Atop the roof of the Science building of Soul High stood languidly the boy with the stunning blonde hair, who, at this point in time, seemed to have his attention focused on a spot left of his shoulder. His mouth moved as his eyes flashed, once angry and twice confused before returning to their normalcy, at the something to his left, but perplexing enough, the boy was alone. Indeed he was quite alone on the desolate roof. This then brings to mind the question of to whom, then, was the boy talking.

Upon closer inspection, one would realize that the carefully created serenity that the boy constantly put forth was actually not serenity at all. Beneath the thin layer of calm roared countless other emotions of which were less becoming of one who holds his beauty. We all expect the beautiful to act as refined as they are elegant, for their face to be a measuring stick of their behavior. And this bias never seems to leave us despite its having been disproved over and over thus.
The wind was blowing wildly now, and it tossed his hair from this way to that, but the boy seemed to not mind. His focus was still on that curious spot to his left.

“FORD! YOU BASTARD! YOU TOLD ME TO SMILE!” Ren yelled, vexed at the land-god who had constantly hovered to his left and whispered odd things into his ears. Just last period the god had goaded him, tempted him, into smiling at his teacher for the sake of testing out his newborn power.

The god merely shrugged. “Calm down,” he murmured, not too invested in Ren’s dilemma.

“I AM CALM.”

“No, you merely take on the pretense of being calm. What I want is real calmness, of which comes from within.”
 

“I SAID I AM CALM.”
 

Ford shook his head and heaved a long sigh. “No, child, you are not calm at all. On a scale of 1 to 100, 1 being ape and 100 being nirvana, you are about 20. Just...just sit down.”
 

Ren looked annoyed but sat down anyways. It was true. He wasn’t calm at all. In his gut, a thousand butterflies were fluttering around, bumping into each other, eating each other, and making cocoons of each other. It tingles; it hurts; it throbs; it convulses. A deep feeling of unrest overtook from from his gut, making him shiver even though it was warm.

Muscle spasm shook him ever now and then. His hands were shaking ever so badly that he had to clasp them together to hid his unsettlement from Ford.
 

“Take a deep breath.”
 

Ren tried, but the effort caused to choke and sputter. His breathing was fast and short. When he tried to draw it out, his chest constricted in pain. Ford saw all this and could only smile inwardly. A nice way to put this was to say the boy was going through shock. A crude way to put this was to say the boy was scared less.
 

“Ren, child, close your eyes.”
 

Ren did so.
 

“Now think of a happy memory.”
 

Ren knitted his eyebrows in deep concentration, sifting through his childhood, trying to find a happy memory. But the more he searched, the more he realized that his childhood was spent alone. Alone and unhappy.
 

“Child, think of sunshine. And please, don’t make that face as if you’re about to cry.”
 

“I...I’m not about to cry.” His eyes were closed so the tears, no matter how persistent, would not be able to push past and trickle down as they so often did.
 

“That so?”
 

“Piss off.”
 

A wry smirk twisted Ford’s lips; a picture of such discord for the cruelty in the smile did not belong with the youthful baby fat in his cheeks. It was like seeing an infant sneering. Thankfully, Ren’s eyes were closed and he was spared the experience.

Ford’s cloud descended close to the cement of the roof, and once the god and boy were at eye-level, the little god reached out and covered Ren’s eyes with his small palms. The contact came as a shock, and so was the unexpected warmth of Ford’s tiny palms, pressing against the hollows.
 

“Fall to sleep mortal, and dream of those days of bliss.”
 

Once the words were out, Ren lost consciousness. He felt his back sink, fallen backwards to a net that catches him, and then an even heavier darkness shrouded him than before.
 

That’s funny, he thought. Bliss is found in absolute night.

Ford sat atop his cloud, guarding Ren as he slept, and reminisced back to thirty years before when Ren’s father had gone through the same shock. He had been younger then and thus gravely inexperienced. He had been unable to remedy the hysteria and the gloom, unable to treat the sudden madness that comes with the just as sudden acquisition of power. Indeed, Ford conjectures, there must exist a window in one’s mind, of which size determines one’s mental plasticity. For some, the window is large, and they can bear the brunt of whatever misfortune or fortune that befell upon them. For others, the window is painfully small and the slightest turbulence, the smallest rocking of the boat, would alert the sense and sicken the soul.
 

Ren and his father had a medium-sized window, gilded at the frames to make it seem all the more splendid when in truth it was not dissimilar from other windows. The news of being a hoja and the birth of new powers...
 

Ford looked down upon Ren’s sleeping face, studied the young boy’s beauty, and decided that he should, perhaps, steal into his dreams and learn for himself what was the boy’s happiest moment. Having decided, Ford once again extended his chubby hand towards Ren’s face and, quietly, muttered, “Divina somnia.”


 

The bell has rung. Lunch period was officially over and the students were all shuffling back to their seats, each storing away their smiles and hiding their mirths. Each one of these students had been in livid conversations of which the subject was but one event: the blowing up of the homeroom wall.
 

The entire class had been relocated to an unused science room thus, but the excitement from the phenomenon had lighted each of their faces with wonder and joy. Conspiracies had boiled over during the lunch period of how a terrorist group was secretly hiding out in the school and wanted to show them who’s boss by detonating a small grenade. Another theory was that there was in fact no terrorist, but just a very unhappy student who had made a bomb from nail polish and third-rate coppers and had implanted the device behind the desk of the teacher so that it would blow up on command. Yet another idea came forth where the premise was that aliens existed and were above the school at this very moment, pinpointing infrared beams to scan the landscape but one bean happened to be too strong and had thus combusted the wall by mistake.

All of these theories were spurious as well as ridiculous. There were no aliens and no terrorist. Many students were unhappy to come back to school, to have their summer joys cut short, but none had the audacity to play with explosives. No, no one in the class, indeed not one, had thought that the explosion had to do with their fellow classmate, Choi Ren. Indeed, no one suspected that it was a smile from that handsome face that blew the wall into bits of flying debris.

But the bell had rung. So the conversations halted and the conspiracies thrown away. It was time for study, and study meant somberness, or as they all thought it meant somberness.


There was, however, a small group of three girls who seemed to have ignored the bell and was still in the chatting reverie of free time.
 

“Neh, neh, that Choi Ren, isn’t he soooo cute?” A girl with puffy raven hair and horn-rimmed glasses exclaimed, flustered so much so that her face colored like her hair.
 

“Oh my, Hyuna, I never knew you were into the younger type,” said one of the trio with a teasing air.
 

“Shut up, Gina. He is cute, okay?”
 

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. You’re going banana banana over him right? Banana bananas! Banana bananas!”
 

“Oh my god, Gina! Shut it!”
 

The pinkness of Hyuna’s face spread to her neck, making her look sunburnt and coy.
 

“BANANA BANANAS! BANANA BANANAS!”
 

Whilst the two friends bantered on without care, the third in this group seemed to be lost in thought. Her brows were knitted tightly together, pressed firm and her eyes were searching for an answer than she could not deduce. After much silent contemplation alone, she decided to share her troubles. “Hyunnie, Gina-ah, don’t you guys think that Ren is weird?”

Hyuna and Gina quieted to listen to whatever insights their friend was about to offer.

“What’s the matter, Ailee?”

“I heard rumors about him. A pretty guy like him has lots of people looking at him. Last year, apparently his parents died in an accident and he missed the last two months of school because he had to take over his parents funeral. People told me that he had to handle it alone because...he was alone. He had no one else.”

“Omaigawd!” Hyuna blinked rapidly, trying to keep her eyes from misting her. “So sad!”

Gine rolled her eyes at the show Hyuna made. She knew her friend too well. If Choi Ren had not been handsome, Hyuna wouldn’t have given a hoot. “Crocodile tears.”

“Hey! These tears are genuine!”

“Right, right. Of course it’s genuine. Genuine enough so that you can gobble him up afterwards, right?”

“Girls, girls, please. Can we focus on the more pressing question at hand? Not everything is about hooking up and eating up.” Ailee sat back in her chair, and mocked a heartfelt sigh.

“Haha! Eating up!” Gina laughed, showing her cute canines. A women with those canines, as any respectable physiognomist would say, is dangerous.

“The more pressing matter, though, is the way he acted this morning! Did you see how he turned pale when the wall went kaboom?”

“So? Everyone turned pale,” interjected Hyuna. “Not everyone has balls of steel.”

“But no one was as scared as he looked. In fact, Ren looked guilty. Maybe he was the one who caused the explosion.”
 

“Ailee, you’re overthinking. How could a cute face like him cause that? I bet all he could do is look good and act stupid. Don’t overthink this. You’ll just cause unnecessary trouble for the guy, alright?” Hyuna frowned at her friend’s over-thinking. It was an old habit of Ailee and an equally hold pet peeve of Hyuna’s. “You’ll just make him uncomfortable. Don’t do that when I want to get to know him.”

A smile lighted Ailee’s fair face, as she slowly nodded in affimative. “Sure. Since you want to get comfortable with him. Anything for Hyunnie.”

Two tables over, Minhyun had his head down on his desk and his eyes tightly shut. He heard the entirety of the trio’s conversation and it worried him. He knew that thinking Ren the culprit of the explosion was ridiculous. What could a frail looking boy like him do? If a gust of wind was strong enough, it seemed as if though the boy would be carried away for he was so frail-looking.
 

But Minhyun still had his doubts. The events leading up to the explosion just didn’t make any sense. The teacher had been calling attendance and when he was up to Choi Ren, Ren had stood up and lingered. That was the most suspicious part. Ren had not called out present and sat back down like the others before him. No, instead he had stood with a troubled face, as if though he was making a decision. When the teacher asked him if everything was fine, Ren had smiled and then it happened. The wall exploded right after he had smiled!
 

Minhyun buried his hand into his arms, berating himself for these ridiculous ideas. It seemed even more preposterous than the alien mishap. But even so, Minhyun could not dispel the feeling of unease and suspicion.

Choi Ren, he thought. How interesting you are.

/// /// /// /// /// /// /// /// /// /// /// /// /// /// /// 

It's been a long time. 

Yes, I know Gina's name is suppose to be written as G.Na. But Gina is easier to type, lol. 

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