Fireflies

48

Mark

There she was. The corners of her eyes were forming a crescent shape and I watched her in curiosity as she entered the room.

Maybe it was because the window was open and the wind rushed in. I saw how the blowing cool gale passed through her clothes, her skin, and then her hair.

My eyes wandered to the corners of her face and I frowned. She seemed so familiar and so close. Jaemin asked me if I remembered a girl named Claire, Mom did too.

I saw how their eyes had been hoping for a yes but it didn't make me feel any better to lie.

Claire Willows.

What a strange yet familiar name.

"Hi, Mark. I'm Claire, Claire Willows," she muttered while never breaking gazes with me.

He couldn't help but ask. "Have we met?"

Her face immediately fell and I had this weird wrenching feeling in my gut that it had been a bad thing to ask but I had to know.

"We have," she replied gulping. "We have met in a way you may never come to believe."

My brows furrowed. "And why is that?"

"Because your words brought me to you. And now, I chose to bring myself again to where you are."

"Why?"

"There is a reason for all of this. I just do not know what to tell you," she admitted and then stepped closer.

I didn't know if it was the effect of the medicine I had to consume earlier but I was palpitating. Maybe it was the evident anxiousness on her face that caused me to take deep breaths too but that could not have been the case.

Everyone around me was like creatures from another dimension. They spoke my name and showered me with pampering words to supplement the time we have lost.

But her, she was so much more than the calm and relieved expression. She was so much more than the stale comments of catching up as if I had not just lost months of my life.

Claire had been worried, afraid, or maybe I was over-calculating things. My head stings like crazy but it did not matter so much.

What mattered was that a girl so mysterious, so intriguing had come to me. She walked through the room with the intent of looking at me and only me.

All the people who came to visit me today were the ones I could somehow recognize through the gradual escalation of memories through conversations.

And I knew that maybe if I just talked to Claire, maybe I'll remember how I met her.

Because, only then will I know why her uneasy face creates a lump in my throat, why her trembling fingers cause shivers down the back of my spine. How the sound of her voice triggers this wallowing alarm in my brain. How everything about her seemed to perfectly fit a scenario I cannot come to entirely visualize.

How cliché it really is but I have to admit that something about her kept on drawing me in.

She was drawing me in through the softness of her gaze, the unusual yet beguiling sparkle in her eyes.

———

She willingly inched herself closer towards him by grabbing a seat and trying to fill the awkward air. Mark did not know where to look but from time to time, when Claire gets lost in thought trying to come up with some sort of topic to discuss, he would roam his eyes to the wonders of her features, and then he would squeeze the palm of his hands and grab his head.