Blossoms of The Forgotten Day Chapter 6: Chapter 6

Read chapter 6 of Blossoms of The Forgotten Day by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

I played until my fingers went numb. Not from the cold. From the playing itself. There is a point, past exhaustion, where your hands stop feeling like yours and the guitar becomes less an instrument and more a question you keep asking without knowing what answer you want. I reached that point sometime in the early morning, put the guitar down beside me on the bed, and fell asleep sitting upright against the wall. When I woke again it was past noon. The snow had stopped. The world outside was white and very still, the kind of stillness that only exists for a few hours after snowfall before footprints and car tracks begin to cut through it. I sat there for a while without moving, just watching it through the glass. My phone had three messages. One from Haruki asking where I was. One from Asahi saying the same thing with more words. And one from Haruka, sent maybe an hour ago. You said you were not coming today. I hope you are okay. Also I found a place for us to practice. It is quiet and no one will bother us there. Come tomorrow? I will meet you at the school gate at seven. I read it twice. Then I set the phone face down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I spent the rest of the afternoon relearning the song. Not performing it. Not running it for speed or precision the way I used to, chasing clean transitions and perfect timing. Just playing it. Sitting with it. Letting my fingers move at whatever pace they wanted and not punishing them when they stumbled. It took a long time before the stumbling stopped feeling like failure. By evening I had found something close to the shape of the melody I was looking for. It was not finished. But it was there, like a figure standing far off in fog. Present. Not yet clear. I picked up my phone and replied to Haruka. Okay. Seven. She sent back a single star emoji. Nothing else. I did not know why that made me feel steadier. But it did. The next morning I was at the gate before she was. The cold was sharp and the sky was a pale grey, the kind that could not decide between clearing and clouding over. I stood with my guitar case on my back and my hands in my pockets and watched my breath come out in small white clouds. She arrived at two minutes past seven, her scarf wound high around her face, her hair catching the thin morning light. She was carrying a small bag over one shoulder and walking fast, and when she saw me waiting she slowed just slightly and raised one hand. "You actually came." "I said I would." "You also said you were not coming yesterday." I had nothing to say to that. She seemed to decide it was enough of a victory and started walking, tilting her head once to signal I should follow. We did not go into the school. She turned left at the gate and led me down the road that ran along the river, the same road I walked every morning. But she took it past the point where I usually stopped thinking, past the bridge with the red railing, past the old convenience store that had been closed since before I started high school, until the buildings thinned and the trees thickened on both sides. I did not ask where we were going. Something about the morning made conversation feel unnecessary. After maybe twenty minutes she turned off the road onto a narrow path I had never noticed before. It cut upward through a stand of bare-branched trees, their trunks dark with leftover snow. The path was not maintained. The stones were uneven and some of them were half buried. But it was walkable, and she clearly knew it. "How do you know about this place?" I asked. "I found it the week I moved here. I went walking to learn the area." She paused on one of the stones and looked back at me. "I walk a lot when I am in a new place. It helps." "Helps with what?" She thought about it. "Helps me feel like the place is mine a little. Even if I only just arrived." I did not answer. But I understood it in a way I could not have explained. The path opened after a few more minutes into a small clearing on a rise