Living on a Time Limit

Chapter 2 ~ Circle of Life

I may not live in "The City that Never Sleeps," but even if it is about 1am, the entire city seems to be awake. It's New Years, after all.

Ayelet's skipping along while I'm trudging behind, attentively watching for any signs of danger like a hawk.

My cousin seemed to catch sight of this and stopped skipping to slow down and walk by my side.

"C'mon, you need to live a little!"

"How am I supposed to live when I could die at any moment?"

She elbowed me in my arm. "Stop being such a letdown."

I responded with a quiet "Mm." If you couldn't tell by now, we're basically opposites.

Ayelet put her arm around me and tried to get me to skip along with her. I didn't.

"You do realize we're not in a musical, right? Nobody's gonna start singing if we do this."

"I know, but you could be a little more enthusiastic about this." I could hear that she was slightly annoyed with the tone in her voice, so I walked at about the same pace as her, and she started humming a tune in delight. Probably from the musical remark.

"Where are we even going?" I asked.

"My favorite diner, I thought you could try it too!"

I knew which diner was her favorite, alright.

"You mean the one that we literally went to as kids?"

"Yes, but I suppose you could get some nice nostalgia from it."

I just sighed. I was secretly excited for this, but who would I be to admit that?

We stopped at a crosswalk and Ayelet released her arm from my shoulders.

"The diner should be over this intersection."

I watched a bird fly close to the ground as we waited for the light to walk across.

As it was flying over the road, a car was speeding by, and-

"Oh, the poor thing..." My cousin seemed to notice what had just happened too.

I couldn't take my eyes off of it, even though the thing that I'm terrified of had just happened to it.

"How can you be so relaxed when things like that happen every day!?" I yelled at her out of fear.

Ayelet put her hand on my shoulder, and it seemed to ground me.

"Hey, calm down. Like you said, these things happen every day. It's the circle of life, it's a normal thing. Take some deep breaths, okay?"

I took a deep breath and relaxed a bit.

"Okay, thank you," I said.

"Of course," she replied with a smile.

We both looked forward and walked across as the signal turned to the white silhouette.

Before heading over, I looked over my shoulder and my eyes met the dead bird.

I stopped and just stared at it for a while before my cousin called me.

"Hey, Akuji, you coming?"

I snapped back to reality and looked at her again.

"Yeah, I'm coming."

We walked over to the diner (which is smaller than I thought it would be) and she opened the door for me.

I took one last glance at the bird before heading inside.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

~ 491 Words ~