[𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐩𝐚𝐝 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝] - 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐩𝐚𝐝 𝐇𝐐 𝐄𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐏𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟐 ☆
19-year old Akira Joshi has always lived in a shell. She has always viewed the world through a pair of metaphorical rose tinted glasses. Good grades...
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《Short Recap》
"I may be loser pathetic Akira, but I'm far from stooping to that level," he said, his tone laced with scorn, "I don't need your bright and wonderful presence constantly to self validate."
I bit back an insult. He was allowed to vent and I wanted to get to the root of the problem rather than arguing fruitlessly.
I placed a light hand on his strained biceps and asked softly, "Vinay you're scaring me. Can you please tell me what's wrong?"
Drawing in a ragged breath he swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing visibly, "I am not going to either Cornell or UPenn."
●○●
At first I thought I'd misheard Vinay's words.
But the strained, pallid manner in which he said them knocked me back to reality.
"What on earth do you mean?" I exclaimed, utterly shocked.
"I'm not going. Or rather there's no possible way I can go." Vinay shrugged with a practiced indifference, "Didn't you hear what I just said?"
I bit my lower lip unsafely.
I knew where this was going. Hiding behind his enormously high emotional walls and his pretence of apathy was his safe place. Something that gave him the false feeling of being in control.
I pulled my mouth into a thin line and sighed.
"Care to elaborate?" I asked, turning my entire attention towards him.
"I'd be just end up wasting my breath then." Vinay replied coarsely.
He emptied the remaining contents of the rum bottle in his hands and placed it on the floor. He lifted his foot and placed it on the smooth, flat surface lightly before pressing down forcefully and crushing the glass.
I flinched slightly as the sound of the splintering glass pierced through the quiet of the night as he unforgivingly attacked the broken shards with the thick rubber sole of his sneakers.
Yet I sat beside Vinay wordlessly and waited for him to talk. I knew he'd buckle under the weight of the heavy silence hanging between us sooner or later.
"My father's decided that he is not going to fund me down my path of self destruction as he so politely put it." He rasped out finally, "Apparently he thought I'd finally had an enlightening staying with you and had decided to throw myself into engineering."
He laughed bitterly to himself before leaning back on his hands to gaze at the clear moonless sky.
"You should have seen his face when I told him I got into both Cornell and Pennsylvania. He looked so proud of me, impressed even, because he used to be a visiting professor at UPenn and he knows how difficult it is to get admitted." Vinay continued, "But it lasted merely for a few seconds until the words English major tumbled out my mouth. I didn't even get to the part of taking a mathematics minor."
