Nove was running away from darkness last few months for him had turned out pathetic, His father who had won a Nobel prize in Physics had died in his lab, his father was his backbone, with his backbone shattered now his whole life was falling apart, his father had always supported the motherless child. He had run quite a distance from the university. He had kept the secret of his homosexuality as top priority ever since he came out to himself in sixth. He knew his friends wouldn’t stay if he revealed that he was gay and that had terrified him, now everything had been spilled out and he would be kicked out of the volley team. Though volleyball was not the main focus for him in the university but academics was. He had just run, he needed to pause some time to think and come out as a different person that he will be.
He stopped when his body couldn’t move, Lover a lover is what he wanted no one who loved him lived or he didn’t love someone who loved him. A lover would magically make all his problems go. ‘Where are you, love’ He thought ‘Take me home, where I can hold his hand.’ He walked till the bus stop and sat down. It appeared like the universe didn’t like him anymore, he stood and waited in the bus stand. He saw Iva come in her scooter.
“What were you thinking, you just ran.” Iva shouted as she sat beside Nove.
“All my childhood fears had come true.” He looked at her. “I will take some days off.”
“Where will you go?” She asked.
“To my father’s farm.”
“It’s empty.”
“I guess I need some emptiness.” Nove said, A bus that would go to his place arrived. “Good bye I guess, then. I will be back soon.”
“Bye.”
Nove had slept off in the bus he didn’t notice his arrival. He woke up after the conductor had sprinkled water on his face to wake him up. He stepped down to the abandoned bus stand, his farm house was a walk from here. He had come without a bag he was just there, the last time he had come running like this from the university was just few months ago when his father had passed, now the mask of heterosexual Nove had passed away. It was just him and the cold feeling rose through his heart. He walked through the green farm of ragi plantation now mostly controlled by his uncle. He hadn’t called them to inform yet, but he was going to his house where only he and his father had stayed.
The key of the house is always below the pot it was a small normal farm house, he slowly opened it. It was clearly his house but his father wasn’t there. He sat on the sofa trying to gather his thoughts, what was the meaning to life. He had spent his school days without a romantic story and with zero distractions only to get into university and now disaster had fallen upon him. He had had sex with every closeted bottom in the university but hadn’t fallen in love even with a single one, he just didn’t feel it and now he was frustrated. His aunt might have probably cleaned the room every singe day.
He opened the fridge to find half emptied beer, he remembered sharing it with his father one week before he died. He collapsed to the ground and in one shot emptied the beer. All the memories came flooding back in, he admired his father, his knowledge in physics was enormous. Nove’s father had encouraged his to take up volleyball and filled him with determination that had him the captain of a top university’s Volleyball team his father had cheered with him in his small victories even though he had a Nobel price this made him a perfect father. His father told him the stories of atoms as nursery rhymes. When Nove was a teenager, his father had gifted him a book on quantum physics written only for his son, that was his favourite book, it contained answers and made his curious at the same time.
He ran to the attic to find the book, it was in the shelf as he opened it a letter dropped.
Dear Nove,
I write this in my last few movements, I love you.
Please go to my lab and read another book I have only for you,
“Time as it is.”
Then open the locker, Code: 227890.
It is yours.
I love you like the electrons love protons, eternal and undisturbed.
Dad.
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