"Alright! Class is over!"
Stretching in his seat, Linel exclaimed before he threw everything into his bag and stood up. Following him, Frank and I left our seats, and the three of us tagged along with the rest of the students as everyone filed out of school.
"I wish Mr Kim would go easier on all of us! I can barely feel my hands!"
Complaining as we left the building, the three of us turned left as usual when Frank suddenly stopped.
"Guess who has come to join us!"
Turning around with a smile on his face, Frank jerked his head towards a certain area. Swirling our heads to where he gestured at, I couldn't help the smile that blossomed on my face as I saw a familiar figure waiting quietly at a corner.
"Ralph!"
Shouting as I waved my hands towards him, Ralph seemed to hear my voice and tilted his head slightly to face us.
"Ralph! You came to meet us."
Grinning, Linel tried to tease him as we all walked towards him.
".....mn."
Making a grunt of acknowledgement, Ralph made a beeline towards me and slotted his hands in mine.
Smiling at him, I turned my head to see the two troublemakers staring curiously at our linked hands, before they noticed I was looking at them and politely averted their gaze.
"Well, let's go then."
Raising a fist into the air in an exaggerated manner, Linel led the four of us to the cemetery. As usual, we entered the air-conditioned reception area and headed up the stairs to the third floor.
"Big brother."
Heading straight to Will's tombstone, the three of us stood behind Frank in silence as he gave his daily report to his brother.
Standing just far enough to not invade Frank's privacy, we were all occupied with our own thoughts. Glancing to my left, I saw that although Linel was looking straight ahead, his eyes were hazy, as if he was lost in his own thoughts. Swirling to the right, Ralph was panning his gaze lightly over the numerous tombstones that lined the third burial sight. His eyes were as still as a puddle of water, but they didn't feel emotionless. In fact, I could almost see a small wave of sadness in them.
Noticing I was staring at him, Ralph turned his head towards me to give a weak attempt at a smile. Squeezing my hand, he then refocused his gaze back on Frank. And copying him, I too returned my eyes back to Frank's kneeling back.
Once done with his daily report, after Frank stood up and brushed the fake dirt from his knees, the four of us started walking out the doors of the third burial site.
"It looks like they're adding another floor."
As we walked towards the staircase, I heard Frank's voice from beside us and we turned our attention to the notice on a sign near the staircase. Beside that sign seemed to be an employee of the cemetery. She was wiping the sweat off her forehead and nodding her head at the notice.
"That will be the fifth floor of this building, and the fifth burial site for this area."
Muttering under my breath, I calculated the number of gravestones with a heavy heart. Each burial site had 4 rows, 10 columns, with the walkway splitting the rows in the middle. In total, there were 40 tombstones per level. And adding that up, the number of tombstones were far too many.
"That means that there will be 120 tombstones."
Frank frowned as he spat out the wrong answer.
"Frank, your math is wrong. It's ... 180?"
Replying back to him with a not so confident tone, the four of us continued our way down the stairs.
"Ralph, what do you think the answer is?"
Dragging Ralph into our math argument, I saw him pause for a while, his eyes calculating, before he answered in an unsure tone.
"300?"
Consoling him that both Frank and I were probably wrong anyway, I was about to ask Linel when he answered on his own.
"200. There will be 200 tombstones."
Unlike our haphazard answers, Linel spoke calmly and confidently. And to be fair, as someone who used to study at High street, his answers were much more reliable than the rest of ours
"200 tombstones. And just for this area. That's unbelievable."
Turning his head to face the front, Frank sighed.
"It is. Even though the MDVA act was made quite a while ago, this cemetery is only 4 years old. And it's already going to have 5 levels. They might have to build another one again."
Shaking my head, I saw Linel frown as he listened to my words.
"Again?"
Turning his head to face me, I nodded mine as we stepped outside of the cemetery building.
"There was an old cemetery that was used before the MDVA act started. It had no air-conditioning though, and the government deemed it too unworthy to hold the bodies of the MDVA victims, so they built this one. That old cemetery is still in use, although it only holds the bodies of non-MDVA victims."
Explaining to Linel, I offered to bring him to the cemetery, to which he declined for today.
"I have something on in a while, so maybe next time."
As he spoke, Linel turned his head to take one more look at the cemetery building before we turned a curve and headed to the crosswalk.
"Do we want to visit the local cafe today? It should be relatively busy by now."
Stealing a non-so-subtle glance at Linel, Frank then turned to face me and gave a slightly helpless smile.
"I can't. I need to go soon."
Replying back in a dazed voice, we all sneaked a glance at Linel, who had fallen into a heavy silence.
Placing a hand on his shoulder, I saw Linel's head shoot up, his eyes meeting mine as I consoled his fragile soul. Then, after having a moment to process what I was doing, he gave me a much brighter smile and seemed to shake off most of the darkness around him.
"I really do have something on. My family is having a meeting later, and I can't be late."
Returning to his more casual and playful atmosphere, we teased Linel a little before bidding him farewell.
"Now, what do we do?"
Placing a hand on his face, Frank gave a troubled expression as his eyes switched between the road that would lead us to the local cafe, the road that would lead us to my apartment, and the road that would lead us to his apartment.
"Could we go to the market?"
Surprising the two of us, we turned to Ralph to see him fishing out a note from his pocket with his one free hand.
"Actually, my Mom asked me to see if I could get some groceries after work."
Sneaking a glance at the grocery list, I looked at the names and made a route in my mind.
"Alright! Then off to the market we go!"
With a bright smile on his face, Frank copied Linel's action of putting his fist in the air and led us to the Middle Middle street market.
Heading down the road to Middle Middle street, at first Frank had both eyes facing forwards, a smile plastered on his face. However, as the time went by, I saw his gaze wavering to our held hands, a sort of envy in his eyes. Finally, it seemed that he couldn't take it anymore and slowed his steps to walk beside Ralph.
Seeing him glance nervously at Ralph's hand, occasionally flicking his gaze up to see if Ralph had noticed or if Ralph was uncomfortable holding hands with him, I couldn't help but smile. Looking at Ralph's unaware face, I squeezed his hand a little and nudged it towards Frank's direction.
Feeling my signal, Ralph's eyes immediately shot to mine to see what was wrong. Jerking my head Frank's way, I could see confusion form in his eyes, his gaze wandering to Frank's before he finally got a clue what I was trying to say.
Wordlessly, and with no hesitation at all, Ralph reached out his hand, which was only a single pinky's width away from Frank's, and held his hand.
Frank, who despite looking like he had gathered his courage, was immediately shocked and his expression froze. However, after seeing Ralph's eyes that seemed to reflect his own image, Frank quickly calmed down and smiled.
Hand in hand, the three of us made our way to the market as a happy little group.