SUPERMARKET FLOWERS ( t. oikawa )

02 | the new chapter

before.

I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

...but you're not going to come back, are you?

WHAT TO LOSE, WHAT TO KEEP. That same simple task but in the end, you don't really have a choice. The things you keep are doomed to leave, to be abandoned.

Humans are selfish creatures who always want better. They seek to improve themselves only to end up worse than before. They change tools for ones that present more efficiency. They cut trees for houses, dig the earth for worthless stones. Only to fall to the same inevitable end.

Death.

Game over.

Mana knows this fact, but she refuses to let go. She gathers all the fragments and hold them so tight that it wounds her.

She keeps the traces of memories, the letters, every single word she can still remember. She holds them so tight that even though it wrecks her entire being, she refuses to let go.

That's why her footsteps always felt so heavy when it was time to visit their graves.

Polished marble with inscribed names, the little fissures that trailed her sister's, the deaths of mother and sister on the same time. Her father's just months away.

"Mana-chaan~" Mana freezes. It's that annoying voice again. It's been weeks now, but he's still achingly persistent.

"What a coincidence! I was just going to visit my grandmother's-"

"It's not a coincidence," she snaps, sharper than she intended to. She's been more friendly towards Oikawa for the past weeks, but the fear that he'll see the gravestones, bearing the names of her parents and sister, Mana can't help but raise those walls for protection.

She clenches her fists. Unclenches them. She breathes in deeply, repeats the preceding action to soothe her nerves. She just looks blankly at him. And then seconds trickle past them, but the silence is intact.

"Mana-chan," he begins and she's frightened of that normal way he says her name. That serious way that pierces through her soul and unravels fragments of her past. She holds on.

"Are those your parents' graves?" he points at the gravestones, cleaned and polished, inscribed with surnames the same as hers.

Mana is panicking too much that sweat is dribbling from her forehead to the ground, clammy fingers closed around each other and hidden behind her. Mana is still panicking after minutes pass, so much panicking that her mouth can't form ideas that refute his statement. Panic claws on her throat, presses nerves that the ugly truth is spat out.

"Y-Yes," she stammers and the word is the worst tasting thing in her mouth. She wants to swallow it like bile but her own body rejects it and spits it forward.

Seconds pass, the wind blows harder, her carnation pink skirt fluttering, the leaves dancing, the grass beneath the gravestones swaying, the flowers inside the glass filled with water blown away. Mana hurries to pick the flowers up and place them back in the glass and she keeps her silence as Oikawa helps her.

He mutters a prayer under her breath, watches with solemn chestnut eyes and Mana feels repulsed by the pity that laces his eyes. It fuels rage in her, crescents formed from fingernails burying into skin. Deep, deep, deep. And blood trickles from the cut.

"Don't tell anyone," she says, voice sharper than the blades her sister cut herself with. Sharper than the words her father hurled towards her mother in those rare fights between them. Deadlier than the fire that burnt her sister, mother and everything to ashes.