Summer Haze [BL]

Chapter 1 - White Canvas

𝘉𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺.

This was the second time someone had tried to kill me.

With my last thread of consciousness, the sounds of sirens approaching from the entry of the forest lingered in my head while my body laid in the dirt's filth.

My head drowned in the horrible amount of my own blood, soaking and streaming from the back of my head uncontrollably.

Thus, I fell into a period of unconsciousness for three years.

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"Mr. Hayes, you will go through the discharge formalities this afternoon. The bill has already been processed, so your doctor will speak to you about the procedures."

Although the minor details failed to resurface in my mind, the moments before someone smashed my head from behind with a hard object persisted to flash past my senses.

It was the vague vision of a stranger dragging my body through the woods before locking me inside a dark place.

I couldn't remember much about the first time someone tried to kill me, but I was led astray by a man when I was around ten. Was he a relative? Family member? I wasn't quite sure. And before I knew it, the ocean tides pushed my body up, and I had floated ashore.

Six months had passed since I "woke up," but at that time, my mind wasn't in my body. I couldn't speak or move due to cognitive and physical problems. It took me a while to complete most of my rehabilitation program, but I had to leave the hospital.

No curiosity passed me the moment I regained a bit of my memory about the hitman just yet because there was a certain someone that I wanted to see. Yet, an accidental encounter with my mother occurred first.

It was only a few days after my discharge that I saw my mother, though that meeting did not last more than a cup of a small coffee.

"Now that you can walk and talk, return to work tomorrow. It was hard having you unconscious for so long since your sister is now struggling because of that. We need to pay her school fees soon."

Instead of thinking about my mother or sister, I was worried about someone else. Had he grown taller? Was his hair still styled the same? What was he doing right now? What had he been doing for the past three years and a half years?

My mother had more strands of white hair stemming from her scalp, and a network of fine wrinkles covered her face, especially around her light-coloured eyes, which could not look at me for more than a minute. She still had the habit of biting her nails and shaking her legs.

I didn't have my phone—it may have broken after that crash or misplaced—so it was difficult to contact my boyfriend.

He was the only one I desired to see when my eyelids lifted. We had been close ever since primary school, but we started dating in high school and had been together for 10 years, but if I included the 3 years I had lost, then 13.

Knowing him for almost all my life, he was also someone whom I could consider my closest friend. I sought him for shelter during those times of suffocation and stress, but we were both there for each other in every moment since primary school.

These past three days after my discharge, I sorted things out from my apartment and my workplace.

My co-workers and principal bombarded me with numerous questions, and my return did initially shock them, but I needed to return to work as quickly as possible.

An open window, the slanting rays of the setting sun, in the corner of a small room, the soft winter evening that I had missed, returned. It was only later that I forgot to ask mother to borrow a phone, but she had already left back home.

Even knowing there would be a phone for me to access when I returned to the hospital for regular check-ups and rehabilitation, a surge of hesitation drowned my body at the thought of contacting my boyfriend.

Walking out of the café, not much of the suburb had changed and it wasn't that busy. Rather, it was somewhat empty.

The hospital was quite far from my home, so it took around forty minutes to arrive back here commuting by bus.

My eyes landed on two figures, but specifically on the tall figure with a clean collared shirt, with one button undone at the top.

Such brightness and gaiety swirled within my chest, such faith and comfort I had found in the future and the past I had missed.

That man's appearance captivated my mind immediately as a smile played on my lips, though that smile vanished as quick as it formed.

That man kissed the cheek of the person next to them, and the two continued to exchange loving affections. Amidst the pale evening gloom, when the fragrance of blooming shrubs hung in the air, my heart swelled and trembled without warning.

A puff of wind swept across the buildings and shops and through that man's slicked-back brown hair.

That man turned around and stared at me with eyes wide open, and so did the person next to him.

The two held hands tightly, their fingers intertwining with each other.

Soon, the words and noises of car tires and chatters became a hazy sound that seemed to reach us from the deep depths of the murky puddles.

"August?" he called.

How long had it been since my name was said in that voice? His hoarse tone prompted my chest to lurch with a stab of pain.

I had not expected this situation; it did not cross my mind at all.

Seeing Henry, my lover of ten years, and my close friend of twenty, tightly embrace someone else was not what I had expected.