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Giorno hasn't been in school for about a month now.
It's been the talk of the school for a couple of weeks- he just suddenly disappeared one day, with no warning or explanation, and he hasn't been back since. For a month, the seat next to the window where he used to sit's been empty. Some people suspected a kidnapping (though I doubt it, Giorno never looked like the type to let himself be kidnapped), and once the rumor circulated, suddenly the whole town went on alert about the alleged kidnapper who was on the loose. Apparently the school tried to contact his parents if they knew anything about their son's whereabouts, but all they found out was that Giorno's parents weren't even in Italy right now, and they really didn't know (or care, probably) where Giorno was. So the only option that was conceivable was that he was either killed or kidnapped- and a lot of people bought the latter, of course. Naples isn't exactly the safest city in Italy, what with the prominent gang movements here, so our school issued a cautionary curfew for its students, to prevent something like this from happening again: be back in the dorms by 9 o'clock, sharp.
But other than the disappearance of our classmate and the extra hours of sleep that we got now, things stayed the same. The desk by the window collected dust, and the notebook inside the desk stayed inside the compartment: with the initials written neatly in red ink, 'G.G.'.
----
The sun was setting when I finally stepped back into school grounds, a shopping bag in one hand and my backpack slung over my shoulders. One hand shoved inside my pocket, head bowed, feeling for the keys to my dorm room, I staggered down the hall of the boy's dormitory when I noticed another figure standing a few feet away. Lifting my head, the first thing I noticed was gold. Then, my eyes adjusted to take in the whole figure, attach the eyes and the hair and the arms and the clothes to a memory of someone I knew, and it finally hit me.
"...Giorno?"
The figure turned his head, and then, silence. Blue eyes, looking straight through me (I remember those eyes, I'd sat next to him and seen the way he looked out the window, his sight set on something far into the distance), before recognition slowly seeped into his expression. A faint smile.
"Claudio. Buon giorno."
His voice was somehow smoother than I remembered, though it wasn't like I really got to hear it much. Giorno didn't talk too often, and when he did it was usually a few words, words that were carefully chosen and strung into a short but eloquent sentence. Girls used to swoon over that stuff, said it was mysterious and oh-so-gentlemanlike or something, but I always thought it isolated Giorno from us, like there was an impenetrable wall that he made, consciously or unconsciously, dividing him from the others.
Anyway, it was weird, hearing his voice again after a month of silence, a month of absence at that windowside seat, and though it would have been nice to say that nothing's changed about Giorno, there was a definite sense that he'd been through something incomprehensible. Well, to me, at least. (Like those eyes finally found what it was looking for or something, I don't know what, but they focused and saw and changed.) Another moment of silence where I scanned Giorno up and down again, and I finally noticed the small box that he was carrying.
"You're leaving?"
And Giorno nodded, his hair unraveled and falling over his shoulders (I'd never seen him without that trademark braid, and it threw me for a loop).
"Si. I won't be coming back."
"Why? I mean, we thought you got kidnapped."
"I know."
Shifting the box in his hands, Giorno tilted his head, looking amused and almost curiously so, which made my cheeks burn with some inexplicable embarrassment, as if I'd just said the stupidest thing imaginable. Of course he hadn't gotten kidnapped. He was right here, after all, safe and sound, looking even better than he did before he left. I think he might have sensed that I was fishing for something to say, because the smile got a bit more defined and he opened his own mouth to speak first, something of a rarity as far as I'm concerned.
"Tell the school that there's no more need for a curfew."
And I blinked, once, twice. I got the distinct feeling that he was avoiding answering any questions that I had about his disappearance, the reason for his leaving, why he was here anyway, what he was taking back, but it wasn't like I could ask him any of this. Come to think of it, I don't think I'd ever really talked to him, during the whole time that I sat next to him in class. It was even a surprise that he remembered my name (it was impossible not to know his, though).
"Wait, but..."
"With me around, there'll no need to worry about kidnappers on the loose anymore. Tell them not to waste their energy."
A polite nod of the head, and Giorno brushed past me with a quick 'Ciao', the smell of flowers and sunlight thick in his hair. I blinked again, a third time, a fourth time (what did he just say?), and I turned my head to see him leave, and at the same time, a man in a hat poked his head out from the far end of the hall.
"Yo, Giorno. Car's waiting outside."
"Mista. I told you not to come inside school grounds."
"I know, I know. Come on, Boss. We're gonna be late."
'With me around'. Boss. The loose hair. The smell of flowers.
It's been a month since Giorno's left, and he came and went before I could even know, register what had happened.
"--No fucking way."