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The first snow is always the prettiest. The way its lace falls as if it has nothing else to care or worry about. Winter is autumn’s ugly twin sister. She is colder and nastier. Albeit she looks the best when you first see her. She makes you fall in love at the first snowflake that gently falls from the sky. However, the feeling doesn’t last forever. The icy serenade that slowly loses its warmth. The longer winter is here, death becomes more apparent. Death changes things and absorbs the energy out of the living. Depending on how it happens, you cannot help but to wonder about all the other alternatives in which it never happens or, at least, as soon as it did. Especially when it is someone that is close to you. You feel empty. Suddenly a part of you is gone. Loneliness becomes the melody to the song, and pain is the words that match it. To that one person Hachi knew once, she bets that they felt that once. Sometimes she wishes that she could take their pain away.
“Hachi!” a gentle voice called out. She turned her head to see an energetic man, looking at her with graved eyes. He noticed how doleful she looked as she was looking at the strawberry glass cup. Hachi places her eyes on the window beside her. The sky is washed with grey, watery light illuminating thin patches to brilliance. Its beauty is laminated by a layer of ambient melancholy. She runs her thin fingers through her light brown hair.
Her corners of her lips push up into a deceptive smile. “Nobu, I’m listening.” A teardrop fell, hitting the wooden table. “Nana is really alive. And is still singing…” Hachi’s voice was breaking between her sentences. “But why should I care?” Nana being alive, not reaching out, having to wait for her has had a pernicious effect on Hachi.
Nobu looks at Hachi, unsure what to say. He wants to pull her petite body to him and let her cry in his chest. But he can’t. He gently holds onto her shoulders. Before he can utter a word to her, Hachi slowly slips from his grasp. She gets closer to the window, looking outside. The first snow, she watches the lacy flake fall in the most tranquility. Snow can be pretty sometimes, ugly other times, but it is water in its more artistic form. Snow has a way of settling erratic flames yet Hachi’s heart still has this burning feel like it did all those years ago when she said her name. When roses burned in the most passionate color of red, covered by the whitest snow.
---
In all the sundry places Hachi has ever felt the most comfortable is her own, now dimmed, apartment which has always been the warmest until it turned cold. Though she is okay with her life now, she cannot forget the ecstasy of her youth. Even cold nights like this seemed more bearable back then. As she walks, her boots sink into the blanket of snow.The world is confined in a glair-white silence surrounding her. A full moon sparkled against the charcoal misted sky. The wind kisses her cheeks with each step she takes. Like winter ripples on shallow sand, the air is frozen filigree on her skin, delicate and icy.
As she walks to the train station, the thick snow begins coming down hard. She has to work out of town, usually taking an hour to get to work. She works, because she wants to, not because she needs to. Ever since her marriage, she felt this need to work or take care of her daughter. Hachi begins picking up speed. She wants to be home with her family. She wants to be under the warmest blanket with her daughter. Hachi can remember when she was carrying first child, her son. It was the most beautiful and painful time of her life. Even with all the havoc, she always wanted to meet her baby.
Before she knows it, she is in front of the train station. The train station is usually busy at this time of the day. Everyone is trying to get home to someone or the comfort of flickering flames. As time elicits, the snow thicks and falls heavier than before. Trains are scheduled about an hour behind schedule, but Hachi was able to catch one before it leaves. The train comes to a screeching halt, having people huddle in front of the door. People storm in and out, and Hachi finds herself an open seat. She is able to snag a window seat. Everywhere you go, window seats are the best. Window seats somehow open another realm you cannot help but to dive deep into. She can hear the doors close and the train takes off. As she sits, her mind drifts to a place where she gets a sudden deja-vu, sitting in her mind for a moment and resetting her mood to days where there were sunnier days.
The train ride is slow, stopping a couple minutes more at each stop. The train is beginning to get more packed. As Hachi continues to look out the window, she feels a presence around her. She can hear the words, “Does someone sit here?” Hachi doesn’t bother looking but shakes her head. The voice sounds too familiar, as if she has heard it a hundred times the day before. She turns her head over. It is the same long lashes, red lips, paired up with long blonde hair. Hachi feels studded as if she has been shot and cannot possibly register the moment of simply existing. She, unconsciously, utters her name, slowly enunciating each syllable. “Na..na?”
Nana Osaki. Her name and existence feels all like a distant dream. Looking back at what was once all a dream, everything began to fall apart after Ren died.
It was as if Nana was snapped back to reality. She felt her chest caving in and her throat getting dry. As if their lives had pause like the flicker of a camera flash, a bizarre white-out like the snow as it heavily falls.
Nana’s almond eyes widen at the sight of Hachi. Instead of sitting onto the cold chair, she steps back and aims for the train door. Watching Nana run away again, Hachi flies out of the seat, calling her name. “Nana!”
Calling her name only does nothing. Before she knows it, Hachi and Nana are out of the train. The train doors close behind them and Hachi stills calls out to Nana. “Nana!” The brisk air kisses their cheeks, as the white snows sprinkles over them. The dusk comes as a promise of starlight, of those brilliant pearls of the nighttime that sit as if cushioned upon pure black velvet.
Hachi catches up to Nana and reaches for her hand. She is able to catch it and get a good hold onto her; however, Nana continues to fight. “Nana! Why are you running?”
“You should have never followed me…” Nana mutters but loud enough for Hachi to hear. They are alone in the middle of an empty street with only a few shops near.
“Why?” Nana felt like an ex, who is dead and alive simultaneously, where you’d need to seal the memories with a kiss and move on. However, Hachi cannot move on.
The wintry landscape touched off with white under the lucid moon. The two stand under the moon like a play cutting off their first act. From here, will it end in tears like all those years before?
--
The bar soaks up the mood of this great evening, from the leisurely spin of the fans to the ticking of the analog clock above them.The two sit in a booth across from each other, giving another round of deja-vu. “So it has been what? Seven years?” Hachi starts off. Nana just sits across, staring at her dark brown, hot tea. “How have you been, Nana?”
Nothing.
It is like those over those of separation they have become strangers again. This kind of silence used to sound like permission, albeit retroactive, to hurt someone. Hachi pushes her hair back, ultimately placing her fingers on the warm table which resembles rich butterscotch honeyed tints flow like lacy waves from a midsummer beach.
“Why did you follow me out?” Nana interrogates. “Do you think that was a smart idea?”
Hachi, sulks into her seat, baffled at Nana’s behavior. What happened to Nana? Hachi is a bit hesitant to bring up the past as it can be anachronistic. “I just…”
“Just what?” Nana scathingly interrupts. Nana’s brown eyes are able to mimic the icy feeling blue eyes tend to give instead. Hachi presses her fingers onto the wooden table.The wooden table is a rainbow of browns. The table evokes pleasant recollections of sitting by a window in a location known as home.She looks at her coffee and can only make out her reflection with deluded coffee beans. Her faint smile is unrecognizable. She has been waiting to see Nana for so long, yet it feels like Nana is looking right through her despite sitting on the same table. Once upon a time, they felt this warm and comfort that was indescribable. Just like those flowers’ petals open that spring, their happiness blooms in the most vibrant colors in a myriad of emotional warmth. But those petals came down in a torrent storm, leaving them in despair.
It’s been quite some years. Possibly six or seven years? Hachi is having a hard time remembering. She looks Into the eyes as she wants to feel warmth but now feels an icy chill. “I just… miss you… Nana.”
“I’m sorry.” Nana’s words brought back memories of a dimmed apartment and a broken heart. “What will missing me do? I still won’t go back. I can’t go back—“
“Why not?” A cold lump forms at the bottom of Hachi’s stomach. It is funny to see how their stories went into reverse. Nana and Hachi were almost like soulmates, a perfect match in heaven, but somehow in between the pages they realized that they were on earth.
“There’s nothing there for me anymore.”
Now, they have become strangers but with memories this time. Hachi slowly stood from her seat. He barely looks into Nana’s eyes. Too hurt to catch a glimpse. She brings herself to do it. Her eyes stinged as it gave a faint pink hue. “I waited for you. I waited for you for years but you didn’t come,” Hachi begins. “I was there, the girl who you met on the train… after everything we’ve been through, it’s like we are strangers again.” Love has always had misconceptions like it being a battlefield, a two-sided coin, that there is either a winning or losing side. Really, it’s a dice, a gamble, an unexpected game.
During a time, before I met you, I always fell helplessly in love. It was a flaw that I didn’t realize before. Falling in and out love, the same pattern. Over the years and now, even without you, neither in promise nor bodily presence, my heart is always open for you, Nana.
Unknowingly, Hachi isn’t aware of the feelings Nana has inside, suffocating her then and even now. In one of the darkest chapters in their story, when that flower died.
They sit underneath a fluorescent light. They sit in silence, like a sad story, the audience murmurs as the curtains close, hoping that the next act will be more jovial than the last.