The next morning, wearing his usual casual get-up of Blue skinny jeans, white trainers, plain grey t-shirt, and his yellow puffer jacket, he headed towards the university to notify the admin department. It was the first time since his return that Jack had used public transport, surrounded by many strangers, not to mention a single-decker bus that was overly full, due to the morning rush to get to school and work.
This was a situation he had not encountered for 6 years, and his nerves got the better of him. He was sat at the back of the bus, on the inside seat right next to the window. First, he stood up and slightly opened the window of the bus to try and get some breathable air to calm his nerves. After a few minutes, this wasn't enough to remove the uncomfortable swirling sensation he felt in his stomach, so next, he tried to distract himself, closing his eyes whilst resting his head on the bus window, whilst twiddling his thumbs, trying to remember anything at all that would distract him. From the K/D ratio that put him top 100 on the leaderboards for 'Demand of Duty', to the annoying voice-over that the system chose to use back in the limbo.
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A quarter of the way through the journey and most people on the bus disembarked as they got to their stops outside of work and school. Although living in a big, populated area like Streatham, his university was actually an hour away by bus, so the rest of his ride would be a lot more breathable and less tense. Or so he thought. Beside Jack was an empty seat, which was a great factor to his sense of freedom when everyone got off at the busy stops in town. However, that freedom was taken away by a new passenger who came onto the bus.
He tried not to make eye contact and huddled himself up into the corner of his chair leaning against the window even more, whilst tucking his backpack into his stomach. With a strong blow of the breeze through the window, a sweet flowery scent came to Jack's nose. It was a strawberry scent blended within the floral-like charming perfume, a smell so mesmerizing that it led him to peak out of the corner of his eyes to look at who sat next to him. Much to his shock, the person who sat beside him was the library beauty.
He didn't know this woman's name, what she was studying, or where she was from. He only knew her as the slender brunette beauty who he saw quite often in the library when taking notes outside of lecture hours. Having no intimate contact with women and only have conversed with the two women in his household, namely his mother and sister, he became immediately shy which only doubled his levels of anxiety and social awkwardness. He grabbed his bag tighter and shifted his hips away from her moving towards the window even more so. To him, he thought this would be a great idea as it would attract less attention to himself. However, not only was the attention focused on him, due to onlookers from the university being jealous about the fact that he was sitting next to her, but it was also for the fact that he looked like a deformed turtle with a stomachache with how he was huddled over his bag.
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Finally, making it off the bus he walked towards the bench beside the bus stop, sitting down to take a break from the intense social activity and to collect himself. A full-time shut-in who had not interacted with anyone for 6 years, being placed in a cramped bus and having the super attractive library girl who caught his eye before sit next to him, both were more than enough for him to tolerate. Luckily, the beauty left her seat ahead of the stop allowing Jack the time and space to be the last to leave the bus. Less people, less stress, less drama, were the thoughts of Jack.
Arriving at the reception of the game design department, Jack followed the procedures regarding leaving for a gap year and returning back next year, September 2016, which was a total of 19 months away. He handed over his documents, signed the necessary papers and received the final instructions for re-enlistment, come next year. He began to head out of the department building, then suddenly a familiar wave of a sweet flowery essence flew to his nose. Looking up he saw the library beauty once more.
Scared to make contact with the girl who's kept him sane in his time of studying the last 2 years, by appreciating her beauty from afar, he lowers his head once more and tries to hurriedly walk past her. Seeing Jack stressed for the second time in one day, she lightly tapped his shoulder and called out to him.
"Hey! Wait for a second, are you okay?"
Jack froze. He was completely unsure of what to do in this situation, this was a woman who he'd come to adore, yet he knew nothing about her, just her pretty face that focused hard on the books in front of her as she took notes. Hesitating to react, and pushing a voice out through his breathless throat, he managed to conjure up a response explaining all was okay.
The woman that had captured Jack's heart, had earned a reputation on campus for being an angel among men. She was a selfless individual in the sense that if there was someone who was in need, she'd do her level best to help them out. Whenever there was a charity drive at the university, she would be the one to take the initiative for it, and much more. Even though Jack had exclaimed that he was fine, being the selfless individual that she was, she once more took that same initiative. Tapping his shoulder once more, she gave Jack a card.
"I know you said that you're fine, but just in case please take this card. On the front side it has a number to the university's counsellor office and on the back is my number, as I'm an assistant counsellor at the office. If you ever need to have a chat, please don't hesitate to come to see us."
As stupid as it may have been, when Jack initially heard her say "on the back is my number", his heart had skipped a beat thinking that he may have had a 0.0001 microscopic amount of a chance with his dream girl. However, after then hearing the remainder of that sentence that the same feeling disappeared in a moment, unintentionally showing visual disappointment.
"What's wrong? Is something the matter?"
A genuine statement of concern came from the beauty. She'd tried to help Jack but was met with a face of obvious disappointment. Trying to recover from this, Jack managed to think on his feet and come up with an excuse that would save his rear in a situation like this, without anyone's feelings getting hurt, that it's all down to a bad past with a previous counsellor.
Before he could even smooth things out, after explaining this and escape from his embarrassing moment, loud footsteps from a group of people came echoing in from behind him in the hallway of the reception. Following those footsteps, a familiar voice came to his ears, the voice of an individual he really didn't want to meet.