The night isn’t what I expected it to be, although Mom not calling me down for dinner is how I had expected the dinner would start.

I go downstairs after checking out the time on my phone, and the silence of the kitchen dawns on me. No humming microwave. No hissing stove. No clattering spoons and plates. No food glinting at me. No Mom. I expected to have an awfully quiet Mom roaming around the kitchen, but there is none. No one. Even the night breeze hesitates to come in through the windows for I don’t see the curtains dancing with it, folding and rolling themselves around the cold hands of the chilly night breeze. The kitchen is devoid of acitivity. Devoid of life. And the terribly quiet ambience slightly pinches a ventricle of my heart.

I pull out my phone from the pocket of the jeans I had worn since the travel. I haven’t had the energy to change my clothes as I arrived at my room for I had drained almost all the tons of life’s energy I had in me as my whole body wore down after the intense conversation I had with my mom. It was impossible to not feel my limbs getting limpy that I couldn’t bring them to move because they badly wanted to take a rest. And somehow, I could hear them eagerly whisper for an eternal rest.

I call Mom but it only hit voicemail. I call her again but receive no answer. For the next minutes, I just keep ending up at the computerized voicemail with a mechanical mellow voice of a naïve woman who can’t sense the urgency of the calls being delivered to her. My hands start to drop sweat from its unseen pores.

There’s a part of me that is aware and complacent that she is just out to one of her solitudes to cool her mind off from what she had recently known from me, but half of me is a sickening nagger that keeps pushing anxiety to my ears.

What if something had happened to her? What if she got herself into an accident? It would be your fault.

So instead of choosing the option to eat relaxedly and think only the positive, I bury my phone back in my pocket and run to the door. I open it and outside, an angry world throwing a tantrum shows up to me. 

I didn’t know stepping outside is a war not until I have to my body against the mad winds rushing to me strongly like a pack of ancient soldiers with their spears up and shields in front.

I tread another few steps and it is a grace enough to fully traverse halfway up the pathway from the main door in this warlike weather.

Protecting my eyes, I hold up a hand to my forehead. I squint around me and notice that Mom's car is not where my she had parked it, nor is the garage closed which would indicate it is there if it is.

No one is around the neighborhood as I take a view of my surroundings. I don’t see cars passing by. All must have been secured in their garages. The houses are all locked up too. Doors latched. Windows closed. I look behind me, to my house, and discover that our windows are locked as well. Maybe that is why I haven’t heard any noise of the upcoming storm outside. (Or maybe my mind was just too preoccupied with my worries and thoughts.) I wonder who locked them up. Maybe Mom.

Mom.

Where’s Mom?

Suddeny, I feel light and spacey, sort of in a déjà vu state, which allows the strong winds to penetrate my skin and bring their madness inside me. It crashes into my rib cage, ruining it bit by bit, bone by bone, reaching to my heart which it almost knocks out of the place. My feeling is as bad as the distant thunderstorms flashing lights in far-flung clouds, briefly coloring them grayish red.

I turn my head side to the side abruptly and fretfully, trying to find something but I don’t know what. I look behind me for the second time and walk back to the door to close it so the strong winds won’t get in and knock things down to the floor.

“Mom.” I mutter under my breath.

There’s not much time to lose and the thunderstorms are getting louder in my ears which only means they’re fast approaching, so I start to walk my way down the pavement. I still have my arm on my forehead and my free hand clutches my white cotton shirt with sleeves rolled up to my elbow.

In every step I take forward, the winds only get stronger and madder. I am a lost boy in a pirate ship under the mercy of the storm.

Cold raindrop taps my shoulder and before I know it’s a warning for a coming rain, a few more raindrops follow, bespattering tiny circles on the pavement I am walking on, until the entire cemented roadside is wet with the angry sky’s overflowing tears, soaking me with it.

I stride faster and pull out my phone again as I realize calling Mom incessantly, without giving up, will make searching for her easier because any time by now, she’ll respond. Or it’s just what I hope. I push the dial with my thumb over and over, not stopping, not even looking at my path, and make around 30 missed calls until a car horn blows me to the wet but hard ground of the asphalted road, sending my phone flying away from my hand and drops behind me.

By then, I realize I was actually crossing the road and a car almost hit me. It is a blessing from heavens that the driver was able to pull up before the car impinged me on the hip. 

Someone gets out of the car and walks to me-- a girl, as her silhouette shows. She has long wavy hair cut halfway to her hips, narrow feminine-like shoulders and wide hips, and she’s holding an umbrella, sheltering her head.

Headlights impede me to see her clearly, so I squint. Her face comes into view when she drops to her knees beside me. She drifts closer to me and examine my sides, probably checking my hips and arms. Her umbrella also shifts to my head, sheltering the two of us enough to not get our heads soaked, although mine has already been.

“Are you okay? Did you get any injuries?”

I shake my head and draw my upper body up to fix myself in a sitting position on the ground.

“Here, let me help you up.” Her hands almost find their way to my arms but I hold a hand between us.

“It’s okay. I can do it.”

She brings her hands down to her lap. “Okay.”

She watches me while I search for my phone behind me. As soon as my hand touches a cold metal, I steadily place my soles on the ground, tough against it, to gain momentum and I pull myself up on my feet when I feel like I can do it without cracking my bones. She also stands in synchronization to me.

“What are you doing in the middle of a bad weather anyways?”

I blink at her. “I’m sorry” is what I expected her to say.

She gazes at me from head to toe and for the first time since she almost breaks my hips with her car, I feel uneasy with her presence.

“And you’re totally drenched.” She glances at my torso first before looking up to me.

A hint peeps into my brain and I casually look down like I am only looking at my shoes but a feign to actually check on my shirt. I discover it sticking to the skin of my chest and stomach, and as a Korean idol which has to shine at almost everything in the entertainment industry and one of which is modelling, I am obliged to have a perfect figure as well. No doubt she took a look of my body for a minute. I can tell she was a little bit distracted of what she had seen although she’s doing a pretty good job in tucking her stammers underneath the confidence curve of her lips.

“I…I..” Instead, I am the one stammering. “I’m trying to find my Mom.”

“Oh,” She looks down, “Would you… Would you like a helping hand?”

I blink and look at her askance due to the fact that she is a stranger and I don’t personally like the way she glanced at my body awhile ago and how she was distracted. Not that I am foreseeing she would force me to have a go at it or ask it as a Thank You for helping me, but for precautionary measures. It’s better to anticipate dangers for preventions. Who knows, the world has been strange lately – girls dating girls, boys dating boys – and add me up who is in love with a boy, a species belonging to my own , and it could have been that cases are not only exclusive to boys girls, it might be vice versa.

Yet, taking a sidelong glance to her car almost makes me want to consider her offer for a moment. But all of a sudden, my phone rings in my pocket which I had absent-mindedly slid into while we were talking, and it buys me a little more time to think her offer over.

Timings do really come in funny times. I receive a text from Mom telling me she is fine. I almost – just almost – breath loudly with relief in front of her.

“No, thanks.” I manage to put on a smile. “It was my Mom’s text” – holds the phone up and waves it – “and she said she’s fine. Thank you, and I’m sorry for causing you trouble.”

“No, I am sorry for causing you trouble. I was busy scrolling through my songs” – she points a thumb to the rumbling car behind her which still has the headlights on – “that I wasn’t able to pay my attention to the road. I know, a violation of traffic rules. Hope you won’t report me for that.”

She let out a low chuckle and I feel like I am obliged to go along it with her, so I let out a low one too which comes off awkward than I intend it to be.

“I have to go back to my house now.” I tell her and before I can duck down from the umbrella and scoot away from her, she stops me.

“Wait, you live around here?”

I blink and nod quickly, but she doesn’t seem to recognize I am in a hurry to go. To get out of here. To be away from her. It’s not because of the somewhat ually harrassing thing she had done earlier. I don’t know why I’m in a hurry to be away from this girl. All I know is my gender orientation and my views towards my uality have been messed up lately and I can’t fully trust myself to be with a girl which is closer to what I wish for when I knew to myself I am in love with a boy. Looking at a girl these days evokes both disgust and desperation in me. Something I can’t handle.

“Take this umbrella with you.”

I blink at her. For the fifth time already. I stare at her hand holding the handle of the umbrella that she pushes towards me.

“Go. Take it. I have a car anyways. You will get yourself sick if you’ll get more drenched than you had already been.”

She pushes it again to me. I take a hold of the handle as she slids off her hand from it, the skin of my palm and her knuckles brush against each other.

And she smiles.

She smiles at me like she had already known me for days, although we’ve talked for barely 15 minutes. She smiles at me like….like she likes me. I shiver and not because I am soaked and wet all over and strong winds are still blowing, but because of the thought of her liking me.

“Can I go now?” I ask to interrupt her gaze at me.

She blinks (now, it’s her turn) like she’s coming back to her senses. “Sure, you can. Oh, my apologies! Why am I making you stay in this bad weather for too long? Go now, or you’ll get something worse than a fever.”

I take my first step but I stop because I am bothered with something, but not my observation that she looks like she likes me which I prefer to keep to myself at the present.

“How about you? I can walk you to the car door so you won’t get wet.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll be fine.” A sheepish smile shyly spreads across her face, lifting up her cheekbones into view and revealing a freckled area shaped like the sideview profile of a Milky Way Galaxy spread across her nose and below her eyes like sprinkled gold glitters.

And it looks…

For a moment, I think she looks…

Cute.

I shake my head slightly at the silliest thought I incur. “Okay, if you're cool with that.”

My legs spring up energy I gather to move it hastily. I bury a hand in my pocket and walk along the pavement briskly with my head down. I don’t look back to see if she already gets inside her car, or else I’ll be thinking more silly thoughts which would make me shake my head few more times, and that will only break my neck. 

“Take care, Joshua!”

I stop with my steps.

Wait.

I can’t recall a moment back there where I told her my name. How could she –--

I abruptly turn my back out of astonishment just to see the car taking a turn to the opposite lane of the intersection and the red taillights disappear as it takes another turn to the right.

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[A/N: What do you think? Some of you might be quiet worried because there's a girl... But anyways, we still don't know how the story would unfold, right? Let's just see how it will go. ;) So, I really hope you guys like it! I've bled all my words for this so give me a thumbs up if you think I deserve it. ;) If you've just recently stumbled upon this, don't forget to Subscribe if you like it! You can also spread the word about my story. To all people who read this, thank you so much~ It means a lot to me that you are making time to read my work and I hope I'm not wasting it. I really hope. :)