Blameless ✔

Chapter 13: ❝Go ahead, teach❞

Chapter 13: ❝Go ahead, teach❞

♡Mark's POV♡

"Do you understand it now?"

I glanced up from my phone that I had discreetly hidden behind the large textbook in my lap to stare at Evelyn with wide, perplexed eyes. "Hm?"

She grinned; always so patient and pleasant with me as she repeated herself. "I'm asking if you understand."

Suddenly remembering where I was and what I was doing, I nodded quickly as I did not want to aggravate her. My quick movement, however, caused the phone in my lap to fall to the ground with a thud. Evelyn looked at the phone, then at me with a disappointed facial expression.

"Mark," she called sternly, all her patience thrown out the window.

Sighing, I reached down to pick up my phone before saying, "look - I'm tired, you're tired so how about we just take a ten-minute break."

She glanced down at the silver watch wrapped loosely around her thin wrist before voicing out her complaint. "The bell's going to ring in ten minutes."

I snapped my fingers and gave her a pointed look. "Exactly."

"Mark," she called again, only this time through gritted teeth. "I literally read and reread Act 1, Scene 3 of Hamlet and you still got nothing from that?"

"How could I?" I retorted, feeling my patience also being thrown out the window to join hers. "I don't understand what he's saying because it's not 21st-century English and what the hell does 'thee' and 'thou' even mean?"

She gaped at me in disbelief before hurriedly biting her bottom lip and casting her gaze downwards almost as if she didn't want me to feel bad for not knowing the translation of those two foreign words.

"It's okay," she breathed out, clearly exasperated. "Not everybody knows what they mean."

"Can we just call it a day?" I questioned, stretching out my aching limbs and sighing contently when I heard the satisfying sound of my bones crack. I didn't wait for a response and instead started tapping away on my phone as I had already anticipated her answer to my question. Gazing at the group chat Luke had made for the five of us three years ago, I stopped my action of typing something into the text box when all the words familiarly got disorientated. I furrowed my eyebrows in concentration as I tried my best to make out the new text that had appeared in the chat.

"No, we can't just call it a day," I heard Evelyn speak, contradicting her words as she shut the large book in front of her, blowing dusty wind into both our faces. I was definitely not expecting that response.

Sighing, I gave up trying to read the text message and returned my phone to the front pocket of my black ripped jeans from where I had subtly snuck it out from while Evelyn was passionately reading Shakespeare.

I spread my legs out and leaned back in the surprisingly comfy chair as I gazed at her with a chronically raised eyebrow. "If we're not going to call it a day, what exactly are we going to do?"

Her facial expression didn't change. "What we came here to do."

I threw my head back and groaned in dismay to the ceiling - the heavens. I was a very social person generally and would much rather prefer talking to Shakespeare himself than sit here in this dusty, old library anguishing over his work.

"Instead of reading Hamlet from the book, I'm going to abbreviate it for what it's worth."

I blinked at her. "You mean summarise?"

"That's what I meant, yes."

Grunting, I sat up straight knowing that arguing with her would only end up giving me a migraine.

I reluctantly gestured her to begin, prior to muttering unenthusiastically, "go ahead, teach."

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

The bell rang unforgivingly loud in my eardrums.

But not loud enough to overshadow the harsh ringing of my cognizance.

After Evelyn had managed to summarize the entirety of Hamlet from start to finish in the span of five minutes, it left me dazed as I tried to process the thought-provoking information I had been given.

"So, basically," I began, pausing to clear my throat as the thick and croaky tone that had taken over my voice seemed to fit the atmosphere perfectly - too perfectly. "Hamlet... h-hated women, correct?"

Evelyn nodded while gathering up her material. She clearly had not taken much notice of the drastic change of ambience that was previously so uncorrupted and serene.

"He hated women because of his mother and his one true love which changed his view of the opposite sex altogether." She scoffed. "Ridiculous, isn't it?"

She then stood up, looking and hinting at me to do the same so we could get to our first class of the day but I stayed frozen and soon, she imitated me upon hearing my cold, gut-wrenching sentence.

"What makes it so ridiculous?"

She was shocked, clearly not expecting it but that didn't stop me as I stood up like she had previously wanted me to. I glared down at her as I sensed an invisible line being drawn between us to represent our very different views on this controversial topic.

"What?"

"His mother didn't even wait to get over the death of her late husband before marrying another guy," I spat. "What makes it worse is that it was the brother of her former husband so it was basically incest!"

Evelyn didn't respond and continued to look at me; watching me - analyzing me with such dispassionate blue eyes.

"His one true love just obeyed the command of her father to stop seeing him and she wouldn't even tell him the reason why she abandoned everything she had built with him. What's a guy supposed to think after that?" My voice shook as the air around me unforeseeably became a little too smothering to bear. "He has the right to think that way about women because it's not like anyone had given him a reason not to." They're all the same.

"That's not true," she spoke after what felt like an eternity of silence. Her voice was a broken whisper as she stared at me boldly and charismatically, making me lose all focus for a second. "Hamlet was just as in the wrong. Although he was the main protagonist in the story, he also played the role of his own greatest enemy. He allowed his misconception of women to take over his life 'till the bitter end. He was fully aware of his mother's guilt but still refused to hold onto that spark of hope that maybe not all women were as heartless as he perceived them to be. Instead, he forgot about his lover and used her as a mere puppet in his master scheme. Feelings can't just switch off like that and it was never fully revealed in the play if Hamlet really did share deep feelings with her." She paused for a second, maintaining our unbroken eye contact before finishing. "He actually made her believe that he never loved her... Nothing can be worse than that."

My eyes were glazed over with pure, uncontrolled emotion and Evelyn appeared the same, her stark facial expression abandoned to join the rest of our sentiments. It was like we were abandoning everything in our endeavour to rationalize, leaving us stripped down to nothing but our vulnerability.

She was the spark of hope I had unsparingly decided to cast aside. Maybe if I hadn't ruthlessly left her out in the cold that night, things would've been different.

-

Oh, yeah, we're back to the ambiguous, slanted, foreshadowinnng sentences at the bottom of the chapters.

You're going to see them a few times so I hope you're not bored of 'em already. :')