Sad Tragedy

Dawn of A New Term

An hour and a half into my sleep, a familiar, yet blisteringly ear shattering tone started playing less than a foot away from my hurting ears. Recognising the tone for the first time in two months, my body, screaming with every inch of ache and reluctance, slowly arose from bed and grabbed my smartphone, in huge force and snoozed the alarm, then finally, concluding the routine with a forceful throw, and the sound of glass knocking onto concrete, and dropping onto the floor.

Ten minutes after my post-awakening outcry, my phone, still pumped with resilience and a fully charged battery started blasting the same, terrible sounding tone again, this time, from more than three feet away. Having no choice or whatsoever, I gave up my fight with the alarm clock on my phone, got out the bed and signed a peace treaty with it by turning the alarm off manually.

En route to school, a boring place made up of three buildings painted in either white or blue, I stared out the cold, hard windows of the freezing early morning commuter bus, into absolute darkness, except for small spots of the pavements and roads lit by warm streetlights that were vaguely even bright in any capacity, contemplating about what the day will bring for me, even if I've had everything predicted — which would always be right, slightly or wholly, because what's there to look forward to when all you — or specifically me, would do will just be repeating the basic cycles of a student. Unless you're someone with a clique or relationship, you can say goodbye to nice, happy school days, an assumption majority of the present society would intrigue you to portray.

I mean, with an exception of a few days or hours in the year where you would be genuinely happy or excited for school, the rest would just be an interesting waste of life, faking laughter and smiles to satisfy the people surrounding you and to limit the amount of "Are you okay?" being shot at you — because apparently, being sad or miserable is kinda forbidden in general unless you're in hiding or at home.

As I inched slowly towards the prominently lit school grounds and greeted by the many spotlights shooting out exceptional amounts of lux onto the walls and fences surrounding the school, particularly the School Plaza where the flags are raised every morning. While seating on the cold and not so pleasant stone tiles of the School Plaza, still watching my drama, I was suddenly distracted by a familiar entrant through the school gates, conveniently situated in close proximity to the Plaza grounds. He changed in many ways, but one he doesn't change is his hair. While he may have been on the chubbier side last year, the holidays revolutionised his build along with everything else, complete with a new set of uniform, smaller in every dimension to squeeze in his gorgeously new body. And that was a brief introduction to my ex-boyfriend.

Two years ago.

Our relationship sparked during History two years ago when we sat together side by side at the very back of the lecture theatre. I could vividly recall the day where we snugged our hands so tight together under the desk, although mostly in fright and in desperation in light of the circumstances that presented us where a terror attack was occurring in our school, I actually felt genuinely happy for the first time as I've had developed quite a massive crush on him three months ago. Although he wasn't that type of typical corridor-popular guy where girls would crowd around him to get a little whiff and glimpse of him or that type of overly hot or fit guy, I still felt that deep attraction to him, regardless.

Since that (not really) traumatising incident that happened at the school that day, our relationship grew stronger from the classmate status to best buddy within a month or two and then by the fourth month post-incident, while the both of us are walking along a deserted corridor along the third level of a vaguely used school block, I don't really know why but I felt a sudden instance of adrenaline rush, then moments later, it was accompanied by a feeling of warmth in my hands. Glancing down, I realised that both of us were holding hands. It was so sudden, so fast, so fucking enchanting that it took me almost a minute or two to realise what we have and what we've just officiated. Although neither of us said a thing, our subtle smiles coinciding with the overwhelming blush on our cheeks, we knew it was real -- the feeling, the love and everything else in between.

While that momentary bliss and happiness we had between each other caused me to be late for my French period, and for him, Chemistry, resulting in a rather hard scolding by our teachers, the thought of us being together, alongside the surreality of what just happened literally a tad bit over sixty seconds ago, made the scolding all that insignificant and worthwhile. Given that the insane thought was still cycling rounds and rounds over my head, I bore through the reprimand with a smile hanging on my cheeks till the end. Seeing me genuinely happy and smiley for the first time in a fortnight was a rarity that even my closest of friends and teachers found it hard to believe as I had always maintained a perfect resting bitch face and cared no less about anything else but my sorrow emotions. This explains why whenever I smile or say something positive, my friends and classmates will start bombarding me with questions as to why I was happy today, or if I was actually okay even if I am really fine.

However, it was to my sincerest regret that I would be unable to give these very "concerned" classmates a justifiable reason or excuse as to why I was smiling ear to ear or that my cheeks were all blushed up and red like fresh ripe cherry tomatoes because I simply can't. See, I am not in a good place to go public with this newly inaugurated relationship, especially when this very relationship is built on the fundamental basis of same-sex. In the society I live in, it is against almost the majority of the beliefs locally to support such cause or be interested in another of the same sex. So, although most of my classmates might seem extremely supportive and all for such cause, who knows one or two might actually have a prejudiced mindset of such cause or us -- in retrospect.