Afire Love

Afire Love - Bonus

Spring 2009

It was Monday and as usual, before lunchtime, it was chemistry slot. Mia lifted her head from the desk and stared blankly at Mr. Grey who was so excited explaining about the theory of thermodynamics in front of the class. She sighed as she saw the whiteboard, fully scribbled with mind maps and formulas. Truthfully, she has no idea about what Mr. Grey was talking about. Well, she kinda like chemistry but somehow, this topic didn't quite caught her attention.

Mia dropped her head back onto her desk and stared outside of the window. Mr. Grey's voice slowly disappeared as her eyelids began to shut. She was halfway towards dreamland when suddenly she felt something being thrown straight to her head. Half dazed, she straighten herself up and touched the back of her head. Mia found a ball of paper on her desk and concluded that it might be the thing that hit her just now. She looked around a few times and slowly uncrumpled the paper. What was written on the paper literally made her smile and from the handwriting, she already knew who it is from.

'You seemed kinda bored. Well, same here.
Wanna do something crazy?'

She didn't like the sound of that but it won't give any harm to them, right? Again, she smiled and faced to her right. She saw Mark, who was sitting two desks away, was looking at her while lifting one of his eyebrows. Mia took a quick peek at Mr. Grey and looked back at Mark after that. She held the paper to Mark and nodded her head few times.

Both of them grinned widely.

-----

"You're quite a daredevil, you know."

"Why?"

"Well, one, you skipped Mr. Grey's class which no one has ever dared to do that, not even Jackson and two, you're one of the top students in school. I didn't know that someone who is literally being adored by the entire school for his outstanding performances in academics and so forth can also do things like breaking the rules. I'm impressed, Mr. Perfect."

Mark turned his head to the right and looked at Mia, who was lying beside him. There they were-- on the school roof top, both lying on the ground while facing the bright blue sky right above them, watching the clouds slowly changing their shapes and enjoying the refreshing spring breeze that blew past them. He smiled and turned his gaze back towards the fluffy white clouds.

"Rules are meant to be broken. Life would be more interesting if we cross the line, sometimes. I'm trying to make some memories here. At least, in the future when I'm old, I can brag to my grandkids that I can still be a top student despite of skipping class. Besides, Mr. Grey loves me. He won't punish me for breaking this one tiny rule."

Mia stood up and stared at him. "Aren't you being too cocky, Mark Tuan? He won't punish you but he will definitely punish me. Seriously, why do I even agree to come up here with you? I shouldn't get into troubles. Mom would certainly kill me if she found out about this."

"Hey, hey..." Mark too, stood up and faced Mia who was already on the edge of breaking down. He knew that this wasn't a good idea, skipping class and dragging Mia into this but strangely somehow, he felt so right. He let out a small sighed and smiled. "No, your mom's not gonna kill you. I'll take responsibility for all of this, so don't worry. Everything's gonna be okay."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Mia looked straight into his eyes and she saw sincerity in it. That calmed her down, a bit. Both of them laid their backs onto the ground again and threw their gaze towards the sky. They fell into a deep silence but it wasn't deafening as they can hear each other's breathing that slowly become music to their ears and they enjoyed it.