-------------------------------------------

[Rei]

A week has passed and I’m surprised at how fast it was going. Today will be a long miserable day. How can I predict that? Oh, I don’t need to predict anything, I just know. And the sky was looking darker than it was before, despite the already pouring rain outside. Sigh. I don’t know if I can make it through the day in one piece.

“Hey,” Miyu approached me cautiously “I know you don’t celebrate birthdays, but do you want to hang out, just to get your mind off things?”

I know she means well and only the best for me, but I really want to spend today alone. Even if I surround myself with people, I’ll just bring them down, so no.

“Thanks, but no,” I remembered last year, Miyu did the same thing for me, took me around town, but I was too miserable to enjoy the day. So I don’t want the girl to feel awful than she already has. “I’m just gonna finish this and head home.”

Miyu nodded her head “Text me, okay? Or call!” She said and went towards the direction of the cafeteria. One of the things I like about Miyu is that she knows when to step back and let me have a time alone, especially on days like this. Even though she doesn’t want to, but she respected my decision.

Everything has just been so hard lately, if I thought the once I faced before was – no! This was by far the hardest and the most challenging one. I want to run and go back to my southern grandparents.

The rain could be heard pitter-pattering against the window of the class. It was on a rainy day like this that the message of my parents’ death was received. You know what else ? I got the news on my 16th birthday.

I became immobile, speechless and thoughtless of my surroundings. It all came crashing 6 years ago. My parents were supposed to return home that day, for my soccer match that was taking place the next day, which I never went because I had shut myself out from the world.

Everyone was on edge whenever they see me walking in the room, afraid that I might shatter. I attended my parents’ funeral, of course, but from that point onward I did nothing but push everyone and everything I love, away.

My parents were my world, they were everything to me. I promised them that when I’m grown up and got myself a stable job. I said I would take care of them like how they had taken care of me. I would have a roof over their head and food to fill their empty stomachs.

But, now, those are just empty promises. I exited my class, robotically, I stepped out of the building and have the rain enveloped me in the comfort I was looking for what I had lost 6 years ago.

Looking up and glanced around at the dark clouds with a smile on my face “Hey mama, papa. How are you? Are you well over there? I miss you guys –”

My whisper cracked into a sob, my head hung low, letting my hair fall on the sides of my face like a curtain. I chuckled bitterly, “Please, do whatever you can to wake me up if I ever feel like giving up on this life.”

I glanced back up to the pouring skies with a genuine set of smile “I love you guys.” With that, I left the campus feeling