Longest Dream

"Wake... UUUPPPPPPPPPPP!" Kyle wakes up to the pain of a pillow getting smashed against his then calmly sleeping face. He looks at the girl sitting on top of him. He creases his eyebrows at her, and says; "Damara, why did you do that? I'm still sleepy.."

"Dumb*ss, it's almost 7:40 AM!" The girl says while she places Kyle's alarm clock right on his face.

"What? No way-" His eyes widened when he saw that it's already 7:39 AM on the clock.

Kyle dashes to the small pond outside to wash his face, and back to his small house to change to his school uniform, and to the door to put his shoes on; 'Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t, sh*t! I'm late!' He runs at the sidewalk to his school after he locks his door.

"Kyle, wait up!" Damara shouts from meters away, while Kyle continues to run as fast as he could.

"I'll see you there!" Kyle says before he takes a right turn, getting out from Damara's sight.

Soon, Kyle arrives at the school; it was a 15-minute run. Well, it would have been a 7-minute drive if he had used the school bus—It's not like the students and/or even the driver would let him in, though, even if he woke up earlier.

Knowing he's already minutes late, he decided to just catch his breath before entering his classroom. 'Sorry, Mama, Papa.. I'm late again.'

He decides to enter the classroom but to his surprise, the lights are still turned off, and he could barely see in the classroom with the shut windows and closed curtains. For half a second, however, he could see bags, and... hear many people breathing.

"Ah!" His glasses fall to the ground while his body unconsciously kept walking backwards until he fell to the ground. Students are laughing, curtains are opening, the lights are turning on, and... whipped cream falls from his face, onto his pants.

That didn't bother him at all. He quickly dropped on all fours as he crawled on the floor, searching for his glasses. That is until he paused and fell frozen to the sound of metal cracking.

He looks behind him with squinted eyes, and there he sees his classmate's shoe breaking through his fragile eyeglasses.

"No.. No..!" He screamed with tears from his eyes as he tries to get his classmate's foot away from his glasses. "Please.."

The students' giggling sounds all over the room, and.. including their homeroom teacher who is crossing his arms while sitting on a desk with the students. The sound of laughter in the room made Kyle question everything. Why is he being treated this way? What did he do to be treated differently from other kids? He knows for sure he hasn't done anything to be treated like some sort of villain, right?

He looks at his surroundings again. It was just students—students who are laughing and nearly forming a circle around the whipped-creamed-boy.

"Kyle!" Kyle turned around when he heard a girl's voice; it was his best friend's voice, Damara. Damara rushes to Kyle from the entrance. She notices that he doesn't have his glasses so she looks around to find it, only to find out that it had been broken to pieces by Kyle's classmates.

She stands up and glares at the students in frustration. She shouts; "You delinquent people really have no conscience, do you? What are you being all cheerful for? My best friend's crying, you *ssholes!", to which the students and the teacher kept quiet. Soon, she helps Kyle get up by placing his arm on her shoulder as they carefully walk away from the people.

The two find and sit under an apple tree in the campus. Damara starts wiping off the whipped cream off of Kyle, while Kyle just stares at Damara.

"I'm sorry," he says with tears coming down his eyes. Damara pauses then looks at him. "It's not- Ah darn it, your glasses."

As he recalls what his classmates did to his glasses, he also recalls the day he bought it after working so hard for it. He carried sacks here and there, be it rice or cement, just so he could provide for his own needs. He doesn't have anyone else to provide for him, after all.

Kyle was born without a family to rely on. He was left by his family at the small pond that he now uses to take baths and drink water. He went astray and lived on the streets for three years, until he decided to make his own house from plain wood near the pond where nobody will see him. He went to work for random people he would find in the streets. He did various things for a change. He helped elders cross the road, he helped carry boxes and sacks, he did everything to feed himself at least once a day. His life was starting to be rather good enough than bad, until nobody would pay him anything or even want his help that he decided to just steal from people's wallets.

For a couple months, Kyle would go to the streets and 'accidentally' bump into people just to secretly and smoothly slide their valuables out of their pockets. He learned to stop after getting caught by the police and getting sent to guidance and left in a room for a whole month. When he got out, he went to find part time jobs in the streets and things worked out for him. He got to buy himself glasses that he needed to suffice his poor eyesight. He got to buy himself a school uniform for the upcoming enrollment. He didn't become a student at the same time as other kids his age but because of his intelligence, he got to skip a few years making him get to classes with students who are just as old as him.

None of that was easy for Kyle. He has been punched in the gut hundreds of times until now, he has been thrown to a garbage can thousands of times. He was picked on everywhere he went, and even now he hasn't found a way to stop them. To him, it was like nobody is on his side. He couldn't have anyone to seek help from.

Everything changed when he became friends with Damara, whom he met while throwing paper planes near his house four years ago. He saw her riding a bike in the grass, and he caught her attention when he accidentally hit her head with one of his paper planes.

Since then, the two became the best of friends, and Damara never left his side. Damara would often witness Kyle getting bullied, so she would always stand up for him. Kyle could never thank her enough. She's the only one he has, and he wishes that he could do something to pay back Damara's kindness toward him as a friend.

"Hey, hey, hey. What is going on over here?" All eyes turned to where the voice came from. By the entrance back to the building stood another high school student with a mischievous smirk. Kyle gulped. He didn't know who this boy was, but he was certain that the boy had thought of picking on the world's favorite victim.

"Kyle, let's leave," Damara says in a nervous tone, holding Kyle's arm close.

The two get up and walk a couple meters away before Kyle gets hit with an apple in the back and fall onto the ground.

"Ah!"

The scream he made sounded really painful that all students near the scene focused on him for an obvious reason—to laugh.

"Kyle!" He heard Damara's voice calling out his name. He felt her helping him get back up, although his back hurt like hell. All people were still laughing so Kyle turned to look at them, and he saw how happy the students were.

'This isn't funny.. You guys are supposed to be on my side..', he thought to himself before he went unconscious due to all the stress.

This wasn't the first time Kyle had passed out from his schoolmates. Actually, it would happen very often—too often that Kyle should be talking to the doctor by now.

He works very hard after school. And on the weekends, he goes to work still.

Well, he can't stop. He's on his own and he has to learn to be independent.

About an hour later, Kyle wakes up at the school clinic. His throat hurts and feels nauseous. His back still hurts really bad as if there's a big rock weighed on his back, even though he's lying on his back at this moment.

He looks around to find Damara nowhere. 'Damara..?' He panics as he searches intensely. As soon as he tries to get up from his bed, Damara's head pokes out from the window curtains. "Kyle?"

He pauses and looks at the window behind him, and there he finds Damara. "Are you okay?", she asks.

"I thought you left me," he responds. She creases her eyebrows and smiles.

"I'll stay here. Okay?"

"Okay. Thank you."

Meanwhile, the school nurse peeks from the door window and finds a student in his bedhead staring into the distance with a shy smile while nodding his head. It is not long before she opens the door and hears Kyle talk with Damara more.

"Who are you talking to?" The nurse asks with her eyes open wide.