Blossoms of The Forgotten Day Chapter 14: Chapter 14

Read chapter 14 of Blossoms of The Forgotten Day by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

The alarm rang and pulled me out of sleep. I lay still for a moment the way I always did, letting the room come back to me. The ceiling. The cold air. The pale light coming through the curtain. Everything in its place. I got up. The bathroom was cold the way it always was in the morning. I brushed my teeth with cold water before stepping into the shower, the hot water fogging the room slowly around me, the warmth seeping into my skin the way it always did. When I stepped out the steam followed me into the hallway, droplets falling from my hair onto the cold wooden floor. I dried off. Got dressed. Picked up my bag. Downstairs my mother had left bread and coffee. I blew the steam from the cup and took a sip and it had milk in it, the way it always did, and I said nothing about it the way I always did. The clock read five past seven. I grabbed my lunch, called goodbye toward wherever she was in the house, and stepped out the door. Outside the air was cold and sharp and the river beside the road murmured softly the way it always did. My breath came out in small white clouds. My feet knew the road. My mind moved the way it always moved in the morning, loosely, not attached to anything in particular. Something felt slightly off. Not wrong exactly. Off. Like a note that is almost in tune but carries a faint dissonance you cannot locate. I walked and let it sit there and did not chase it. Sometimes mornings were like that. Leftover fragments of sleep, the body adjusting. At the school gate the sakura trees lined the walkway, their branches carrying the early buds of March. I had walked this path every morning for three years and the trees were always the same. I pushed through the gate and went in. The classroom was its usual morning self. Noise and movement, bags dropping, chairs scraping, the particular energy of people who have not yet been asked to sit still. I moved through it toward my desk at the back, near the window. Shoyo said something as I passed the middle row. I did not catch the words but the tone was the same as always. I kept walking. Haruki was in her seat at the front. She turned as I passed and looked at me the way she always did, assessing. "You look like a person," she said. Which was what she always said. "Thank you," I said. Which was what I always said. I sat down. Asahi arrived a minute later and dropped into the seat beside me. He said something about the basketball team. I listened and responded and everything had the texture of a normal morning. Except for that note. Still there. Still slightly off. I turned to the window. The sakura trees along the walkway were moving gently in the morning air, their branches bending and releasing. And as I watched, a handful of petals let go all at once, spinning slowly down toward the path below, pink against the pale March sky. I watched them fall. One petal landed against the glass. It pressed there for a moment, its pale pink color against the grey morning, its shape delicate and temporary. And something in my chest shifted. Not the stone. Something different. Something that felt like the edge of a memory that had not fully arrived yet. Someone bumped into me. Her hair glowed like the color of a rising dawn. Her eyes were blue like sapphires. Sakura petals hanging in the air around us, unmoving for a heartbeat. I sat up straighter. The classroom door opened and Mr. Shouto walked in. We stood. Good morning, teacher. We sat. He picked up the chalk and turned to the board and wrote the date in his usual careful hand. 7 February 2018. I stared at it. The chalk squeaked against the board as he underlined it. The date sat there on the green surface, white and certain. 7 February 2018. I had seen this date before. Written in this exact hand, on this exact board, in this exact classroom. I had been sitting in this seat and the sun had been at this angle and the sakura petals had been falling outside this window. The first day. Her first day. I turned from the board to the se