Water and Fire (BL)

Chapter 10. Gangster Kids

Note: Hey, guys, sorry for not uploading these past few days. I've been terrible busy with the final examinations. Thank God, the first half of our subjects were already done with, the second half would be this week. I hope I won't end up a corpse when the war is finished hahaha.

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Chapter 10. Gangster Kids

Ever since the acquaintance party a week ago, Eric haven't talked to David. Heck, he didn't even look at him even once, as if David was non-existent.

David was so frustrated because of this current situation. I thought we're gonna be good friends since we bonded over practicing our dance, it turns out we went from friends to being in cold war. Damn that Charlie!

David punched the white wall of his bedroom, frustrated to the core. It's all Charlie's fault, he kept saying to himself. If that brat hadn't acted like a victim all the time then Eric might not have pitied him. As it turned out, Eric even became closer to that pathetic kid ever since Eric saved his damsel in distress.

Why does Eric wanted to always salvage that kid? Why does he want to be friends with someone as uncool as Charlie, when I'm always here willing to be his good friend?!

All of these things weighed on his mind, numbing him and making his brows knot into an undescribable image of worry.

Add to that the fact that Eric seemed to have gotten closer to the weird girl in class, named Olivia. Did he always want to be close to a bunch of weirdos?

The more David thought about it, the more he became frustrated. He especially became more frustrated because he shouldn't have been thinking of Eric too much. Why am I this affected?

But all of the worries weighing him down seemed to have gotten lighter when he received a message from Xiaoge. It was a photo of her holding a tumbler of pearl milk tea. She was all smiles, and her face looked like a tasty piece of bun blushed rosy pink. She was so cute. David wanted to reach his hand over the picture and pinch those soft cheeks.

In the afternoon he decided to meet with his friends Jarwin, Jaguar, and Loco at a luxurious coffee shop.

"So why did you meet us, huh?" Jarwin asked in his usual arrogant voice, turning the tumbler of coffee in his hand.

"Nothing, it's getting boring in the house. Thought I might wanna pass the time here."

"Why this coffee shop?" Jaguar said. At first glance, Jarwin and Jaguar looked like two peas in a pod—two hulking airheads who had a penchant for destruction—but once David got used to them, he realized the distinction that Jarwin's face was more rounder, while Jaguar's face was more chiseled, like a jaguar.

"Yeah," Loco added. "The last time we spent time together, we played basketball at the court nearby. Why sit down here? It's getting boring, to be honest." Compared to the two airheads, Loco had a more pleasant, thinner face and drowsy eyes, though he was also cruel like the two.

"What does it matter, huh? I just wanted to sit, that's all." David then sipped on his caramel macchiato.

The three bullies were obviously impatient with these kinds of things. They're unable to sit down for a long period of time. They're active animals, wanting to be always running around looking for prey, to always wreak havoc in the surroundings.

The truth is, David initially wanted to talk to these guys about his frustration with Eric, but seeing them now with insensible, impatient eyes, David seemed to have lost the courage to talk to them. First off, Jarwin, Jaguar, and Loco were airheads, not having the wits to talk about trivial matters of the heart. And second of all, what the hell did David think that these airheads would take him seriously, should he talk to them his troubles over a boy?! Heck, they might have even beaten him to death for seeming weak and emotional. So David just kept quiet.

An air of awkwardness settled on their table. Jarwin kept on stirring his tumbler. Jaguar's feet were restless. Loco's fingers drummed the table endlessly.

David randomly searched for something to say. "So, um... What happened to the incident at the party?"

This seemed to have brightened the mood of the three airheads.

"Man, we were called at the guidance office last Monday!" Jarwin's tone seemed like he won a lottery. "As usual, we were sent to the Peace Room to atone for our sins, but it didn't take long because that ugly guidance counselor Miss Perez knew too well that our parents are board members of the school. I might have gotten her jobless, you know?"

Jaguar smirked. "Hmph, sending us to the guidance for what? For rapping about sex and drugs? Dude, the world's changing! Those are the kind of topic that's cool nowadays, you know?! These silly teachers clearly have no taste for good music."

"Copy that. And for throwing trash at that dumb Charlie?" Loco interjected. "Is it still new to them that we're ganging up on him? I mean, we had been preying on him for the last four years in junior high!" Loco laughed wickedly, his sharp jaw quivering.

David feigned laughter. So it's true what he heard about these three being the sons of board members of the school. And that they always got away with their wrongdoings.

They're certainly cool kids, but they're rotten to the core.

Then Jarwin continued yammering about his sexcapade with Celeste, that night at the party. But David didn't listen because he was so deep in thought.

Did I choose the wrong set of friends?

If Eric were there beside him, Eric might have smacked his head three times while saying, "I told you so!" David smiled when he remembered Eric's face.

"Hey, David, I was asking if you're actually Chinese," Jaguar's voice was loud.

David snapped from his daydream. "Yeah."

Loco squinted his eyes at him. "Because the way you speak our language, it seemed like you're a native born here."

"Yeah, I studied hard before going here," David lied. The truth is, since his childhood, he learned Filipino from their Filipino housemaids. He also enjoyed some of the Filipino cuisine that their cooks made.

Jarwin smirked while his eyes narrowed, observing David up and down. "If you're Chinese, then that means..."

Jarwin, Jaguar, and Loco looked at each other with smirks on their ugly lips and amusement in their faces, as if they understood something funny that only they know.

David became impatient. "What?!"

Jaguar spoke with a mocking tone. "You're supot, aren't you?"

"Supot?!" David didn't know that word, but the way Jaguar said it, it seemed like an insult.

Loco interjected, laughing. "Don't think about it too much. It just means you're awesome or something like that."

Hyena-like laughter reverberated in the coffee shop.

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Notes:

Supot - a derogatory term for someone who's not circumcised. In the Philippines, boys at the age of 12 are circumcised during the school break in the dry season (March to June), as a rite of passage. Circumcision is seen as something that must be done in order for a boy to be a man, and naturally, those who didn't go through the cut or those who haven't undergone circumcision yet are teased and insulted with "supot," which literally means sack, or a container, because of how the foreskin covers the glans like a sack or plastic container. Up to this day, this close-minded culture about circumcision prevails up to this day, and it's still believed nowadays that doing so causes a boy to grow taller, have a deep voice, and causes his penis to grow, when in fact, it's naturally at this age that boys' bodies develop, circumcised or not.