Demon Stories

Saya: Reflection Blue, 1980, United States

Saya

Reflection Blue

1980, United States

"Seiya! Penguins, look!"

My date happily ran to the penguins and I watched her from behind. As I walked behind her from far away, her small form and long black hair reminded me of another. It looked almost as if...

"Seiya! What are you doing? Come over here!" she yelled, and I blushed as people looked at me. 

No, I thought, feeling a sad twinge, she is not him. You must stop thinking about him, trying to make people him. They're not him. 

I reached the penguin enclosure, and as she pointed I studied her face. Her cheeks were chubby, her lips thin. Her nose was too high above her mouth, her forehead too large. 

She doesn't look like him at all, I thought anyway, not heeding my earlier thought. And as she took my hand, her fingers chubby and too short, my brain had a sad thought. 

You'll never see him again. You must forget him.

It was hard to enjoy the date after that. We sat in the cafeteria of the aquarium together, and as she cutely ate her hamburger I bopped her on the head with the little dolphin toy I had bought her. It was bothering me how she reminded me of him so much even though she looked nothing like him, not really. 

She looked up at me and smiled when I bopped her, and I felt another sad twinge in my heart. For, though they looked nothing alike, their personalities...

This was the girl I was dating now, Charlotte Kishi, a Japanese-American college student studying marine biology. She loved the aquarium of course, so we came here at least once per week. I hadn't thought she was special at first, and I just dated her because she was Japanese like me and therefore reminded me of home a bit. But then she came out of her shy shell and now she regularly freaked me out like right now in the aquarium cafeteria. 

She had no idea she was freaking me out, of course. I couldn't tell her she reminded me of my past lover, my boyfriend. So, I just settled for relishing in these moments when, if I closed my eyes, I could swear she was him just by her word choices alone. And such a warm shiver in my heart I experienced. Such a feeling of home. 

"Are you okay? You haven't touched your sandwich," she noticed, a look of concern in her eyes. 

My mind flashed to the same look of concern on a heart shaped face, the intensely green eyes half closed in gentle concern, staring at me unblinkingly in kind curiosity. 

I had to stop myself from gasping. Instead, I picked up my meatball sandwich. 

"It was too hot until now," I smiled warmly, and bit into it. Chewing slowly, I tried to brush away this image of him, my joyous sunshine, this long ago memory of my lover.