Work Text:
Driving towards the intersection, the red traffic light having just lit up, ahead the red numbers blinking slowly. Behind the numbers, a patch of clouds red from sunset catches my attention.
I pull up the handbrake, sink back into the seat, try to empty my mind. After becoming an adult, even this little bit of time to relax alone feels incalculably precious.
It’s so nice to look at.
When I was seventeen or eighteen, I loved to watch these kinds of red sunset clouds. I can’t say the reason, perhaps I was simply spellbound by the rare beautiful scenery, or perhaps I always felt the person who watched the scenery with me was wonderful.
The noisy sounds outside the car window gradually disappear from my ears. When you're alone, you can't help but think about a lot of things from the past.
This same time of day, the same color of the sky, it was only that the desk had become a steering wheel, the whistles from gym class had become messy honking.
Near the end of the school day, the last class is always the hardest to bear. The sun which shone in people’s eyes the entire day now hides behind the back of the mountain. The bravely scattering residual heat brings a most comfortable warmth which covers a person's entire body. The teacher at the podium rambles as he tries to wrap up class. On the track outside, a crowd of students are running and shouting one two one two in an orderly fashion. These various sounds mingle together chaotically. Like a lullaby in unison, they quietly pull my consciousness away.
When I wake up, it’s already after school. In the hallway pass by two girls holding hands, discussing in hushed tones where to go next. I was often coming and going alone, so this kind of scene shouldn’t have mattered to me. But such it is that wretched feelings of loneliness are prone to appearing and disappearing unpredictably, disturbing moods. In the moment, I can only not help but to admit, I also want someone to be with me.
And then she appears.
She comes to my side with very good timing.
“Ah, you’re finally awake.”
From my folded arms I raise up my head, my gaze going to the source of the sound.
The light from the fading sunset hits the side of her face. Her body is slightly bowed, the corners of her mouth carrying a gentle smile. Seeing that I am finally awake, she leans herself forward, her wine-red eyes clear and bright, reflecting my shadow.
“Let’s go back together? Misaka-san.”
Honk—
I startle, coming out of my memories. The red colors in front of me have already been replaced by green, the cars behind me relentlessly sounding their horns. I hurriedly release the handbrake, start the car.
I admit that what I miss isn’t the scenery, rather that irreplaceable person of the past. But it’s still the past, so no matter how much I wish, I still can’t return to it.
Turn right ahead, at the next intersection, another traffic light. Not more than two or three minutes later, I stop at the next one, and the sky has already darkened. The red sunset clouds are nowhere to be found. All that’s left is a dark moon hanging alone in the sky.
You see, no matter how much you may find yourself moved by something, in the end, the curtains still fall.
In those days, it also turned dark very early. When the moon would come out, she would seemingly absentmindedly murmur: the moonlight is so beautiful.
And I would only complain: “Such dim moonlight, how can it be beautiful? Your sense of aesthetic is really so strange.”
To be young and ignorant. When I realized it later, it was after she had already left for an unknown number of years.