Office Diaries - Chapter 168

“Well, I heard brothers are like that. But if you don’t have brothers, I guess male friends are like that,” Yanee surmised, and Anjee smiled.

“Yes, it’s like that. I didn’t have brothers. Peter was like that for me. He’s also a single child, so we kind of started off as close as siblings were, but it grew to something else as we grew older. For me, it’s a gradual thing until I was old enough to be aware of love in middle school. For him, it was an instant thing at a random time. He realized his feelings had changed. But he didn’t know what to do until we almost separated when I chose to follow a different path from him and he panicked,” Anjee shared with a fond smile on her face. Do you know why I know this?”

Yanee of course, had no idea and so she shook her head.

“It’s because of this,” Anjee said as she placed a recorder on the table and Yanee looked at it with a puzzled expression.

“Peter worked with a recorder on hand. It’s so he could still take notes even without a pen or paper.” A mischievous smile played on her lips and Yanee finally understood what was going on.

The recorder had a voice of Peter— basically like a diary of some sort and Anjee was naughty enough to bring it so she could listen to it. She looked at her questioningly but Anjee nodded.

“Don’t worry, he knows. He couldn’t come with me to also give you his side of the story so he came up with this,” Anjee ȧssured her before pushing the play buŧŧon, and both Yanee and her listened to Peter Choi’s voice.

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My heart… it felt like bursting.

As the single plume glided across the white sheet, the ink painting colorful words on its bȧrė confines, I let the waves of emotions sway myself. Have I not longed for this time to come? A time when I closed my eyes and be able to envision the world I’d always coveted. The chains of depression finally breaking down, I felt my life’s wings spread wide as I looked up at the sky and smile, ready to fly away.

I was free…

With adrenalin rushing through my veins, my heart throbbing with a familiar thrill, I picked up the pieces of my dreams. The distant light played the mirage of my youthful yearning, the phantasmagoria enticing me to pen down fleeting memories, giving them shape and emotions, making them real, making them happen.

This is it! Excitedly I typed down the words that came rushing in my mind.

[I could see…visions.

The myriad of broken glass of dreams, the kaleidoscope of memories, the chaotic fusion of the past, present, and future, I could see them all…and it scared me. How it scared me…

At night I lay awake, hearing distant cries. They were not mine, and yet – and yet they could have been just that. I could see through their eyes, watch the horrors, and envisage their fate. I could smell the tantalizing scent of danger and fear through their noses, taste the piquant flavor of mixed sin and blood, and feel their rampant heartbeats like they were all my own.

The raging waves of darkness had long since engulfed me, and I had been lost in those fathomless pools since…]

Since? Since… what?

The pen I was holding stopped moving, an inkblot forming on the pristine paper as my eyes widened in epiphany. Since what? What? WHAT?

I couldn’t understand. I was okay earlier. I thought that I was finally regaining my balance in writing. Why was it that my mind suddenly went blank again?

Damn it!

Like a spurned little child on the verge of a tantrum, I unceremoniously threw my pen aside in frustration and slumped on the cold, hard floor. My head began to hurt as I haven’t given up trying to draw something from the emptiness in my mind. Try as I might however, there wasn’t really anything there.

Great!

I just came out of a slump.

Yeah right. I only came out of a slump for five friggin’ minutes – and then BANG!

The wind made me shiver a little and I turned my body to the right as I bent into a tight ball and hugged myself. To be honest, I wasn’t as clueless as to why I was acting like this. I was very much aware of the reason why for weeks now, all my creative juices seemed to be suċkėd dry. It was because of her.

I closed my almond shaped eyes which just a few days ago she said looked good, and pictured her in my mind. Long raven hair, huge doe eyes which always seemed to sparkle with mischief along with the mischievous tilt of her pair of soft, rosy lips, tall nose, and stubborn chin completed what I thought the most beautiful face ever— those plus her alabaster skin which was smooth to the touch.

Damn…Even to myself, I sounded like a pathetic, besotted fool. Thinking about her, I wondered if I’d ever get over my feelings. After all, to her, I was nothing more than a friend, nothing more than someone she had to take care of. Remembering this tiny weeny bit of information, all my frustrations came rushing back and once again, I drowned in this desolate pool people called unrequited love.

“Damn…”