Their Days of Nights

06 : Gloom

August/September 2006

Benjamin

Me: good morning, KP

Kim: good morning, Sunshine

Me: <3

It's eight a.m. now. I get off from the jeep at the first stop around the academic oval. I'm too early for my first class today, so I'm going to walk for a bit.

The acad oval is this portion in the heart of campus, where the major buildings are located. There are areas in its center with grassy fields and parks. Along the sides of the roads are stretches of century-old trees that meet each other's branches, creating canopies atop the streets.

The campus looks gloomy this morning. The pavements are wet from an earlier downpour. Rainwater is still falling from the leaves of those trees as I make my way along the sidewalk. It stopped raining, but the sky is still heavily clouded.

I just pass by the administration building to my left and a museum on my right. It's still a long way to the end of the curve, but from this perspective, it doesn't seem that far. I'm heading for the Social Sciences building, somewhere in the middle of this side of the oval. Across it on the other side, separated by a small parking lot and a woodsy passage, is the Engineering building, which is where our CS classes are held.

I have my hoodie fully zipped-up as I'm still recovering from being sick last week. It's a long weekend then, and I originally planned to visit Kim in the province, but I was too sick to even get out of bed. It's a long weekend again these coming days, for Monday is another holiday, but I doubt I can still go with my plan to see her this time. I'm still feeling slightly under the weather, and she insists I should just rest and recover.

Cars are lining up to drop off students in front when I start ascending the steps of the old building. I have Geography1 this morning. My friends Frank and Chris are still in most of my other classes, but I'm on my own with my Gen Ed subjects. And I enlisted in this Geog class because I heard it's easy to ace.

*

I turn away from the table and my friends to sneeze. "Sorry," I say afterward.

We're in the always-crowded canteen between the Social Sciences building and the annex housing the Psychology department. I'm with Chris and Carleen, and we're waiting for Frank. We have a common breaktime at eleven-thirty, just in time for lunch.

Chris now resides, together with some of his friends from their province, at an off-campus boarding house. And Carleen lives in that girls-only dorm right across the Biology building.

"Woah!" Chris leans back from the chair with a look between surprised and perplexed. "You're either going to attend a wedding or your arraignment in court," he says the second Frank slides down to the seat next to me and across from them.

"What's with the formal attire?" Carleen asks Frank, who's wearing a light-green long-sleeved buttoned polo shirt, black slacks, and leather shoes.

"It's part of the rites," he replies. He also sounds like he's in a good mood.

"You look nice," she says.

Frank nods and says, "thanks."

Something's up with those two. I'm not quite sure what or how, but there are days when they're bickering and days like this one when they're friendlier to each other.

Frank is joining a fraternity. And this is their weeklong final initiation rites. Chris and I laughed at him at first when he told us about it more than a month ago. We thought he's joking then.