Thanks everyone who read this new chapter!

Sabanoodles: Thanks for the continuous advice; I've been fixing everything! If you guys haven't noticed, I'm a pretty bad proof-reader. And I try REALLY HARD to update as quickly as I can, but if I'm working on other stories or just my own stuff (I have a life outside of Fanfiction...pshhh...I'm...social and...stuff...) please understand.

All the support: Thank you guys so much! It means a lot to know people care enough about my writing to comment! Sometimes I get kind of...erm...annoyed when I feel no one's looking at my hard work. So everyone, I really really really love you guys! (You know what I mean) ^_^

Thanks everyone for their comments and...yup!

I think it was the absence of ringing that first struck me. Now, mind you, I'm not saying I'm one of those girls who texts every few seconds and gets ten billion dollars on her phone bill at the end of the month. However, usually someone would call. Sometimes it was Sakuno reminding me to get the frozen meat out of the freezer to defrost or Grandma saying tennis practice was running late or even just a sales call.

So I dug through my bag, unconcerned, thinking my phone was just on silent. Ten minutes later, I had cleared everything out of my pack and shook the whole thing out upside-down in a vain attempt at possibly getting it out. And after I had still dug through the pockets very thoroughly.

Once again, I am not one of those I 3 txting, like, OMG he is sooo hawt and wats math hw? people. However, I am one of those Grandma, please don't kill me because I lost my cell phone people.

My first thought was, it fell out at home. My second thought, after I had turned everything upside-down and then right-side up (yes, my Grandma really is that scary when pissed) as I sat in my room was that Sakuno never had this problem. I'm serious. My sister's never lost her phone. She has this little knitted case stitched into the inside fabric of every bag she owns that Sakuno made herself. I wasn't that kind of person to take that much time on something like that.

After rocking and thinking to myself, I decided to do the brave thing: have Sakuno deliver the bad news about how my phone was lost. Yes. That was the only option. To be brave.

I heard the door open and waited for Sakuno to come up at the stairs where I was waiting, but as I prepared to start pleading, she shot me such an angry look that I closed my mouth immediately.

"Hey, Uno," I said nervously. When I first got here, I had misunderstood the pronunciation of Sakuno and instead heard Uno. Needless to say, the name stuck.

"Serena," Sakuno said, usually smiling mouth pressed into a stern line. I thought she found out...that somehow Sakuno realized we'd been following her and was now angry and hated me so much that she'd never talk or cook or help me ever again. But then I took a deep breath and reassured myself that it was a very slim chance of that to be possible.

It's alright. She doesn't know.

"Serena," Sakuno started again, her usually sweet brown eyes creased into a gaze of anger and...and...sadness. She wasn't angry as she was sad. My sister didn't care about my curiosity; Uno wanted my trust. I found myself wet-eyed.

Why did I always have to be so darn meddlesome?

Uno looked at me sadly, no longer stern-faced or angry. Just sad.

"Sakuno..." I started then closed my mouth in defeat.

What could I say to make this all better? What could I do?

As I wondered in defeat, Uno reached into her bag and pulled out my cell phone. She handed it to me, the cold surface feeling a thousand times colder.

Sakuno gave me a small smile and a hard candy. It was one of those wax paper wrapped, caramel lozenges that had little things that resembled fortune cookie fortunes written onto the wrapper. They were my favorite. Closing my eyes I turned my head down until I heard her leave, the door of her bedroom closing. This was Sakuno's way of saying, I forgive you. But I didn't want forgiveness; well, I didn't know what I wanted.

To know every detail of my sister's life?

To protect her from embarrassment?

It was a while later when I went into my room. I unwrapped the candy and pressed the caramel onto my tongue, savoring the sweet taste against the bitterness of the words I didn't say. Looking at the paper, I gave a bark of dry laughter.

Avoid impulsively making things worse.

It was funny how just a little candy wrapper can spin something completely in a different direction that it was going in the first place. Maybe it was for the better, maybe it was for the worse. I was going to find out soon enough though, right? Lying down on my bed, I considered what I could do to show Sakuno how sorry I felt.

After hours of staring up at the ceiling, I finally came up with an idea. Maybe it was there this whole time, but I had just ignored it because of how embarrassing, humbling, and effective it would be. It would be awful to me. It would be me facing my biggest fear.

But what was fear to love?

I told myself not to back down and not to screw up this one. One more clean slate. No more mistakes. Maybe the fact that I had told myself not to make any more mistakes was a mistake in itself.

But everything eventually linked back to that one thing:

Avoid impulsively making things worse.

I'm not talking about the candy. This is about me; not about Uno, not about Grandma, not about anyone else. Just me and my arrogance, my aggressiveness, my impulsivity. Did it hurt more to know Uno still forgave me, or to know that she no longer trusted me?

I knew one thing: a regular apology wouldn't work. Sakuno already forgave me, so now I needed to atone myself in her eyes. Sitting up, I felt new determination course through my veins like adrenaline.

Tearing out a piece of paper from one of my notebooks, I scribbled out a list and when I finished, I held it up and read it over again and again and again. Finally satisfied, I stuffed the paper into my backpack and sat down, swiveling aimlessly on my wheelie chair. I was determined. I was sure.

This plan was fool-proof, direct, and would be successful. I should've known thinking that was just plain dumb. Nothing is set in stone, but I felt high on determination. Maybe I was stubborn. Maybe I was just being careless. But nothing has an outcome that can be seen. The only way to know the future is to live through it, but by then we don't say that the 'future' is the 'future' anymore; now it's the past. Yet I had still been positive it would work.

That was my sixth mistake.

Okay, so about the fortune cookie thing, I really did get a fortune cookie with the exact words on the candy wrapper.

And looking over this whole story, I realize that all these chapters have only a few hundred more words than my other story, Songs of a Lightless Star, which only has two chapters. And I only wrote that story in two days, so now I feel like I should pay more attention to this one. I'll try and update soon!