughs." I didn't know what else to add after that. After a bit of silence, and her obviously waiting for a bit more elaboration, I began to speak again "I got sick of being treated like dirt. Of being looked down on, for being different." I couldn't exactly just start spouting off about all of my issues, because that's just not the way that I am. But I did give her enough to go off on, to know about the situation. I fidgeted with my hands, because she was making me nervous.

She nodded calmly to me, continuing to smile, "Bullying is something that isn't tolerated here at this school, Yukiteru. If you had told us about this sooner, we could have handled it. But I can still help you, switch your classes so that you and he- or any of friends won't be in the same classes, if that helps at all?" she asked, "You know, if you ever need help with any personal matters, you can always come to me, right?"

"I didn't come to anyone, because..I thought I had a friend, someone to talk to, who at the very least got me on some level. I didn't think that I'd be betrayed by him, maybe I was just a little too naive to believe someone would befriend me." I sighed, "I think..I'd like for my classes to be switched around." not saying a word about her confronting them, because I knew it was useless. Something about me, just always made teachers want to defend me. Maybe I was just weak. They saw me as some frail boy, an outcast who always needed to be sheltered, because I didn't speak my mind about things. At school, I was a docile, 'kind' person who didn't fight back. People called me all sorts of things behind my back, whispered things about me, spread odd rumors and tried everything to make me miserable.

Maybe they succeeded. I was miserable, beyond all relief. Sitting in the halls at lunch, alone, reading books or sometimes actually eating my lunch, while select few faculty saw me and decided to strike up conversation about varying things I had little interest in. The vice principal had semi-startled me, by saying that he knew exactly who I was. This ordinarily wouldn't be such a peculiar thing- save for the fact that there were a few hundred students in the school, and he knew me. Explaining he knew that I had more than a few 'absences' from school, and that I needn't worry because he wasn't there to talk to me about that. I wasn't worried. In fact, I found it hardly any of his business or concern that I skipped school. Being forced to delve into subjects one didn't really care about, or wouldn't necessarily 'need' in the real world, I didn't feel the need to learn. Omitting the fact that I didn't have friends, or a support group of any kind, I disliked school. It was something I had to endure through, just until graduation so I could finally be free. But that was still a while away.

Going home at the end of the day was a god send, it meant that I no longer had to deal with the immature and bratty antics of boys from school. That I wouldn't have to listen to more arrogant/conceited rants about how I'm different and below just about every person at the school. Sometimes, I didn't know how I'd survive through school, I was fed up. My mom wasn't home when I came back, so I went straight to my room and plopped my things down, doing the one thing that somehow made the rest of my disagreeable days pass by- turn on my gaming console. Biohazard 5 the new zombie game I'd begun to play, and quickly excelled at. Playing the versus mode on the game made it a whole new experience, considering the fact that I'd never heard so much profanities in my entire life. If you won, people were very likely to say they did varying sexual acts with one of your parents, that you should kill yourself, or you somehow cheated at the game. I was still an amateur at the game, but I did understand the basic principals of the 'slayers' mode that I usually played. Big kill count, large sum of points. You could kill the other players, or leave them alone and kill the zombies instead. Most 'friendly' players liked to pull a gun behind your head and fire away. It only served to make me weary of the overpowered characters, killing and letting them bleed out was something I'd gotten the hang of. Letting them cry out for their partner to help, that never came.

A player I disliked joined the lobby. I remember his gamertag, Akise Lavigne17 originally, he was on the yellow team, just to fight me for a revenge win. Two other people joined, and forced him to switch on my team. They used overpowered characters that most were afraid of, the two male characters, while we picked the women. His was for comboing, mine was for the same, albeit she was a bit more combat capable because of her high damaging weapons for both the infected and players. He invited me to a party, and I joined, this person was afterall a 'friend' of a 'friend'. It was a humorous situation, I had no friends in real life, but an abundance of them online. "Hello?" I asked, with the confidence I lacked in school and anywhere else.

"Just keep the combo so we don't lose." he was short, and to the point with me. Maybe he still didn't like me, and that was just fine.

"Don't hinder me and lose the combo. I'm not about to lose just because I had to carry someone to victory." I arrogantly scoffed back at him, as the game started and we started out our small combo. He was using his sniper, killing off a few, we nearly lost it only at the small number of 5.

"You act as if you'd be the one carrying us to victory." he snapped back at me, "Keep it!"

I used my shotgun to quickly kill one, the combo was getting harder to keep as one of the opposite team began to steal my kills. "I have nothing." I said shortly, seeing the other player go for the boss zombie kill. I did the obvious thing, shot him twice at close range to get him dying, stole the kill and brought us in the lead. His partner began saying promises of saving him, while his character began to ask how he'd failed to help. The moment he respawned, he thanked in an effort to taunt me. I returned it, and continued to kill zombies until he came back.

"Nice." a somewhat praise from 'Akise'. Whether that was actually his name, or not, I didn't know.

I was shot by the other player, gaining a large amount of damage, fortunately I landed a close-range shot, we both used our shotguns and brought the other into dying. "Akise, keep the combo."

He couldn't. Our 40 combo died, and the other team taunted us, as theirs too died. "I couldn't. The other one is attacking me now." he was definitely irritated, I could hear the many electric blasts rather than see them. The other two players were ganging up on him, so I went to help. We managed to kill the pair of them, with quite the struggle. He healed us in front of them, my character saying 'Thanks' which they obviously took as a challenge to attack us again. We ran, and did our best to keep a combo, they followed us at every turn, and did get us dying. Taunting us, until our characters died, once we respawned, we resumed our combo. They were in the lead by 20,000. "Hang on." he grabbed a 'combo time' which gave us 1000 points per kill after we started a combo.

"We've got this." I said, not about to lose. We killed all of the zombies we could, trying to keep a decent combo, the other team came back to kill us, and we managed to deal with them once again. An extra 4000 points for killing them, as the game ended we barely won by a few hundred points. I exhaled a breath I didn't know I'd been holding, my hands are shaking from how deep I got into the game. It wasn't hard to see how poor-sporty people could be about these things.

"Nice work." he praised me again, in the same manner.

"You too..." unsure of if we still hated each other, or not. If he was going to kick me from the party, as it was just uncomfortable silence. Akise Lavigne17 wants to be your friend. As the notification popped up, I paused for a moment, before accepting it.

"We make a pretty good team- Misaki." Akise praised me.

I used an entirely different name for my online gaming, to keep as much distance as possible from the people I met. "Yeah, we kinda do." although we'd gotten off on the wrong foot at first, we certainly did do pretty good together.

"How about a few more rounds?" he asked, waiting for a reply.

"Sure." I was up for it, I had nothing else to do. Over the course of a few more matches, some wins and losses, we began to talk about varying things. I learned that his name was actually 'Akise' and when he asked me mine, I just gave him the response of 'call me Misaki'. Having online friends was different somehow, easier. If they knew the real me, they'd obviously not be friends with me at all. That was my resolve, to lie to my new 'friend'. Eventually, we did part ways because he had to go. It left me a bit disappointed, but excited at the thought of playing with him again tomorrow.