An Eternity of Eclipse (12 page)

“I really hoped that you would agree to give me your soul.” His voice was filled with disappointment, like
I
had done something wrong.

“Well, I didn’t,” I mumbled. I did not bother to look up at him. I was too afraid Professor Cho would catch me and put me on blast again.

“I didn’t want to do what I’m about to do.”

My heart stopped.

“What?” I asked, finally lifting my head up to face him with startled eyes. The seriousness of his voice frightened all the molecules that made me human. “What are you going to do to me?”

Eclipse glanced at my notecards and gave me an apologetic smile. Just as Professor Cho ended class and announced he was going to pass out the graded projects we turned in several weeks back, Eclipse was gone.

I was suddenly left to drown in a vortex of fear and uncertainty with his absence.

The memory of what he said the night prior replayed in my mind:
“You should know that Demons are known to be very persuasive creatures. You should also know that if I want something, then I always get it.”

What was he going to do? What was he going to do to me?

The answer to that question came in the form of the biggest calamity I could imagine.

Strutting up to my row with a stack of projects he had graded, Professor Cho mindlessly slipped mine onto my desk. My world crashed all around me when I saw my paper and the blasphemous grade on it:
F.

I couldn’t breathe.

I just couldn’t breathe.   

My eyes were nearly bulging out of my sockets in disbelief.

What was this?

What the fuck was
this
?

I did not care about many things in life. However, I took matters pertaining to my academic career very seriously. I had never seen any letter on my grade report other than an A. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the F. I mean, I wasn’t even one of those jerks who didn’t need to study to get good grades! I wasn’t that intellectually inclined. I studied my butt off and worked hard to earn my A’s.

This was why I couldn’t fathom the F on my paper.

Oh my God.

I knew who was behind this.

Eclipse.

That evil Demon just gave me an F!

“Professor Cho, there’s a mistake!” I shouted like I had just witnessed a murder. “This is a mistake!”

I stood up indignantly, watching as my classmates began to scan over their projects in an expectant manner, accepting that the grade on their paper reflected their efforts. It was only me. It was only me who received the grade she didn’t deserve. Normally, I would be too spineless to stand up for myself, but this was my grade—my future! I couldn’t leave class without getting it corrected.

I gaped down at Professor Cho, finally making eye contact with him. He stood five rows below me, staring at me in nonchalance.

“Professor Cho! Please, sir. You gave me the wrong grade.”

“No, Ms. Hwang,” Professor Cho replied airily, clearly expecting me to react this way. He finished passing out the last of the projects to my fellow classmates before turning his full attention to me. “This is no mistake. The objective of the project was to find fifteen real-life examples that would be applicable to the concepts that were taught in the curriculum. In addition to the writing portion, there were also mathematical equations and graphs that accounted for 70% of the grade. You’ve not only neglected to give any applicable real-life examples, but you’ve also answered every single equation
wrong
.”

I feverishly scanned through my project in dismay. I thought I was about to have an aneurysm when I saw that my project was the crappiest project I had ever seen. My explanations and written responses not only sucked, but my numerical equations—all in my own handwriting—were all incorrect. Everything was wrong. Sadly, the irony of this entire thing was that if given the opportunity right now, I could easily solve all the equations without breaking a sweat!

“Professor Cho, can we please just talk about this—?”

“Truthfully, Ms. Hwang,” Professor Cho interrupted rudely, “I was surprised at your project. You’re usually so on point with your work. Alas, after seeing your behavior today, perhaps if you spent less time talking on the phone in class, then your next project won’t be as . . . disappointing.”

I clamped my mouth shut, feeling like Professor Cho had slapped me with his chiding comment. I sadly watched him turn away from me and exit the classroom. I realized now that any argument for the betterment of my grade was futile because I finally saw the big picture.

Eclipse appeared in this class on purpose. He wanted me to talk to him and make it appear as if I was being a bad student and slacking off in class. He planned all of this, probably knowing that Professor Cho would be more inclined to work with me to help resolve the issue of my grade if I was quiet in class all day. Since I “disturbed” class twice, I was on Professor Cho’s bad side, thereby meaning that this grade on my report was no longer negotiable. It was permanent.

Eclipse. Fucking Eclipse did this.

Mortified with my grade and embarrassed to be standing in class with my peers who all probably got better grades than me, I dejectedly gathered my things, deposited them into my bag, and ran down the stairs in my white heels like I was a cheetah on steroids.

I had to find Eclipse. I couldn’t let him get away with doing this to me. He had to fix this.

I was already rehearsing in my mind a bunch of things I wanted to dramatically say to him: from cursing at him, to telling him I hated him, to telling him he was the most horrible person in the world. There were many scenarios playing in my head, but all of it came to a screeching halt when, while running down the stairs, I somehow missed a step and—

“Ahhhhhhh!”

I
lost my balance and felt my body fly in the air before landing face-first onto the ground with a loud
plop!

During my odyssey of falling from grace, I scraped my knees over the carpet and accidentally flung my bag across the room. The fall unleashed my wallet, phone, and monthly womanly essentials all throughout the room. A collective gasp reverberated in my class. Several of my classmates ran over to me and helped me up.

While slowly sitting up to ease the black spots from my vision, several of my other classmates kindly helped gather my fallen items and put them back into my bag. I was thankful for how nice many of them were. I was also grateful the fall did not cause the lavender baby doll dress I wore to come up to my butt. The last thing I needed was to flash my thong to my male classmates. I wanted to thank God for that, but I had a feeling Eclipse, being as possessive as he was, wouldn’t allow any part of my body—much less my butt—to be showcased to anyone but himself. This was the primary reason why I knew,
I just knew
, he was behind all of this.

Needless to say, as my classmates handed me my bag and helped me stand up, I was too mortified to stay in class any longer. They were all nice, but I knew what they were thinking: “That’s what she gets for wearing heels and running in them. What an idiot.” Too embarrassed to be in the classroom any longer, I thanked everyone and sped out of class.

The only thought in my mind was that I wanted to kill that goddamn Demon of Lust!

“Eclipse! Eclipse, where the hell are you, you mean, mean person?!” I hissed, running into the girl’s bathroom in search of him.

In scary movies, the bad guy always hid in the bathroom stall while the beautiful, victimized girl was staring into the mirror broodingly, wondering to herself how she came upon this misfortune in her life. I figured since it appeared that I was the beautiful, victimized girl in this scenario, the perfect place to look for the bad guy was the girls’ bathroom. Unfortunately for me, my life was not written as the script of a cliché scary movie.

Eclipse was not standing in the bathroom and waiting for me as I had anticipated.

Wanting to make sure I was thorough (and pissed off enough to take out my anger on inanimate objects), I dramatically kicked down all the stall doors to ensure that the devious Demon wasn’t hiding and laughing at me for not being able to find him.

My first mistake was kicking down the doors with my heels on because I pulled my leg muscle in the process. My second mistake was kicking the door down to the last stall because there was someone inside—it just wasn’t the Demon I was looking for. It was some random girl using the bathroom for official toilet business.

“Ahhhh!” she screamed when the stall door flashed open, giving me the shock of my life. She covered her eyes in fear that I was going to beat the living daylights out of her.

“Oh my God! I am so sorry!” I cried in apology, nearly falling over when the stall door creaked in a pendulum motion, still reeling from the momentum of my kick.

Beyond stunned, I thanked the fates that she was covering her eyes so that she didn’t see my face. With several mutterings of apologies and several bows of regret for the trauma I bequeathed unto her, I ran my ass out of the bathroom.

Holy shit, holy shit.

I couldn’t believe I had just done that.

Afraid that the newly victimized girl would come after me with the authorities, I accelerated my running speed. I sped through the thinning traffic of students in the business school building like a neurotic bat out of Hell. I had planned on going into another girls’ bathroom to search for Eclipse. However, when I saw the clock read 9:35 A.M., my eyes expanded in dismay.

My Entrepreneurial Finance class had started at 9:30. Professor Post was notorious for marking off points for students who were tardy to class. Alarm whipped through me. Screw finding Eclipse! I had to get to class.

Making a vengeful mental note to deal with the evil Demon later, I was already running out the door when—

Whooooosh!

“Oh! Oh my frigging flying pigs!” I shrieked once I was greeted with the thrashing of rain and wind.

With the rainstorm attacking my face and completely soaking my clothes, I struggled to dig an umbrella from my bag. I whipped it out with the intention of protecting myself against the rain. I didn’t even get an opportunity to use it when a big gust of wind came and turned the umbrella inside out, rendering it useless.

“Are you kidding me?” I cried out, wanting to break the umbrella apart. I groaned to myself and continued to fight through the rain. I ran with the sorry-excuse-for-an-umbrella flapping around uselessly while I did my best to maneuver onto the sidewalk. I was thinking that my day couldn’t get any worse when a car came speeding by, conveniently running over a puddle of newly formed mud water.

Splash!

I was drenched.

I was completely drenched from head to toe.

Muddy filth dripped down my hair, tattooed my once beautiful dress, and polluted my once flawless white heels.

I felt like shit and as much as I hated to admit it, I looked like shit as well.

I hate my life.

Crestfallen while wind and rain continued to inundate me with their wickedness, I glumly picked up my feet and continued onwards to class. My lower lip quivered as I tried not to think about how ugly and pathetic I looked.

“
I hate you. I hate you so much,” I whispered as Eclipse’s flawless face crossed my mind.

Ironically, the only part of me that was utterly void of mud was my F-paper. Sparkly clean with no blemish whatsoever, this cursed project of mine was the only thing that continued to beam with pride as I miserably trudged all the way to class.

My mind cursed the Demon for the hell he was putting me through. I knew it even then that Eclipse was just getting started. My horrible day was far from over.

●●●

Bad luck followed me the entire day.

In classes, my professors seemed to have an affinity for picking on me to answer the hardest questions that no undergraduate student would be able to answer. They also had a habit of calling me up to complete equations in class that I just couldn’t solve because I wasn’t frigging Albert Einstein. They made me feel like an idiot, and to their credit, they succeeded; I had never felt more incompetent in my life. To make matters worse, I couldn’t for the life of me control the coordination of my own two feet!

Throughout the day, I couldn’t stop falling on my face, tripping on my feet, and slipping on my butt. I had acquired so many bruises that one would think I had just came back from a battle in World War III. Big gushes of wind were also unleashed my way, causing discarded soda cans, candy wrappers, and big ugly bugs to come flying at my face. Ew much?

I was granted reprieve when I went to work at the library. I couldn’t imagine what else Eclipse could have in store for me for the remainder of the day, but I was thankful to be away from the rain and away from flying objects that could attack my face. I was relieved initially, but the greeting I received once I walked into work was making me think twice about my supposed “relief.”

“Grace! What on earth happened to you?!”

Sitting at the front of the circulation desk with her jaw hung low and her eyes gaping at me from above the library’s flat-screen computer monitor was Ara.