To My Dearest Roseanne

Chapter 16

On the returning bus, Roseanne read everything she could have about the incident in Mierzwin. On her phone, she opened the image of electrical poles burning with blue flames.

"So you came out of that?"

"I suppose so."

"Dayum, girl! Were you born with a flamethrower or what?"

Roseanne kept flicking through articles.

"Over at my end, it was a similar thing, but I was on a street instead of a field," Cho clarified.

"And what were you doing?"

"I was just returning home. It's not like I dropped on my knees and conjured up this explosion."

"That's not what I meant. I'm just curious about your life."

"Oh..."

Cho felt unsure telling Roseanne about her daily habits and chores. She felt unwell just thinking about it, just thinking about the slavery of mindless, purposeless, 11-hour-long learning each day, just so she could come back home and have little peaceful moments of doing what she liked.

"I don't want to bore you, really."

"Come on! You claim you've seen my life backwards and forwards, I just want to know more about you."

"Uhm, how can I say this?" Cho hesitated. "My life is literature."

"Come again?" Roseanne thought she misheard it.

"My life is literature, s t u p i d!" Cho accentuated. "I like reading books, all sorts of books, just not the school stuff."

"Yeah, really? That sure explains your rich luggage of nouns, verbs, and adjectives."

"To be honest, my mom encouraged me to start reading..."

"No shit!" Roseanne grabbed Cho by the arm. "My mom tried the same with me!"

"Oh gosh! So what is your favourite genre?!"

Roseanne immediately frowned, "None."

"How come?"

"I tried reading books, but it just wasn't my thing. My mom kept giving me suggestions, but I found the whole process time-consuming. It was too much focus for me. I felt better outside, playing with colleagues from the backyard or taking pictures of landscapes."

After a few moments of deep silence between the two, Cho finally said, "Perhaps you weren't just ready then. You started reading too early."

"You think so? I believe I'm not the right type of person to consume literature. It's a thing for researchers and librarians, not the military-class students."

"Don't be so harsh in your judgement. If anything, life has taught me that if you don't like something, you have to grow up and try it again. You need to approach it with a fresh mind and experienced intellect. If you still don't like it, it wasn't meant to be. But if you do like it all of a sudden, the new discovery enriches your soul."

"Girl, you come right out of a comic book."

"Excuse me?"

"Bruce Lee enriches my soul, get my drift?"

Cho was about to say she had no idea what Roseanne meant by her Bruce Lee reference when she was interrupted by a scuffle on the bus. Turns out the ticket inspectors have met their match in the form of a mentally unstable freak.

"I have CONSTITUTIONAL rights given to me by birth, by nature, by the law, and by the President of the Land of Po!" the man shouted.

"Show us the ticket!"