Ghost In The Room

THIS IS SUMMER AND WE AREN’T IN NOVEMBER.. There shouldn’t be Halloween stories.

But a couple of nights ago, I was early for my public administration class that when I entered the room, there was only one classmate waiting for the teacher before I came in. I said “Hi” and Rhea said “Why don’t you hi yourself”, no, I mean she also said hello to me, and was in fact similarly polite to me, like I was to her when I knocked on the door and greeted her earlier.

You know, I always have this untoward trepidation about snobby and conceited women when I was younger, perhaps even until now, that I have this subliminal fear of greeting women I am not so familiar with, like women of newfound acquaintances and those that are unfamiliar colleagues at work, that I often dissuade myself from greeting women who aren’t really close to me. In fact, I often have daytime nightmares about this that I imagine how conceited women would always respond to me when I said to them “Hello, how do you do?” and they would be like “Why are you helloing me or hi-ing me like that. Why don’t you hello yourself and hi yourself?”

But enough about that trepidation, I am sure it is merely that, trepidation and baseless hesitation. I am sure 9 out of 10 women I will said “hello” today, the moment I walk outside, would return my greetings with exemplary politeness, and not with some scorn in their eyes.

Rhea and me were sitting for nearly half-an-hour and our teacher, the eloquent and healthy Mr. Patinio, who happens to be the head of the Central Bank here in the city, has not yet arrived and neither one of our classmates.

It’s kinda strange, I uttered to Rhea, how our classmates are not in the classroom at that very late hour especially when we had to take the final examination that night (our classes goes towards the early part of night). She answered, that perhaps they all had forgotten about the examination. Well, I said I doubt that. Study shows that 9 out of 10 students just do not forget final examinations.

Excuse me, Rhea asked, have you seen somebody walked outside? I said What? She asked, have I seen someone from the room went outside by walking in front of her and me? I said that’s impossible because as far as I have noticed, there were only two of us there in the room, me and her, how could that be possible, I asked her?

But really I said, did she really saw some person walking in front of us?

Yes, indeed she assured me to the hilt, like I thought she was lying or had gone lunatic.

I told her not to worry and asked her to describe what she saw.

She said that while we were having a conversation, she thought that a classmate had already came in and sat down and then went out again. And Rhea described what she saw. She saw a woman with long hair in a white colored gown, walked towards the door and went out.

I said to her that we do not have a classmate with that description, and that I swore that not one of our other classmates have arrived yet.

She said yes indeed, not one of our classmate looked that way. And we both agreed that it was a ghost that she saw walking in the front part of the classroom, while we were having a conversation, and waiting for Mr. Patinio and the rest of our classmates to arrive.

But we didn’t leave the room. We waited for Mr. Patinio and the rest of our classmates to arrive. And we took the final examination.