Burning Passion

He eyes darted throughout the room searching for the students that were supposed to be in the class, only to find the charred remains of his classmates. Pain, suffering, agony, despair, misery, anguish, grief, and desolation all forced their way into him like a truck ramming into the side of a building. Even then, that could never hope to accurately describe the melancholy that had painfully twisted itself into his heart without warning. He looked for the girl that should have been sleeping next to him and felt a glimmer of hope well inside him when he sees her unharmed body still fast asleep.

THANK GOD!

A wave of relief flooded his entire body, but only for a brief moment.

I need to hurry.

He took her outside of the burning building and carefully placed down, onto a bench. He turned back to the school, but upon doing so was nearly sent flying when the building itself collapsed in on itself. He rushed through the rubble to get people out of it, but with each corpse he found, the more his soul began to torment. He returned to the girl on the bench to wake her up.

Why?

He attempted to wake her up multiple times, to no avail, thus he checked her heart rate to confirm her well-being and found peace, upon hearing its spontaneous beats.

“Calm down, calm down, calm down. NO, WHAT THE HELL AM I EVEN SAYING!! THERE'S NO WAY I COULD CALM DOWN WITH WHAT JUST HAPPENED! WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING!? WHY IS SHE THE ONLY THAT SURVIVED!? WHY HASN’T ANY HELP COME!? WHY ISN’T SHE WAKING UP!? HOW DID THE FIRE START!? WHY DIDN’T I WAKE UP BEFORE IT WAS TOO LATE!? JUST WHY THE HELL IS THIS HAPPENING!?”

He pushed her repeatedly, in the hopes of getting some semblance of a reaction.

“Please…I’m begging you…PLEASE WAKE UP!”

With, again, no response, he pulled out his phone to call the police but with each attempt came the same despairing outcome of, no answer. He looked at the girl, this time noticing a cut in her shirt and with closer inspection he found…

“This isn’t happening.”

His mind had gone blank, he couldn’t rationally think of anything after finding a slit in her abdomen that had clearly been leaking blood for some time. The fact that she had died was as clear as day, no one could survive after having a wound like that stay untreated for so long.

“…ke up.”

Huh?

His vision slowly faded away as he heard voice of girl that should’ve been right in from of him.

“…wake up.”

“…who?” Pushing his dry voice out, he felt a throbbing pain in his throat.

Before his question could be answered, he felt a tug on his sleeve. He sprang up from his seat to find that he was back in class.

“Woah, you scared me there! Did you have a bad dream or something?” Surprised by his sudden movement she jumped back, nearly falling off her chair, but she luckily managed to balance herself and looked up at him standing there.

With his mind unable to catch up to the sudden whiplash of this situation he stood there standing for a while. He quickly regained himself though.

“Yeah, a really bad dream, too realistic for my liking. So, what do you want? “ His entire body shaking, he sat back down in his seat.

How the hell am I supposed to calm down after that? Come on I gotta play it cool so no one notices.

“Well, you just looked really pale so I thought that I should be kind enough to wake you up. Unlike a certain someone. I really wasn’t expecting you to jump out of your chair like that though. I also wanted to ask you some things, but I guess that can wait for now.“

What’s with her, being considerate suddenly?

“I’m fine, so what did you want to ask me anyway?”

“You clearly aren’t fine…but” Having seemingly given up on asking him about it, she looked directly into his eyes. “Can you tell me your name?”

“I don’t remember it.”

“I’m Louise, so what’s your name.” Completely ignoring his sarcastic comment, Louise Introduced herself, and again asked him for his name.

“Don’t just ignore me…” Realizing his own hypocrisy, he stopped talking and averted his gaze from Louise.

A hazy depressing feeling loomed over his heart as he readied himself, to again tell Louise his name.

It just gets harder and harder each time I do this.

“My name is…Mena.” Ignoring his body adamantly refusing to let him speak any further, he gives Louise his name.

Louise: “One last thing, what dream did you have just now that made you look like that?”

Did I really look that bad?

“….to be honest just remembering it…”

As he started recounting the horrifying events that took place during this “dream” Louise grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Sorry, I…don’t really care about it anymore anyway.” Seemingly no longer interested in it, she tried to stop from him remembering the dream.

However, all it took was a single moment for all of it to vividly flash into his head. His body moved instantly and soon he calmed down.

It feels…so warm.

He his tightened his grip and “ehh…”

He returned to reality and wrapped between his arms was Louise, trembling with a flushed expression and eyes filled with confusion.

She looks so lovely…wa-it…

“Umm…could you maybe…let go?” Blushing profusely, Louise managed to get Mena to realize what he was doing.

Slowly, he moved arms away from her, and sat back down in his seat.

I really did it this time, huh.