The Wish From Heaven | ✓

chapter 3 : clashing realities

"It's not a prank!" the guy says, and I flinch.

"The fu- how?"

He shrugs. "I think it's an ability I would need to fulfill the wish. Maybe you are the type of person who doesn't speak his mind."

"This is ridiculous."

"I fucking know right?"

Oh my God, he even swears.

Due to the distraction, I forgot about the throbbing headache, but as soon as I let my mind wander a little, it comes back in all its glory. Flinching, my hand reaches my temple, although it does nothing to help reduce the ache. He gently holds my arm.

"I know it is a lot to take in," he says, this time in a soft voice. "But the sooner you accept it, the better it would be for the both of us."

I take a deep breath. "H-how do I know you're telling the truth?" I ask, though half of me, for some reason, already feels convinced. There is something about the way he speaks. It's the way he looks deeply inside my eyes, his gaze piercing through mine with the confidence of someone who has done nothing wrong, or said anything but the authentic.

"Well, you can start by seeing what your mom thinks of me." He stands and positions himself behind my chair as he says, "She is coming to your room right now, so you might want to grab a book to pretend that you were studying instead of going to take a bath."

My heart skips a bit as I hear footsteps growing louder, and I hastily grab the nearest book I find and open it to a random page, muttering obscenities under my breath. "Hide, hide, quick," I tell him, but he doesn't move. I curse myself for not locking the door, and have no idea what to say as an explanation. But before I can curse him for his illogical behavior, the door swings open, my poor heart having to skip yet another circulation.

"What- what are you still doing here? Haven't taken a bath yet?" she asks, her tone sounding annoyed the first sentence, becoming a little softer at the second seeing me studying. What a woman - satisfied as long as there's a textbook in my hand.

That's when I realize she is not looking at the boy standing behind me.

"I w-was about to," I say, without looking at her. I hope she can't see the sweat on my forehead, hear the nervousness in my voice, or sense the tension in the room. He is still standing right behind me, but she seems to not care at all. "Just wanted to finish this chapter first."

This is too much to take. Why can't she see him? How can she not see him? He is not only a mind-reader, but also invisible? How is that possible? What the hell is going on? This makes no sense. How can someone be invisible?

Yet another supernatural occurrence, this one defying the law of physics. My heart, a restless marathon racer inside the closed space of my chest, does not bother to calm down.

"You can do that after the bath. I thought you knew the sequence already."

"Yeah. Okay." I close the book and get up. I look at mom once, and find her gaze following me. She does not so much as glance at the stranger in my room, let alone be confused, shocked, horrified, and mortified - in that order, like she is supposed to.

Outside, the rain announces itself through the song of booming thunder. I hear the sweet melody of raindrops hitting anything solid, but it fails to calm down my conflicted heart, which continues its restless pacing even as I make my way to the washroom. Halfway across the room, my eyes begin to lose focus.

Everything has started spinning around me. Maybe this boy is telling the truth. Maybe it is the collision of two realities, and I am at the center of the collision, so the two universes are clashing right into me from both sides, shattering me into tiny pieces of dusts. Everything becomes a spinning blur at the point of junction; everything becomes confusing - the confusion of whether to believe what I have always believed or to believe what I am seeing, hearing and feeling right now.