The dark knight

The next class I found the Bleach eyes following me, seizing me up, although with no response. Now that I had seen him, I could distinguish his sharp face bones in the dark corner he sat in, and the dreadful feeling was lost. An elongated figure with an earth yellow sweater approached me with a smile. He had dark maroon eyes, a pale brown complexion and voluminous lips. He sat near me and looked at my face forever, locking his expression and eyes on me.

- ``So, what will you do? Now that you know... whatever you shouldn't, I mean?'' - His eyes were challenging me and measuring me at the same time. The light changed and before my eyes I saw him reaching for the neck of a numb human. My face must have become as pale as the background walls. My stomach rotated empty acids, my mouth filled with the flavor of vomit and I could only hold my breath and hope to regain control over my bodily functions.

-``Do I know you?'' - Akita hadn't come today and I felt alone next to a predator, without the strength or stability to say my words louder than a whisper.

-``Now you do! More than most I should say, although... Now that you mention it, not much at all.'' - He was amused and puzzled by my twitching arms cramped around my stomach. I should focus on the now, right now! His face was exotic with freckles on his pale brown cheeks and almond shaped eyes that shone with an annoyingly confident mockery.

-``Ok. What do you want?''

-``To know what you will do? Wait, first I want to know why you went there at that late hour? No! I want to know what you are thinking!'' - The tension that was building on my chest made it tremble and escaped in a chortling. It was such a late hour, though only for us -night students- could it be considered as such.

-``I was upset and decided to walk a little.''

-``In the forest? You ain't normal!''

I slit my lids in response, considering once again the concept of normality.

He laughed as he leaned back on his chair. -``I like not-normal. Of normal is the world filled.''

He sat next to me in most classes that day and he was quite nice. What am I saying? He just drank human blood yesterday! - ``How can you be so nice? After what you did last night?''

-``You make it sound like I killed someone.'' - He whispered sideways with a hand over his mouth and laughed again.

-``Well, they didn't give you that much, otherwise...''

-``Don't be mean. That is not nice! I only took a little, it's just a party stupidity, like in most fraternities if you ask me.''

-``Not the same!'' - My madness exploded and fury filled my words.

-``Well, we had no one in alcoholic coma. No one did anything unhealthy, and they just gave blood... isn't that suppose to be a noble thing?''

-``To save lives, yes!''

-``Well, that is what we do!'' - He looked forward, with his chin high. I could see inside his head the sound of a waving cape. That made him sound like a dark knight. He cracked in laughter and I met him in it. Couldn't be helped, overall he was a nice man.

He wasn't doing something wrong, the whole system was wrong and he was a pawn on it. But... to what extend was it bad, and to what measure was he to blame? He was sold the same as my trainer. Still, I say, I draw the line of idolization in blood. Turns out he knew Akita from last year, when they first came to college and they got along quite well. Akita came sometimes, some other he would have some higher reason not to come. Of course that was noticed later in his exams, but I don't want to jump to it prematurely.

The Dark Knight was quite interested in all that was theoretical enough, while I was interested in all that was palpable. I just had a different notion of palpable than most people. I always felt comfortable with numbers, even if they were maneuvered by Greek or roman characters. There is a real association between them and our reality. So to me geometry was unfolded in 3D like a movie and calculus was a puzzle of the highest level. Of course what you can understand and what you can implement are two entirely distinct subjects. So my Dark Knight amused himself tutoring me- did I say tutoring me? I meant torturing me - getting impressed at how simplified my thinking was, how analogies could bring the hardest theory to a five-year-old. We laughed, missed Akita who would be even more absent during the examinations.

We became great friends, the three of us. We would live our personal issues outside and talk of all the rest. We discussed all the philosophic values we based ourselves on, we challenged each other and argued, but never really shared specifics about our lives. We wouldn't know much of our individual life, at the same time we knew each others most profoundly than our best friends did.

By the time the tree leaves blushed and started twirling towards the floor in a colorful crackling mantle, we had fun even during classes, sometimes too much. The Dark Knight and I were even asked to leave this particularly boring history of the metamorphose class. The amount of fun we were having loudly contrasted with our fellows' pain. I never saw nor heard of anyone being asked to leave before in college. We were both so filled with shame over that episode we vowed not to speak during the next classes. Yet after one hour of geometry - which was typically a good enough subject on its own - when we felt bound to our own ruling and prisoners to our decision, the matter was found unbearable and was thus banished from our mind. We just had to keep quieter as we shared our every thought.

The dark knight and Akita turned a terrible nightmare into an amazing college experience.