An Angelic Intervention

A Man In White

Kay's eyes shot wide open the second he heard his alarm. He was on his bed, lying on his back with his hands on his stomach, unmoving as his phone's alarm tone grew increasingly louder.

“That was weird, wasn’t it?” he thought to himself as he stared at the glow-in-the-dark stickers stuck to the ceiling. The memory of last night — rather, around 3 AM that day — was still fresh to him. Maybe it was because he wasn’t able to get any sleep, or maybe he did get some sleep but he had dreamt it. Kay wasn’t sure what happened from 3 AM onwards, but he knew he arrived safely back in his for dorm room, changed his clothes, and got under the covers. Whether or not he was actually able to get a wink of sleep, he didn’t know. Still, he decided to sit up and finally turn off his alarm.

“Maybe it was a dream,” he told himself, closing his weary eyes and taking a deep breath. Dream or reality, it didn’t really matter. It didn’t change the fact that he had to prepare for a 2 PM class. So, he got out of bed and went into the shower.

There were many things that Kay didn’t like about the dormitory his parents paid for him to stay in. First, well, it was a dormitory—which meant that there were other students and professors who weren’t necessarily from the Engineering department that stayed there. This fact paved the way for many awkward hallway instances, wherein Kay would always act so awkward whenever he would run into someone he wasn’t sure if he knew. He was been with faces and names—not because he was a snob or unfriendly, but mostly because he had only been in the university for a week and he had already been introduced to dozens of people he had never seen before. It wasn’t like he talked to them long enough to get to know them either, because they were mostly 5-second introductions that include an exchange like: “Kay, meet person. Person, meet Kay. He's a new first year,” awkward clammy handshake, awkward goodbye, and that was it. So, whenever Kay would come across someone in the hallway whose face looked vaguely familiar, he didn’t know whether or not he should greet them; because he feared that if he didn’t, then they would think he was ignoring them.

Going back to the dormitory, another thing that Kay didn’t like was how small the rooms were. Maybe it was because he had lived in privilege all his life, but he found his new room—the place where he was supposed to live for four years—to be boxy. It could only fit in a double bed, a small closet, and a study desk. There was nowhere he could store his telescopes, so he had to tearfully leave them in his bedroom back home.

The only redeeming quality of the dormitory was the bathrooms. Only a few dormitory buildings offered rooms with bathrooms inside. Kay couldn’t even imagine how he would survive with a shared shower area. He wouldn’t have had lasted a week because his bathing time was the most important part of the day for him. It was one of those mundane things that he appreciated a lot—the sound of falling water like a white noise to calm his thoughts, the warmth of the water easing his anxieties, the relaxing scent of body wash and shampoo—all necessary for him to start a good day. So, one could imagine his dismay when the water that came out of the shower that time was ice cold.

Tired from the lack of proper sleep and annoyed at his broken shower routine, Kay stood awkwardly by a corner in the building where he was supposed to meet Gina for the class they had together. As other students passed by in front of him, he checked his phone so as not to look like a creep that was watching people.

“Almost there. Got you coffee!” Gina had texted him. With the message, she sent a picture of herself holding up two to-go cups while she was in the back of a cab. From her background, it looked like she was two to three minutes away.

Kay replied with a “Thanks,” and a crying emoji to get his gratitude across, then he looked up from his phone again and searched around for somewhere to sit or something to do. He noticed one of the campus landline telephones nearby, so he went ahead and picked it up. He checked the directory and dialed the same number he did before.

This time, it only took one ring for someone to pick up.

“Campus security,” a man spoke, sounding different from the one he talked to a few hours ago.

“H-hi, uh,” he whispered, holding the receiver close to his lips, “I just wanted to check in and ask if you—if you were able to help out the man behind the Main Accountancy building this morning.”

“Main Accountancy building?” the man asked. “We didn’t find anyone there last night. Probably some kid just called in the prank. Hey, wait a second, how did you know about it? Were you the one who gave us that prank call? Young man, that wasn’t funny at all. It was 3 in the morning!”

“N-no, it wasn’t a prank!” Kay panicked as the other person kept yapping. Since he didn’t seem to have any plans of stopping, Kay simply said, “I’m so sorry!” then quickly hung up the phone, his face already starting to become a little red in his embarrassment. He took in a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair, hoping no one witnessed his panic.

“That was weird, wasn’t it?” he thought to himself, walking out of the building to sit at one of the benches outside. “I clearly saw someone. Or did I? Was I just imagine things because I was too sleep—” the train of thought quickly ended when a strong gust of wind sent leaves flying and a certain familiar scent in Kay's direction.

He lifted his head up as he recognized the smell of Blue Fragrance by Flor, which was worn by no other than the object of his affections—Leo, standing under a tree, laughing with his friends. The fact that Kay knew the specific perfume Leo wore was not a product of stalking, just to clear that up. It was because of an embarrassing moment after the Photography Club orientation, when Kay was searching for the smell and quite loudly asked Gina, “Do you smell that?” only to be overheard by Leo. The third year had sheepishly smiled at him then and asked, “Oh, is that me? I accidentally sprayed too much this morning, I think,” then showed him the bottle.

So, now, Kay knew the smell of the perfume his crush wore, and its specific name and brand.

He watched as Leo adjusted his glasses and leaned on the trunk of the tree, and he couldn’t help but think that he just might be the coolest man he knew—not to mention, the most attractive with his jet black hair, those deep blue eyes, and pink lips… Kay had never kissed anyone before, but he could imagine that kissing Leo would feel like heaven. If only he could gather the courage to approach him, then that could be the start of their very own love story.

Reveling at the thought of that, Kay quickly checked his appearance using the front camera of his phone. There was nothing much to do with his unruly curly brown hair, so he just tried to at least make the curls look nice. Then, he stood up, took a deep breath, and slowly started to walk while pretending to look at his phone. He wasn’t planning on approaching him, no—he lacked the courage to do that, especially with Leo's friends there. However, he did hope that with Leo's friendly personality, the man would greet him once he notices him walking past.

It was a lame plan, but that was all his confidence could afford.

He had barely made it two steps away from the bench when something caught his eye. Among the number of university students cluttered around the grounds, there was someone who looked out of place. There, just past Leo and his group of friends was a person who looked familiar.

Kay stopped in his tracks and his eyes widened as he realized how he recognized the man—it was the same guy from last night! The light blond hair, the same white clothes—it was unmistakable, although this time, he was not unconscious nor groaning on the ground. He was standing right there—no, playing was a more adequate term. He was picking up and playing with dried leaves from the ground, very much alive and okay.

With his attention suddenly rid of Leo, Kay wondered if he should go up to the man and ask if he was okay. But then, it wasn’t as if he actually saw or knew Kay. Maybe the mere fact that he seemed to be alright should be enough. After all, the last thing Kay wanted to do was pry or disturb a man who seemed to be enjoying himself.

Kay had just convinced himself not to approach him, when he seemed to have felt Kay's stare and proceeded to look in his direction. Their eyes met for a second, until Gina suddenly stepped in front of Kay and waved at him.

“Hey, I’ve been calling you for like forever! What were you looking at so intensely?” she asked, looking behind her to follow where his gaze was at before; but the man was already gone. She turned back to Kay with a knowing smile on her face.

“Ah, I see,” she teasingly whispered as she wiggled her eyebrows, “lovingly gazing at the lion, huh? You know, Leo the lion.” She snickered at her own joke.

“N-no, I wasn’t!” Kay frantically whispered back, cautiously glancing around to make sure no one was listening in.

“Sure,” Gina laughed, patting his back. “Come on, let’s get to class, lover boy.”

Kay turned around to follow her, but not before doing a quick look around. The man was nowhere to be found. Thinking nothing of it, he cast one last glance at Leo who had remained unaware of his presence, then followed Gina into the building.

“Oh, as promised. My treat.” She handed Kay a warm cup of coffee, which he thanked her for. “Sorry for being late again. The traffic down the street was terrible! Turns out, there was another accident by the steep curve just after the bridge, you know that place? I think it’s the same place a few kids almost died in.”

“Yeah, I know where that is. People almost died there? Are they okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Gina shrugged. “I don’t think anyone actually died, thank God. You didn’t hear about it? It was like this big thing before the trimester started.”

“No, I got here the day before the first day of classes,” Kay recounted. “Thank goodness everyone’s okay.”