Labyrinth | ✓

t w e n t i e t h ♂

Monday, 07:29 AM.

Locked.

The entire weekend, I managed to spend most of my time locked inside my room, just like most of my summer holidays last year and the years before that. My parents tried their best to get my ass off the bed and out of the room. They wanted me to walk Myla as an excuse, but in the end, Lu saved me by volunteering.

After all, she was the only person in my family who understood that I just wanted to be left alone.

Hugging my bolster, I thought about insomniac nights I had these past few days. I kept rolling in my bed, closing my eye and wanting for sleep to take in, but something was stopping it from doing so. I successfully had fallen asleep, only to be woken up by flashes of that nightmare I had on Saturday night.

I just wish there's an invention that can erase memories...

I have yet to make a single contact with my friends during those days, even Rena. I simply checked their Facebook posts to what they were doing. Seb was busy with his works, while Alyssa and Rena both went shopping at the mall with their other friends yesterday. It slightly bothered me, but I knew that it was a girl's thing to go shopping and stuff, so I shrugged it off.

As for Florence, she probably spent time reading novels at home, as she had no updates on her profile.

Even though I wasn't really close to her, I still knew her from my childhood. She was that quiet observer of the group and loved bringing a book along with her to read. She was that girl with a small, feathery side ponytail, and often seen hanging out with Seb. Besides, he met her first in fourth grade, and I could see that since then, they have grown closer. Even after that day, their rapport still remained firm until now.

Not only bookish, she was also infatuated with the act of being critical. Alyssa was often judged as a girl who knew no limits and had no sense of direction. Rena was called off as a naive girl who lacked courage. Seb and I weren't lucky to escape from her so-called opinions, even though she had a crush on him. She even dubbed me Grumpy, anyway, or even Grumps just to shorten it.

At first, I reminded her to just call me Edward, but then she still went on with the Grumpy shit, so I didn't bother to correct her anymore.

I let out a long, deep sigh.

Since I had been staying on the bed for long periods of time, some parts of my body had been itching since last night, and were quite muggy from the sweat produced. My skin would then stick to the blanket or the covers, and it was making me really uncomfortable. Not to mention, my hair was completely tousled and was slightly oily.

There, I was determined to stir myself off the bed that I had been staying since yesterday. I slowly adjusted myself, before ambling towards the bathroom. There, I turned on the faucet of my bathtub to fill in. As the sound of water rushing and hitting against the floor of my tub resounded through the area, I walked towards the mirror, and began to strip myself off my remaining clothes.

I kept looking at the mirror as a boy stared back at me with his cold, dark blue eye that used to shine brightly back then. The more I kept gazing at him, the more pathetic he became. I could notice more glaring flaws than before.

One of them being that I had almost no visible muscles, just a lot of useless, flabby tissue that filled not only my arms, but my entire body. Guys in my school thought that it would be awesome to have strong builds and muscles that you could show off to people, especially the girls. Fucking hell, why should I be jealous of them? I don't even play basketball anymore, nor do I do workouts everyday.

Before I got to criticize myself further, I looked away from the mirror, gently entering the bathtub. Even though the water wasn't at the same level as my body, I could still feel the stinging coldness piercing against my flesh.