Present Benches :; short

one and only

one,

two,

three.

The rain pours. Whenever rain pours and drums on both benches, it pours as hard at their thoughts at that night. The breeze calms her anger, while the breeze gets him curious on why he isn't colder as it is; why it was still maintaining its strength from twenty-four hours of people against it. Their thoughts came from different paths, though it was parallel that made them end up sitting back to back on both benches located in a park block. The block was silent, except for the beats of every raindrop. It was in the midst of a bustling city as a center eye of a storm is.

He needs air. Jon thinks the cold possessing him will make him feel better. Right now, all he could do was wish, and he despised that he couldn't do anything. His relationship with his family was going downhill and his hopes were about to be as blurry as how his house looked from his distance.

He couldn't do anything, so he will do something himself.

Sun rays were going to be stretching in his horizon, and he will take this as an excuse for his change. Try harder to not care of what people say and forget about it all, you weakling, he thought to himself every day as a promise for his time ahead. The words were harsher than the last. I will show people what's really tough.

Vicky tried hard to understand everything, herself, them, their actions till she actually struggled to understand why there were red lights per end of the street when all it did was to stop her and make her feel like one inch step past the line was as scary as being sued on. Last time she checked, she had friends to drive her, to guide her. Now it feels like they had vandalized on her back, and she can't let anyone in since then. Little words mean the most, words run through her head to cover others voices of people discriminating.

Sun rays were going to be drowning down to darkness soon in her horizon. She was done doing nothing with it.

"Stop crying," he fills in the silence, in a straightforward manner.

Vicky does not flinch nor stop, "I don't know what to do, then."

"I don't know," he shrugs. Jon doesn't even know why he was the one who started speaking,"I don't even know what you're talking about."

"I don't even understand anymore. Especially people who hurts people for their mysterious sake. I'm nothing, they said."

With that, he knew somehow that they were the same. But at the same time, they were not.

He felt sorry for this person, after sharing the same problems. He pitied people that can make a person feel as this.

"Don't show them weakness," he speaks after a beat, "Fight back to them, give them what pain they caused you."

She remembers who she was talking to, "Changing myself won't change my problems, stranger." She continues, "Do I need to hate them? No. Why should I let society posses me as well? That's just tragic."

"That happened past now. Now, show them you're not weak."

"Show them? Weak? That's just making their intentions happen. Don't mess up your future because of other people. Like you already did..." She lingers for a while, "I don't fancy to be what you became."

"Pardon?"

"I mean what you're trying to be now, Jon."

"How do you—"

Their feet face one another as they stood and that affected Jon's pair of dark eyes to widen. She was half amused by his surprised expression, almost with a smirk. The colors of their irises sink in familiarity. Time pours hard on their heads fast like a train passing by. From a sinking sun of hers and a rising one of his, their suns collide into one and goes directly atop. Their clocks are on one narrow direction only, both sides of their benches on one side of time, presently.

Although Vicky felt all this time slap, her eyes never strayed. Her eyes were calm, as she knew this; as she knew him all too well.

He spots the familiar brokenness in her eyes, seeing it now as if for the first time. The pain he had put carelessly in her eyes now fades, only lessening as her clock rewinds. Regret was a slap in the face and so did Vicky and her spoken words became coherent as his clock forwards to the present.

"I'm sorry," he speaks. He was at lost for words at the very moment, "I –"

"Go home," she nods in understanding. But she wasn't deterred after hearing where he was coming from. Vicky still had hope for the person who almost made her doubt herself, "I will learn to accept that, but that doesn't make all the words you said and your mistreatment to people any less wrong."

Looking at a figure he belittled and mocked, he now feels small. He feels his past self's promises taunting him like a vivid dream. He reminisced at what the young boy he once was would have expected when he wished to become stronger. Maybe, it was even cowardice; running away from his problems by masking himself as this heartless human, hoping his circumstances change. Were his own scars going to be invisible by putting it on others? He was irritated to no one in particular on how these questions came in too late, though he knew the answers always have existed.

Would he, that young child want to influence others to despair just because he was?

He nods back. Jon to see his house again, and Vicky to fix hers. The benches disappear. The rain stops.

the not end

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lt cover by -ggukthicc ;