Keyholes To Flowerage

II. Keyholes to Flowerage

II. Keyholes to Flowerage

AFTER THE autumnal departure of Mary Joy, I've had become very particular about the time-I've been in a habit of managing clocks and watches, scared to miss a sheet of moments. My arrival was lullaby, it made no turns and twists. It was always a lot easier to classify which clusters do my classmates belong to. With sufficient comprehension of what's happening, with the same monochromatic strokes of rainbow, I blended beige-temperate and plain.

It's a monotonous routine to exist in multitudes. Everyone's predicted to have dissimilar ways of attending the classes. Boys compacted together behind the rows, entertaining the ghosts that dwell in their phones. Few are talking to notebooks, showing how genuine they are in absorbing knowledge to be the best students. Some are bats, getting back their slumber by taking naps.

I intended to drop my bag and headed to the scarlet-tinted corridor. From the summit 4th floor, I chinky-ed my sight to exhibit my hope of chancing April and her friends. Students walked in a whirled motion, fading away from my gaze.

An auburn-headed girl appeared in my camera. I focused the lens on her out of the throng of people passing through the alleyway. Her friends are unfolded plot twists that are paralleling every move she crafts. I shut my camera close, it's painful to see her being friends with someone not like me or Mary Joy.

"Confucianism is also a belief system. It focuses on relationships and it also stresses the importance of rituals." Ms. Pringle paced back and forth, doing her best in planting knowledge in us.

"There's a term in Confucianism that elucidates the five basic social relationships. That's Zheming. What do you think are those five Zhemings?"

Five basic social relationships. Could it be one of them? Hmm. I slugged the tip of my pen on the armchair, cupped my face, bit my chapping lips as my heart pounded due to thrill and desiderata.

My mouth escaped words, almost inaudible. "Friends and friends."

"Ms. Pringle!"

"Yes, Lauren? Do you have the answers?" I turned my head right next to my seatmate. She put a quick look on me and stood up, voicing out my answer louder than I could.

"Excellent!"

She expressed the swirl of gladness and beamed at me. "I hope you didn't mind. You didn't have the courage to voice it out so I did you a favor."

I recognized the sameness of this situation; I was always taken advantage. Every eye of people thought too ordinary of me. "Yeah, sure."

She showed a grin. I infiltrated the orbits of planets within her eyes. Her pupil uncloaked their beliefs of me being shy and uptight, which I won't deny. But that's it. The things I can find no explanations with. I don't know if it was due to my tendencies of isolating myself in a hope of discovering solitude in schools or due to my unbearable silence that prompts them to misinterpret my temperaments.

I INTENDED to spend my vacancy figuring out the possibilities of me being an educator someday or a pharmacist. Or a lawyer. Or a journalist. Trailing my thoughts off, I transformed myself into a glass of water, crystal and ocean, revealing the alternative universe that hides behind the see-through rectangular thing.

The cubicle torn itself open, disclosing a familiar figure. I struggled on what to do first whether to say hi or stay silent. She made a quick approach to the faucet and a cozy approach to me by showing her milky teeth clothed with bloody braces. I returned the goodness. Volcanic smokes stormed out the comfort room, giving us ease and space. She pricked the absence of noise by asking how I was.

"Damn, you're so edgy." Her laughs echoed throughout the comfort room, bringing me back to actuality. I didn't know it was taking me a decade to respond.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was kind of surprised."

"It showed." Valery then became a stalwart detective, interrogating me through looking at my eyes deeply.

"You don't look okay." She paused to twist the faucet on. "Well, whatever it is that you're going through," she started, twisting her curls through her wet fingers.

"Just remind yourself that everyone had been there. Everyone's facing the same situation. And maybe." She calmly looked at me. "Some are going through a lot harder and bigger problem than yours."

I fixed my sight observing how the water fill the sink. "So stop sulking over petty shits that make you feel bad, alright?"

After a moment, she made a quiet departure. She didn't wait for my thank you. I wasn't intending to say one, though. I twisted the faucet off, then on. Water exploding swiftly, reaching my pulse -reaching for coldness. I hated it. The chitchat. With Valery. I had all the swords to fight for my sadness. The water fought. The mirror fought. The silence fought. And I didn't.

MY CLASSMATES rejoiced over the epilogue of classes. I sailed the ocean of students leaving actively the classrooms empty. I calmed myself underneath the green papers of tanned-tree, facing the mountains and the sanitary engineer's building. I plotted to reconcile with April today. With my patience growing paper thin, I wrapped my figure with sunsetting shadows. A whimper obliged my head to tilt. A couple making-out behind the building, I hunch-ed.

"Oh, April."

Without thinking, I photobombed into the picture. April cussed, buttoning her uniforms up. I identified a college guy behind her asking what's wrong. He then exerted a glance at me, then another.

"I'll call you later, Quentin." She grabbed her bag and walked pass me. I tailed after her shadow.

As birds ran in a hurry, the clouds stretched, improving to a beautiful lilac in the poetic sight in dribs and drabs. I communicated my words to April through movements, through silence, and through anguish. At least we still have connection. That's what the most important.

It had been three years since she shut me out of her world, of her moments and minutes. We reached the parking greensward. I stopped stepping foot when she did.

"I'm not gonna explain anything to you." She sat on her bike, looking directly at the rocky road.

I gripped on my sling. "Ah, yeah. I, I know you have a boyfriend and I'm actually happy that you're in love. I feel in love, too."

"You know what," she hesitated. "I don't fucking care. So, stop talking about love as if you're capable of doing it."

She pedalled away from me, I waited until her figure shrunk from afar. I've been doing this for years. Reaching out for the people I forgot to make moments with. Holding onto the photographs I collected to blanket the holes of longing for my loved ones. I got fond of this. Of exhaustion. But never would I get fond of pain she's making me feel even if I badly wanted to.