The Unbalanced Circle
It’s the start of school in August. New people, new environment, new white walls, and grey chairs made into a circle for everyone to sit on as they introduce one-by-one to the class. On one side of the circle sits a guy with a preppy black v-neck vest, with a leaned back pose, looking opposite to him.
And then they met, it was just a glance at first, an incidental meeting, then something pulled him to make a double-look, and so he did, and as he did, he found out she hadn’t looked away. There, for a moment, orb to orb they looked at each other.
He did so with a seemingly building smile or grin on his lips, and an expression in his eyes—one of someone who’s hooked to something. This time she looks away, panning her eyes somewhere else as she’s done with it.
Whether he had already looked away or kept looking after, is a knowledge she doesn’t have. Not that she was in a state where she’d have enough energy to care. No sleep on the first day of school, and an unhealthy sleep schedule going on for over a week, her lips are dehydrated more than what’s ideal. She’s leaning back on the board, only moving her eyes around to preserve the already low energy she has.
An ice breaker deformed the circle. Students went around asking others as the activity demands. A bit of time passed and a number of students were still not done, the seats were all over the place, and so even if Red finished early, she couldn’t go back to her original seat hindered by some other chairs.
Red decided to just sit anywhere available, leading her to a chair quite off track from the circle, nearing the center of the room. She sat almost at the edge of it, with an upright posture, arm on desk, throwing the white board a rather contemplative yet empty look, she’s still, not moving—yet something behind her was.
And sometimes one would feel things that aren’t there, and it wasn’t crowded, she was off-track, it would be quite astonishing for someone to randomly choose to lean on a chair like that—but maybe not for some, a possibility well-demonstrated by Chance. Red shifted on her seat to the side, revealing Chance, leaning against it. As if getting corrected real-time, still, her calm exterior didn’t reflect the thoughts, and questions she had in mind, one for example is “For what reason would this guy be here?“.
Trying not to overanalyze something that could possibly be subjectively normal, she didn’t entertain a certain thought. Well, to her she doesn’t know, for him it seemed very normal that he didn’t even faze.
Some ticks of the clock after that, Red stood up from her seat, and Chance continued to lean against it for a few more minutes. Perhaps, from that point, it’s clear that to him, the circle is no longer balanced.
The rest of the day he kept looking at Red while Red is focused somewhere else, as if a pair of nice eyes that can't keep itself off of looking at the sun. Chance's sun isn't blinding however, the opposite way round; it makes his vision clearer, but the same way for the sun in terms of keeping him on the ground.
