It was just like any ordinary day. We were just like strangers who crossed paths with each other. Him sitting at the front of the class, me sitting at the other extreme corner at the back. Two people who seemingly should have remained as strangers. Yet, how did he slowly creep into my heart? I don't know.
"Henry!" a high-pitched voice called out to our class chairperson. That day, it was sweltering hot day and our class was having a very dry lesson. The professor was talking so passionately about the origins of mystical creatures which of course, no one in the class bothered to listen. The voice was a pleasant alarm which thankfully aroused me from my dozing off. I glanced at the door, curious to see who it was. The girl, she was beautiful. She had her hair in a high ponytail, air bangs falling over her forehead. Her skin was flawless, her cheeks a little chubby, yet somehow it made her look cute. From the way she carried herself, her big round eyes gleaming with excitement, I reckoned that she was our Year One junior who had just started freshman year. She must have known H from freshman orientation. Haha, one year down the road and you'll probably look like a walking zombie, I thought.
As the junior waved to our class chairperson H, he looked up and waved back as well, smiling ever so lightly. Soon after the commotion outside the corridor slowly died down, I looked away from the door, about to drift back to sleep. "Aiyo H, who is this girl huh?" the boys in our class teased.
Just as suddenly, H turned back, his body facing 45 degrees in my direction to where I was seated at the back of the class. We made eye contact, or so I assumed. He still had a smile on his face. The look in his eyes, I could not decipher. Did he turn back to see if that specific someone was just as interested about what just happened? Or was it purely a coincidence not worth mentioning?
You must realise that this all happened just over a few minutes. One can say that it was almost an insignificant event, a passing moment of a day. Yet, somehow I could still recall this incident till this day. The searching eyes and whether or not H and I made eye contact, I do not know, and probably never will. On hindsight, I now know that there must be a reason why I could still remember the memory. Perhaps I knew it too late. And it cost me a lifetime worth of memories.