The Girl Who Carried the Sun

Twenty One

Twenty One
☢️☢️☢️

Lily’s eyes stayed on the wall clock above the white board as students filed in.

‘Only three hours’ she thought, ‘It’ll be over before you know it.’

She leaned forward on her desk, covered her face with her arms and said a silent prayer. She sat somewhere in the middle of the room. A ceiling fan circled overhead but it didn’t help. She brought out her handkerchief and padded them on her forehead. And just in time to light up her world, she saw her best friend, Shangkim, enter. She’d shortened her hair and highlighted the ends over her shoulders with fiery streaks of red. Lily stood up as she approached her and they hugged. She took an empty desk on Lily’s right and asked, “How’s your preparation?”

“Scary.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry,” she grinned at her. “Are you going to go back and forth from the village in all the papers?”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t it exhaust you though?”

“It does but I’ll have it worse if I don’t stay with him especially during the exam. He helps me catch up and he’s the only one I want to be with for now.”

Shangkim smiled and nodded. “I know. No matter how much I miss you, it’ll be good for you to stay with him for a while. I just wanna get this exam over with and come back home too.”

“You could come over to Reiveihmai for a visit! You’ll love it. It’s another vibe out there and I miss you too.”

“I doubt that. Now that you’re with your brother you won’t miss anyone.”

“I don’t miss anyone else but you!” Lily countered with great emphasis and a warm smile.

“There goes my heart. Mothelshang asked about you. Did you really end it with him?”

Lily bit on her bottom lip and nodded slowly. Mothelshang wasn’t only her boyfriend. He was a great friend to both of them. Lily couldn’t help but feel she had betrayed a friend and Shangkim wasn’t going to be pleased with that. Things were not expected to remain as good as before and Lily just might have thrust their friendship in a very odd place. Lily fixed her eyes on Shangkim and waited on the impending chaos that was to befall on her. For a moment she was sure Shangkim wasn’t going to just let her go so easily. Not without a thorough session of emotionally-charged interrogation. Throw in a pocketful of chastising on what a stupid move she’d taken, how she might have unnecessarily broken the heart of a very good person, and there you have a natural, expected response. But Shangkim did none of that and softly asked, “Why?”

Lily had to swallow and contain her tears.

“I don’t know why,” she said. “It was nothing he did. I just felt like I had to get away from everything. I just felt so suffocated every time… didn’t wanna talk to anybody.”

“That’s alright. He understands. I talk with him often and he holds nothing against you. He was just curious how you were doing. Don’t worry about him. Is your brother waiting downstairs?”

“He is.”

Daniel waited in the empty hallway just outside the office of the Head of Department, who took notice of him furiously working on his laptop and immediately recognized his face.

“Daniel!” the pudgy, silver-haired professor called, standing by the door. “Why the devil are you sitting out here? Didn’t anybody invite you in for coffee? I should write a letter to the chancellor to have everyone here suspended for at least a year!”