future.

broken
hearts
break
hearts.

But she's no longer broken, isn't she?

now.

THE TRAIN LOOKS LIKE A GIANT, SQUARE WORM WRIGGLING STERNLY PAST METAL LINES AND STONE. The windows are clear, showing a perfect view of the scenery passing through the compartments. The scent of the tangerine Mana is unpeeling wafts through the entire compartment but no one other than Mana is present so there is no room for complaint.

The lilac dress she's wearing provides ample skin so it's not too hot even if the window is only half open. She takes a bite of the tangerine and relishes in the delicious combination of sour and sweet.

"You're leaving...?"

She can't bear to look at his face. She doesn't want to see traces of a broken heart and misery. She was once this way and looking at this boy will only tear the band-aids she's put to cover the bruises.

Mana swallows bile and her throat feels raspy as she replies, with trembling lips no less, "I am."

He steps closer to her, but she still looks at the floor as if there's something special going to pop out of it in a matter of seconds. Her knees are quaking and she wonders if she can conquer another demon today. "Why?"

"Because..." Because it hurts me to see you, because it make me second guess my choices and I hate it, because if I see your face one more time, I might surrender and fall in love all over again. "I think it's time for me to leave this all behind."

( Because I'm tired. )
Because I want to be free.

"I want to start anew, Oikawa," she says and she gives herself a mental award for managing to finish the sentence without stammering or her voice breaking.

"Call me Tooru," he says and this time, he is pleading. His eyes are probably stained with tears and he looked like he cried a river. No, an ocean. "You used to call me Tooru."

She clenches her fist, tries her best not shout. She's angry not because of what he's done, but because of what he's doing. It's difficult to move on especially if he's still holding her back. "We're past that."

"I can't believe this." And it takes so much strength to look at his disheveled figure, shaking his head and face incredulous. His eyes are blooming with a thousand flowers of sorrow and she is the one who planted them all. She's tending now and what's more unfortunate is that she's the only one who can get rid of them. She won't. "Where did it go wrong, Mana? Why are you leaving me behind?"

"Everything was wrong," she replies. "We weren't happy. Not anymore. The codependency between us was just suffocating. You hurt me and called it love. I reciprocated your love with insouciance. We were at the point in our lives where we were standing on thin ice. Everything was beginning to shatter and I know that if we stay together, we won't just be drowning anymore. We'll die."

"And it's not just you I'm leaving behind..." she trails off. "I have my friends, Iwaizumi, Tobio. My home, the memories."

"That doesn't make anything better."

She looks up at him, finally meets his eyes. Grey to brown, just like the old times, but subtracted with love and replaced by devastation and dolor. "Do you think I'm not hurting too?"

Mana is all alone. Physically. And after leaving Oikawa, in the deepest sense of left alone. She looks at her bag, propped on the seat in front of her, stuffed with chocolate bars, chips and books. (The clothes are on the bag next to her, along with the other necessities). She grabs the bag across her, and opens a secret compartment.

Maybe she shouldn't have brought it. The leather casing feels old, worn out and touched by time from all directions. It is festooned with some torn stickers and a red ribbon whose edges has frayed and showed the tiny threads that compose it. She unlatches the rusty lock and flips the cover to the first page.

[ My name is Akatsuki Mana, 12 years old, female. My therapist said that it was easier to move on if I was writing about stuff. So she instructed me to write about the things that I've been keeping inside my mind. I don't know if this is going to help at all, but grandmother will be furious if I don't accept help from this 'therapist'. ]

Young, naïve Mana. She can hear the sounds of her self, alone beneath those thoughts and desperately wanting for a new purpose and a sense of happiness. A girl who was a poltroon in all senses of the word, someone who needed to hide behind her parents' backs, pretending to be unaware of the maleficence this world bore. Just a child.

[ I've talked about my hobbies and stuff but Midori-san— my therapist— insists that I dig deeper into my mind and let the thoughts loose.

Even I'm afraid. ]

She flips unto the next page, the handwriting much more worse. She wrote this in a brief flit of panic, the thoughts surging out of her mind like a gargantuan tsunami meant to drown.

It was only the child Mana who drowned.

[ There are days when I see all the horrible things. I see my mother's diary pages propped open on her table, written with things. Things so horrible that sometimes I have to run to the bathroom and vomit. She wishes that she was dead. She wishes that we were gone so she had no reason to stay. I think Mama secretly hated us, because we made her stay. I don't hate her nor feel lonely about it. I'm just wondering if in the end she was happy, when the fire took Etsuko and she screamed. When I managed to run towards the window. When her eyes met mine and she mouthed something that replayed in my mind over and over again. Precious, she said. And there were tears streaming from her eyes and Mama was probably apologizing. And I landed on the grass next to our backyard. Bones broken.

Sometimes I can still feel the pain.

Not the pain of twenty seven stitches or second degree burns. But the pain of losing them. ]

She can smell the fire, the scent, a farrago of ash and decaying matter with tiny hints of something bearing the most effluvium of scents. Her nose wrinkles in disgust, but Mana only shakes her head, closes the window and continues to read.

[ I can see Mama and maybe I'm going insane but she's standing next to me with glossy eyes. I can see Papa. He still loves us, he said. I can see Etsuko, in a brief show of emotion, crying. And I realize it's a dream and when I wake up, tangled in sheets, lying on the floor, I mouth 'sorry' over and over again. Until my mouth is parched and I have to drink water.

I'm still sorry. For staying. ]

Mana clutches her chest and the hurt seeps from everything. The next page is a bunch of nonsense about a story Mana dreamed of, but she knows better. Fingers hover over the date and she remembers. She scans through the pages and finds the paper tucked carefully. It's folded and so thin so no one would see it. Not even the 'therapist' her flagitious grandmother had hired.

[ I just realized that my therapist, isn't a therapist at all.

She's a psychiatrist. I know what a psychiatrist is.

It's a doctor for crazy people. Grandmother sent this psychiatrist. She wants me to go to a mental hospital. ]

Mana crumples the paper under her fist. The following diary pages are full of nonsense since by this time, Mana has planned to prove she isn't insane and the psychiatrist is utterly and completely useless. She wanted to finagle the furtive harridan who decided to betray her trust.

[ I've learned to move on from the past. ]

The last log, just before the 'therapist' left and she's been given her journal back. A few empty pages past and Mana begins writing again. This time with no filter, just her deepest darkest thoughts. Things that would have made Stephen King horror novels look tame.

[ I wish I was dead, but I'm afraid to even try. It's terrifying, frightening, horrifying. ]

Mana's hands tremble but she carries on, flips the journal page unto the next. Her unwavering focus only disappears when a series of tok tok tok enters her ears. There's a knock on her compartment and when she turns her head to identify who or what it's from, she discovers it's from an old couple. She smiles warmly at them, and she shuts the journal close.

"Excuse me, dear," the woman says and Mana freezes when she shows her a familiar piece of paper. It's crowded of thoughts, lines and letters and private passages. The missing journal page must have flown out sometime. "This flew to our compartment. Is it yours?"

Mana nods, slowly, eyes still wide from the fact that this was here. She remembers cutting herself that day, the razor blade sharp against her skin, her blood flowing in rivulets. And it hurt. And it was wrong.

"Oh my," the old woman says. "It's full of so much anguish. Are you okay, dear?"

Mana tries to put on a cheerful smile. "Yes," she replies, clenches the skirt of her summer dress. "It's for a novel I'm writing. A summer break project."

"Oh." Now the woman looks amused. Her partner grumbles something under his breath and leaves. A brief look of amusement passes her face as she watches the old man. Her wife probably roped him into this. "I used to write stories too. Picture stories. And please pardon my oafish husband, his knees are hurting so much."

"I see," Mana says, liking the amiable tone this woman has. She looks and acts very kind, her hair loose and an orange cravat tied around her neck. So unlike her grandmother, a woman probably of the same age, but a maleficent creature in every way. "That's fascinating."

The woman chuckles and her chuckles are airy and carefree. "It was back in my days," she says, eyes wistful, and hands Mana the piece of paper. The woman's hands are wrinkled and warm— Mana only pays attention unto the latter detail, noting that whoever this woman's grandson was; he was blessed. "Does the protagonist here get a happy ending?"

Mana smiles, a real genuine smile that she wishes would stick with her for the rest of her life. Maybe she will carry on if things are like this. So carefree like those summery days filled with skipping rocks on pellucid lakewater and frolicking through patches of daisies. "I hope she does."

"I better get going now," the woman says and bobs her head to the compartment where his husband has just retreated to. She grins and Mana silently wishes that her teeth remain intact like the woman when she's her age (assuming she grows up past fifty, not dying from buckets and buckets of stress). "My husband is very grumpy at times. It was nice talking to you, dear."

"Thank you," Mana replies and dips her head to a nod as a sign of gratitude and respect. "It was nice for me too. Do you want some tangerines?"

"No, thank you," the woman says, gesticulating with her hands to press her point further. "I'm visiting my grandson and I've been dying to taste his luscious cooking. I want to taste it with an empty stomach so water is the only thing for me."

"Oh... I see," Mana says. "Have a great trip."

"You too, dear." And the woman turns around. Mana does the same and head back to her own compartment, the piece of paper heavy on her grasp. The ink is fading, once black now grey and even though some letters have disappeared, Mana knows the words.

[ There's a story. One Sunday morning, a girl reads the diary of her mother. It's filled with horrible thoughts but the girl continues— she's been reading it for a week now and she's vomited once. Her mother apologizes and says that she's taking the girl and the girl's younger sister with her. The girl is so afraid that by evening, she just sits on her windowsill and refuses to fall asleep. It's eight thirty in the clock by her bedside and the girl feels her eyelids getting heavier. The girl realizes that her mother put something in the soup they just had for dinner and it's too late. The girl only took a sip since she doesn't like soup that much and she was feeling very afraid.

Her younger sister hated soup, but the younger sister must have been so tired and starving that she took it all in. The girl rushes to her sister's room, but she can't move. The clock displays eight forty-six when she smells the faint scent of gasoline.

The girl falls asleep.

Her sister's face is the first she sees when she wakes up and their house is burning. The girl's younger sister cries but there's a determined look on her face. The younger sister tells her that the sleeping powder was in the rice and the younger sister didn't eat the rice because she saw her mother put something in it. The girl, for that part, ate the rice and it dawned on her why her younger sister took that much soup. She must have been starving.

The younger sister is glad she's awake and the younger sister, ever the brave knight in the story tells her she's going to get their mother. The flames grow bigger and the clock by the bedside has burned. The younger sister tells her that their mother has spread gasoline all over the living room and set fire to it.

It's too late when she rushes to her younger sister because the doorway to their mother's room has fallen on the girl's body. She only sees blood and the woman who was the cause of all this madness, screamed.

"Etsuko!" the girl screams, but it's of no use. The flames grow bigger in front of her and blocks her path. She tries to run past it, but a large chunk of wood covers her path. Her mother is the only one she can see now, cradling her sister's hand and looking at her. She mouths something.

The girl is afraid so she runs back to her room and in a flit of panic, jumps from her window. She lands on the grass and the sound of sirens echoing throughout the entire neighborhood is the only thing she hears before she loses her consciousness. ]

The girl in the story was Mana. But she was no hero or villain. She was just the helpless bystander who needed to be saved.

Nononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononono—

She can be so much better now. She is strong. She will not break anymore. She saves herself. Not some hero or some villain. This girl who was cowardly and self loathing; she can raise broken empires back. She takes a deep breath. The compartment smells of the chocolate she's munching on, the smell of the cotton on her fusty, velvet seat, the tangerine peelings, the old journal. Her vanilla scent.

But most of all, it is—

The scent of a new beginning.

* * *

e n d.
-
[ Supermarket Flowers ]

'sometimes, it's just better to let go.'

[ a u t h o r ' s c o r n e r. ]

mana's wearing a summer dress like those pure hearted kids who go to a summer vacation because she's extra that way. pardon my drama child- she's like 90% drama. no one can compare to shiori, my oc from drrr!! though :P

and also, she's riding a train to kanto...??? is that possible, idk sh*t about japan's geography (or means of travel) so if anyone knows, umm yeah kindly educate this poor child (i'm not bad at geography, really) ↲ said by same kid who only learned east, west, north and south when she entered sixth grade.