Ice Cold

We only had one lesson in school today so since we got to leave early, I decided to go see Andreas. We've been talking via mail for a while now and he told me he had a gift to give me and would like it if I could come as soon as possible, as we live close to each other it's more convenient for me to go to him in order to pick up the thing instead of him sending it with snail mail, obviously.

He looked, if possible, even more worn out today. I saw him wearing a pair of gloves, he told me he hates the winter and he seemed to shiver even though it was relatively warm inside the house. Andreas said he didn't want to keep me there since I probably had better things to do than visiting him (which I don't), so he would hurry to go get the gift. Ignoring his words I removed my jacket and boots and went into the small kitchen as I thought I heard someone speaking in there, near the stove. It only took a few seconds for me to realise that the sound was coming from inside the stove. I squatted in front of it and began to reply to what I heard. I cannot recall the gender of the voice but I do remember that what it talked about was mundane things, for example, it said to me that this weather was dreadful and also asked me if I was properly dressed, to which I replied "yes".
This is when Andreas enters the kitchen to see me conversing with his white ware. I'm sure the look on his face was rather comical, I didn't have time to see it as I didn't notice his arrival until he spoke to me. I didn't expect him to come back so quickly, otherwise I would've repressed the urge to answer to my hallucination (sometimes it gets worse if you don't answer, though). You see, I haven't told him about my schizophrenia yet. But this forced me to explain myself.

I told him about it and he didn't seem very taken aback, even if he had somewhat of a confused look on his face before I got to explain, in fact he was only happy to get an answer to my strange behaviour. There's only really two ways in which people can react when you tell them things like these; they will either start to shun and fear you, or they will still continue to welcome you with open arms, though maybe a bit more carefully than before. And I guess you can't blame them for that. However, with Andreas, this didn't happen. If anything it was like our bond had grown stronger after this, I could not notice any extra carefulness in his demeanour.
Also, the gift he decided to give me was one of his bird books (he has many), and though I have one myself it's always nice to get another one. I stayed and talked to him for a little while.