It... was nice

"Leave me alone," I sniffed and quickly wiped my tears before moving away from him.

I continued making my way down the several turn of stairs.

To my surprise, he followed me.

"You're crying," was the only thing that left his mouth.

"What do you want?" I immediately halted in my steps and turned to face him.

"Who even are you?!" I struggled to refrain myself from shouting.

There was one thing I hated about myself and that was the fact that, I couldn't control my emotions. Most people who knew me did all the they could to avoid me when I was in a bad mood, except Kiki of course.

I continued, tears flowing from my eyes as easily as they could.

"First, you show up in my life as a rude stranger and now you stalk me. What is it that you really want from me?" My voice cracked.

"I... I'm sorry," His eyes that had been on me the entire time, fell. "I wanted to help you back then but..."

"Well, you can keep your help to yourself," I hissed and resumed walking with the believe that he had stopped following me.

I finally got out of the hospital to be greeted by the busy crossroad.

Vehicles horned and sped through the road.

The noise.

Everything was getting to me as if they had come to torment me.

My temporarily forgotten resolve slowly returned and I found my legs moving close to the busy road without a care in the world.

Just before I could get myself onto the road, I felt someone roughly grab me by the arm.

"Are you mad?!" Was the first thing I heard and believe me, I was shocked.

"Do you think every problem in this world is solved by killing yourself? Do you think that will make every who loves you happy?! Do you think things will become as easy as you think once you're dead? Do you?!"

He was shouting at me as if he knew me yet for some reason, I couldn't argue with him.

"Leave me alone," I said in a voice that sounded almost like a whisper.

"Fine," He replied, very much to my surprise. This guy was the most unreadable human I had ever met.

He had let me go. He wasn't shouting anymore yet I couldn't bring myself to continue where I left off.

"But before you kill yourself, I just want to let you that I am truly sorry for what happened that day. You may not know why I didn't help you now but you will later," He added, his voice calm this time.

"It's not like I wanted you to save me," I finally said.

"If you don't want to kill yourself anymore, you could come with me. I'll walk you home," He ignored my words and began walking away.

I stared at the ground for a brief moment, almost as if there was a battle going on inside of me that I was trying to conquer.

"I'll come with you," I found my voice after a short while.

I don't know why I had said that.

Was it that I was afraid of death and just wanted to seem brave? Or was it that I actually didn't want to leave the people I loved behind?

Miles stopped walking once he heard my words and waited till I reached where he was. Then, we both walked together, side by side.

"Here," He handed an handkerchief over to me.

"It's fine," I told him and he didn't hesitate to put it back into his pocket.

After that, there was complete silence between the two of us as if something had never transpired between us some minutes ago.

"Why were you at the hospital?" I decided to break the silence.

"My mum," He said "She's suffering from brain tumour."

There was so much guilt in his eyes.

"Oh... I'm so sorry," I quickly apologized.

"You don't have to be," He sighed. "We all have different things we go through in life and killing yourself is never the solution to any of them."

I kept quiet.

"I lost my dad when I was seven," I continued. "He was really sick and ended up dying after a fatal accident."

It was very much unlike me to say this to strangers but somehow, it felt like Miles and I shared something in common - tragic experiences.

"My mum never for once respected the fact that he was dead. It was as if she didn't seem to care. She got married to another man just after three weeks of my dad's death," I added.

"I'm so sorry to hear that," Miles did his best in comforting me.

"Thank you," I sent him a small smile.

"You look better with that smile of yours," He pointed out with the most serious face I had ever seen. "Crying makes you look like a monster."

Now, I wonder if Miles ever smiled for a long time. I had only seen him laugh once and that was on impulse I believe.

"You should smile more often too. I mean, you look good but with a smile, you'd look better," I assured him.

"Like this?" He pointed at his perfect set of teeth that clenched against one another, making it seem like he was posing for a toothpaste advert.

"May God deliver you," I laughed.

Some time passed and we reached a bus stop.

"I don't think I'll walk any longer. I'll just take a taxi from here," I told him.

"No problem," He slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

I simply nodded. He waited till I was able to stop a taxi.

It was quite a surprise that Miles turned out in a different light than I used to see him when we met.

Today made me feel like I had gained another friend.

Before I got into the back seat of the taxi, I turned to face him.

"It...was nice," I nervously spoke, not daring to look at his face.

With that, I rushed into the seat and shut the door.

I think the taxi driver understood my situation and didn't waste even a second before driving off.