call out my name [2gether]

CH 2

THE THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT.

"So," Boss drawled gleefully as Sarawat sat down with a tray of food at their table in the noisy campus cafeteria. There was little time left before the first lecture block so the otherwise airy room was bustling with students that were trying to grab a quick and easy breakfast at the last minute. "How's your first weeks been in the haunted room? Seen any ghosts yet?" He stared expectantly at his stoic friend.

Fed up with all of these questions, Sarawat just scratched at his cheek with his middle finger while looking away nonchalantly, making the other two guys laugh out loud and throw their paper napkins at him in mock outrage. Sarawat swatted them away efficiently but remained otherwise quiet, brows slightly drawn together.

"Well?" Boss urged while demandingly slapping his big hands on the table, making cutlery clatter on their trays. He wanted to know all the juicy details and would not be dropping this topic that easily. Sarawat had to fess up. Now.

"And nothing," Sarawat replied monotonously and dug into his breakfast, making no further commentary, shutting himself up with the food.

Man and Boss shared a look across the round table, brows arched and eyes glinting mischievously. Sarawat was acting a little suspiciously. For one, he was no longer arguing against the possibility of his room being haunted. Instead he had just clamped up shut, closing in on himself and avoiding the topic completely, sometimes even avoiding Man and Boss altogether. And this had been occurring for the last couple of days. Strange. Sarawat was not really a social butterfly but he was not an unfeeling stone either. Regardless, it seemed that their group of friends had seen better days.

Boss kicked Sarawat under the table petulantly, making him look up with a piercing glare in his dark eyes. Boss sighed, slouching back in his seat.

"Whatever man," Boss muttered as he finally gave up trying to make the other one talk. He averted his eyes while crossing his arms defensively. Man shook his head at his friends. Boss never knew where the fine line was with Sarawat, always toeing over it and making the other one fume at his senseless antics.

Sarawat exhaled, dropping his fork and letting it clatter to the table. He reclined in the rickety plastic chair, legs sprawled wide, thinking.

Honestly though, as much as he did not believe in any of the nonsense that Boss had been spouting, it was still undeniable that some kind of weird shit was actually going on in his damn room. Sarawat would not go as far as to say that it was being haunted since that was too far of a stretch but mundane, unexplainable things did indeed occur. It was not even scary, just inconvenient is all.

For instance, his toothbrush kept ending up on the floor of the shower stall each morning. For some strange reason only one shoe of his favorite sneaker pair was missing its laces. An USB stick with some rather important documents had disappeared amidst the move and while Sarawat had been anxiously searching for it high and low, it had innocently reappeared on his empty study desk a few days later. The little bag with spare guitar picks, usually kept inside his guitar case had disappeared too and was yet to be found – much like the missing shoelace. And the list just went on and on like that. Each day was becoming slightly more troublesome than the other, bringing down Sarawat's already rather spent mood.

And since Sarawat lived a rather messy life, all of this could be easily explained by his laziness to unpack. He rarely had any patience to complete boring tasks and often left things off halfway through when his interest was piqued by something else. Sarawat would however, strongly argue that he was not messy, he just lived in an organized chaos.

Sarawat furrowed his stark brows while chewing, going back to eating his breakfast again while his friends were whispering harshly with each other and throwing meaningful glances at him. He rolled his eyes while glowering at them.