A/N: Generation β (Beta) are those that will be born from 2025 to 2039.
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Eddy's POV
I was born in the year 2030. In 2019, 11 years prior to my birth, a global pandemic broke out.
We learnt in history class that so many people were wiped out in the first year, it sounded horrific. The elderly fell victim first, the young were spared, so many youngsters had lost their great grandparents at the time.
Then the virus mutated and started to attack the younger. It seemed to have risen to the challenge of beating the younger population who had a stronger immune system.
I grew up in "a new normal" as the media called it. We were in repeated cycles of border closures and lockdowns. Half of my schooling was done online, missing out on many face to face activities such as normal school lessons, assemblies, sports, excursions, camps, rehearsals, concerts and just hanging out with friends. Hugging friends. I thought I'd miss out on my first kiss. Or any kiss for that matter. Or falling in love. Like, can we even fall in love without contact?
"The new normal" meant we had our faces hidden with face masks at almost all times.
The technological advancements in face masks developed in leaps and bounds since the pandemic. There were self-warming, self-cooling, self-drying, self-moistening fabrics synthesised with hypoallergenic materials. Micro aerodynamics was a big thing to calculate air flow through these items to improve the quality of breathing to alleviate the sense of asphyxiation felt by prolonged use of masks.
So our faces were always covered up when we were outside and we were only ever allowed to remove them in front of family. A new genre of pornographic material sprouted of women and men wearing nothing but a mask made out of almost see-through material, showing the contours of their noses and lips. It goes to show that anything hidden can become the object of desire as many were turned on by the thought of seeing the whole face of somebody apart from your parents and siblings.
So I don't even know the faces of my friends. Well, all except one.
Brett and I met in maths tutoring and became close friends in the youth orchestra when we were barely teenagers. Like all the rest of my friends, I had no idea what his face looked like. I wasn't particularly interested in any other person's face except Brett's. What he showed unhidden by the mask for the world to see was already enough to give me palpitations from very early on of us becoming friends. His strong eyes, lush eyelashes and his smooth porcelain skin.
Most of us had unsightly tan lines from our face masks. I was very self-conscious of mine as my face was tanned around my eyes and all around my jawline, except for the part that was covered by my face mask. It was terribly embarrassing to look at it in the mirror, not that it would be seen by anyone apart from family members.
I could not help wonder what Brett looked like under his mask. When he cringed at my bad jokes and scrunched up his face, whether he'd get little lines to show up anywhere around his nose or what his lips looked like. Whether he actually had a tan line from his mask and if he did, how much more pale could the skin around his nose and mouth be, as in whether it was even possible, like whether such a translucent colour even existed.
In case you didn't notice, I always had a crush on Brett. And he's been my best friend for, like, forever.
Puberty was much kinder to Brett than to me. He may have had approximately 2 zits during the time I had in excess of around two thousand. It was within a year of knowing him, one day I noticed his voice hitched and went a bit squeaky, then almost overnight it had gone down two octaves and he had turned into a baritone. As much as I loved his new voice, it took me months to register that that beautiful voice was coming from his delicate frame. The stark contract was such a turn on.
Reflecting back to the first time I met him, I give thanks to my lucky stars that I was physically present at the tutoring school at the time of enrollment since we were in "downtime" so to speak, from the wretched virus. It would've been a time when its new variant was no longer as "new" and either herd immunity or a new booster vaccination had kept the numbers of new cases low. This was when and where I met Brett who was 14 and I was only 13 years old at the time. Brett would've still been a high tenor and taller than me then.
It was the end of summer and we were both enrolled in preparation for the new school year due to start soon. The classrooms had no air con and an old ceiling fan was doing a half-arsed job of keeping a room full of teenagers cool so they could focus on some maths, not. I was also way too hot and distracted, gazing at the boy I sat next to, who was kind enough to let me sit next to him. This boy didn't look particularly focused either, he must've also been bothered by the heat. During break time we all spilt out of the classroom just so that we could get some fresh air. After walking around aimlessly I ended up outside, at the back of the building.
There I saw Brett.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
He was drinking from the garden tap.
Drinking tap water was strictly forbidden in our era.
The splashing water hid most of his face as he was lapping up the gush from the faucet.
When he turned off the tap and looked up, he noticed me.
To be continued...