Chapter Text
Nene stood stiffly at the entryway of a classroom in her school. She had noticed the room in her peripheral vision as she trotted through the school’s corridors.
The atmosphere in the room was uncannily different from the rest of the school. It wasn’t that this was the first time she had seen the room. Infact, Nene dawdled past it routinely. Yet, today, she was driven by an impetus to halt in her tracks, for her attention to loiter in the mundane classroom.
Nene hesitantly peered into the classroom, her fingers positioned on the doorframe as she hid behind it cautiously. Her breath became heavier as she contemplated whether she should enter the classroom. Nene gradually shifted her footing, the contents of the room becoming demystified as her vision became less obscured by the door.
However, when the classroom’s entire landscape was revealed to Nene, her lingering discomfort contrasted with the sight before her; whilst the room possessed a grim ambience, the desks were arranged as they normally were, the chairs were neatly pushed in, and the blackboard contained nothing incriminating.
Nene took a deep breath before detaching her feet from the floorboards where they were planted. She cautiously entered the classroom, her eyes darting across the area in observation. Her footsteps seemed to echo softly across the room, the previous step bleeding into the present and future.
Whilst the classroom continued to maintain the normalcy, Nene had noted previously, her eyes once again fell on the blackboard. Pushed towards the margins of the vast board sat a date written carefully with white chalk. The letters and numbers were clear and visible; none appeared to be inflicted with time’s passage. The pigment of the chalk was almost too white.
Yet, there on the board, the year “1969” was written in place of the present year. Nene carefully glanced at it; her eyes squinting as she reread the numbers, confusion etched on her face.
Nene muttered to herself, “Why does the date say…?”
Her pondering was interrupted by a loud thud coming from behind. She quickly whipped her around towards the direction of the noise, and her pulse began to quicken. Her eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of the sight before her.
A boy was crouched in a gritty corner of the classroom. The light beaming in through the windowpane was severed from where he stood, the row of desks and chairs he took shelter behind casting shadows which enshrouded him.
His uniform consisted of a white button-up and black trousers. A deviation from the pale-blue shirt, which the majority of the school’s male population wore. His hair was wispy, with the umber strands from his choppy fringe obstructing his eyes. Even so, when the boy inched his head slightly upwards, his eyes aligned with hers momentarily. Whilst Nene immediately categorised the boy as being ‘so not her type’, something about his saucer-like eyes caused her breath to hitch. Their deep amber colour was boring into her soul. She cast her eyes down, her gaze landing on his tense arms, which he had positioned in front of his body as though to guard himself. She was briefly nonplussed as she discerned the surplus of bandages lazily draped across his arms. She shook off her short-lived stillness. Nene began to dart across the room, towards the corner where the boy sat. She plopped herself down on the hard surface, her knees grazing against the boys.
Upon noticing her arrival at his side, the boy looked frazzled and attempted to inch himself away from where Nene sat. The sturdy wall behind him thwarted his efforts to escape. Nene gave the boy little time to breathe before a tidal wave of questions emerged from her lips.
‘Are you okay? Did someone do this to you? What’s your name? Do you go to this school?’
Her brows were furrowed as she took hold of the boy’s arm, worry etched on her face. She glanced upwards in an attempt to make eye contact, yet the boy’s eyes were rigidly fixated on the wooden floorboards. His face reddened as his skin came in contact with her fingers.
The boy pulled his arm backwards with a hasty swing, leaving his elbow to collide with his torso. He scrambled to his feet and scurried towards the doorway. His footsteps rang with dissonance.
He had disappeared before Nene could protest, leaving her mouth agape as she stared at the doorway, dumbfounded.
Nene suspired and remained put. She ached with exhaustion; the weight of her legs wouldn’t allow her to go on a wild goose chase.
Nene listened to the tolling of the boy’s footsteps as he frenzied down the hallway. Strangely, the boy’s footfall didn’t gradually soften as he moved further from the classroom. Instead, the loud footsteps abruptly ceased, never fading out.
Nene shook her head in an attempt to expel the ideas coming to mind. She rose to her feet and made a beeline for the doorway. She took one last glance at the blackboard and found that the date read ‘2015.’ A chill crept down her spine. The numbers were glaring against the darkness of the board. 2015 is the date; it’s what should be written. Somehow, “1969” still persisted in her mind. She feared she hadn’t imagined it.
Nevertheless, she continued to amble out of the classroom seeking to quell the unease fermenting inside her.
Her eyes flicked towards the expansive windows as she re-entered the school’s halls. Twilight was beginning to settle in the sky; fragile strips of pink and purple were peeking out from beyond night’s darkness as the sun descended.
Nene hummed to herself, lost in a manufactured daze as she waddled towards the school gates. She skipped down the steps outside the school’s entryway as she braced herself for the thickness of summer’s breeze. Her hands slid down the rail whilst her nails tapped on the metal surface.
She directed her gaze forward as she drew closer to the school’s final gate; her body growing wearier from today’s events. But there, lingering around the school’s outskirts, she saw a figure. The night rendered his features indistinguishable. Yet a shadow was cast off him as the streetlight illuminated his back overhead. His shadow stretched out, long and distorted. She continued to move towards the gate, intent on leaving without dilemma, but she caught a glimpse of the choppy strands of hair emerging from the boy’s silhouette.
Her steps quickened, abandoning her goal of returning home before night had fully settled. Whilst the sound of her steps intermittently broke the night’s silence, the boy’s shadow remained stiff, frozen in time.
Nene called out into the distance, her voice floating through the night, ‘Hey, are you okay? You’re that boy from before, right? I’m sorry if I scared you.’
The night’s breeze returned as the words rolled off her tongue frantically. The wind tugged Nene’s cream-coloured hair, and the strands cascaded across her face. She brushed her hair away, as it had exacerbated the oppressive heat.
Without warning, the boy’s silhouette gradually became vaguely animated as he shifted towards her direction. She gulped at the ‘sensation’ of his eyes staring into her. As he moved, he became more illuminated by the headlight’s coverage, revealing his wistful eyes. Now it was Nene’s turn to freeze. She glanced down, attempting to avoid his gaze, and her eyes landed on his arms.
Whilst his arms still held that same tightness to them, they were stripped bare. The curtain-like bandages no longer hung loosely around them. It hadn’t been that long since the two were in the classroom together. Had he taken them off? Had they fallen off?
The questions bounced around Nene’s head as she engrossed herself in scrutinising the boy.
The boy awkwardly shifted his feet; his arms suddenly perched behind his back. Yet, Nene remained fixated on staring at where the boy’s arms were once positioned. She lingered on the phantom of them. He let out a haphazard cough and opened his mouth as though to speak:
‘Have we met…?’
His shoulders were slightly slumped as he spoke. The words came out slowly, dragging at each syllable in a frail tone. The meagre light allowed Nene to barely catch a glimpse of the way his eyes were fixed on his shoes.
Nene let out a stilted laugh as she waved her palm affirmatively. ‘Sort of!’ she trailed. ‘I was the girl who came running at you in the classroom earlier.’ Nene absently twirled her hair around her pointer finger as she spoke.
The boy tilted his head and furrowed his brows, the humming of the night’s fauna breaching the silence between their respective words. ‘I uh…’ he began. ‘I think you’re mistaking me for someone else. I haven’t been in a classroom. Not recently’
His words hung in the air, the ghost of them causing Nene to recoil briefly. She squinted at him earnestly, attempting to make out the features she recalled in the classroom, from the low-key glow of the night. The strands wrapped around her fingers tightened as she scrutinised him. Had she made a mistake? She couldn’t have…
The boy who stood before her was the same. He donned that same unfamiliar uniform, the same resin-coloured eyes, the same uneven fringe, the same meek posture.
‘No…’ Nene whispered, she reached out her hand towards him, as though his presence might flicker out at her touch. ‘I’m certain you’re who I saw.’
The boy took a step back, his face appearing as though it was flushed. He clumsily scratched his neck, his eyes darting across the outside, avoiding Nene’s gaze.
‘I’m pretty sure I’m not who you saw.’ His voice was flighty and tense. For a fleeting moment, he stood entirely still. His fists clenched by his sides as though they would crumble from the force of his grip. Without notice, the boy had begun to sprint away from where the two stood. Nene blinked rapidly, barely processing his absence before she moved to chase after him. The place where he once stood only moments ago still burned with his presence.
Her steps were heavy against the ground. Birds dispersed in her trace, taken aback by the conviction in her bolting movements. The wind howled, its force attempting to push her back, widening the distance between her and the boy. He turned towards a sharp corner to which Nene swiftly followed suit. The trees lining the pavement shook as they ran, as though the adolescents themselves had catalysed their stirring.
When Nene had finally reached the corner that the boy had run down, Nene halted in her tracks. The outline of the boy’s wiry figure had vanished, leaving not even the reverberating echo of his footsteps.
Her posture stiffened as she gaped at the narrow path that the boy had travelled down. Hardly any streetlights illuminated the ground, bestowing the street with the impression that it was the abyss itself.
Nene knew one thing for certain: the boy she just saw and the boy in the classroom were the same. A more pressing question remained:
Where exactly had he come from? More importantly, when did he come from?