Not Unique

Special

I jump down the small stairs connecting the SUV to the tube floors. Their large pipes that once held vibrant pink and blue colors have now been ripped out and little chunks in the ground spill out gray matter. Nasty. Euggh

The circle isn't hard to miss. It's named the circle because it's a tall circular structure that spans the length of seven football fields. This is the gigantic hub where various products ranging from baby wear, house cleaning, and make-up can be found at huge discounts. I only come here if I'm on a budget.

"Only the necessary" Zylith repeats what she just told me 3 minutes ago. I shrug my bag onto my shoulder. On Thanksgiving day, most of the circle is closed so we get to peacefully walk the tall circular concrete walls to enter the closed-off part of the circle. No one should have been able to enter here.

"You said that already" I tsk at her for the fun of it.

"And you need me to repeat things twice" She replies back keeping a smirk from tugging out plays it cool by hitting me with an eye-arch eyebrow like the emoji.

"No~ you like talking twice" I rile her up more because we both know she despies talking more than 500 words per day.

"I know for a fact I only repeat twice and not more" She smirks fully at me. Zylith does in fact never repeat herself thrice. She says it's this self-imposed rule but she also expects it from others. It's like the fool me once shame on you,m fool me twice, shame on me, fool me three times, I'll slap you.

We stand in front of the metal door and I unclip one of the bobby pins hidden in my bangs, inserting it into the hole, Zylith gives it a little push and it creaks open. We both ignore the sign saying personnel area only and close the door firmly behind us.

"I'll set up the drones to monitor the parameter, it's a miracle no glasses have been broken yet" Her face darkens at the last sentence.

"Is it a problem?" I ask "For the glasses to not have been broken? Why is it a problem?" I clarified even though I'm sure she understood me the first time.

"Because there are no miracles in real life Bliss and no matter how much of a blessing it seems it's always a big curse waiting to bite you". I squeeze my bag's strap and gulp nervously suddenly worrying about my choice. Usually, Zee makes the choices like she's been doing for the past 2 months and this is my first time having a full say in our next course of action.

It doesn't take us more than 2 minutes to get to out the back rooms and into the book sector and while Zylith looks for language textbooks and engineering textbooks I head to the diary sector. I've had a diary since I was 9, after my first boyfriend, I had a lot I wanted to write so it was weird not having a book to doodle in in the first months of the apocalyptic. Plus my memory was trash, not as good as Zylith's, I needed to remember the day I did my hair edges and they came out crusty and not well done just 10 more minutes to go to a conference meeting with Mother. Or that day the sun was exceptionally yellow.

It doesn't take me a while to find the diary sections and some books on one shelf are covered with pink and yellow clouds, and another shelf is covered with stickers of skeletons, coffins and spider webs on black leather-like covers. Another side of the shelf is themed red roses and lilies of the valleys. I walk to the rose sector and I find one with a smooth cover with a padlock as a décor. I like this one so I grab it and move to look for stickers.

I find glitter, scissors and stickers and quickly do a DIY using my name on the front of the diary. Blue Romanized letters that spell out Bliss cover the quarter of the diary.

I smile satisfied at my work and in my joy, I make one for Zylith, it's almost the exact same replica but with her name on top and some moons and stars around it. I don't really know what Zylith's aesthetics is but I hope she likes it regardless.