IF

As Old As Time

The music of Pan!c at the Disco's Death of a Bachelor blasts from Eyrin's headphones as she makes her way to the hall where the lockers are. It's a typical school day for her. She got up of bed, prepared for the day, and started it by attending her classes. Later she will end it by collecting the souls of those she never really knew when they were alive. Finally, she'll get home, get ready for bed, and sleep the hours until the next day.

Scenes of the things on her to-do list flash before her eyes as if they are predetermined. As she closes her locker doors, she sighs, "I'll get through this day, right?" She nods to herself, turns on her heels and walks to her first class.

Monday is a very busy day for everyone. That's the time that she needs to be early because if not, she'll end up sitting at the back corner of the room. Monday is the day when students, delinquents or not, go to school and early. In fact, that's the only day they go to school. So when Eyrin realizes that she's a minute late on her usual schedule and there's no seat left except that one on the farthest end, she tells herself it's okay.

By the time she takes her seat, the professor is not there yet so she doesn't remove her headphones yet. Noises are cancelled and she can only focus on her fingers tapping on the table while the music keeps on blasting. She is isolated. It's as if she's there but she's not. She's on her own bubble right now that she doesn't know what's happening around her. In fact, someone's already calling her name but they are getting no response. They decided to throw a paper on Eyrin's face.

By instinct, Eyrin removes her headphones and averts her gaze to the direction where the paper came from but she does not expect to meet familiar eyes.

Hazelnut eyes pierce through her. The glint on those orbs matches the apologetic look of the beholder as he's saying he's sorry. "I couldn't think of anything to bring you back to Earth."

The frown on Eyrin's face has been washed off as she recognizes the face underneath the shadow of his black hoodie. "It's you."

The guy smiles coyly. "You said I should call you but you never picked up," he says and Eyrin recalls what happened in the cemetery two weeks back.

She just smiles and bites her lips, flustered as she has totally forgotten about it. "Yeah, about that..."

"It's okay," he cuts her off. "Do you一" He holds back what he's going to say. Eyrin waits for him to continue but the professor already barges into the room and the class greets him with the usual good morning, in a bored tone of course.

The guy turns to the front, his back against Eyrin. The professor starts talking but before the both of them become engrossed in the lesson, he quickly looks back and say, "Eat lunch with me," then averts his attention back to the board.

Eyrin's mouth forms the slightest shape of "O" as she it registers on her. She couldn't say yes or otherwise so she decides to shrug it off. "I guess there will be an addition to my to-do," she tells herself. She's supposed to do soul collecting at lunch time but maybe she should have a good lunch instead.

—-
Eyrin is literally picking on her food. She only has fries and soda but she barely touched it. She just stirs the soda with her bamboo straw that she always carries with her. Adrian is just on the other side of the table but she hasn't spent a single glance on the guy. The confidence she had when they first met disappeared as if it never existed and right that moment, she's obviously flustered as flashes of that scene in the cemetery flood her head.

"Did I really ask him to call me?" she asks herself, mentally trying to pull her hair off her scalp.

She spends a quick glance at the guy sitting across her. His head is shaded by the shadow casted by the hood of his jacket, as always, but even so, she still can see that he's just staring down at his food.