SUPERMARKET FLOWERS ( t. oikawa )

01 | the heartbreaking decision

future.

< You were everything, everything
that I wanted.
We were meant
to be, supposed to be,
but we lost it.
All of the memories
so close to me
just fade away... >

Why is it that all the sad songs have suddenly become about us?

now.

STERN, SMART AND SUCCESSFUL.

Fitting words to describe Tsuchigiri Kyoko, principal of Aoba Johsai. The old woman, who was probably in her sixties or something, looked like she was just in her thirties. There was no trace of grey or white hair in her tresses of black (pulled into an immaculate bun, of course) and that God awful smile on her face made Mana's knees quake.
Of course, it didn't help that the woman was her equally revolting grandmother.

Mana hates clocks but this woman is fond of them. Her office is a pastiche of different kinds of clocks- vintage, wooden and etc. All decorating the vast expanse of her office and ticking and tocking.

She also hates this woman, deep down in her soul, for surviving. She was her mother's mother, but they had a huge fallout and now this woman hated Mana to pieces. She didn't even bat an eyelash when her only daughter died, when her own daughter drowned in madness. Madness she had probably caused for endless whip lashing and cutting the woman out from society.

Her mother died, young Etsuko too. And yet this woman.

Shrewd. Snake.

More fitting words to describe her.

"So you've decided to live with relatives in Kyoto?" the woman arches an eyebrow, eyes the same grey as her mother and Etsuko but sharper and more dangerous. "I can say I'm relieved."

She flips the notice of transfer to the next page. Mana's legs hurt from standing and the overwhelming fury she feels make her want to reach across the table and slap the old woman, but she doesn't out of the most minuscule tint of respect she has left.

"It's only too long that I can handle such a useless girl," she says as if she's even bothered helping Mana. (Well, she did twice, in the most inconvenient and unsuccessful way possible). "Very much like her mother."

Mana remembers her mother before madness, kind and loving, exactly what a mother should be. True, she often failed to reach an understanding with the way Mana and Etsuko grew up, unknowing of what and how they should be raised as children (never having the experience of becoming one herself), but Mana loves her to bits.

It also helped that Mana thought she was her mother's favorite. And maybe she was.

"And gladly so," Mana replies. She's already gone through the most horrifying moments of her life. Failing grades, heartbreak, death. Standing up to an old bag of bullshit seemed so much easier. "Very alike. And unapologetically so."

Kyoko sneers, the most fitting expression in her face. "Watch your mouth, you brat," she hisses, steel eyes boring into hers but Mana doesn't waver. "You have been spoiled by the world! You have forgotten more significant things and you choose to enrapture yourselves with vanity and trifling things."

Spoiled? Mana wants to tell this woman that she is a coward, yes. She is afraid, yes. She is broken, yes. Annoying, yes. Lonely, yes. Self hating, yes. But she is not spoiled by this world.

"I am not spoiled," it is the only thing Mana says. Because this woman does not deserve her words.

"And you dare deny facts- my judgment?" she asks and her voice has become an octave higher. "Do you think I am not aware of your shameful grades and activities within this school? Is failure something to be proud of? You are a failure and you should have accepted my help when I offered it!"