Step To Meet You

PROLOGUE

"A step towards another is the greatest journey in life" (S. W. Maugham)

Sky. What could be greater and more immense? Blackened, it was in anticipation of bad weather. Dark clouds hung over the still green field. Everything died out. Only the restless wind howled its lingering and dreary song, shaking shabby robes over the farmhouses. The buildings, as if made of rice paper by inept children's hands, trembled under his impulses. This frozen silence and tension in the air foreshadowed a storm. In the distance, the indistinct echoes of the approaching elements were heard.

"Very close" Said the girl in a whisper, as if she was afraid that someone would hear her. She peered: where the field stretched, a gray wasteland loomed. Lightning flashed. Clean. Illuminated the entire sky for a moment, as if during the day.

"Two ... Three ..." The account was interrupted by a thunderclap, so obvious, as if someone had struck a copper ladle. An echo of it ran all over my body. The rain poured into the forgotten town in a continuous stream.

It was this weather that Mingzhu loved, it was this element that she admired. She sat on the wooden floor, leaning her shoulder against the ajar door of an old Japanese house, and watched the drops banging on the surface to make sounds so familiar to her ears. In her eyes, as dark as this formidable sky, flashes of lightning were reflected. Mingzhu recalled how recently she had also sat by the window, just looked at the sky. She remembered how the dearest person approached her then and hugged her. His hands are so warm and gentle. She closed her eyes. It's like he's next to her again, hugs her again. His voice, which she could not forget, remained only an indistinct echo in her memories.A salty tear, full of sorrow, rolled down her cheek.

Memories are all that remains for her, all that filled her thoughts and dreams. Mingzhu recalled those warm and awe-inspiring promises of two loving hearts, those words of tenderness that had been uttered; but time has turned everything to dust, and death cannot be deceived. And now this is only a part of her story, her sad story, the very secret that she is afraid to forget one day. These memories, sunk into the inexorable river of time, remained the last ray in her forgotten heart by the light, because sorrow is like a gray haze: it overshadows everything around and does not give a person more opportunity to get in touch with the outside world.