|ONE YEAR AGO|
School. Or as she and Katherine—more commonly known as Kat—liked to call it: hell. The June break was nothing short of stressful despite it supposedly being a holiday. She had to live and breathe her revision materials throughout the one-month holiday. Preliminary examinations were right around the corner and she couldn’t afford to waste any second idling with her grades on the line.
Now that she was back in the hellhole, her brain was on shutdown mode from all the late nights spent cramming for her tests. She was honest-to-God trying to focus on her Chemistry teacher’s drone on the Mole concept but the back of her crush’s head was just way more interesting. She was jolted out of her reverie by the snap of someone's finger.
“Damn, just how stoned are you?” The teasing tone in the lilt of Kat’s voice was almost palpable as she glared at Iris from across the aisle. “I’ve asked you what you’re gonna wear tomorrow for the play like three times.”
Blinking owlishly, Iris answered the question, feigning interest in the conversation when really, she was distracted by the boy at the front of the class turning around and talking to another classmate seated behind him.
Kat followed the direction of Iris’s gaze and smirked knowingly. “Ugh no wonder, you’re too busy looking at someone else.”
Iris scoffed and looked down to hide her growing blush, inwardly regretting telling her friend about her infatuation on the messy-haired, droopy-eyed boy named Ryan. She should have known Kat’s teasing tendencies won’t spare her.
“I bet you're hoping he’s gonna notice you all dolled up tomorrow.” Kat winked, though the wink looked more like an eye spasm. “Oooh, lala~.”
"Shut up or I won't hesitate, Kitkat," Iris said, holding up her thick textbook as a warning and Kat backed down from her interminable teasing sensibly with a chuckle. A sudden throaty cough then startled both girls and when they looked up, it seemed like everybody's attention was on a fellow classmate, Ming Yue, who was still coughing violently.
“You okay?” Iris heard another classmate whispering to Ming Yue worriedly.
“Yeah, it’s just a cough. Probably something in Malaysia’s tap water,” Ming Yue laughed, voice still croaky after her hacking cough.
Kat sobered and turned to Iris with a grimace. "Right, I forgot to tell you that there's some contagious illness going around. It seems like a common cold with coughing as its symptoms but I heard rumours that people in other countries started dying from the same illness."
"Talk about perfect timing." Iris rolled her eyes, sarcasm lacing her words. "A pandemic may kill us before we take our GCE O Levels."
"Like I said, it can just be a rumour and nothing more. A cold can't be that deadly. Maybe it's just the residue from the Covid19 pandemic." Kat shrugged.
The bell then chimed lightly, signalling the end of the school day and sending the students into a gleeful frenzy as they packed up hurriedly. Swept up in the flurry of movements, Ming Yue’s mini coughing fit was long forgotten like every other insignificant moment Iris had encountered in her life.
♧
“Do you think we’ll see Willow Tree? I can't let him see me looking like a mess,” Kat said, fretting over the nonexistent lint and wrinkles on her hoodie. Iris gave her a quick scan from head to toe but couldn't find a single flaw in her friend's appearance aside from her blotchy peach lip gloss that had faded away after dinner. Dressed in an oversized red hoodie paired with a black mini skirt and knee-high thermal stockings, Kat looked effortlessly adorable for the play, almost like an incongruous Little Red Riding Hood.
"Aiya, you look great lah, stop worrying so much. And your crush might not even be here, you don't need to use his codename," Iris groused, her Singlish accent slipping out in her moment of fond exasperation. Kat smoothed out her hoodie one last time before she was satisfied. Climbing up the last few steps of the escalator, Iris led the way to the gathering point since her friend had no sense of direction. In Kat's defence, this place was pretty hard to navigate.
The National Library on Victoria Street was an impressive two-block structure with a glass pod-like dome at the topmost floor and its skybridges linking the two blocks. It was renowned for storing state-of-the-art books in its extensive public library that was located at Basement 1. The building also housed a Drama Centre with massive auditoriums from Level 3 to 5. The layout could be disorienting and confusing to most people on their first visit but Iris had become skilled in finding her way through the labyrinthine corridors after multiple trips to check out storybooks for some light reading.
It was now nearing 7.30 p.m. when she glanced at her wristwatch. The play was going to start soon but only a handful of gaudily-dressed schoolmates were present at the designated meeting spot. The Secondary Four pupils were given free tickets to the musical that had been rising to stardom lately as a graduation gift from the school. Iris really had expected more cohort mates to show up but she supposed they had better things to do than watch a musical. She and Kat only showed up because they loved anything to do with theatre, literary arts and music.
Kat abruptly let out a small squeak. "Oh God, he came after all."
"I didn't know Wei Tze was into these kinds of things," Iris mumbled, catching sight of the boy who had reduced her friend to a flustered mess. He was leaning against the glass doors to the concert hall with three of his friends milling around him. Poker-faced and clad in a simple black tee and denim jeans as his outfit, Wei Tze struck Iris as a rather dull guy. Kat pining after him for four years will forever be a mystery to her. The three of them used to be classmates in Sec 1 and 2 but chose different majors before the start of their third year. Hence, Wei Tze wound up in 4E4 whereas the two girls ended up in 4E3. But the fact that they were in different classes did not stop Kat from crushing on him hard. Iris really couldn't see what the appeal was.
Iris merely rolled her eyes and scoured the arena to see if her own crush was present. Ryan took advanced music as an additional subject—that should mean he wouldn't pass up on the chance to watch a musical, right? Before she could identify the bespectacled boy in the small crowd, the entrance to the National Library began filling up with thirty or so students who had arrived on the dot. Within moments, the atmosphere was electrified with the boisterous sounds of excited chatter and raucous laughter. After a few rounds of headcounts and attendance-taking, the teachers ushered the teenagers into the air-conditioned theatre. The moment the two girls were seated side by side, Kat craned her neck and scoured the line of plush velvet seats in front of her to see if she was anywhere near Wei Tze but ended up freezing up in shock when someone plopped down on the empty seat beside her.
"Hey," Wei Tze greeted with a polite smile. "Not surprised to see you here. You've always liked anything to do with the arts." Kat ignored the elbow jab from Iris on her left for she was more focused on restraining herself from screaming and bolting out of the theatre. This was why she hated having crushes—her brain always malfunctioned whenever she was in close proximity with them.
"Oh, hi!" Kat eventually replied, beaming. She hoped she didn't look too eager to see him. "I didn't think you were the type to like musicals."
Wei Tze fixed her with a bemused quirk of his lips. "How come?"
Kat wracked her brain for an appropriate answer. "You're more into sports so I assumed–"
"So you assumed that jocks can't appreciate the fine arts too?" Wei Tze supplied, gimlet-eyed. 'Shit, shit, I fucked up.' Kat cringed inwardly. She was sure she could combust from sheer mortification right there and then. The last thing she wanted to do tonight was offending her crush with a fucking stereotype she didn't even believe in.
"Sorry, I mean–" Kat began but was interrupted by a fleeting laugh.
"It's fine, I'm just messing with you." Wei Tze patted her on the arm reassuringly before turning to face the opening curtains. Kat mustered a weak smile and mentally noted to scream into her pillow later. She earned a knowing look from Iris who had been watching her friend’s face turn a pale rose pink.
Both girls could hardly concentrate on the musical. Kat was on edge the whole time she was sitting beside Wei Tze who would whisper hilarious comments to her. Iris would have made fun of her tomato-red face if she wasn't distracted by the sight of Ryan a few rows down. Simply seeing his signature ruffled hair shouldn't make her this happy but it did. She bit back a grin and tried to focus more on the lithe dancers on stage than the slouching boy.
At 8.45 p.m., the show was about to come to an end when Ming Yue suddenly shot up in her seat, wheezing and hawking up her lungs as she scampered over her classmates’ feet on her way to presumably the washroom. Kat and Iris did not take any notice of her abrupt departure until an airy gasp rang out, catching their rapt attention.
They couldn’t see clearly in the semi-darkness but Iris managed to catch a glimpse of the fallen, convulsing body of Ming Yue through the gap between the two aisles with her keen eyesight. The whole row of students was now aware of the ruckus and was getting to their feet to check up on her, obstructing the girls’ view.
“Jesus fuck, what’s wrong with her?” Kat said, clambering onto the plush seat to get a better look, throwing all thoughts of social etiquette out the window. Wei Tze glanced up at her with wide eyes, simultaneously nonplussed and amused. Iris simply stifled a groan of fond exasperation and placed a hand on Kat’s back lest she fell over.
Out of the blue, a terrified, ear-splitting scream that bordered on hysteria pierced through the commotion like a great shard of glass, silencing everyone. The next few muffled cries were of pain, garbling and pitiful. A few boys had also climbed onto their seats like Kat and were craning their necks to get a better look at Ming Yue surrounded by a group of people that were now dispersing and backpedalling with screams of their own erupting from their throats. By then, the whole audience was looking their way. Some were already approaching the students and the teachers, all curious and eager to find out the cause of the disturbance.
However, Kat did the opposite. Whatever she had witnessed was enough to send her into a panicked state and her hand shot out to grasp Iris’s forearm, eliciting a pained “ouch” from her.
“Iris.” Her voice came out as a hushed, frightened whisper. The hoodie-clad girl then turned to lock gazes with her friend. Iris had to strain her ears to hear the next few words. “We need to fucking get out of here.”
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