The sun hung high in the sky, casting long shadows over the desolate streets of the city. Hae-Rin, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and cargo pants, stood at the top of the bridge, looking out over the empty city that stretched before her.
The days were dry now, and the little clouds that had been there were now gone, leaving the warmth of the upcoming summer to wash over the decaying city. The nights were warmer, too, and the life of the vegetation seemed to take more and more of the city as days went by and no one was there to stop it. It wasn't possible to do that, anyway, people had bigger problems to worry about, bigger things to take care of.
Taking a deep breath, Hae-Rin stepped onto her longboard. The familiar sensation of the board beneath her feet brought a small, rare smile to her lips.
It was a fleeting moment of normality in a world that had been anything but.
Hae-Rin missed gliding down the streets.
She missed normality.
With a gentle push, she began to longboard down the bridge, the wheels of her longboard humming against the asphalt. The wind whipped through her braided hair, cool and refreshing, carrying with it the faint scents of the city- dust, decay, and something almost sweet, perhaps a memory of what the world used to be. A sweet scent of nostalgia, of what had been lost, of what Hae-Rin may never have again. Something celestial, something that was around her yet felt as if it was planes away, as if she was a ghost; unable to touch anything, unable to feel the world with her hands.
Hae-Rin leaned into the ride, her body swaying with the motion of the board. The world around her faded away, leaving only the wind and the sweet warmth of the sun. As she picked up speed, the cityscape blurred, the crumbling buildings and abandoned cars becoming a backdrop to her ride.
The longboard was her escape, her way of claiming a piece of herself in a world that had taken so much. It was the same as how her Peter Pan book was but a little less since nothing could be the same as that book.
As Hae-Rin longboarded down the bridge, eyes cast on the thick vegetation waiting for her at the end of it, she thought of the past few days.
They weren't eventful, per se, but a few things had changed, things Hae-Rin noticed like pinpricks.
