"Your face is so soft. Is it okay if I touch it?"

"What?" It was so dark she couldn't see a thing, but she could feel his breath on her lips. The blackness gradually faded, and she found herself staring at him, his lips mere centimetres from her own. Her eyes widened upon seeing the looks of the stranger. She could recognize this person anywhere even at the drop of a heartbeat. He was still handsome, even more handsome than she'd seen in her memory, and completely sober. She watched unmoving as he leaned in until the distance between them was only a hair's breadth away. She shut her eyes tightly, knowing what was to come next.

"Ah!" Zen was startled awake by the sound of her alarm. It had been a nightmare. Her cheeks were hot and burning. She quickly brushed off the images of the unlucky dream returning to her memory and reached for her phone to silence the annoying alarm.

Zen was never a morning person and she never would be. That was a universal truth. So when her alarm went off at seven o'clock in the morning, the first thing she'd done was hit the snooze button that had a ten-minute interval before the next ring. Being the lazy person she was, she would continue to hit snooze until the clock struck eight. From then on, she would begrudgingly groan and get herself off the bed, a string of curses rolling from her tongue, before getting in the shower and readying herself in exactly fifteen minutes to attend the obviously long boring class that started at eight forty-five.

The word breakfast was not in her dictionary. She didn't have time to have more than two meals a day, too preoccupied juggling between part-time jobs, even a snack break in the middle of it all would be considered a blessing. Perhaps that was the reason why she was deathly thin, causing a lot of her classmates, primarily females, to envy her, but she wasn't one to pay attention to such trivialities. She didn't care what people thought of her physical appearance. But somehow, and as much as she hated to admit it, she couldn't deny her encounter with the homophobic stranger the previous night left her a bit uneasy. I'm thinking about him again. She quickly discarded the thought as soon as it came and went back to sleep.

Her phone vibrated for the second time and she groaned loudly. This time it wasn't the alarm but a call. Half-asleep and frustrated, she reached for the phone on the bedside table while laying on her stomach, unbothered to get up. Ripping the charging cable a little too violently, she slid a finger over the phone screen, nearly dropping it in her carelessness, and placed the device next to her ear.

"What?" Zen answered, her tone cold and unwelcoming.

"Zenjee!"

"Dad?" Zen jolted wide awake, immediately sitting upright, legs bent over the bed in a highly attentive manner.

"Is this true? You got kicked out of the dorm?"

Now that was a teeth-grinding way of saying it. Kicked out, huh? "Dad, I can explain." If there was one thing that Zen was afraid of, it was her father. Her father meant the world to her, and disappointing him was like ripping a chunk of her flesh and pouring disinfectant over the open wound. In this life, all she had was her father and her not-so-significant fifteen-year-old brother. "Yesterday, I-, I, well, I-"

"Miss Dorothy told me all about it. No need to explain" came her father's voice from the other line.

"Miss Dorothy? Who?" Zen asked in confusion.

"Who else? Your warden."

"Wait, her name's Dorothy?" Zen mumbled to herself. Huh! For an old, toad lady with anger management issues, she had a pretty nice name. What a disgrace to all the people named Dorothy.

"What are you mumbling to yourself out?" Her father's impatient voice rang out again, and she flinched, bracing herself for a massive bomb packed with immense explosive power bound to cause permanent irreparable damage soon to be dropped by her father.

"Nothing," Zen stuttered. "Dad, I'm sorry. I know I've disappointed you again. But this time, I had a good reason. Please listen to me. Yesterday, in the dorm room, I-"

"Zen, calm down. I'm not disappointed in you."

"Hah? You're not?" That was a pleasant surprise. The father who always reprimanded her for the tiniest of reasons was not mad at her. Something was clearly wrong.

There was a long pause of silence before her father spoke again. "I'm not... Are you... alright?"

"Huh?"

"I'm asking if you're okay." Her father's tone sounded calm and concerned.

"Mm... I'm okay."

"That's good to hear. This morning I got the call and it worried me."

"So, you're not angry?" Zen asked hesitantly.

"Of course, I'm not angry. Are you stupid?" he scolded her. "If anything like that happens, you make sure to call me."

"I'm sorry. My phone's battery died."

"You are such a... anyway, where are you right now?"

"At Kate's."

"Good. That's good to hear. And what about university?"

"I'll get ready in a bit."

"Good. Good."

"So, you're not angry?"

"No. Have you ever seen me angry at you?"

"No." Zen smiled right after.

"I know my own daughter. She would never fight back without a reason. Isn't that right?"

"That's right," Zen agreed, nodding her head fiercely as if her father could see her now.

"Make sure to tell me if anyone bullies you again. I'll come there and deal with it myself."

"It's fine, Dad. You're so old, you won't be able to fight with them," Zen joked, giggling to herself.

"I may be old and bald." Her father laughed aloud. "But I'm still your dad."

"Yeah. I got it. I got it, old man," Zen replied in amusement. "I'll call you if anything happens. I'll go now or I'll be late."

"Alright, alright."

"Bye, Dad."

As soon as Zen cut the call, she cursed out loud. It was ten minutes past eight, and she was late. Judging from the atmosphere, she was all alone in the apartment. Kate had probably left for work since her morning shift started at five in the morning. No wonder she found herself sleeping alone on the bed when she woke up.

Dismissing her thoughts, Zen hurriedly got up and headed straight for the bathroom, knowing perfectly well Kate was going to give her an earful for not making the bed when she returned, but there was no time.

After coming out of the shower, she grabbed a couple of clothes from her now severely disorganized luggage and hastily dressed herself. Zen wasn't a messy person by nature, but she did go out of control when under pressure, and that was exactly what she was experiencing at the moment. Pulling up her grey pants almost to the point of ripping her fingernails off in her haste, she rushed to the mirror fitted on the dressing table and quickly ran a comb through her hair.

"Done. Let's go grab my bag and my watch." Zen stopped dead in her tracks. "My watch? Where is my watch?" She felt her shirt and pants with her palms, looking for a hard, spherical object. "I remember wearing it when I left the dorm yesterday." She walked back to her trolley to search but stopped herself. "No. I'm sure I didn't put it there. Don't tell me..."

A spark of the previous night's incident flashed before her eyes. Her cheeks flushed, remembering the scene when the drunk stranger stole her first kiss like a thief in the darkness. "Damn it." If it was any other watch, she would've ignored it and waited until her next paycheck to buy a new one, but that watch was very important to her. And it most likely had been STOLEN by that evil, conniving drunk stranger who she highly doubted she'd ever meet again. "Ugh. All because of that unlucky bastard! Shit!" Now she was truly late. At this rate, she might not make it to mark her attendance.

-~-

"

Now class, remember to submit your thesis by the end of this month. Class dismissed."

"Zen? Zen?"

"Huh?" Zen was startled awake by a finger poking her continuously on her back. She jerked her head up from the desk, wiped off the nonexistent drool from the corner of her mouth and turned around. A meek-looking girl with neck-length hair and enormous spectacles was waving at her from behind.

"Lin?" Zen acknowledged. Lin was her classmate, and also the only classmate she conversed with in class, and to think it had been three years since she attended this university. She was such an outcast.

Lin was the first person who approached Zen in freshman year. That was how their friendship blossomed over the years, though it just remained nothing but a platonic classmate relationship than friends. They got along well, but Lin's meek personality didn't appeal to Zen's overly dominant one. Lin was far too gentle for her taste. She was, by appearance, a very cute and strangely quiet person who seldom talked to people but definitely not a loner like her. She was the type of girl that wasn't fun to hang out with during parties and group outings, that irritating kind of person who couldn't stand up for herself, and no matter how many lectures on self-confidence and personality development she took, she would never learn. But one thing about her was that she had people who'd stand up for her. She gave people the desire to protect her kind of vibes. That, to Zen, was the only good thing going for Lin.

"Class is over," Lin said, her voice so low Zen had to strain her ears and read her lips to be able to understand what she was saying.

Flipping her head to the side, Zen caught a glimpse of someone in a pencil skirt and black heels closing the classroom door. She was so deep in her sleep that she didn't notice the professor leaving. She turned around and returned her gaze to Lin. "So, what'd I miss?"

"The teacher told us to submit our thesis by the end of this month," Lin softly replied.

"Ah, I see. Thanks for the info."

"Zen?" Lin gave her a worried look.

"Hm?" She looked at Lin, raising her eyebrows unattentively, asking her to continue.

"Are you okay? don't look good today."

"I'm good."

"You almost didn't make it for first period's roll call today. You even skipped the second lecture session, too."

"I woke up late today," Zen replied, brushing a hand over her head, pretending to dust off some foreign particle that did not get caught in her hair.

"To be honest, this was the first time I saw you doze off in class," Lin continued.

"Must've been quite a shock for you." Zen chuckled.

"It was. Even Kai is sleeping in class today. I wonder what's wrong with you guys. Is it the weather?" Lin muttered to herself, glancing over to her right.

"Kai? Who?" Zen followed suit. Her gaze was drawn to a figure seated three rows ahead in the outermost corner, which was aligned next to a double-glazed window in the classroom. The person was hunched over his desk with his head pressed down. "That's Kai?" The name sounded strangely familiar to her, yet she couldn't quite put a finger on where she'd heard it before. But one long and hard glance at the said guy's physique from the back was enough for her brain to connect the dots. She knew that guy, in fact, she had often seen him attend lectures a few times.

The section of the classroom and the position of his desk made him look like he was some main character in an anime world. The window seat in class was always reserved for the main characters for no particular reason. Outside the window, the sight of swaying leaves accompanied by a swift spring breeze added to the dramatic image she was visualizing in her mind. Perhaps Kai would make a nice male lead for a short story she was planning to write in the future.

"Zen? Don't you know Kai?" Lin whispered to Zen.

"Of course, I know him," Zen answered awkwardly. She wasn't lying when she said she knew him. She genuinely did. More than that, she'd overheard majority of the girls in her class obsessing over how good-looking he was. In no way would she allow herself to call it nosy, but she'd heard hot gossip about him, stories of his private life, his ex-girlfriend, everything but his name.

When it came to remembering names, there was no denying her friends when they said she suffered from short-term memory loss. She couldn't come up with an explanation for why she forgets people's names way too soon. She could recall faces, alright, but names were a bit tricky. She was so used to forgetting the names of professors from her subject department let alone the names of most students in her classroom. A name like Kai was no exception. When it came to Kai's looks though, even Zen couldn't deny how strikingly attractive he was in a benevolent kind of way. Tall, dark medium-length hair and cerulean blue eyes - he was like a forbidden fruit dangling from a heavenly tree, impossible to possess yet guilelessly tempting others to pick it.

Like the single, unclaimed, damsel-in-waiting, yearning for a thrilling romance erupting out of the blue type of woman she was, would have fallen for Kai's dashing looks - that had probably broken the hearts of half the female students in the University - if it weren't for his popularity. Zen would rather save herself from this frivolous way of wasting her time over a moronic love relationship she wouldn't even dream of by doing nothing than risk being viciously lynched by a mob of hungry deranged fan girls.

"Are you okay?" Lin's concerned voice reached her ears once again.

"I'm fine. Don't worry." Zen smiled, observing her friend's thin untrimmed eyebrows knitting in worry, and praying she wouldn't pry any further than what she thought would be necessary. Zen saw Lin open her mouth to speak something she knew she wouldn't want to answer and thanked all heavens when Lin instead gave her a feeble smile.

It was obvious her entire department knew of her being unceremoniously ejected from the dorm, and Zen was no fool not to notice the number of stares she'd received from the hallways as she ran to class that very day. The only reason nobody approached her was that she was an unapproachable person by nature, and anybody, meeting her for the first time, would deem her severely introverted and reserved, causing them to be unduly cautious around her. Although, the reality of her personality was entirely different from what people imagined it to be.

Zen was an introvert, but to say she didn't open up to people would be a big fat mistake. But then again, not everyone was like Madilyn or Nadia, who was born extroverts and had the power to bring sunshine during a storm anywhere and at any time. She might even consider destiny brought the three of them together - three crazy fools to be more precise - and she assumed the role of a weird but loyal, easy to get rid of annoying pet they inadvertently found on the street and decided to adopt. "So anyway, Lin. Are you done with the thesis?" She asked Lin who had been patiently waiting for her to speak for quite some time.

"No. I still have a few more pages left to write," Lin answered, adjusting her glasses nervously.

"Take it easy. I won't steal it from you," Zen joked and frowned instantly when Lin did not get the joke. The next few seconds went silent and awkward between them. "I'll go for lunch now," Zen quickly broke the uncomfortable atmosphere and without waiting for a response from Lin, stood up, trashed her bag with notes from the previous lecture - notes she knew she would never take out and read until the date of the semester exam was fixed - and rushed out of the classroom.