His monotone voice droned on as minutes stayed stagnant.
“Now… Worksheet 1 on the… Complete it….Good.”
The humid air suffocated my lungs. Each second seemed to be clawing at my sanity, itching at my patience. How much longer until the bell?
“Okay… Now onto… Question 1…”
A wild blur willingly escaped my mind and spread itself over my vision. The tedious words slowly fizzled out into a high-pitched hiss, the dull colours of the desk metamorphosised into the rich, over-stimulating world of my thoughts. My fanatic and erratic wonderland.
Dinner. Churros! Mexican food. Spanish… si? Homework. Physics due, ugh. PE tomorrow. Mem: pack gym clothes in bag. Ugh, soccer. Soccer. Noah.
A face emerged from my soup slurry of thoughts. As my mind came to a halt out of recognition. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, not in my head at least.
“Noah was good at soccer.” I thought.
His face was distant yet so familiar.
I’ll never forget his eyes though. An unforgettable jade colour that glimmered every time he saw the opportunity for a score. Disappearing every time he smiled, and reappearing only bigger at the sight of me. Those eyes had once made my hands jitter. Those eyes had once made my heart-
Made my heart feel as though it was being squeezed dry.
I still hate the way he had made me cry, sob pathetically -curling up like a beaten child. I hated the way we taunted and teased each other. I hated the way none of us ever said anything. Wasting all that time.
I hate the way I still miss what it feels like to love someone. I hate the way-
I hate the way we fell so far, yet so close.
I hate the way we could’ve been.
If any of us had said anything. Muttered even a word with real truth.
Maybe I would be watching his soccer games, screaming his name, and hugging him afterwards. Instead of covertly sneaking in just to glance at his face for a second. To just hear his voice for one word.
Maybe we would know what it felt like to be holding each other, to feel each other’s breath. Instead of looking at one another distantly as we would pass by. Like strangers who knew nothing of each other and felt nothing towards each other.
Maybe we would have been holding hands by the springtime. Birds chirping and humming tender melodies of enchantment. Flowers blooming, blinding my paradise with its glaringly vivid colours, that would fill in the backdrop of my fairytale. We would be in our own world. In a hypnotic state, lost in one another’s gaze -admiring each other like pieces on display at a museum.
“I’ve always loved you, we’ve always loved each other,” he whispered.
“Chen…? Chen answer. Chen… answer the question…” A strange, irritating voice interrupted.
He was leaving.
I sprung onto Noah like a sobbing, pitiful child, clinging onto its toy.
I was leaving.
Suddenly I felt nothing towards him anymore. Empty. No adrenaline rush, no churning stomach, no numb, sweating palms. We passed one another with stone-set faces. We ignored each other like corporate men and women at the subway -not out of pettiness but simply out of irrelevance. I felt nothing at the sight of him anymore. Frantically and desperately, my pupils widened, attempting to memorise every detail. His every strand of curly blonde hair, intertwined around my fingertips. His every freckle, every smile line, every crease of his lips, every vein on his cheek, every-
“Chen! Hello…?”
Ruddy splotches of red emerged from the canvas of my face, submerging my cheeks in a sea of embarrassment. I was still in class.
“What..? Sorry- Sorry sir, I don’t know.” I managed to sputter out.
“Well Chen, make sure you say it while you still can. You don’t want to pay the consequences now do you?”
Writer – Bianca Hu
Editor – Robbie Ge
Artist –Marianna Wang
–August 2024–
