Chasing Hurricane (PlayboySeries#2)

Chapter 20

"VON KHENRY MONTEJAR, ANO BA? SABING BUMALIK NA TAYO EH."

Natigil ako sa ilang hakbang ko ng maramdamang hindi sumusunod si Von sa akin. I look back at him and he was happily dancing like a child on the rain. I shouted again his name but he only look at me and smiled. Nilahad niya ang isang kamay sa akin na nagpahakbang ng isang beses sa akin patalikod.

The invisible bile on my throat as I look at his calm eyes looking straight at me while his hands offered comfort on this cold rain gave me that unexplainable feeling in me, something that made me swallow.

"Bahala ka jan magpaulan! Mamamatay ka sa lagnat, Gago ka." I shouted and turn my heels to leave. This feeling I am feeling around Von Khenry Montejar is just too much to bare. Kotang-kota na ako ngayong araw. Tama na.

"Damn it! Ano ba?!" Hindi na ako nagulat ng maramdaman ko ang mainit na kamay niyang dumapo sa braso ko upang iharap. It was like a subconscious guess or more so, a sure guess. Ganito naman talaga siya, the more I neglect him, the more he become perseveres.

"Ang KJ nito! Sige na, Madame, please. Ngayon lang naman ito oh. Basa na rin naman tayo kahit gaano kabilis natin tumakbo pabalik sa bahay ni Aling Martha. Might as well, let's just enjoy the rain while it last!" he laughed and tried to raise both our hands on the air, feeling the drops of the pouring rain.

"Come on, Airess Zhail! Have fun while we have a chance! We'll never know what tomorrow will brings us! So for now, be young and alive!"

And that caught my tongue. What he just said was like a slap from my youth, a moment where my inner-young-self woke up from sleeping for so long. Maybe that was a price for maturing too early, experiencing life at its hardest at a very young age was  my slap to reality to always be critical, to forget the kind of typical fun but get to have fun on the adrenaline in the middle of a dangerous mission. The fun of getting to play and put the lives of the bad people on my own hands. Not realizing that I had forgotten to experience a fragment of living a life with no worries but to just be alive.

Or maybe, once did I felt and experience it. But  then, it was so long gone now. All were thrown away by the piled-up hardships and pain. The misery and the harsh reality of my life that kept my heads up to focus on my priority. And that is to kill to protect. An oath that I swore in my name. A responsibility of the duty I was tasked to do. 

And one of the things I learned in life is to simply savor one in a lifetime moments. And this, dancing and having the chance to savor the rain is not really a daily mood for me. So yeah, for the first after all my misery, I felt alive again. In the middle of the rain as I laugh and play like the little kid I once were with Von Khenry Montejar.

"Hindi mo ako mahuhuli, Boy!" I laughed and run. The splashes of the water on the ground did not even bother me. 

Sa ilang minuto naming paghahabulan at asaran sa gitna ng malakas na ulan ay biglang tumigil si Von. We were playing tag and he was chasing me as I laugh so hard every time he slipped. I stop just a few meters away from him and he was just there, standing amidst the rain, all so wet and panting from all the chasing, staring at me as if he was savoring the moment too.