SUPERMARKET FLOWERS ( t. oikawa )

05 | the flicker of hope

IT IS A PECULIAR SIGHT TO SEE THE SEIJOH SETTER LOOKING SO SHARP, STANDING AT HER DOORSTEP. Ever since their relationship took a dive in the pools of sorrow, she's never seen him in front of her house.

"Shall we go, Mana?" he asks with that smile of his. Like everything isn't wrong with him- with them.

And Mana shakes her head. Give him a chance, give him a chance.

It's the only thing she can give him now. Not love, not hope, not trust. A chance.

And maybe it was what she wanted. To give him a chance.

So they could fix them.

( So he could break her heart again. )

( Maybe she's been broken too many times that she's learned to love the pain, to want it. )

The sun is bright today so she decides to grab an umbrella from the metal rack in her doorstep before she heads out with the Seijoh setter. She can't protect herself from other things but she knows she can protect herself from the scorching sunlight.

"You look good today," he compliments her, but Mana doesn't take it to heart. "You look... alive."

The last one strikes her and she's clenching the hem of her shirt again, hesitation flickering in her eyes, across her pale features and she's almost trembling. Why did he know to say the right things? Why Why Why Why Why.

"Thanks," is the only thing she utters. Oikawa is right though. Mana is beautiful today, even more than usual. She took time preparing her hair, tied the caramel locks in a tight ponytail and applied some bit of blush on to make her look more... alive.

"Where do we plan to go first?" Mana asks. If she's giving him a chance, she might as well be conversational. Although the words coming out of her tongue are akin to stale crackers.

"Let's go get ice cream!" He looks like a kid. A child who wasn't meant to hurt. A child, so naive to the wrongdoings of the people in the world.

They were all children once.

That was long past.

"Don't you like ice cream anymore?" he asks, tilting his head to the side. It was those little things he did, she noted. Those minuscule movements, expressions and reactions that made her immeasurably attracted to him. When he tilts his head and curiosity brims his visage, when he tries to put on that smug smirk that actually makes him look stupid rather than intimidating, when he fiddles with her thumbs and transpose warmth onto them.

Like he's the sun. That ginormous ball of gas, with the corona and core and radiative zone and photosphere.

( He burned her. )

She shakes her head, some unruly strands of her hair falling from the tight ponytails she put so much effort in making. "I'm sorry... I was just thinking."

He pouts and takes her by the hand. When they walk past vendors, she does her best to actually feel ecstatic so she spouts nonsense about how she thinks fruit vendors are people who put so much effort and he reciprocates in his own way. And she laughs at his stories; he's mumbling something about aliens and the fact that people are trying to cover up their traces.

He even shows her some pictures on his phone that made her laugh.

"That's just edited, Tooru," she says and his name feels so casual off her tongue. It's not heavy anymore, it's more like minty froth on top of your favorite cappuccino beverage.

"That's the thing," he says. "If this is edited, then who did?"

Mana shrugs and looks him in the eye. "Internet geeks who don't have anything to do with their lives."