Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Photo Collector : Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

Dinner was done. On the sixteenth minute after Dad left to look for the janitor whom he expected to be somewhere on the upper floors without knowing he was actually more than an hour dead already, we settled ourselves on the carpet laid at the center of the music room and meditated. Everybody was cross-sitting beside one another, knee to knee, while forming a big circle composed of eighteen bundles of nerves praying for a positive plot twist in this unsalvageable breaking point. The fluorescent lights above us weakened in brightness. We had our eyes closed, but it was utterly impossible to just ignore their flickering, especially not when we were surrounded by all sorts of horror similar to what people would imagine when they read an Edgar Allan Poe novel. We may have been thinking varying scenarios—either good and bad—in our head, but one thing common among us was certain; We all pray we could get away with this murder. 

“Who’s that?” Andrei hissed, taking a few steps away from the closed door. I answered, “Clueless.”I reached for the switch and turned it on. Brightness began reappearing again, flooding the spacious rectangular room with lights just as the moment the shadows vanished completely. A knock on the door called our attention one more time. It was backed up by a familiar voice saying, “Wake up, kids! We’re having a chitchat.” To me, the voice was unrecognizable. But to Philip who had heard that voice countless of times each day, it was already registered in his head. He tiptoed stealthily to the door, and as his thick brows wormed their way to meet at the center of his forehead, he verified, “Dad?” The unhealthy white color of his neck crimsoned after he stretched it to link his ear to the door. “Didn’t we told you we are sleeping?” 

My foot was sure of what it bludgeoned; it was something that was sharp and heavy. And if I were to give my shoe a quick diagnosis, I would surely find a cut or at least a scratch on its surface. But I couldn’t do it. Not when I was hugging three leather bags that made looking down to my feet entirely impossible. “Oh,” Travis said, “That must have hurt.” I retorted, “No. It didn’t. But could you check out what that thing was?” He put down the four luggages on the doormat on the other side of the  double glass doors, and wordlessly commanded by wish. As he went to the direction of the registrar, he fished for my phone from the side pocket of one of the bags I was holding, and flashed its light to the raven floor. It took him a few navigations before finally noticing something strange yet surely familiar. Beside the potted crotons just few arms away from the

I arrived at the venue five minutes earlier than our agreed meeting. The University chapel was located across the building A, the one and only building built westward of the Hamlet Creek, where a hillock met a sloping road that stretched straight to the Gate Two where vehicles would usually make their way out.Since it was established on the late months of the year 1986, the chapel had earmarks of postcolonial infrastructures. It was jury-rigged out of mud bricks, wattles and daubs, and split logs and rubbles. Although it was known as a chapel because of its nature, it was still undeniable to say that it was way too big for its name. It had two towers standing on both of its sides, one of which had Brobdingnagian old bell that would only toll when someone from the University had died, while the other one was heavily decorated with gothic sculptures that seemed rather spooky than religious. It looked twice older than its age. It was covered with mosses on most of its parts, and

The least movement I made upon hearing his answer was covering my mouth with my hands before it could even spill out sizzling words that were strictly prohibited to say; like fuck, or shit—or in my worst mood, both. As what my best friends Andrei and Benedict described me, I was the King Of Bad Words. I knew all along that it was not the best title or moniker I dreamed of having, but I had no choice. It’s the only thing where I’m good at—Cursing.  It was crazy because in my four years of staying here in HCU, I never heard of its original name before. Not from the Star Section’s Board, not from our own class adviser, and especially not from the principal herself. Sure enough, that went the same way with my classmates, too. We were fully aware that this was once a public high school, but it never occurred to us to hear it from a rival University’s Head Director. HCU had been through a lot in the past, but we were robbed the o