C015 Do It To Me One More Time...
1809 Words
After I had paid up using poor old Shiro's ATM card, I informed Ayumi that I had something important to attend to and I left the accessories shop in a flash. The President of the Sports Committee just gave me a look which was hard for me to describe right now and wanted to say something to stall me for time, but in fact, I was trying to escape tormenting my poor dear friend's wallet and ATM any further. Hahaha...!
She called out to me and reminded me to meet her after school tomorrow to sign some important documents and thanked me aloud for the ring that made several shoppers look my way and hers as well. Well, she got what she wanted and had left a scorching hole in the bank account after paying for the single purchase.
When I reached the surface of Oz Garden, I went to a nearby bench and took a seat to gather my composure and calm my racing mind as well as the fleeting thoughts of burning yet another hole in the ATM. In just a few hours, I had spent more than ¥50,000, one is to wire the sum agreed with Akira and then on a piece of polished metal that looked like silver with a dead anchovy on it...! DAMN...! The money spent is like turning on the tap...!
Is the President of the Sports Committee wanted only the attention of boys alone or just wanted to toy with their feelings? I'm not sure of the whole situation but any gullible guy would just let himself being 'used' by this type of girl. It reminds me of one Executive Producer for one radio station across the border who did the similar thing with several big named tycoons until they hatched a plan to kidnap her after work and then gang rape her to their heart's content after spiking her drink.
Well. that was another story anyway.
Unfortunately for me, the contract that I had signed for the remuneration package, as well as the academic and sports sponsorship, were all on the line. She could simply chuck and shread those documents as if it never existed between the two of us if she had taken an adverse decision against implementing the proposal at all.
As the President of the Sports Committee, I am sure she has the final say in all of the sponsorship that she had presented before me that Friday evening.
Wuwuwuwu... My head was spinning with dizzying thoughts just by thinking how the President might implicate things if matters do not go her way. I stood up and walked to a bistro cafe just outside one of the entrances and bought an ice-cold cafe latte to cool my nerves... It was a few minutes before the appointed time to meet Akira.
It was then already 5 pm after I had gotten a brain freeze after sipping the ice-cold cafe latte and Akira had not replied to an SMS I had sent or called me to indicate that she had already arrived. I sent an SMS once more but received no reply yet so I decided to give her a few minutes more. Besides, the bus she was on might be late a bit so I sat down on one of the tables outside with an outdoor umbrella as I sipped the ice-cold cafe latte and welcomed it icy coolness as it trickled down my throat and filled my soul and got another brain freeze Hahaha...!
I absentmindedly flipped open and close the mobile phone to check any incoming SMS from Akira a few times within a minute. Weird... Normally, she would answer the SMS or popped her head to me somewhere...
I turned my head around to scan my surroundings but to no avail. So I waited and slowly sipped my drink and walked out from the umbrella-shaded seat towards the bus stop that Akira had mentioned to meet me when she gets back from her relative's place.
When I got down to the terminal underground, I saw there was a bus that somewhat looked like it had broken down and stopped a few meters away from the bus stop. There was an unusually large crowd at the bus stop and it seems to be buzzing with more activity than usual. Maybe there was some people who had brought with them some seasonal fruits and those gathering around were helping themselves with it.
I looked at the crowd, dismissing nothing was amiss when I was going down the steps that lead from the platform down to the street where buses that serviced other districts were situated. Suddenly my heart skipped several beats and several disembodied voices rang out in my head as it sends shocking and rather foreboding thoughts that played out in my mind. I instinctively flipped my phone and discovered that there was still no SMS from Akira and I pressed the dial button on her number.
"The number that you are calling cannot be reached. The user has either switched off the phone or out of coverage area... Please try again later.... *Toot* *Toot* *Toot* *Toot* *Toot*..."
I tried calling the number a few more times and received the same female operator's voice. The sense of the foreboding feelings got more and more intense and then an ambulance with its red lights flashing overhead and sirens blaring began to pull away from behind the bus and quickly zoomed down the streets.
My heart sank... To the lowest point ever in my life... As I staggered to the crowd that had slowly dissipated when the ambulance had left the scene. The steps that I took was heavy and it seemed that I was dragging my feet towards them.
"Please God... Don't tell me what it is that's f*****g bothering me at this moment... Oh Please God, don't let it be... Oh please..."
I profusely begged and prayed in my heart to keep those disembodied voices from penetrating my thoughts as I inched my way through. I asked what happened and the bystanders said that the incident happened all of a sudden. They mentioned the bus driver had somehow lost control of the vehicle and had smacked its side against the wall, striking a single person down before the bus rebounded against the side boundary wall and stopped a few meters away.
The bystanders mentioned that the bus driver was lucky and was able to evade a more disastrous accident but unfortunately a standing passenger waiting for someone near the alighting area got hit instead. My head was spinning and my eyes were losing its vision as I walked with jelly-like legs to a policeman who had cordoned the area with the red white and blue tape.
"Excuse me, I was waiting for my girlfriend here but she does not answer my SMS and her phone was switched off. I think she had taken the bus earlier and was waiting for me. May I know if the casualty was a boy or a girl?" I asked the policeman with a heavy heart and seemed to realise the answer even before the policeman had answered me. "Its a girl, and the person was waiting for someone here when she got sideswipped by the bus. The victim was as young as a high schooler with two sides of ponytailed hair and wearing a white blouse and blue short skirt."
My heart suddenly choked in my throat as I fiddled with the phone and tried to contact Akira a few more times but the call still failed to connect. I glanced around and apart from an oil slick, a few debris where the bus had hit the boundary wall and there was some blood stains near the front of the bus, when I saw something familiar sticking out from the grilled gutter next to the boundary wall.
My heart sank...NO...! MY HEART SHATTERED, GODDAMMIT...!
It was a piece of heart-shaped origami that was made from some shiny material and it was definitely from something I was familiar with and I had seen it before many a time...! HHUUAARRGGHH...!!!
The foreboding feeling came again and this time with a severe intensity that I had to clutch my chest in order not to have a sudden cardiac arrest as I slowly reached down to grasp the heart-shaped origami from the gutter.
I held the heart-shaped origami in my open palm, and the world around me seemed to be spinning and shrinking at the same time and time happen to stand still. I could feel myself gasping for air as I felt my heart shattered into a zillion pieces as my legs turned to jelly once again and my weight fell underneath it.
Mr Director... Can someone please hand me a cushion underneath my knees as I take the fall...?
I was opening and closing my mouth just like a goldfish gasping for air as the small bowl aquarium fell and shattered on the floor. An old man who was the permanent newspaper vendor underneath the myriad of train and bus platforms overhead wobbled his way on his walker towards me.
"Son, is your name Shiro-san...?"
I looked up and faced the elder as to ponder on how he knew my name.
"You better hurry, Shiro-San... The girl screamed out your name when she was knocked down earlier... I was unable to pull her to safety... It happened so fast... I tell you... The emergency ambulance... It is from Ookuma General Hospital... Its just 5 minutes down the street... Go now, Shiro-San...! Go, now...!!! GOOO...!!!"
I muttered my thanks to the elder, stuffed the heart-shaped origami in my right pants pocket and picked myself up. My eyes were already clouded with streams of hot tears as I stumbled at first then sprinted as fast as I could towards Ookuma General Hospital...
How can you expect a guy to cry and chase after the ambulance that had taken away your beloved after it had left more than a minute ago, right? He's going to blindly crash into a bus and cause another accident and draw unecessary attention to himself.
"I am coming, Akira...! Please be safe...! I would be there darling...! I'm so sorry I never waited for you at the bus stop earlier or else....." I thought inwardly as I had the urge to scream out her name and make her name to be the number one household brand in some country...Hahaha...!
"A... KI... RA...!!!" I screamed on top of my lungs as I raced down the road amidst the traffic of a Sunday evening... I was gritting my teeth as my uncontrollable tears streamed down in torrents and I could taste the saltish tears as it entered the gaps of my gritted teeth. Honks were heard on the road as I zigzagged against the flow of traffic wildly to reach there at the shortest time possible...
I screamed aloud in my head, "How could you do this to me twice in a row...?!? WHY... WHY... WHY...?!?
- Writer
