In this chapter, the two of them discuss the fact that they're "better off being friends" . They're not really friends, though, since they've never really gotten along. When they first got the offer to go abroad to study, they never told each other what they were thinking. Instead, they just acted like they could figure it out on their own. This is the same behavior we've come to expect from our friends: they act like they know what's going on, but they don't tell each other about it. The only reason they never talked about it was because they were afraid they'd get mad at each other if they did, so they just kept acting like they knew what was going on. This behavior, the narrator tells us, is exactly what we're about to see in this chapter.