The day we walked

Day by day, and the spring is just about to come in an unexpected way. There is nothing predictable for this season; it randomly comes for nothing, sweeping through the city streets with a sudden, unseasonable warmth, only to drop the temperature by evening.

People are crowded, walking on their own paths. Some students are about to enter their new school year; some crybabies are there, clinging to sleeves, not wanting to leave their parents.

Takeda watched them from the second-floor window of the staff room. The morning, bell had just rung, yet the schoolyard was still a chaotic sea of moving bodies. He took a slow sip of his lukewarm coffee. The wind rattled the glass pane, a low, persistent hum. In his mind, the distant chatter of the students sounded exactly like the ocean. Waves. He closed his eyes for a brief second, feeling the tide pull in, dragging the pebbles across the sand, and pushing them back out into the deep. He always felt a strange sense of isolation in crowded places, like he was standing on the shoreline watching the water recede.

Sometimes, Takeda felt like a meteor. A silent, lonely rock drifting through a vast, freezing void, surrounded by nothing but space, waiting for the friction of the atmosphere to finally catch him on fire.

Miles away, the bell of the flower shop chimed.

Arita did not look up immediately. His hands were submerged in a bucket of cold water, carefully stripping the lower thorns off a bundle of roses. The scent of damp earth, crushed greenery, and quiet mornings filled the small space. He liked the shop when it was empty. It felt insulated, like the inside of a glass bowl.

As he moved around the counter, arranging ferns and baby's breath, Arita felt weightless. He felt like a fish. He imagined himself gliding effortlessly through the thick, clear water of the afternoon, his movements silent and fluid. The customers would come and go, tapping their fingers against the glass of his world, asking for bouquets or potted succulents, and he would simply blow bubbles, nod, and swim in gentle circles. A fish does not worry about the vastness of the sky or the changing of the seasons. A fish only knows the water it breathes.

The day stretched out, long and beautifully mundane. Takeda taught his classes, grading papers with a red pen while listening to the wind howl against the school building. Arita swept the floor of the shop, watching the dust motes dance in the slanted afternoon light, safe inside his bowl.

By the time the sun began to dip below the skyline, casting long, golden shadows across the pavement, the shop bell chimed one last time.

Takeda was standing in the doorway, his coat slightly ruffled by the unpredictable wind, a faint smell of tobacco clinging to his collar.

"You're early," Arita said, wiping his wet hands on his apron.

"The students left early. The wind is getting stronger," Takeda replied, his voice carrying the calm, steady cadence of a receding tide. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah. Just let me close the register."

Arita took off his apron. He stepped out from behind the counter, leaving the safety of the fishbowl behind, and walked out into the open air.

They walked together, side by side. There was no urgency in their steps, no heavy questions hanging between them, no need to define where they stood or what they were doing. They were simply walking. The conversation was sparse, drifting easily on the breeze.

"The clouds are moving fast today," Arita pointed out, looking up at the sky. It was painted in strokes of bruised purple and deep orange.

"Yeah," Takeda said, exhaling a thin cloud of smoke that was instantly snatched away by the gale. "It feels like the sky is rushing toward something. Or maybe it's running away."

They headed toward the outskirts of the town, leaving the neon signs, the crowded stations, and the paved roads behind. The concrete slowly gave way to dirt paths, and the buildings were replaced by the towering, silent shadows of a dense forest. The trees swayed heavily, their branches groaning and whispering as the wind rushed through them. It was a long, continuous sigh that seemed to swallow the rest of the world.

As they reached the edge of the forest, the trees broke open, revealing a massive, empty clearing under a vast expanse of twilight.

Takeda looked up into the darkening indigo. He imagined the meteors up there, invisible behind the atmosphere, wandering in the dark. Did they know they were falling? Did they feel the loneliness before they burned?

Arita stood beside him, his eyes wide. The wind hit him full in the face, rushing past his ears. He wasn't swimming in a small, contained bowl anymore. He was in the ocean. The sheer scale of the open space felt like an overwhelming current, sweeping him off his feet. And the ocean was standing right next to him, silently watching the stars begin to blink into existence.

The wind grew louder. It wasn't violent, but it wrapped around them completely, blurring the edges of the world.

A soothing voice coming in the wind.

Catch it.

Neither of them knew who said it. Maybe it was the wind itself. Maybe it was the space between them. Maybe it was just a thought slipping out of a dream.

And they run.

They didn't know where they were going. The ground beneath their feet felt less like dirt and more like shifting water. The waves are raising... washing over the grass, drowning out the noise of the city, drowning out the ticking clocks and the rigid days.

The trees blurred into streaks of dark green and black. The leaves are floating in the sky, defying gravity, spinning upward into the dark blue, carried by an invisible tide. Arita felt the water rushing past his gills, fast and exhilarating.

Up above, a sudden streak of silver scratched across the atmosphere, burning brilliantly as it collided with the earth's air. Then another. And another.

And the meteors are not alone anymore.

They were falling together, illuminating the deep void, turning the night into a blinding canvas of white and gold. The wind howled, a beautiful, deafening roar that erased everything else.

Even if the world ends in front of our eyes.

Ah... the bright of them...

Everything began to wash out. The sound of their footsteps, the light of the stars, the feeling of the breath in their lungs. The shapes of the trees dissolved into nothingness. The boundaries of the sky faded into an endless, empty white space. A quiet, sprawling silence where thoughts no longer needed to be spoken.

We won't be alone anymore.