Das
Resultat sagt alles ~ Extra
~
By 汐薙 (Shio Nagi)
It was on a morning when it was still a bit chilly.
Having finished my usual work
as a newspaper carrier, I reclined my body, tinged with fatigue, sprawling out
onto the verdant, flourishing meadow. The grass that touched my wind-caressed
skin tickled a little.
The sky I gazed up at was
cloudless and clear blue.
The sun that had begun to rise
overhead was tinted pale yellow, and light rained down from it gloriously. I
squinted at its radiance. Before my field of vision, birds danced freely as
they spread their wings wide, the color of the sky concealed by their bodies.
As if singing their joy, they cried out just once with shrill voices.
Does this sky... feel that
good?
I reached out my hands. The
sunlight that I felt was obstructed by my palms. Far from ascending upward,
this heavy body continued to crawl along the earth, and couldn't dance high in
the sky.
“... I can't reach, can I.”
I lowered my arms that were
projected upward, stretched out widely, and took a breath.
I slowly closed my eyes. There
was an irritating pain in my head. Something grazed the inside of my brain. ...
But I couldn't tell what.
Somehow,
I thought that it was something terribly sad.
Though I felt a sense of
tension. I didn't know why.
— Though I want to be here.
I feel like I shouldn't be.
A peculiar uneasiness.
Next to my ears, were the
faint sounds of rustling trees and greenery. Like they were whispering,
lamenting something.
These sounds that I normally
loved, somehow hurt today.
I opened my mouth.
“...”
Whose name I was going to
call, I didn't know. I opened my mouth, but remained silent.
My lips which wouldn't form
sounds, seemed terribly useless, and were painful. I shut my eyes tightly. A
cold sensation wet my cheeks.
“... I have to go back. ...
I'm sure she's worrying.”
Where?
— That was obvious.
I wanted to tidy up my jumbled
feelings. I gazed up at the sky again. — It was that moment.
I saw a cherry-blossom-colored
shooting star.
“...?”
Though it was still daytime.
It streamed across the sky, making a thin ribbon. The light flowing off of it
formed motes that sketched its path, and more radiant than the light of the
sun, they rained down on the meadow.
I stood up in astonishment. I
reached out my hand, and touched one of the fragments of light with my
fingertip. That instant, the fragment vanished as if melting into it.
I enclosed another one of the
descending bits of light in my palm. ... It was warm. Though it should have
been enclosed by me, instead I felt like I was being enclosed by it.
I gazed skyward.
Like the birds from earlier,
the shooting star seemed to soar through the sky in joy. As if pursuing it, a
white shooting star intersected with it.
The sky, was being painted.
After I had watched for a
while, the shooting stars vanished. Though I could no longer see it. That vivid
cherry-blossom color was burned into my eyelids, and wouldn't go away.
Feeling somehow elated, I ran
back to the orphanage where Linith was waiting. I wanted to tell her, who I
loved, of the beautiful sight I had seen.
So that I wouldn't drop the
fragment enclosed in my hands, I held it gently but firmly.
In the end, when I returned
home and opened my palm in front of Linith, nothing of that fragment remained.
All I saw, was my small, empty
palm.
But it was really there, I
saw it. When I told Linith this, she stroked my head many times. Then, she
lowered her eyebrows a little and smiled.
“... You know, Fate. That
wasn't a star.”
“... Eh? It wasn't? But it was a light, streaming through the sky.”
“...
Someday. The time will come when you'll understand.”
I looked at her expression. I
became anxious, wondering if I had done something wrong. But, it didn't seem
that way.
To try to find out, every time
I finished my part-time job, I went to that meadow. Secretly from Linith—
Again, and again.
But, I never saw that
cherry-blossom-colored shooting star. Eventually I became unable to withstand
the sorrow, and by the time a year had passed, I no longer went to the meadow.
— I'll never see that light
again.
And so.
The fact that the me years from now, would see that light again...
The me of now, still didn't
know.
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