Chapter 1

My breath shortened, and my sweats were cascading down to my temples. I took long strides as I jogged by the park over the luminous grass that was drenched with morning rain. Crisp wind swept on my skin, diminishing the heat that arose in my body. Aside from the song blaring from my earphones, I heard my heavy pants as I was reaching the border of the park. Though my heart was hammering in my chest as if it was about to fall out, my legs couldn’t stop running. Energy had overflown inside of me, neglecting the twinge in my chest. My heart was begging me to stop, but since I didn’t want to have another attack, I kept moving.

Jogs had made me overcome my illness along with my medication, and it helped overcome the worry or panic I would always have. This activity had helped me cope up with the anxiety which also gave me more strength to fight the battle in my head. It wasn’t rare to have mental suffering; everybody would have this attack at least once in their life. But sometimes, I couldn’t help but think of how I brought it up to this day when twenty years had already passed by. It wasn’t a rare case, but the agony and trauma failing to subside throughout those span of times though I was taking my medications were bizarre. The people in my therapy session had already overcome their issues, but here I was, still living with it and it never once went away.

I halted when I jogged past the huge tree and hunched my back to rest. Grasping my thighs just above my knees, I looked down on the ground as the sweats fell on the grass. I unplugged the earphones from my ears, and all I could hear now was the thumping of my heart. My skin was already glimmering with sweat when the sunlight hit me, as I grimace from the heat. Glancing at my wristwatch, I checked the time, realizing that I would be late for work, only if I had one. 

The mortifying event last night had appeared in my head so vividly. I remembered the moment when the manager fired me because of my irresponsibility and bad temper. All I could do was curse myself for arguing with a customer yesterday because I was disrespected. That old woman had tested my patience, provoking me into speaking up and practically getting myself fired right after the misunderstanding. How I wish I could go back to that time and resign myself because that job had given me a hard time that I almost degraded myself. I hadn’t really enjoyed being in that awful restaurant where the crews were as nasty as that place because I wasn’t getting enough salary for working hard as a waitress. But though I badly wanted to quit that monstrosity, I had to pay for my bills and support Aunt Odessa because she was getting old.

Now that I had no job or anything to support us financially, I was embarrassed by myself for letting this unfortunate thing happen. I wasn’t moping over losing my job, but the fact that I wouldn’t have something to fund me and my aunt.

Sighing in frustration when these nagging thoughts had crept into my head, I proceeded to walk further to deviate my attention from the problem that I was currently facing. I strolled along the pavement, ignoring the little kids that would gawk at me for being so drenched with sweat. I had this abnormality rooted in my anxiety that caused me to sweat uncontrollably when I suppressed my agitation. This was the oddest flaw I had that I wished would go away because it was part of my insecurity. It made me look like I just came out of the water and forgot to dry myself down. 

I stopped on my track when I noticed a poster attached to a brick wall on my right side. Averting my attention to it, my brows lifted as soon as I read ‘hiring’ text on the uppermost part of the poster. It was written in bold and emphasized by a red color so it wasn’t too hard to catch attention. Realizing that I lost my job yesterday and there was this hiring signage that suddenly popped up, I highly doubt this was just a coincidence. Nevertheless, I trailed my eyes across the texts, reading every bit of it, as my mouth almost gaped when I realized what this job was all about. It made me disconcerted, a bit skeptical, and the last thing I knew, it triggered my anxiety in just a blink of an eye.

My heart thumped rapidly and my head went on a spiral. Biting my bottom lip, I forced myself to keep calm and steadied my breathing. I shut my eyes closed and pretended like I saw nothing. But when I felt a cold surface touching against my bare legs, I immediately jolted and flicked my eyes down. I would’ve screamed if I hadn’t realized right away that it was just a husky that was sniffing my legs. Sighing in relief, I crouched in front of it and rubbed its head.

“Hey there, buddy,” I said with a playful tone and noticed the dog’s leash hanging loose on the ground. “Where’s your owner?”

“Athena,” someone called near our area as I flitted my eyes up.

The dog immediately walked away from me, running towards the guy who was now approaching my area.

At that point, I thought my anxiety worsen because sweat oozed out of my hands and my heart skipped a beat at the sight of the guy. And I concluded, it was probably because I was smitten in less than a second.