Summer Haze [BL]

Chapter 2 - Henry Watts

We went into another café.

Eugene, the person sitting next to Henry, did not once let his gaze drift away from me as though he was examining me from the depths of my skin to my bones.

Eugene wore a thin cotton jumper with black woollen gloves on each hand. His naturally droopy eyes produced an impression of calm and peacefulness, though he was eyeing me rather superciliously.

"You disappeared for three years after going away to that rural school placement. How could you just leave like that?" Henry asked.

"During my teaching exchange, I got into a car accident."

Henry's knitted brows soon became two arches, and he didn't blink until I took another sip of the iced water. He tightened his grip on the cup, almost that the subtle tremors of the water and glass were visible to the eye.

"An accident? That's all you can tell me? How do you expect me to believe that after you left without a trace? Your mother told me you desired to escape, so you ran away while using the teaching exchange as an excuse."

My brows raised before smiling. "...During my exchange, I got caught in a car accident while I was heading back from the school. You know that the place I was going to was a rural area... so it took a while for the ambulance, or anyone at all, to notice. Right... I was unconscious for three years and I stayed in the hospital for over 6 months. So I was only discharged a while ago..."

The coldness of the water numbed my palms and fingertips, travelling down my arms and to my head.

The more words that escaped my lips, the more I was confused by what I sounded like, which this puzzlement of where I was weighed down upon my entire body.

Although my eyes locked with Henry's, whose gaze kept faltering between the drink before me and my face, my senses already began rotting. The surroundings blurred, and my muscles became fatigued.

Then, with haste, the lethargy swallowing my soul became a piercing abscess forming around my heart that consumed the oxygen from reaching my lungs.

Eugene tightened his grasp, holding onto Henry's hand even tighter. Eugene would occasionally rub Henry's hand with both palms, still having his eyes examining me. My head was still throbbing, but there was nothing I could do to ease this ache.

"Why didn't you contact me when you woke up?" Henry asked though hints of reluctance rose before he spoke, like he didn't know whether those were the right words to use considering Eugene was beside him.

"My phone broke."

"Are you feeling alright?"

I nodded.

"It was a hit and run?"

Holding onto my cup, I fiddled with my cold fingertips.

"No. It was an accident."

"Why didn't you contact me when you woke up?" Henry repeated.

Throughout the conversation, Eugene would clamp his eyes shut and grit his teeth and wait for it to pass. And it would pass—but slowly, little by little, taking its own time and leaving a dull ache in all our heads.

Henry rubbed his temples and breathed heavily. His face hadn't changed that much, but I could tell he had lost a bit of weight.

Compared to my sickly appearance of a pale, wasteful dreamer, Henry was radiant, and his long, diamond-shaped face glistened with all candour of youth despite being in his late twenties.

"All this time, I thought you ran away... I was so lost. When I went to your school, they informed me you had simply disappeared and never returned. Your sister told me you took your passport with you before you left, and even after trying to contact you for so long, you never responded. So... I really thought you had just abandoned your life here and went to Australia. Have you gone to meet your mother? Did you explain everything to her?" Henry asked.

"Yes."

"What did she say?"

A slight wrinkle formed in Henry's forehead, and he clenched his fists.

"Did she tell you to go back to work?"

It took me a while to decide on what to say and it didn't exactly come out the way I wanted to.

"There was someone else who I wanted to see, and that was you, Henry. I really... missed you."

Still, even with my eyes directly gazing at him, I didn't understand the weight of my words that it had on him, nor did I know the meaning behind his expression.

Only after processing what I had said, my mouth clammed shut. Henry's lips parted, though no words left his mouth, and I ensured there was no time for him to speak.

"...But it appears that my appearance today was not that welcome."

I didn't mind being given up on by others because I always had him next to me, though it never came to my mind that this thought would merely be a hopeless desire.

The green paint patches on Henry's fingers caught my eyes. There was a desire to ask him about his art career as I remembered the light that ignited in his hazel eyes every time he painted or spoke about art. Hearing him talk for hours and watching him paint, while he sometimes accidentally smeared paint over his face, those were the brightest days of my youth.

I was still trapped in that summer solstice while everything had moved on ahead. With only exchanging a few words left about my condition and his new relationship with Eugene, I left the café without taking a glance back.