I was supposed to listen to the professor after a school break, but I heard nothing he had discussed. The classes ended, and I understand nothing. My mind kept on wondering somewhere. I shouldn’t be thinking about Gavin because we only talked yesterday until that morning.
I felt guilty about what I said to him before I went to school. I was thinking I hurt him for real that time. Because I knew what he felt for me was genuine. I could see it in his eyes every time he spoke to me with full of admiration. I groaned in frustration and stomped my head on the table. Some students who were going out turned around in surprise to where I was sitting beside the window. Thinking I was just acting baffling, they went on without sparing me a glance anymore.I didn’t need to be distracted while studying or else it would ruin my plan of finishing a degree before going faraway. It was also my fault. I shouldn’t have responded to him when he entered the coffee shop. Ignoring him was the best choice, but I failed on it.There was no use in thinking about him more. I put my notebooks and pen in my bag pack and walked out of the classroom. I found my only friend Tristan waiting for me. He was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. He stopped from watching a certain clip on his phone and waved his hand when he saw me.I moved closer to him as he stood up to greet me.“I saw your friend. I never think he is in this university as well,” he said to me when we were facing each other.I looked at him with a confused expression on my face since I didn’t have any friend other than him.“Who’s friend? I don’t know who you’re referring to,” I told him as I hang my bag pack on my left shoulder.His forehead furrowed as he was thinking because of my response. After his train of thought ended in a second, he looked at me in the eye.“If not, he’s your friend. He’s your boyfriend then.” He pointed his finger at me with a silly look in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me? Do you think it would disgust me just because you like men?”I smacked his head lightly to wake him up from his delusion. “What are you even saying? There’s nothing to tell since I don’t have a boyfriend.”I walked, and he went with me to my left.“What’s he’s doing in your house then? I called you this early morning to check up on you since you didn’t reply last night. He answered me,” he told me.I stopped since I didn’t understand he was sure he met Gavin. “How did you know it was him?” I asked.“Because he greeted me in the hallway earlier.”“How does he look when you saw him?”“Why are you asking? Are you that head over heels in him?” he teased me.“Just answer me.” I raised my hand to smack him once more, and he flinched. I rubbed his head instead to encourage him to speak.“He’s stunning.”“That’s not what I want to hear,” I told him as I put my hand in my pocket. “Does he look like a student here?”“Of course. He even knew the professor from aerospace engineering.”Once I heard his answered, I had guessed Gavin saw me in the university and started tailing me. He was really studying even though he didn’t need it.“Where did you see him, exactly?” I questioned my friend. But I didn’t give a chance to answer. I reminded myself to forget about him. “Nevermind. Did you bring the files?” I added to change the subjects.He took out the black flash drive from his pocket that contained the papers Maggie had prepared.“Do you need anything else? I can call her,” he said to me as he handed me the flash drive.“I already have everything. I just need to go to the faculty room. How’s she?” I received the device and put it inside the side pocket of my backpack.“I told you she’s fine. Don’t worry.” He tapped my shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault a man tried to kidnap her. Let’s go now to the faculty room. I have to monitor you since she thought you would forget to give the papers.”“She didn’t trust me,” I said as we walked down the stairs.“A little. Don’t blame her, she was just thinking about her grades. I knew you understand since you both supporting yourselves. I am still wondering why you didn’t become friends with her. You’re taking the same class for months now.”“I told you I am not looking for friends. If you didn’t force me to be your friends, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”“Don’t say it like that. I really found you cool when I strike a conversation with you in our freshman year. And thanks to you, I have now a girlfriend.”He was not saying it wrong. I had a major role in why they were in a relationship. I became their bridge for a couple of weeks before they finally talked to each other.As we were about the reach the of the stairs, I paused after seeing Gavin leaning on the wall. He raised his hand to greet me while smiling. Tristan gave my arm a nudge, wiggling his thick eyebrows to tease me. I stared at my friend and ignored Gavin.Gavin’s face became sullen the moment I looked away from him. Tristan stayed quiet, and we continued taking the stairs. When I was about to step out of the stairs, Gavin grabbed my wrist that made me turned around. I glared at him and he shook his head lightly to respond. I planned to yank my hand to release my wrist from his grip, but it wouldn’t budge. His hold got tighter.No matter what I would say, he kept on ignoring them.Seeing that Gavin was stopping me, Tristan suddenly excuse himself.“I forgot I have something to do,” Tristan told me and whispered. “Talk to him and tell me later how you met.”I wanted to kick him but he had already runaway. I looked at his back until he disappeared after turning to the right of the empty hall.I took a deep breath to calm myself. “Fine. I will listen if you have something to say,” I said to him without looking at him. I only turned around when he let go my wrist.I sat down on the stairs, and he copied what I did. He looked at me afterward while I stared in front. I waited for him to speak, and it took him a minute before he finally told me something.“Can yo let me stay by you side? I promise, I will not force myself on you,” he said to his sincerest voice he could muster. I ignored what he had just said. “What made you change your mind?” I asked him since it has been bothering me all morning. I spared him a glance. “From the past year, you just watch me from a far.”This time he was the who looked away. “I knew the moment you locked eyes with that bald man, everything will change. To protect you, I had to be on your side all the time. It will only happen if I told you my feelings, since it’s the only reason I have to be close to you.” “Wait. This means you knew where he came from?”He met me in the eye. “Yes. He came from the same pack that wanted you dead.” “You even knew that about me,” I said, and it didn’t surprise me. In the back of my mind, I already expected it.“Yeah. Do you think it is wrong?”“No. It just confuses me because I thought you only started knowing me when I noticed you,” I explained, so that he would not get the wrong idea about what I said.“What I told you last night was real. I’ve known you for a long time before you saw me. And I never expected to see you here in this university when I transferred here a year ago.”I studied his face. He was not making it up. “How?” I asked.He closed his mouth. It meant he wasn’t planning to answer me. I punched him lightly on his side and he giggled to tell me he was happy that I already changed my mind.“I will not tell you a thing. I am sure you will remember, since we’ll always be together every day from this moment on.” He stood up and hopped to get down the stairs.“Aren’t you really going to tell me?” I gritted my teeth. “I will punch you.”He smiled at me and pinched my cheeks. “You never change when you’re mad. You need to remember me just like how I remember you. I have to go. There’s a class I need to catch.”He kept on pinching my cheek, so I slapped his hand to stop him. He freed my cheek and smiled widely. It didn’t end there, he also winked at me and walked away since he knew I would kick him.As soon as I walked into the faculty room, a heavy silence filled the air, while everyone stay seated. While I was there, I didn’t let that eerie feeling distract me. I went directly to the humanities professor’s table, where the teaching assistant was busy typing on his seat. This man who always wore a striped polo shirt didn’t like people talking to him. So, it wasn’t a surprise he ignored me when I stood in front of him. He still fixed his eyes on the laptop without sparing me a glance. I didn’t know why he was acting like that and I wasn’t planning to know. “Here’s our report. I am hoping you can send them to the professor,” I said to him as put down the two flash drives on the table next to his laptop. He didn’t say a word that made me took a deep breath. I was not worried he would not listen to what I said. Luckily, the professor knew what kind of person his teaching assistant was. If he did not pass the reports, the professor would scold him that would end up putting him in a
We went to a not secluded neighborhood where the store of the man Tristan wanted to interview was located. The entire area became like artsy grounds for talented people. Artists filled the empty walls along the streets with graffiti, attracting newcomers like us. It was not my first time there, so I just ignored the walls. I had a part-time job there before. Gavin wasn’t also looking and his attention was all on me, making me uncomfortable. He was confident about walking under the sun. Meanwhile, Tristan couldn’t help himself. He had took out his phone and took a picture of everything we passed by. After a few turns, we finally arrived to where the store was. The yellow color of the signboard said they sell fried chicken. I could even smell from the outside the spices the owner used to cook. The store had no glass walls, but it had a large window where we could take a peak of the inside. It was an old house, and it turned into a store a couple of years after the owner separated from h
The moment I was back at the front of the store, I felt this sinister aura emanating from the inside. It made the hair on my skin stood alarming me about the danger that was occurring there. With no second thoughts, I rushed to the door and stepped inside as fast as my feet could do on an ordinary form. I wasn’t wrong about the uncertainty earlier. I found the owner choking Tristan off the floor. The tables beside them broke in half and broken glasses scattered around them. Tristan’s face was turning into red as he couldn’t breathe air. The man turned his head toward me and growled. There was something different about the owner. His eyes were bloodshot alike to what happened to the bald man before. I clinched my fist, thinking of the right thing to do. I was putting a friend now in danger. But if I made a move, it would reveal my true self. As Tristan tried to lift his hand to ask for my help, I realized I wasn’t alone there. Tristan passed out after that. I had Gavin on my back. As
Everything seemed normal about me as I sat down on the floor, leaning on the side of the bed. But deep inside, I knew something had changed. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. It was something that resonated emptiness that I had not felt for so long. All I knew for sure was that when Gavin crosses my mind, I felt a pain in my chest. It had been days when I left him on the road after the witch appeared in front of me. Since that day, I haven’t left Tristan’s room because I was avoiding to see Gavin. I just felt like the moment I stepped out, he was there waiting for me. I glanced at the door when Tristan entered carrying a paper bag. He looked at me and his shoulder dropped after he sighed. “Stop making me worry. Ever since to other day, you’ve been acting like that. You don’t even want to answer my questions,” he said to me. “Aren’t you planning to go to school?” I shook my head. I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t have the urge to study. I would move to another city faraway fr
The entire ride on the train was quite uneventful, with the constant silent rumbling and screeching of the train. I stayed quiet while my head wandered somewhere else back to where we used to live. Just like before, I always thought we would last there, but because I made the mistake of hurting one of my schoolmates, we had to move. After several years, it was going to happen again. I didn’t want to live in a new environment. I had a hard time adjusting last time. But just like before, I had no choice. My brother on my right fell asleep sitting down. He leaned his head on the cold iron bar. When I looked at him, I still couldn’t believe I am seeing my brother in person. I even told myself maybe it was just imagination. But no matter how hard I convinced myself, nothing really changed. I only stopped looking at him when the train stopped at the station where I need to get off. My brother didn’t wake up to the noise inside the train. He was still deep asleep as I stood up. I took a dee
I thought I had died, but when I opened my eyes, I found myself in an unfamiliar room. The light coming from the ceiling was so strong that it made me put my hand in front of my eyes. After my eyes adjusted, I sat down, observing the entire room. It wasn’t big and there was no other type of furniture inside other than the table beside the bed. The room wasn’t that special. People only used that kind of room to kill time or hid from someone they didn’t want to see while doing something. I touched my head, trying to figure out how I got there. The last thing I remembered was the lightning hitting me. Going back to what happened only made me sad. I realized my mother had died because of the lighting. I didn’t even know how it happened. I had not heard of anybody who could control the lightning, even from the race of vampires. Out of frustration, I walked down off the bed to pee in the bathroom. My body felt so light, which I just ignored. Since everything was close to each other, it on
“Why do we need to ride in your car?” I asked Gavin as I sat down in the passenger seat. “I couldn’t understand. We could just run since we’re both fast.” His smell, which was a mixture of woody, minty, and floral scents, stayed inside the car, making my nose itch. I brushed my nose when I noticed he wasn’t even starting the car after closing the door. He looked at me without blinking an eye. “Using ability is unconventional. It could cause a disturbance to humans,” he reminded me. “And I just can’t leave my car here.” “Okay, I understand. But what is our relationship? You will not help me like this if we’re just acquaintances,” I said. He took a deep breath to calm himself. “You need to answer me. It might help me remember something.” “Don’t talk too much while you’re in my car,” he told me and started the engine. “I don’t want to. I will only listen to you if you answer my question. Are you really not going to help me, remember?” “It’s much better if you remember nothing. It
The living room looked empty when I entered, even though there were types of furniture in their right place. Maybe the old vibe of the room had something to do with it, or because no one was around. The chandelier in the ceiling didn’t help to change the atmosphere, even if it was glowing. I looked at the fireplace beside the big flat-screen television when the firewood lit up. It surprised me a little, but it didn’t last long. I knew it was possible because I was in a mansion filled with vampires. I turned around when I felt my father behind me. He was standing there looking at me without blinking an eye. “Why don’t you sit down? We have to talk while they’re not here,” he said to me. I looked at him in confusion. “Who are you referring to?” I asked him. “Your mother and siblings.” I understand why he said that. He didn’t want his wife and children to see that he was talking to his son, Liam. Liam didn’t have a good relationship with his family, just like what Gavin said to me. He