Chapter 5: Returning Home

Sherry and Dom made their way down the stairway, with Sherry in front of Dom, to the house's front door. Sherry sat on the second step of the stairs, leaning forward to reach down onto the floor for her white and pink trainers. Once Sherry slipped her trainers on, she moved off of the stair step to let Dom come down from the stairs. Sherry picked up her shopping bags to get ready to leave Dom’s house when Dom was also ready to leave.

Gavan walked over from the kitchen to say goodbye to Sherry along with Saoirse, as she came bum sliding down the stairs from her quick nap to hug Sherry, even though Saoirse knew very little about Sherry other than the fact that she was being friendly towards her and her family. Saoirse said to Sherry in a sad tone.

“Bye bye, big sistur!”

Sherry smiled and knelt to Saoirse to give her a tight hug while saying goodbye to her too. Once Sherry let go of Saoirse, she patted her head and looked up at Gavan, who was also saying goodbye. Sherry soon tilted her head to look at Dom as she stood back up from hugging Saoirse. Sherry thanked Dom again for the grey trousers he gave her on the stairs.

“Thanks again, Dom, for these pants!”

Sherry raised one of the shopping bags that contained Dom’s old grey trousers up before lowering it to her side again. As Sherry did this, Dom smiled and replied happily to Sherry by telling her.

“No problem, Sher….”

Dom looked down to the side of himself as if he wanted to say something else to Sherry. Sherry picked up on this and asked Dom what was on his mind.

“What’s wrong, Dom? Are you afraid I’ll leave now and not come back?”

Sherry laughed, making Gavan chuckle a bit too. Dom looked at Sherry and tried to tell her timidly.

“No, nah…no way! I just…”

Dom wanted to know if Sherry was still living in the same house as when he left her around five years ago. This was so that he would know exactly where to stop by in the morning to pick her up and walk to school with her. Since Dom was still finding it hard to talk, Sherry asked him while curious and puzzled about what was on his mind.

“What is it, Dom?”

Sherry soon had the thought that Dom was thinking that she might have some trouble getting back to her house since she might not be able to find it, just like how she couldn’t find one simple skirt for school tomorrow and also gloated earlier about going to town on her own, making Dom worry for her. At least this was what she thought his thought process was thinking of as of right now.

Sherry pouted while annoyed at the assumption of what Dom was thinking of her and gave out to him by telling him.

“You know that I know the way to my own house Dom! I’m not a kid, you know!”

Sherry looked at Dom with her face pouted and gazed directly at him. Dom held out his hands in front of himself and flailed them around as he smiled at Sherry nervously and explained to her what he was going to say before Sherry made assumptions about what he was thinking.

“No, it’s not that, Sher, it’s just that… it’s been a while since I’ve seen your place, you know. I want to talk to ya for a bit longer, so…yeah. I’d also like to see where you live now, of course! Like, if you’ve moved, or not! But even if you didn’t, I can’t remember exactly where you live, so…yeah…”

Dom cut in again before Sherry spoke and added to his words.

“Oh, and…it goes without saying, but I’d like to be able to walk with you on the way to school in the morning. It would be pretty depressing walking to school alone, right? Especially after meeting each other again for the first time in years.”

Sherry started to feel guilty as she thought that Dom was trying to treat her as if she was still a little kid, but all Dom was doing right now was just trying to make up for lost time and wanted to know Sherry more, since they haven’t been together in five years. Sherry also didn’t mind walking to school with someone else for once since she doesn’t walk to and from her house and school with anyone. Sherry hadn’t made any friends from school who were interested in staying with her in life and continued to chat and be friends with her outside of school time.

Sherry thought to herself while feeling her heart melt from Dom caring so much about her that he didn’t want to let go of her yet.

“You know…that’s actually kind of sweet of him!”

Sherry smiled at Dom and replied to him while relaxing and speaking sarcastically.

“Okay, if you miss me that much, Dom, then I guess you can walk with me to school from now on, and walk me back to my house for today!”

Sherry initially came off as smug and sarcastic but couldn’t help but show her appreciation for Dom and his caring attitude toward her as it was written all over her grinning face.

Sherry and Dom left the Bremdat household, with Dom shouting back to Gavan and Saoirse at the front door of his house.

“I’ll be back home soon, guys!”

Dom also waved back to Gavan and Saoirse as they smiled and waved back at him. Without delay, Dom and Sherry took off from Dom’s house and made their way out of the housing estate that Dom lived in called Dranovast.

As Sherry and Dom walked underneath the overcast night sky, they could see their shadows on the ground. The shadows themselves were ultra-long due to the positioning of both Dom and Sherry to the streetlights ahead of them. Still, as they kept walking through and under the streetlights, they soon noticed that the streetlight cast shadows would get smaller and smaller as they kept walking forward. The shadows would get so small that they would look more like poorly rounded ovals, especially when they were both directly underneath the streetlight casting the shadow. When Sherry and Dom continued to walk out from underneath the streetlight, it caused their shadows to start stretching out again until the shadows dissipated due to the lack of light between each streetlight.

Sherry and Dom talked quite a bit on their journey from each other’s houses. Dranovast, Dom’s housing estate was just recently built in Dwindabre and was the farthest housing estate from the town centre of Dwindabre but was still closer to Sherry’s house than to the centre of Dwindabre itself. It was built on the edge of Dwindabre as a part of a new initiative to relocate the people living in highly populated areas of J-Land.

For example, the county of Joseph’s Janikan Heart has people travelling far to the south of J-Land to occupy these new buildings/houses for those who wanted better, easier, and more affordable living conditions from their prior homes.

The initiative also started as a means of trying to cater to and combat Josephnite Flyer during his Golden Phase when he was also known as Golden Flyer. During Josephnite Flyer’s Golden Phase, he was wreaking havoc on the poor people of Janiki while committing acts of atrocity daily in various countries.

 

As Sherry and Dom continued to walk towards Sherry’s house, she was starting to get more curious about the people that she had met today through Dom. The main people she was curious about were Saoirse and Lyla. Since Sherry already knew Lyla as an upperclassman in Dwindabre Primary School and her first year of secondary school in Ms Drillhole’s secondary school, Sherry asked Dom about Saoirse while trying not to talk about Janny, their mother and bring down the mood for both of them as they both continued to walk to Sherry’s house together on the streetlamp lit pathway.

Sherry started the conversation with Dom by asking him.

“So, Saoirse? That’s a charming name for a girl. Where is it from, Dom? Halaladroo? Guacnameren or somewhere else?”

Dom looked at Sherry and said with a cool deminer.

“Actually, it isn’t a name that originates from anywhere on Janiki! It’s a name from what Josephnite Flyer called an ‘Irish’ person.”

As Sherry acknowledged Dom’s answer, Dom himself also asked Sherry if she knew this little bit of trivia that Josephnite Flyer had said to the public once since Dom brought up his name.

“Did you know that Josephnite Flyer said that the Irish, or Ireland as the country is called, is in a similar spot as J-Land co-ordinate-wise? When you compare his home planet and ours? Isn’t that so cool?”

Dom stopped for a moment to let Sherry absorb some of the information he had just fed to her and noticed how happy she had become once she heard the name ‘Josephnite Flyer’ being uttered in their conversation in a positive sense. Dom continued explaining Saoirse’s name and the origin of the name to Sherry by telling her.

“Josephnite Flyer doesn’t even know what the name means and didn’t even explain the name and its origin, but what he did say was that his friend back on his home planet used the name Saoirse for his pet dog. My ma and da liked the name so much that they gave it to Saoirse when she was born!”

Sherry felt worried for a moment since Dom mentioned Janny briefly by saying ‘ma’ but realised that Dom didn’t seem phased by mentioning her name at all. So, Sherry decided to move away from talking about Saoirse for a bit and started to talk more about Josephnite Flyer since it seemed like Dom was just as much of a fanboy of his, just like she was.

“So, do you like Josephnite Flyer Dom? I know many people find it hard to trust him nowadays, but I still believe that Josephnite Flyer is a hero, through and through!”

Sherry stopped herself before letting her inner fangirl take control of her mouth and waited for a response from Dom to see where he truly stood when it came to the hero Josephnite Flyer. Dom responded passionately.

“Of course, I do! I’m just annoyed that people tend to ignore how much good he has done as both Iron Flyer and Josephnite Flyer! The media only seems to concentrate on when he was forced to be Golden Flyer since he did a few bad things for months. They make it seem like he’s never done ANYTHING good until now and that it wasn’t against his will!”

“All those years of good deeds just flushed down the drain, and it’s not even his fault! It annoys me that people still deny the facts to this day. Like what was in the Golden Case: Documentary, if you haven’t seen that already Sher, give it a watch; it’s great. But, in that documentary, they went into clear and great detail about Josephnite Flyer as Golden Flyer but…yeah…Sorry, I shouldn’t get so worked up over it. It’s just annoying that’s all.”

Sherry looked at Dom with eyes of approval and agreed with everything he was saying to her. Before Sherry went on an even bigger ramble than Dom did about Josephnite Flyer, Dom decided to bring up why someone like Lyla was at his house today.

“Oh, by the way, my crus-eh…Lyla was only over today to babysit Sairsh. My dad had called her a few times before when we first moved into our house and got new furniture! Of course, if you were still curious about why she was at our house today!”

Sherry was starting to get more curious now about how long Dom was even in Dwindabre if Gavan had to call Lyla to babysit Saoirse for more than just today. Sherry asked Dom out of curiosity while swiftly moving off from the topic of Josephnite Flyer.

“How long have you been here in Dwindabre Dom? It sounds like you’ve moved in for quite a while now and forgotten about me, huh?”

Sherry added a hint of offence at the end of her question since Dom didn’t come to visit her sooner, making Dom feel a bit bad about not seeking her out in Dwindabre until he replied to her question by telling Sherry and chuckling.

“Sher, we’ve only been here for the past few weeks! I was so busy with helping my da get stuff ready for the house, you know! Even if we didn’t meet today, we definitely would’ve met at school tomorrow anyways, so… no biggie…right?”

Sherry sighed and smiled to herself at the response that she got from Dom and went back to talking about Lyla with him for a bit longer after forgiving him for not visiting her sooner. Sherry and Dom noticed how they were closing in on the end of their walk to Sherry’s house. Dom started to recognise the scenery around him from when he was younger. Still, the surroundings have updated slightly since he's last walked down Bragondrove Street to Sherry’s house.

The six-foot-tall hedges covered most of the attached houses along Bragondrove Street in front of every home. These hedges were dividing themselves with a small gap and a big gap. The small gap in the hedges was for the front metal garden gates so that they could be fitted in between each of the hedges while allowing entry into the front gardens of the houses. The big gaps in the hedges were left for the driveways of the houses.

After reaching outside the front of Sherry’s Garden and home, Dom was starting to feel a bit of pressure build up inside of himself since he was thinking about how he was going to contact Sherry tomorrow morning about what time they should walk up to school together. The reason he was putting it off until now was because he was enjoying his conversations with Sherry.

Dom also wanted to know when Sherry was either awake or still asleep in the morning so that he wouldn’t have to wing it every morning while hoping that Sherry would be ready to walk with him to school when he got to her house.

Before Sherry decided to turn around and into her front garden, Dom held onto her right arm as it swung back from her, as she walked towards the front metal garden gate, which was the closest part of Sherry that he could grab onto before she left him. Dom asked Sherry while stumbling on a few words since he was starting to get flustered since he was about to ask a girl for her social media, which was the equivalent of asking a girl for her number but didn’t mean it in that way.

“Hey, hold on a sec, Sher!”

Dom slowed down and stopped when Sherry stood still with him and looked curiously at him. Dom let go of Sherry and took out his black and blue phone in front of Sherry while unlocking and holding onto it with both of his hands. Dom continued to explain to Sherry while flicking through his black and blue phone.

“All right, so… sorry for not asking you sooner, Sher, but…it slipped my mind. Since I’m living here in Dwindabre, why don’t we exchange a few things? Since we’re starting school tomorrow and…well, it’d be nice if we could message each other when we’re both ready to go to school together tomorrow in the morning and all...”

Dom was still flustered but confident that Sherry would agree with him since it wasn’t illogical to give her this request. Sherry smiled smugly while replying to Dom, indicating that she might begin teasing him for what he had just said to her.

“Yeah, sure thing Dom! I’ll give you this!”

Sherry smiled at Dom while giving him a tap on his arm and taking out her phone. To Dom’s relief, his query wasn’t misunderstood by Sherry as Sherry herself seemed normal and unphased by his query. Sherry held her phone with a QR code on her phone’s screen for Dom to scan.

Dom scanned the QR code on Sherry’s phone while trying to remember what exactly it did until it hit him that this QR code would give him more than just one of Sherry’s social media account names and links, but all of what Sherry wanted to include within the QR code link itself. Social media like her YouYu account channel name, her Twit account page, and even her phone number if she had it in the QR code link itself.

Dom apologised to Sherry as he never actually spent the time to set up his own QR code for something like this since he’s never found a reason to do so until recently, ever since he started to try and upload more videos to his YouYu channel again where he was going to set up a QR code to put into his videos.

“Sorry, Sher, I don’t have a QR code set up right now...but I can text you my number later if you need it! If you look at my Twit account name, it should also link to my other accounts if you need them!”

Once Dom checked his phone after scanning Sherry’s QR code, a bunch of notifications appeared on his phone. Dom pulled them all down and scrolled through them all while swiping away the ones he wasn’t interested in at the moment. Like his last notification, which said.

“Josephnite Flyer says, ‘I hope everyone’s staying safe tod…’”.

Dom skipped over all of his notifications until he reached the notification that stated.

“Congrats! You are now following @Shaweber on Twit and other apps!”

“Sherry Aweber has been added as a contact…. “

Dom told Sherry his Twit name to let Sherry add him back, at the very least. Sherry looked up Dom’s username as he told her his username and read his username back to herself curiously.

“Domdat…”

Sherry looked at Dom as he looked back at her with a deadpan face. Dom misinterpreted Sherry’s comment as being an insult to his username. Sherry said to Dom while waving her left hand backwards and forward while holding her phone with her other hand.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, Dom. It’s just that it seems that we both made our usernames based on our actual names!”

Sherry giggled to herself as Dom looked back down at his phone in curiosity about what Sherry was talking about. Dom reopened Sherry’s Twit profile page to see that her username on Twit was ‘Shaweber,’ which is a combination of Sherry, dropping the ‘erry’ part of Sherry along with using Sherry’s second name, ‘Aweber,’ with a decapitalised ‘a’.

Dom looked at his username and remembered that ‘Domdat’ was also a combination of his name. Using the entirety of his first name and the last three letters of his last name. Dom soon smiled at how silly it was that he forgot about this and joined in with Sherry as she started laughing at both of their usernames. Once they both stopped laughing, Dom commented on the hedge that he was in awe of when he realised something about it.

“Man, these hedges grew tall, didn’t they, Sher?”

Sherry replied happily back to him, knowing he wasn’t feeling judgemental anymore about the way she read out his username to herself while holding her hands behind her back and holding her phone in her hands.

“Yeah! They were the same height as us when we were younger, right?”

Dom nodded in agreement while replying to Sherry.

“Yeah!”

Soon after Sherry and Dom stalled outside of Sherry’s home, whilst looking at the big six-foot tall hedges together, they eventually looked back towards each other with smiles on their faces and waved goodbye to each other for the night as Sherry started opening the metal front gate of her front garden. Sherry said to Dom with sincerity in her voice.

“See you tomorrow, Dom!”

Dom gave Sherry a genuine smile back and said goodbye to her too. Dom felt silly about how happy he was but didn’t care since he felt thrilled to have finally reunited with his long-lost childhood best friend.

Sherry and Dom started to smile with their eyes creasing as they both remembered a scenario from when they were younger, where they were both smiling together a long time ago during the daytime while also holding onto their respective parents’ hands. Dom was holding Janny’s hand and Sherry was holding onto Rendren’s hand, her father’s. These two moments from the past and present seemed to overlap in some respects, even if just for a moment, and continued to fill both of them with positive vibes in the chilly autumn night air. Sherry fully twisted herself around to her house's front door after seeing Dom walk away from the front gate of her house.

Without Sherry even noticing it, Yovan was peering through one of the windows of the house and down at Sherry and Dom the whole time without them seeing her. Yovan was fuming with steam with how annoyed she was with Sherry that she hanging around with a boy. Yovan soon left the window as Sherry entered the house and slowly closed the house's front door behind herself while saying aloud and without thinking before, she announced herself to the household.

“I’m home!”

Sherry froze and looked around but heard no response from Samantha or Yovan yet, so she took off her shoes and hoped that she wouldn’t get a scolding earful from Samantha for coming home late today just from getting some school supplies.

Sherry slowly grabbed her sneakers and placed them down with the other shoes on the bottom shelf of the shoe stand where her other shoes were when suddenly a daunting voice chilled Sherry to her very core.

“Welcome home, Sherry!”

Sherry squeaked loudly while looking up from the floor since she was kneeling to put her shoes away onto the shoe stand. Sherry saw Samantha and Yovan gazing at her with their arms folded, glaring into Sherry’s soul while having a menacing aura that surrounded them both.

Sherry looked to Samantha and then back to Yovan, terrified at their deadly, piercing gazes. Sherry didn’t understand why Yovan was so cross, so she told Samantha first about how her trip went while stuttering a lot in her explanation.

“Hey, m-mom, I g-got the uniform!”

Sherry shakily opened one of her shopping bags to reveal a combination of clothing items that she got for her new school uniform. Unfortunately for Sherry, the top of the bag showed Dom’s old grey uniform trousers first.

Yovan scooched past Samantha with a shadow blocking her eyes while kneeling to the shopping bag to pick up the trousers on top of the shopping bag. Samantha said to Sherry in a questionable tone.

“Trousers? Don’t you usually wear a skirt, Sher?”

Sherry sat nervously on her legs and stared back at Samantha with sweat droplets beading down from her scalp while Yovan opened and unfolded the trousers to inspect them. Samantha said to Sherry after sighing.

“If that’s what you want to go with, that’s fine; please...tell me next time when you’ll be out for so long…okay? I was worried about you.”

Samantha smiled at Sherry with a worried motherly look on her face. Sherry sighed in relief that Samantha wasn’t too mad at her for coming home late but soon noticed that Yovan was posing herself in a manner where she was going to ask Sherry something. Yovan held the back of the trousers at Sherry and pointed at the white label on the inside of the waistband inside of the trousers to ask her a question.

“Hey, Sher, whose trousers are these?”

Yovan didn’t want to admit that she was surveilling Dom and Sherry through one of the house's windows, so this was the only way she could start to interrogate Sherry about what she was doing today with Dom. Sherry fumbled with her words again as she tried to tell Yovan whose trousers she was borrowing.

“Em, well…eh-eh, t-these are from my f-friend….”

Sherry couldn’t speak to Yovan since her piercing gaze became even more intense with every passing second. Sherry suddenly remembered a reason why Yovan would be so annoyed at her right now. Because she was with Dom, a boy, Yovan was catching on to the fact that the trousers belonged to a male friend of hers and not a female friend of hers.

Sherry put her brain into gear to try and cover up the real reason she had the trousers in the first place and the fact that they were from Dom. Yovan continued talking to Sherry with a chilling tone in her voice.

“Oh, I see. Hey Sher, why does the label on these trousers have a boy’s name on it?”

Sherry darted her eyes directly to the waistband of the trousers and saw that a small white label was hanging out from the waist of the pants itself. Sherry saw that the small white label sticking out from the waist of the pants had ‘Dom’ written in dark blue ink with, assumingly, a permanent marker. A marker that was fine enough in size to be able to write a name onto the label and stay there permanently, even after thousands of washes.

Sherry’s thoughts tried to warn and set her into fight-or-flight mode since Sherry was glued to the floor in fear. Sherry started mustering up the energy and strength to keep explaining to Yovan about the trousers she had brought home and why she had them in the first place. So, Sherry mumbled to Yovan.

“Erm, well y-you see…I couldn’t get a skirt, s-so my old friend, that I m-met in town, gave me hi-their old trousers...and-“

Samantha chimed into their conversation as she saw the name on the small white label. Samantha realised that the boy’s name, Dom, reminded her that Sherry said, 'This boy was her old friend.’  Samantha also remembered that Sherry mentioned that she met this ‘old friend in town.’  Meaning that there was no doubt in Samantha’s mind that Sherry was talking about her old childhood friend Dom and not another friend named Dom too.

So, Samantha asked Sherry some questions to be sure that Sherry was referring to Dom Bremdat and not some other friend named Dom, whom she’d never talked about until Yovan’s interrogation today.

“Wait, Sherry, do these trousers belong to Dom Bremdat? From primary school? That boy who moved away a good few years ago?”

Samantha approached Sherry while cutting in front of Yovan, causing Yovan to calm down a bit. Yovan pulled herself back to let Samantha talk with Sherry, while Sherry nodded frantically to Samantha in response and felt saved from Yovan’s wrath. Sherry told Samantha with confidence since Samantha saved her from Yovan’s interrogation.

“Eh, yeah. I thought I saw him at the bus stop in Dwattale today, so I decided to go up to him to see if it was really him! It turns out that Dom and his dad were going shopping for a few things before Dom starts school tomorrow!”

Samantha looked at Yovan as she continued to calm down but still had a look on her face that was trying to pray on Sherry for information about Dom and what they were doing together in Dwattalebringdamadodoka. Samantha also thought that Yovan was probably thinking to herself at this very moment as she stared Sherry down.

“Why is my daughter interacting with a boy!?’”

Yovan squinted her eyes at Sherry as if she was trying to enter Sherry’s mind and interrogate her in her mindscape. Samantha waved to Sherry to get up and off the floor, helping Sherry up herself once Sherry’s shoulders were within her leaning distance. Samantha continued to talk to Sherry about Dom with genuine intrigue and out of pure curiosity.

“Oh, how is he? It’s been years since you last talked to him, right? Hasn’t it?”

The atmosphere in the hallway started to get less and less tense by the second as Sherry talked to both Samantha and Yovan about what happened in Dwattalebringdamadodoka today. Sherry was beginning to relax as she enjoyed talking to her parents about how today went—like her hunt for her new school uniform, reuniting with both Dom and Gavan and even getting the chance to go to their new house today for dinner.

Sherry continued to talk to both of her parents about what she had been up to all day since she sprinted out of the house earlier in the day without a word. As Sherry talked to Samantha and Yovan, she took the grey trousers off from Yovan and folded them back into her shopping bag. Yovan was still looking at Sherry cautiously while Samantha told Sherry with sympathy for the Bremdat’s loss.

“That’s great to hear, Sherry but it’s sad to hear that Janny’s not with us anymore…”

Samantha turned to Yovan with a sad look on her face while thinking of Janny Bremdat.

“Dear, we should visit Gavan at some point, whenever we’re all free! I want to introduce you to him since he’s such a nice guy!”

Samantha started to hold onto Yovan’s left hand with her right hand as she cuddled beside her, causing Yovan to smile instinctively even though she was going to ‘tut’ at the thought of meeting a man. Yovan looked at Sherry, smiling at her, and then at Samantha as she smiled at her too. Yovan decided to smile back at Sherry and Samantha while sighing and saying to Samantha in particular.

“Only if I get to see…Dom was his name, right? I need to know if he’s a gentleman or not. But-“

Sherry interrupted Yovan by saying what she remembered when she went to Dom’s house.

“Oh, and Dom also has a little sister now called Saoirse! I think she’s only four years old!”

Yovan’s expression quickly changed to curiosity as she thought about how cute Saoirse maybe since, as much as she didn’t want to admit it, Dom seemed like a decent guy when she saw him and Sherry talking to each other outside of their front garden even if it seemed like Dom was putting on a façade from Yovan’s point of view.

Yovan imaged Saoirse being well-behaved, adorable, and probably an angel sent down from The Legend’s Divine Realm itself. Since Dom didn’t seem like a bad guy to her, his little sister Saoirse could just be as great as he was. Yovan soon switched moods while telling Sherry and Samantha, while acting dismissive.

“I suppose I could hold off judgment on Dom as long as I get to see little Saoirse as well.”

Yovan finished her sentence while smiling toward Samantha and Sherry with a hand on her hip. Sherry smiled back and started to feel relieved as the situation seemed to have been completely defused.

For a brief moment, Sherry also remembered that Lyla was babysitting Saoirse at Dom’s house and thought about whether or not she should bother to mention this to Yovan and Samantha but decided that she shouldn’t bring it up for now since Yovan would start to get the feeling that Dom was not going to be a loyal friend to Sherry if he has more than two female friends in his life.

 

Once Samantha and Yovan talked with Sherry to make sure that she had enough to eat for today and had everything she needed for school tomorrow, they let her go to her bedroom to organize the stuff in her shopping bags and prepare for school tomorrow. Sherry wanted to ensure everything fitted her right, especially Dom’s old grey trousers since she never asked Dom if she could go into his bedroom again to ensure that they fit her.

Once Sherry put away her stuff for school tomorrow, except for her school uniform, she changed into the school uniform to see how it would look on her. Once Sherry finished dressing into her new school uniform, she stood in front of the full-body view mirror in her bedroom and turned around while constantly facing the mirror to check herself out and see if anything seemed off to her.

Sherry was pretty chuffed with herself as she realised that the whole uniform fit her pretty well. Sherry enjoyed wearing the pants with her new school uniform instead of having a skirt like she originally wanted. However, Sherry realised that if she had slimmed down a bit too much, then she would probably need to buy herself a new belt for her pants to keep them from falling down all the time.

Sherry stood at her six-foot-tall body mirror and scanned all five feet and five inches of herself, from head to toe, in delight as she took little subconscious notes of how she looked in her new school uniform.

“I’m not wearing them now, but the black slip-on shoes are missing… Only a freak would wear shoes inside of their house though so I’m not wearing them now! I can wear any socks as long as they don’t stand out, but there’s no point in wearing tights since….”

Sherry looked down at her legs to see the trousers covering her legs, indicating to herself that trousers ruin the whole point of wearing tights. Sherry continued her train of thought with a silly but practical idea.

“…well maybe I should wear some tights during the winter for the extra warmth. Who’s gonna know anyways?~”

Sherry’s eyes glanced up at her trousers in the mirror and to her waist, causing her to compliment herself by thinking to herself.

“The more I look at them, the more I realise that these pants actually suit me.”

 Sherry smiled and continued inspecting her school uniform outfit while looking at her torso.

“We have the white shirt with the black blazer cause honestly… it just looks cool! I know I called Dom out for his uniform colour scheme…but at least I have the little red ribbon tie I found in The Market Lane today. If I’m lucky, Ma or Mom might accidentally throw this shirt and the ribbon tie into the same wash and turn this shirt from white to pastel pink! If that’s how washing works anyways…Then I won’t look as plain as Dom.~.”

The last part Sherry needed to examine was her face and hair. Sherry soon realised that she didn’t have much time left in the day to style her hair, and she would most likely mess it up anyway as she was thinking of heading to bed soon. Sherry said to herself out loud and with low energy.

“Meh…I’ll try a few new hairstyles tomorrow morning if I wake up early!”

Sherry moved away from the mirror while yawning, then changed out of her new uniform, and reappeared in front of the full body view mirror with the pyjamas that she was wearing this morning on herself once again.

Sherry went into her bed with her phone on her bedside desk. Before she decided to sleep, she checked her phone briefly. Sherry saw a notification from Dom on Twit that he had posted a new picture of himself with a ‘sunglasses face’ emoji covering his face along with his new customized school uniform in the picture with the caption in impact font.

“My new D R I P for tomorrow!”

Sherry chuckled in bed and then added a ‘like’ to the post while clicking the share button to message him through a messaging app called Vice and sent the post to him with a message underneath saying.

“See you tomorrow at half 8 you dork lol!”

After adding a nerd emoji to the end of the message, Sherry clicked send before setting her phone back onto her bedside table. Sherry started to get some sleep for the first day of school tomorrow.

 

Meanwhile, in Dom’s bedroom, Dom soon checked in on his latest Twit post since he was taking a break from what he was doing on his gaming PC and saw that Sherry had liked his most recent Twit post. Dom said to himself while cringing at the fact that someone he knew in real life saw his recent Twit post and even called him out on Vice for the poor-quality meme.

“Maybe I should hold off being cringy from now on, especially since Sher will probably bully me tomorrow for it….”

Dom soon heard a knock on his bedroom door, along with the door itself slowly opening to reveal Gavan poking his head in through the door. Gavan greeted Dom quietly.

“Hey Dom, have you got a minute?”

Dom replied quickly to Gavan without a second thought since he thought Gavan sounded serious.

“Yeah, of course, da!”

Dom clicked a button on the side of his phone to lock it and placed his phone on his desk while turning his black and yellow gaming chair towards Gavan. Gavan opened Dom’s bedroom door wider and walked up to Dom as he sat in his gaming chair. Gavan stood in front of Dom while trying to waft the smell of beer from his mouth and said to him cautiously.

“Hey, Dom. I know the romance novels I read are a work of fiction and all that, but in nearly all of these books I’ve read so far… the childhood character never gets to be with their lover.”

Dom’s face started lighting up red from embarrassment as Gavan continued to explain to Dom why he was suddenly bringing up the topic of romance novels this late into the night.

“Now, I know it’s too early to say yet, but-“

Dom quickly got up from his gaming chair and placed his hand on Gavan’s mouth, knowing exactly who Gavan was referring to, himself and Sherry.

“Dad! Stop! It’s not like that between us! I swear! It’s just-“

Dom thought about an old friend from his old secondary school that he left behind and then thought of Sherry in his old friend’s place. Dom continued telling Gavan how he felt about Sherry while taking his hands off Gavan’s mouth and telling him quietly and calmly.

“I’m just… thrilled that I still have a friend here in Dwindabre…that’s all! If Sher wasn’t around, I’d probably just be a loner…”

Dom plopped back down onto his gaming chair with his arms resting on the gaming chair’s armrests. Dom looked up at Gavan, standing in front of him while Gavan looked back at Dom with a genuine smile on his face and embraced Dom with a hug while cheerfully saying.

“Aw! My boy, that’s good for you! Good for you!”

Dom caught a whiff of beer from Gavan but before he could question him about it, Gavan had let go of him while smiling harder for Dom and his lovely reunification with his old best friend. Gavan was leaving Dom’s bedroom and smiled as he said to Dom before leaving his bedroom.

“I see how it is now! You must still like Lyla, right?”

Dom got up from his gaming chair and was about to shout at Gavan, but Gavan had already left Dom’s bedroom while chuckling to himself. Dom was glad that he didn’t shout at Gavan though since he remembered that Saoirse was sleeping in the next room to him. Dom sat back in his gaming chair in silence as he blushed at the thought of him even being with Sherry; never mind, Lyla!

Dom turned his black and yellow gaming chair back into his desk and continued working with a musical DAW program on his computer rather than thinking about what Gavan had told him.

 

While Sherry was sleeping with a smile on her face at how dapper she looked in her new school uniform, Sherry was also really glad that she didn’t try to find and get a new skirt today since if she had found one sooner in Dwindabre, she would not have met Dom in Dwattalebringdamadodoka today and probably would not have met him until tomorrow at school.

Even though the day might not have been the smoothest day of Sherry’s life, there were some good memories that Sherry was going to cherish from this day onwards, and it was only getting started.

 

Today ended with the reunion of Sherry Aweber and Dom Bremdat, as they both were looking forward to their first school year together since they were in second-class in primary school. Along with the fact that this year of secondary school was their fourth year of secondary school too, which was commonly known as a transition year in J-Land. The earth equivalent to this year would be like Ireland’s transition year in secondary schools across Ireland.

The transition year itself was a year of either doing very little work or no work at all hence why many students across J-Land and Ireland simply write this year off as being a ‘dos year’. Transition year can be seen as a break from the modern struggles of secondary school time for secondary school students all across J-Land!

Sherry, Dom, and a few other students were looking forward to their first day of school, where they were unknowingly moving forward and into the start of a fresh new chapter in their lives, whether they expected it or not.