He’s back

(Rorim's POV)

huff huff huff

"I'm late!" I squeaked as I sprinted from the school gate on the way to my room.

Not that I mind being late, I always was. Ninety-nine percent of my life I spent chasing (or running away from) time. And that ninety-nine counts today - the first day of school. First day of college. The first one I've ever (and probably the last) stepped into my whole life. Why and how did I even choose to finish The Odyssey all night, thinking that it could help me sleep immediately, when I have class that starts at seven? I only had two hours of sleep and now my head's in the clouds - all the air and vapor steaming my mind that I unconsciously took a spoonful of cinnamon while mixing my coffee and sprinkled coffee on my oatmeal this morning. To say the least, I skipped breakfast and now I'm running straight to my first class. Every breath was a pain to my throat and my stomach but that didn't stop me from racing against the time to reach the room. So much for the first day, huh?

Slamming the door open, I scan the room as I catch my breath, feeling dreadful that I missed a thirty minutes of potentially interesting introduction from one of my favorite professors on the first day of school.

"I presume that you're Ms. Hourglass, seeing that only your name hasn't crossed out my list." Ms. Lee stated, looking at her list and then to me. Great, now I failed to make a great first impression. "Find your seat, Ms. Hourglass. We're just about to start with the activity."

I rushed to the nearest seat in the first row. Ms. Lee took a bowl filled with folded papers and shook them inside with her hands.

"As I was saying, this activity will both serve as your introduction and a practical experiment to our upcoming lecture. I want all the people from the first, third and fifth row to go down here and pick a paper from my bowl." I stood up and queued with the first row one by one picked paper from the bowl. "First row, the numbers you'll pick will decide your partner from the last row. Third row to the second and fifth to the fourth. Count from left to right."

When it was my turn, it took about a second or two for me to register that Ms. Catherine Lee, my favorite author and professor, was in front of me. "I'm sorry for being late Ms. Lee." I muttered before I grabbed a paper from her glass bowl.

"No worries child. Do be punctual next meeting." I bent my head to a bow before turning to check my paper.

ONE

I looked up to the rising row of seats and searched the faces on the sixth row. The crowd of people finding their partners kept me from having a proper look at the occupants from the left side of the room.

I'll go to them myself then.

Walking carefully up the elevated stairs, I tried to avoid bumping onto other students and made my way to the sixth row. I was a few feet away from the first person in the row when I got a good peek of their face.

thump thump

I have had plenty of heart-stopping moments in my life, but I never thought I'd be in a situation where I'd feel the exact opposite from the prior causes to it. Every step closer I could hear my own heart beat, so unfathomably slow and loud.

thump thump thump

I can almost push my chest with my hands for fear that it can actually jump out of my flesh. Can stopping your breath and heart cause an adrenaline rush? I believe this must be common sense to me but right now, I was clueless.

Like my hands that managed to switch coffee and cinnamon for breakfast, my feet dragged me nearer to him. How can I even tell that it's him? Maybe it's not him. Maybe he just looks like him. It has been years. But if it just looks like him, won't that be worse for you? It should be him. It must be.

"Later, Norman."

My heart must've really stopped at that moment. My resolve, the sand castle I've slowly built with the finest pebbles of ploy and with buckets filled of becoming, now thoroughly washed away by the sea of subterfuge - my own emotions.

There he was.

Norman. A two-faced tragedy trapped in a traveller's trace.

thump

___________________________

I met Norman when I was a kid.

It was a rainy day when the shelter's doorbell rang.

riiiiiiiiiiiing riiiiiiiiiiing

Ms. Hipher hastily ran to the corridor despite her remarks of otherwise when a few kids scampered from playing chase. She opened the door and there appeared a middle aged woman. Behind her was a little boy, his eyes wide and haunted as they surveyed in the dark, grim interior of the place.

"Poor kid." A grown one murmured under her breath as she peeked from the corner of the room.

"Well that makes one of us." Another grown one muttered and left, unbothered.

That makes another of us, I wanted to correct.

Another son, about to be offered and left by his mother, this time with a reason that she no longer can afford another burden in their outstanding family. Whether she meant the better term or the other, he must have understood at an early age that he was discarded.

Norman cried silently in the corner, just beside the door of the room where his mom spoke of abandonment to Ms. Hipher. When she left, he only stared at her walking towards her car, a butler holding an umbrella opened the door for her then went driving away. The last of his tears streamed down his face before running to his room in defeat.

I didn't go near him for the first week after he was left. I only observed from afar, like I've done to everyone else.

Norman was five, like most of the number of kids. Kids his age would be throwing tantrums or would isolate themselves, not to mention the subconscious trauma of being left by their own parents. Instead of those, he was strange, well-behaved. He'd wake up and tidy his bed once Ms. Hipher would ring the bell. He would wear that practiced smile on his face first thing in the morning, unbothered by yesterday's event. In the playroom full of rowdy kids, he would place himself on the most comfortable spot, where everyone can still notice him, and read a random book he pulled from a random shelf.

"Hey!" Dennis, a kid with dirt smeared on his chubby cheeks and flabby arms, spoke out to him.

Norman carefully lowered his book and looked at him. "Yes?"

"Wat aw yu weading?"

Norman glanced at the cover of the book and then back to the dirty kid. "Amphibians." He spoke the word like a natural, no normal five year old kid in the place would be able to pronounce.

The kid must have been taken aback as he had no reply and just looked at the book, probably trying to attempt the word in his mind before speaking. For a while he stood there, hands tight into a fist, until his other friends came to pull him to their game before he arrived.

Norman went back to his reading when the kid left and stayed there until he finished. Other kids would attempt to go near him, in between flipping pages, but then scrambled away afterwards, failing to make a friend in him or even a decent five-year-old conversation.

On some days he would be like that, but on some he would be the one to come up to them. With his usual smile, he would approach a few groups, some small and some big, and look at their activity. His hands would meet on his back as he focused and observed the games the children are playing. After having a grasp of the mechanics, he would move forward and offer to try. The kids don't mind; the more playmates, the better. One by one, this game to the other, he would defeat them flawlessly. The other kids from different groups would gather behind him to watch his prowess, and soon, marvel.

Soon after that, he had become a magnet. Some of admiring fellows, some of jealous eyes, yet he didn't mind both. Unlike his gray, lifeless eyes when he reads the random books, there, before the overused sticks and crumpled papers that spread before him, his eyes sparked. Either from the attention he's getting or the satisfaction of acing any game before him, bright had become his face. I was meek moth attracted to the source of light, so warm that it caught my chest a weak smolder.

I watched him do those for a week, my eyes immediately finding him wherever he goes. I would bring the same book with me everyday, hide from the covers of it as I stole images of him in my head.

"That book again?" Gale stated as she sat down next to me.

She was one of the older ones, about seventeen or so. She was from the other house, the grown ones as she would prefer to call it. Despite being one of the people Ms. Hipher has assigned to tend and look after the kids, she doesn't like the young ones. They're noisy and clumsy, she once said and I agreed.

Everyday at three in the afternoon, she and I would rest under the tree, both occupied with different matters. She taught me how to climb the tree some time and I prefered to stay on higher ground after that. Staying there was her reward after taking care of the new babies, while mine was just to see everything in the open. We both didn't mind each other's presence. Maybe that's an understanding we both shared silently.

'You're an odd bird, Raven.', she murmured in the past and patted my head.

She must have called me that way because of my name. Not that I bothered, it wasn't a big deal; having seen how you were born and remembering it was. Odd bird, indeed.