Our Symphonies | satosere

30 ;

「 thirty 」

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In my life, I've never been anyone's exception.

Even when I used to circumstantially get featured in some school theater play, I was always the understudy, someone taken as a replacement in case the main character is unable to make it. Or perchance a sidekick, or a tree ‐ if that even counts.

I was the girl that other students used to politely "shoo away" for the purpose of reserving benches for their own buddies, the girl with an eternally vacant seat, because I was everyone's second option. That's why I didn't want a recurrence of my past - especially with someone I had started to hold so dear.

I wanted Ash to be my first and only option.

So I picked up my pace over the cobblestones and nearly sprained my ankle four times, then settled upon taking off my jet black heels off altogether. They were giving my feet terrible shoe bites, anyway.

I wasn't even sure what was I supposed to anticipate anymore. But there was certainly something cynical in the moisty air that stuck on me like a second skin, I just couldn't get rid of it.

Raindrops started descending soon - rhythmical and lightweight - and I could already sense the downpour coming up later. Maybe it was the kohl tinted sky or just my instincts again, but I quickened my steps and proceeded jogging over the pavement.

I didn't halt sprinting until I reached a clearing, a neon red signal blinked as it warned of an approaching train. I caught my breath and placed a hand over my chest which rose and fell profoundly, with raindrops still pattering on the ground.

It was that same Naha station where May and I had our first encounter, where she had extended me a handshake of sunlit friendship and I had rolled my eyes to the sky. Where I had acquired Ash's name and phone number, too. Then the house party happened, mine and Ash's introverted conversation at the night breezed balcony, then the music room fiasco, his Inter-Town piano competition...

And the oxygen could hardly even funnel into my lungs because my peripheral vision caught something from the corner, lit underneath a faint street lamp.

Bicycle. A quite familiar one at that, too.

The thunderstorm worsened further, dark grey and bewildered and relentless, just like my brain at the moment. Because that was Ash's bicycle, thrown away at the sidelines under the gloomy rainfall.

The train's track was in the open, therefore no barriers were constraining it.

On instinct my eyes desperately searched for his presence anywhere - and although I had prepared myself for the worst case scenario, my teethframe clattered and my ribcage quaked underneath my rain-soaked velvet dress.