Still Falling MINA
Rain from yesterday had left the yard smelling of wet concrete. Tuesday traffic was already threading toward first period when Val took the last stretch to Highschool A's gates, bag slung on one shoulder, voices from the field mixing with locker slam and shoe squeak ahead.
Wei was on the same approach—same clock, same path, close enough to make a scene if he wanted one. Val did not slow. He did not glance sideways. The building ahead held his eyes.
A sneer, then a hard shove at his shoulder—enough to knock his stride, not enough to be a fight. Val's foot stuttered half a beat. He did not turn around. He kept walking.
No stop. No glare. No answer rolling back toward Wei. Whatever reaction the other boy wanted, Val was not stockpiling it. The push barely registered as worth the breath.
Behind him, Wei's voice chased the retreat. "Stay away from her, you loser."
Val's pace did not change. The words hit the morning noise and broke apart.
Inside, Mei and Xian were already at their usual locker row—back on campus after the family pull that had emptied their seats for a day everyone had clocked. The reunion with ordinary school rhythm was quick: easy hellos traded with Val, with Dawn, nothing weighted, just bodies in place again where they belonged.
Between classes, a hallway bottleneck thinned around him and then didn't. Mina's face lit—bright, disbelieving, the tone of someone who had known a kid in primary and was now squinting at a stranger who might still be that kid.
"Wait—is that really you?" She laughed once, helpless. "It's been forever."
She talked like the years between had stayed kind in her head—close friends when everything was still simple, warmth intact in how she remembered them. Her version of grade ten and eleven matched the stretch he carried in bones she could not see.
The corridor noise dropped behind his ears. Brief flashes, Val-only: tenth and eleventh when heat between them had been real; eleventh bleeding into twelfth when want had crept in on his side; then John with Mina, her silence toward him, John's dislike sitting under every hallway like a floor that would not hold his weight.
He kept the regression lesson where it belonged—stay close to people who earned it, not the fair-weather gravity of James's lunch table—and he knew he could not walk the Mina endgame twice. Distance first, even while she stood there smiling like the old road might still open.
"Hi."
Polite. Short. No question back, no warmth offered. His shoulders stayed closed; he did not give the reunion room to root. He was gone down the hall before the moment could widen.
Mina's hand half-raised after him. He was already around the corner. They had been good friends once—no fight, no speech about why the door was shutting. Only her voice, lost in the turn:
"What did I do?"
Val found Dawn and the twins again. With them his mouth loosened—easy, warm, the kind of morning that did not need explaining. Mina left behind under fluorescent light, him laughing two steps ahead with the people he had chosen to keep.
The bell dragged homeroom into motion. Classes, corridors, the rest of the day settling into routine—nothing else from this morning asking for a second act.