Here All Along

chapter - 4

"Phi Bright" the boy panted, eyes clouded with fear "the new student... picked a fight with Win..he-"

I did not hear the rest of what he said and ran.

Someone had a death wish that day.

....

I pranced towards the canteen where a few students were assembled and piercing their rows, my eyes landed on Win.

He was on the ground, hair dishevelled and his uniform, stuck out in all places while a senior was jeering at him. The sun was back on my neck again, burning my skin as a raging wildness took me in an overwhelming grasp. The murmurs around me reduced to shrill beeps and everything blurred except Win's eyes that locked with mine and he visibly shrank with fear. I assumed the same fear was reflecting in everyone there who knew what was going to happen the next moment. Win mouthed something but I could only see a drop of blood sprouted at the corner of his lips.

Red swept all over my entire being.

My head felt too heavy and something throbbed loudly under my fingertips. I clenched my fists, all veins twitching with a fury I falsely believed I had mastered. I trembled with charged bolts of anger, my chest felt like a hot furnace and someone might have told the boy who hit Win, to run away but he turned back with a smirk on his face. I looked at Win who was on his feet now, crawling to me and i averted my gaze back at the bully.

I punched him in his face.

I punched him. Hard, raw, so powerful like a streak of lightening from the god Zeus himself. He stumbled on the ground.

"Bright! No!" Win shouted amidst the cries and squeaks of students who started dispersing in panic.

"HOW DARE YOU TOUCH HIM?!" I growled with untamed anger, fisting his collar and hitting another blow on his face.

"Stop it Bright please!" Win cried, pulling me roughly, rendering the boy to be released from my grasp and fall on the ground, limp and lifeless.

....

It was second time in two years when I had been outrageously violent in school. Funny, bullies never made a place under the violation of rules labelling in our glorious prospectus of Naurburi high. I had no excuse for my behaviour nor I apologized to the boy with the broken nose.

Win's parents and mine were immediately summoned at school. The only comfort was that grandpa did not tell my parents immediately and instead came for me.

Win and I were sent back to our classes. He did not spare me a glance and i could not ask him to.

The dinner was painfully bland. A dense thickness rested in the air and i could taste a metallic sourness on my tongue. The quiet was prickly and only sounds that striked my ears were the angry clattering of spoon in grandma's plate. I wanted to throw up. She had not talked to me about the incident and only attended me when necessary. I could sense a hesitant sympathy in grandpa's eyes that did only so much to comfort me. I had no idea what had happened back in the principal's office and it was pretty obvious that expressing any curiousity would have been that one easy step to provoke grandma and her aggression she was trying hard to keep inside. I respected it and after dinner, silently walked out of the house.

Like every night, i went to the backyard even though i already knew I wouldn't find Win there. I still lied on the grass anyway and glued my eyes at the sky, the giant, shimmering river of stars that looked a lot farther than it always did. My shirt felt damp and slight sticky at the back from the moist grasses I had laid upon and air was fresher than it was inside, yet equally suffocating.

Growing up, i only allowed myself to feel very little of emotions like annoyance and anger, and much less let them appear on my face. Again, i did not know why was I never a demanding kid like one deserves to be but I guessed it must have taken a lot of demands to go unheard and unvalued before i became silent with them.