Chapter 2

As the day progressed, a mildly awake Martha reached her hand to the clock to check what time it was. Although it was just an hour before her first lecture at school would commence, she still gave in to the sleep after battling for a few seconds. Just before she had hugged her pillow completely shut her slightly open eyes, her mother called her name.

"Martha, get up hon! Get prepped fast for school!

"Yes mum!" said Martha even as she hugged her pillow tighter and still not combated the sleep that dominated her mind. 'A warm sleep followed by some delightful waffles with honey.

This day can't get any better unless I add these extra 5 minutes to my sleep!' thought Martha as she dozed off after having set the alarm clock for 5 minutes.

Martha walked rapidly towards school as 5 minutes remained before the lecture could start..

Now it was half the time and Martha had to quicken the space to reach her destination on time.

On her way, she met Uncle Belvot whom she had known from her childhood days. He was a flower seller in the village and considered Martha as her daughter. Belvot had a wife and a daughter.

His wife died 1 year later after giving birth to their daughter. His own daughter married a guy who lived far away from the village and since then she'd been living with him, though she visits her father once a month on a Sunday.

Martha used to visit her uncle whenever she needed flowering advice or some special flower seeds, though she hardly ever brought flowers from him.

She in fact never needed them since Belvot himself would give flowers to Martha without accepting any money from her. While walking towards the school and not changing her path, she waved at her uncle with a broad smile and said, "Uncle! Good morning."

Her uncle, Belvot, who was busy packing a stock of seeds to be sent to the city turned around to find Martha.

He responded to this sweet gesture with a smirk and said, "Good morning my beautiful child.

So you're hurrying to the school, eh? You should wake up early.

I already saw the last student heading to the school like 10 minutes ago and now my own favorite child has gotten so late.

Hurry up!" Martha attempted to speak but was silenced by the gesture of Belvot extending his finger in front of his lips and then swinging it in the direction in which Martha was heading.

He didn't want Martha to get late. Martha acknowledged the gesture and headed to school.

Part of her was content too as she was sitting just behind Matthew. Matthew was the guy whom she had a crush on.

While attending the class from the first bench or second bench, she would often turn slightly behind to find out Matthew trying his best to pretend as if he is able to understand everything the teacher is saying since academics was not a cup of tea for Matthew.

On the contrary, he was brilliant at sports, especially soccer, and would hardly miss any chance to prove his love for sports by winning sports tournaments against schools of other villages.

Martha and Matthew had been good friends for a while. The affection developed 5 days ago when they both had gone on a hiking trip with a group of friends.

The group had decided to stay in the woods for the night and had settled themselves under the blanket of twinkling stars.

They had lit a bonfire by using some branches that had fallen off the tree. The night progressed with singing songs and eating marshmallows. After a few rounds of humming the songs, both of them decided to take a brief walk around their encampment.

While strolling around the forest, Matthew's eyes fell on an object that was shining in the dark forest.

"Hey look over there, must be something precious to retain its shine in the dark forest!" said Matthew even as he sped up to pick that peculiar object.

"Even bottle caps shine when they are exposed to the moonlight! Let us not get ourselves lost in the dark" said Martha while going behind Matthew. Martha stood to the left of Matthew while bending a little so as to place her head right beside Matthew's.

Martha was less interested in what bottle-cap-size treasure Matthew believed to be some precious gem and more interested in examining Matthew's eyes which, for her, were glittering way more than the object he held in his hand.

Both of them seemed to be lost in their own world. It was Matthew who was first to speak of the two since he had realized the object was just a piece of glass.

He moved the glass away from his sight and turned to face Martha, not really aware of Martha's face being a few inches away from his own.

"It's just a damned….." Matthew didn't get to complete his sentence once he got aware of how close he was to Martha, or maybe the other way round.

To make things worse, he had put his own lips on Martha's while speaking which left the sentence incomplete.

It was somewhat a peck which even pulled out Martha out of her state of unreality. She too now was as uncomfortable as Matthew was.

She lowered her eyes, not being able to look directly into the eyes of his crush. Matthew however no longer felt embarrassed and in fact lifted Martha's face by her chin and implanted a deep kiss on Martha's glossy lips.

The kiss lasted for not more than 10 seconds and it was Martha who had backed out of it.

As quickly as she withdrew herself from the kiss, she made quick steps towards the encampment and after a few steps, she stopped and turned behind to Matthew "Let's get back to the encampment or other might get worried" As she lost the sight of Matthew after turning back and walking towards the encampment, a smile made its way on Martha's lips since deep inside, she was melting like a hot chocolate by remembering the tender way in which Matthew had lifted her chin and kissed her.

On the contrary, Matthew panicked as he believed he made a mistake by kissing Martha without her consent.

He quickly followed up with Martha when they were just a few meters away from the camp, fearing if she would blurt out everything in front of others.

He couldn't even muster up the courage to talk to her and chose to leave everything on fate. They reached the camping venue, much to Matthew's surprise; Martha acted very normally in front of everyone but constantly avoided taking a look at him, let alone talking to him.

One of Martha's friends, Jessie, teasingly asked the reason for their absence for a good 15 minutes. Before Matthew could speak, Martha joked that on their way to the camp, Matthew had found a strange looking object which he believed to be a piece of diamond someone had dropped by mistake while burying a treasure in the forest while in reality, it was just a piece of glass.

A huge laugh escaped from the mouth of everyone sitting there. Even Matthew himself giggled while being relieved that Martha didn't spill the beans. However, he was still worried since Martha didn't seem to be on talking terms with him.

Over the past 4 days or so, Matthew had made few attempts to break the ice between them but Martha showed no interest in having a word with him which made Matthew reduce his efforts so as to not cause her any trouble.

Matthew was still not convinced by Martha's behavior of brushing off his approaches to talk to her.

Therefore, he desperately wanted to talk to her and wanted to tell her how his heart felt for her and that he didn't kiss her deliberately but rather did so in the spur of the moment.

While being lost in the memories of the camp night and how she'd been brushing away Matthew's efforts to talk to her over the few days, Martha finally came back to reality when she realized the teacher called out for her.

"Yes sir!" said Martha

"Where have you lost my child, I called your name for like 3 times before you finally responded."

"I am sorry sir."

"Do not be my child. Only that I don't want my children to seem lost in the class but rather focus on their academics.

If there's something you want to tell me about, feel free to come to the staff room" said the teacher with a warm smile.

Sure sir. There's nothing bothering me.

It is just I am not used to sitting in the middle of the class but only on the front-most benches" blurted out Martha, not really coming up with a good excuse to make.