Rex the Period and Silence

#11.3 The Salt on the Wound

The weather broadcast announces that these two days, the storm will come, but I have no umbrella after all, so I grab my hoodie jacket as my umbrella. At 1 P.M straight and am I walking into the swimming pool. Lately, De-Yuan is slacking off his working hours. He didn't show up and he ask the other to show up.

Today, base on the schedule only De-Yuan and me will be working, but I don't know who will he picked if he doesn't show up. It will be such a dramatic scene if Li-Zhuang is the one he picks randomly. Yeah, sometimes, when you want to erase someone from your life, it keeps coming back.

1:15pm, 1:20pm, 1:25pm, and someone suddenly breaks in but it is not someone I know. The siren keeps yelling as she didn't tap her card in the entrance. She stares at me furiously. She seems familiar yet I can't recognize her. There is no business between us but she spikes her eyes furiously to mine."May__I__help you?" I stand up and I ask her politely as she intruded in out of nowhere.

"It's you right?" she steps closer. At that moment, it strikes me that she is--. "You are the one who steals him from me!" Max's girlfriend. "What?" I don't get what is she talking about. She angrily walks closer and raises her both hands means to push me--the way how girls used to fight in the dramas, and I avoid it by stepping one step back. That's why I told my parents to not enroll me in the girl's high school, I spilled that the way girls fight was way scarier than how guys fight. She looks more infuriated as I dodged her. She lifts again her right hand trying to grab my hair, again, I tackle it by crouching down. "CAN YOU JUST SPEAK?!" I scream out. "Why should I speak to someone like you?!" she tries to grab me by the collar, then I block both of her hands. With messy hair and breathlessness, we are in the facing at each other. "Do you think you know me?" I answer her out of breath.

"YOU ARE THE REASON HE LEFT ME!" her voice fills the empty swimming pool. I am so speechless with her response. I have nothing to say but I can't let her win. "If you are going to blame everything on the others, you'll never find the answer," at that point another obtrusion breaks in, her boyfriend drags her out. The war ends.

This is the first time I witness this kind of 'surprise'. No one shows up after that add lib. I am alone until the time to close the swimming pool. After my working hour at the restaurant comes to an end, the only thing I wish is Li-Zhuang isn't there to explain everything to me. I mean, I just want to get her over my head. The 'surprise' wasn't that pleasure for me to remember, though.

The rain hasn't fallen, I expect that it will pour when I was working so that I don't have to be drenched when I get off from work, but the sky still holds its tears. I can say that I watched too many cartoons which makes me lay out my right leg, testing if the sky is waiting for me to come out. When I feel the drizzling, I use the threshold as my starting block and begin to run--I don't sprint like I did to avoid Josh, but I still give my best to avoid the rain.

I personally think, the rain likes me so much and likes to play along with me. If I write a novel, I think I should name it 'The Rain Who Loves Me'. The rain will never leave me alone. It pours step by step, and the droplets get bigger until it reaches the point where I need to find shelter. Now, my life has back to normal that I don't expect someone to be here when I need, as I am aware that nobody will be here to give me a shelter. Until I reach the intersection of me and Billy's alley. Billy's presence who is sheltering himself under his big umbrella caught my eyes.

"Hey! Bil!" I automatically run to him, his umbrella is so big that our bodies don't touch each other. "What are you doing?" he asks me and points my hands that are covering my head, with his head. "Your hand." I am getting used to standing under the leaking umbrella that I forget, not every umbrella is drippy. I put my hand down slowly as if I don't believe that his umbrella is a safe place to hide, and laugh foolishly to myself. It feels surreal to stand beneath the perfect umbrella.