Saturday Night

I promise I’ll be the one you want, Don’t tell me I’m unfixable 

- Natalia Kills, Saturday Night

The dying fire was all embers. It was a cold night, a few hundred meters above sea level. The dam kept the water in, rising the level to several meters height. The stars shone brightly, even behind the clouding branches and leaves of the Fraser's Hill forest.

There were 4 of us. All the second to third tier MRSM alumni. We were not really failures, but we didn't went abroad after we finished school and we went to local public universities after MRSM, which for some, what constitutes a failure for an MRSM student. 

We were the unlucky bunch; me the academically challenged, Naja the scholarship-ly challenged, Afiq the real unlucky one - his offer to a prestigious university in Japan went direct to his email's trash, while Syiemey...well I don't know much about Syiemey's adolescence to be honest. But we were not your MRSM success stories, far from it. 

Had Syiemey come from Pengkalan Chepa, it would complete the quorum of MRSM BITARA 2006 alumni; me from Jasin/Tun Ghafar Baba, Naja from Taiping and Afiq from Langkawi.

Naja was already in the tent, the cold medicines had rendered him unconscious. 

The darkness surrounding us was engulfing everything else untouched by the light from the fire. The setting was quite eerie in its own right, but the fire still burning at the campsite next to ours led us into believing that we were not entirely alone.

We were alternating between the river, feeding more wood to the fire, and the tent. 

I long for moments like this. Where I feel stripped off every accessory and be left in my most primal, basic state. What is a person, when he has nothing but himself? I didn't need to worry about charging my phone, no work, no pressure, no life to be taken care of. No WhatsApp messages to reply to, no phone calls to make.

I felt a deeper connection to my fate, to the surroundings, to these friends that I have, and to friendship itself. In the dark, I could sense something lurking underneath the shadow. I couldn't see it, but I knew it was watching me. But I'm not scared, not when I have these people with me. 

What would we remember in the future? What would I tell? A snippet of my history, one Saturday night in Bukit Fraser's forest, sitting next to a river, watching stars from somewhere I felt so strangely alone but not lonely. This is insignificant to the greater scheme of things, this is a non story no less, but this is all a part of my story.