Blooming Pink
The cherry blossoms hadn’t bloomed yet. Even though it was way past their season. That was all I could think about as we both walked. I’d been looking forward to seeing all the trees along the path dotted with flowers of the softest shade of pink, but now there were only leaves coated in harmattan dust.
“There are no cherry blossoms this year,” I mutter to the girl walking next to me.
She turned her head sharply to look at me, as though she had completely forgotten I was there.
“huh?” she grunts, looking up at the trees. “Oh…I hadn’t really noticed” she said in her tiny childish voice. One I’d always teased her about.
“I think it’s a bad omen. Maybe the world is going to end this year.” I try to keep her talking. The silence we’d carried was starting to weigh on me.
A dry chuckle escapes her lips.
“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad after all.”
I feel a faint frown grow on my face. She didn’t mean that. I know this because, out of everyone I’d met in the past four years, nobody loved living as much as she did. That and this wasn’t the first time she was being like this.
She turns her hand to check the time. Her shift at the library would be starting soon and I’d have to return back to my hostel to labor in front of my laptop screen in an effort to salvage my already falling grades.
“You really don’t want the world to end do you?” I mutter.
She doesn’t say anything as we continue to head toward the library. A two-story building that at first glance would fit the description of a warehouse. The school had really put effort into making it pass as a library. An effort that had somehow paid off.
“I don’t know what I really want,” she says finally in a half-whisper as we reached the library entrance. I nod, understanding what she meant. Turning to face her directly, I reach out for her hands and hold them.
“We’ll work this out.”
She glances at our hands and nods. An unspoken understanding passed between us.
As I head back to the hostel, making my way towards the same walkway we’d come through, I spot it. Tucked behind a cluster of dirty green leaves. A dash of blooming pink flowers. First of the season. Maybe, just maybe there was hope after all.
