Chapter Eight: Hide and Seek

She arrived at school and headed to her locker. She brought the flower that the little girl gave her.

“That pretty flower might wilt if you put it inside your locker.”

The guy who was wearing a cap and ripped jeans the other day, and now leaning beside her locker with his cap covering his face again had suddenly talked to her again with his nosy tongue.

But when she’s about to react, he walked away fast before she gets to see his face.

“Was he really the guy from last time?” She asked herself thinking twice as she thinks she remembers, he is the guy who offered her his cap when she was half asleep in the classroom.

He’s still weird, she thought, he will see him again in her class today. She will surely see his face clearly later.

She suddenly thought, what’s wrong with her? Those guys she had met around are all weird.

The guy in her dream, Mr. Smith, and this guy earlier are all weird.

Well, she’s still not meeting Mr. Smith, but he’s also a guy who’s messing her with his letters.

Are they playing hide and seek with her?

Well, anyway, she ignored her thoughts and took the flower again to bring it with her to the class. As she remembers the guy's words earlier.

She’s on her way to class when she sees Jean coming across her way.

“Where’s that come from? Is there some guy hitting on you now?” She asked curiously like she can’t believe that some guy is into her.

“The guy in my dream gave me this.” She just answered teasingly, to annoy her.

“Well, I can’t believe you, dear! You’re being secretive to me now. I hate you! Who gave you that, really?” Jean asked her again to satisfy her raging curiosity.

“A little girl from the city garden gave me this. I know you will not believe me if I would say that this is from the guy in my dream. Yet maybe this flower is from a secret admirer of mine. He just used the little girl to give me this. So dear, believe me now. Some guy wants to seriously hit on your best friend.”

She said to her and continued her way to class. She left Jean standing in the corridor processing the words she said to her.

She went into the class and look for an empty chair and headed again to the back to look for the weird guy who was wearing a cap and ripped jeans, but he is not there in the classroom.

Maybe he’s late, or he is absent today to ignore her because he annoyed her earlier at the locker.

The class has started already but the guy she’s waiting to see is not yet inside.

What’s going on with her? Why is she waiting for him? She doesn’t even know him.

She scratched away the thoughts that she has in her mind right now and focus on listening to the lecture.

But a moment later, her classmate who was beside her gave her a folded piece of paper. She opened it and read the note inside.

“I apologize for making you wait. You will not see me again in your class. Bye for now.”

“What the heck?” He’s talking to her as if she’s obsessively wanting to see him. She looks outside the classroom and sees if he is there, but there’s no one around in the corridor.

When she asked the one who gave the letter to her. Her classmate just told her he did not know where it came from. As her other classmates just ordered him to pass it on to her.

When the bell rang, she organized her things and went out fast as she could to search for the letter sender outside the corridor, but she couldn’t see the ripped jeans guy there.

She searched around the entire floor of the Science Department, but she never even had seen his shadow. Or maybe he doesn’t want to be found.

She went back to her senses where she has to go home. She shouldn’t do this to herself, as if she was so into him.

He just wants her to play with him in his hide-and-seek game as she thought. Enough of his childish game of him.

She thought deeply again. She remembers the boy in her childhood dream. They used to play hide and seek.

And whenever they play she always became a loser because he was good at hiding and she wasn’t eager enough to find him so she just cried in the end for him to get out of his hiding.

And when he’s out, he would give her a sweet kiss on her cheeks for her to stop crying.

She went down to the building to get to the parking lot, where she parked her car and went home.

She erased the thoughts that she had earlier and focus on the road on her way home.

However, she can’t erase the idea that those guys were playing hide and seek with her.

Does she need to cry hard for them to get out of their hiding?

If that happens, only two of them can get out of their hiding because the other one is just an imaginary guy from her dream.

Only two of them are human, Mr. Smith and the ripped jeans guy, though she hasn’t seen their faces since the fact that they exist in this world.

Even though she also wants to believe in the guy from her dream that he is also real.

She may be crazy but he was so real whenever she dreams of him and wants to see him again and again and again even though she just only met him in her dreams.

She thinks she’s falling in love with the man she only met in the unreal world.

“Hey there! What are you thinking? Maybe, you are thinking of me circling in your head and you, are overly crazy thinking about my existence. What a wonderful day, love. It is my pleasure to be in your mind repeatedly.”

“The unreal world again!” She exclaimed in her mind.

“Hey, Mister.. whatever is your kind. I am just a girl thinking of a solution to my problem of how to get over you in my head so that I will not dream of you anymore.” She said to him, as she shrugged and continued walking on her way home.

“Wait,” she is not dreaming. She saw him. She just talked to him in the flesh. He is real.

But he’s gone with the wind later when she realized.