"AHH!" I exclaimed one morning Mix and I were walking together. "It's about slaves!

"HUHH?" Mix exchanged in a higher intonation.

"Our group work in Grade 8. Why did you cry that time?"

"What time?"

"History subject about slaves."

"I cried?"

When I would open up that time he cried, it would always be like this. Sometimes, it's his turn to be silent. Sometimes he would change the topic or say, "I don't want to talk about it."

It became his catchphrase and he would only look at me that feels like he's undressing me. Him, with his hard-to-ignore hunter eyes and that prominent scar on his chin. Every time I looked at it, it mocked me with its secret origin.

Then when it was time I asked him about his scar, again, he would strike me with his, "I don't want to talk about it."

He doesn't want to talk about it.

"Okay, Mr. Mystery."

My habit of not wanting to persuade or not to meddle with such affairs kept me from the truth.

As a child, I'm more fond of guessing things rather than asking. You know how kids who are deprived of answers tend to find the answers themselves? Yet, I hoped that if Mix and I became closer, I'd feel like there's nothing changed, that there's no gaping presence by my side left by Crimson. Or if Crimson came back and he saw Mix and I together, he'd be jealous like I was back then. 

Better, be friends with me again. Was I becoming too optimistic?

Of course, it crossed my mind that Mix was just making fun of me. But there's something there: an ulterior motive. And what pushed me up a notch was the little surprises he did to get my attention.

Those flamboyant impulses he casually did to me. A slap on my butt, an intermittent knee jolt with his grin saying, "You're hungry."

Or when we were watching a movie in the classroom, he'd call out to me but I wouldn't pay him any attention. He would then move his head closer as if he's going to whisper something. Acting oblivious to his presence until he would bite my ear!

It came as a surprise the first time he did it. It reached the inside of my ear like pressing my head on a window of a moving car or an insect trying to enter. It was tingling! I immediately covered my ear with my hand. Feeling violated and confused, I would've stormed out of the room but I let him do these things to me because as I said I was curious. And to everything that Mix did to me, this was not even grazing the surface. 

More than once, I'd turn around and a peck on my cheek from him would startle me. Like a bubble popping right in front of my face. Getting away with another one of his catchphrases, "Trip ko lang," or it's just his way of panggigigil or gigil for short (having a hard time controlling one's self because of cuteness). Nah, I was convinced that he's just a pervert.

Mixuwert, his first name was always an odd name. He said the 'u' is silent and the double-u is pronounced as 'v'. I only knew his full name when we started calling him "Mixuwert the Pervert." For more reasons, he knew hentai and had watched it. Hentai! Or in Japanese, Pervert. Of all the things he called me, it's my only rebut to chaff him.

But I didn't know when I started calling him "Master." Maybe it was when our tasks became less imposing than a command but more authoritative than a dare.

An order.

"Master, master, what's your order?" We asked each other that question as if we're not too old for our age.

Whenever he asked me, "Who do you want to be the master, me or you?" It sounded like a question of superiority over the other. 

Perhaps, considering that we were both unknowingly shackled by our submissive nature, we let someone tell us what to do, to tell us what they want and not our own. Being a sidekick with very little agency, maybe he wanted me to dominate him and without Crimson, I want to be dominated—or rather enslaved by him.

"You or me."

Me or Him.

Without knowing why, I was slowly getting excited to choose the latter.

Because every time I gave an order, I could still feel an invisible knife stuck in my throat. So I end up saying just treat me outside, bring me food, or do simple things for me. While Mix always had me on a tight grip.

"Watch hentai with me."

"Dance in front."

"Poke anyone and blame someone."

Those were his dares. Till every day we'd only treat each other snacks, inevitably forgetting our so-called "orders."

One after another, I got used to his taunts and fusses. And over time I became unaware that I was still chasing the answers to the mysteries about him. The reason behind why he cried in our group work in Grade 8. His scar. That straight dent on his chin. I knew nothing would come off it but it's like a beautiful song I never got to know the title of. And I knew I wouldn't stop until I find it. But I was no longer throwing any question to him about it because it's meant for me to find it on my own.

At length, when I tried to order him to tell me about his scar and that time he cried for a second time, I decided that if he doesn't want to talk about it then...then.

"Hug me."

What hinted me the most that I should know of his intentions was when he said, "Hug me."

He said it in one of our vacant subjects in the morning. Every now and then he'd open his arms wide and gesture to lock me in his embrace. This sudden show of affection was what I called the hug complex. 

People were not too open about being physically intimate, even as friends at that time and age. But maybe it's the weather getting cold or one of his "perversions" that inclined him to do it. Although I still couldn't push him away. As if I could or ever would. Maybe we had come this far and it's too late to turn back.

"Hug Me."

"Hug Me."

"Mukha mo," I'd say at first. "In your face!"

Here's a better explanation. There was a part of me that wanted to give in to it, be seized by it. It was close to fighting the urge, to topple a domino, when it's waiting for you to tap it with the littlest force possible. After after you did it, you'd get weirdly satisfied. 

He was tugging at me like an undertow. More than that, he also had this smell of a cool, fresh, blue ocean that I wanted to dive in and drown.

Every time I was on the verge of doing it, of hugging him, I'd make an excuse just to save myself from admitting that this petty companionship has deeper roots. Our own complexities. 

Maybe as a kid, he lacked affection and now he was looking for it somewhere else. If he was deprived of hugs the same way I was deprived of answers. He must have been there.

I once wished I could read everyone's mind. And I wished for it more when he said, "Don't hug me, then."

What was in his mind when he said that?  Did he finally give up?

Here I thought our clumsy charade would stop. But now I was being more tempted than ever. Is this what they call reverse psychology?

But I was still reminded of the knives in my neck that held me hostage.

When we finally found our common ground in anime (not hentai), Mix and I would spend entire hours of lunch break, with each of his earphones in my right ear and the other in his left. It took us a while to notice that we also had the same music taste. When we went to Mizzus' carinderia, to photocopy our notes, the music playing on the speaker was one of the songs of Eraserheads. Mix caught me jamming to the song and asked, "You listen to them too?"

"Yeah," I answered. "They're one of my favorite bands."

"Me too!" he simpered. "What's your favorite song of theirs?

Throughout the next subject, we talked about the band and our favorite songs of them. For the first time, I could set Mix apart from anyone. Not just a a friend or a classmate, or an alien from another planet. But my sentiments still proved to be difficult to relinquish. A tug of war I was still trying to win. With Crimson's absence, the entire classroom still felt gloomy to me. Although, I constantly tried to suppress what's left of my attachments to him, it's welling up inside me, waiting to explode.

Up until that next Monday, when we were wearing our gala uniforms, my head was already spinning at Math class which was the first subject after recess. I had to endure it for one more hour of History until the class ended at lunch. I could barely stand up. As a result, I stayed on my seat.

Some of my classmates were eating with their lunchboxes inside the classroom and that made me relieved. They turned the T.V. on and this time they plugged-in Final Destination 3. I sat up front to watch but couldn't bear to relive the roller coaster scene. I laid my head down on the desk, my arms crossed under it, and felt my head swim.

For some reason, I didn't dare to be absent that afternoon. Maybe one reason was my fear of missing something.

After a session of screaming and shrieking and a bit of regurgitating, someone hunkered down to ask me, "Does your head hurt?" 

I remember that scorching afternoon at the plaza, when Crimson laid his head on my lap.

"You're burning up."

I nodded with my forehead still pressed against my forearms. Peering down, I could only see his rubber shoes and faded jogger pants. I thought it was Crimson but when I lifted my head slightly, I saw it was Mix. I dropped my head back down. 

But then I felt his hand, bare and cold, touched my nape to check my temperature.

"Do you want me to take you to the clinic?" he asked. 

I shook my head, floating now, with my face still laying downwards when Mix sauntered out of the room.

Five minutes later, he came back with medicine and a water bottle in his hands.

He squatted down again and said, "Drink this. You'll feel better." 

The water I drank was cold but it felt warm enough.

"Thanks," I said weakly while wiping the water off my mouth. 

He sat next to me as I rested my head on the desk of the armchair again. I thought he was going to watch the movie playing on the TV or produce his phone from his pocket to watch anime. I could picture him wearing his earphones and waiting until he could piss me off again. But it was the turning point — my turning point. 

When I felt him bent down, placing his head, and crossing his arms on top of me like a dome of a blanket. His span was enormous, his warmth —immense, and his scent was all over the place as if claiming me that I am his. 

It reminded me of the weight of Crimson's head on my lap. But what truly set Mix apart from Crimson was when I noticed that he was not pressing his weight down, yet, as if only providing me what I needed. No excess, all necessary for me. No redundancies.

I didn't give him any orders to do it and it might as well be exceeding the necessary of him doing this. But this time...does it even have to matter?

There may have been nothing there and I might have invented the whole thing that he liked me. And I could be mistaken that his being clingy, possessive, and even protective of me meant something else. But whatever it may be, we became each other's resolute. 

We're like two peas in a pod or two people stranded on the same boat. More than that, I saw myself in him more than to anyone I knew. 

Before long, we would pick each other in all the group works and activities. The more time I spent with Mix the smaller the knife in my throat felt. I became more comfortable with him and possibly learned more ways to tease him.

"You sure you're not gonna cry?" I joked when we were doing group work inside our classroom. It was Thursday, we were wearing our blue uniform.

Circle of students grouped together in every corner of the room, discussing, whispering gossip, and writing in manila papers with black markers. There's no teacher in charge, so Blinkey as the Chairman, for how many times shouted, "KEEP QUIET!"

The usual, Mix would pinch my cheek or point his lips to mind as though kissing me again. I pretended to cringe away. Then he stood up, patted my head, and went out to the balcony. I looked at him through the window. He leaned with his elbows on the railing, his eyes fixed on the hectares of rice fields afar. Again, I wished I knew what he was thinking.

I excused myself to Blinkey and to my groupmates saying, "I'm just going to the bathroom." 

But my eyes were locked to the nape of the boy outside the room, wearing a blue shirt uniform. 

Once I was at the door, I crouched low and crept noiselessly behind Mix. Then one lunge forward, I swiftly chained my arms around his waist and laid my head against his back. 

I didn't know if I was being saved from damnation or I was leading myself to a greater pitfall. But I could feel the knife pricking in my throat softly melting into a small thorn or maybe just a tiny fishbone. And then it was gone, when I untangled my arms around him and ran to the stairs.

"Wha — why?" Mix turned, smiling, his tone surprised and elated.

"Nothing!" I yelled.

But surely there was.