The Apple Tree

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The world is getting weirder.

And people is getting stupider.

Talking about stupid stuffs famous people made.

Laughing about things if they found it funny.

As they keep on talking, I pack my bag and leave.

The school is over anyway.

For a second grader of elementary school,

They call me a genius.

Or are they just too stupid to become normal?

I don't know.

It's probably the second.

But I, indeed, found people dull.

Everyone,

But you.

As I walk to the apple tree,

Our meet up place after school,

I replay the memory of our first meeting.

Back then, 

I used to stand beside the apple tree.

Watched leaves fall one by one.

Sometimes I saw apples falling down from it.

Then I think,

Of how could Isaac Newton found the theory of gravitation the second he saw an apple falling down from it's tree.

That's when you came.

That's when you asked.

"What are you thinking? Isaac Newton?"

I don't remember anything much after.

What I know is that we're finally getting closer and closer,

Inseparable.

For the first time in forever,

I finally found someone alike.

Someone who could understand me.

And someone I could understand.

You wave at me today as I reach the apple tree.

I sit on my usual place.

You soon climb up the tree

Getting me an apple.

Also getting one for your own too.

I smile as I accept the red fruit.

Then you sit beside me.

And our conversation runs.

Talking to you feels so easy.

We match perfectly in some sort of sense.

We can sit down for hours and talk.

We can talk about everything.

We can talk about our day,

About people,

About some science facts we recently discovered,

About a book that we're interested in.

Anything.

We can even talk about the solution of a mathematic problem we saw somewhere.

Until the day is getting dark, and we must go home.

It is a routine we do everyday.

Talking all day long under the apple tree.

Without getting bored.

Then,

I finally reach the day that I turn 9. 

That day, my mother tells me that I should go abroad to get a better education.

I cry.

The thought of leaving you and having no one like you scares me.

But when I tell you about this,

All you do is just smile.

A sad smile yet reassuring one.

"We can still meet at your holidays, right?"

I nod as an answer as I wail my eyes out.

"Then promise me that you'll meet me every long holidays"

That's our promise that I keep over the years.

I meet you every holiday.

Every single one.

And every time I'm back,

I always rant to you

About, oh, how I couldn't find anyone like you there.

Of course, I met a lot of amazing people there.

But no one as interesting as you are.

I met lot of geniuses there.

None of them match me as well as you are.

Our easy yet serious conversation is always be something I miss about us when I'm there.

It become a tradition for me to rant about it to you.

Every single year.

Every time we meet.

Before we spend the remaining days catching up to each other.

But this year,

Is the saddest year of mine.

It's my first year of my senior high school.

I hadn't got a chance to meet you since my junior high graduation.

My mother said that I was hospitalized.

So that I couldn't meet you.

I don't remember being sick that time.

Nor getting into the accident after the graduation.

I can't remember a thing at all.

All I remember is that I still need to come to the hospital for controls.

I don't know why.

This holiday, my mother promised me that she'd take me back to my hometown.

I can't wait to meet you.

I indeed spend my holiday here.

For the whole time, I sit under the apple tree.

Waiting for you to come.

I arrive at the tree early at the morning,

And went home late at night.

I wait.

And wait for you.

But you never come.

And at the end of the holiday, 

My mother tells me,

That you will never come.

Because you weren't real in the first place.

That you were never exist.

My mother tells me,

That you are a part of my imagination.

A hallucination I made myself.

And now that my therapist healed me,

I would never see you again.

Now tell me.

Is it true?

The things that my mother told me,

Is it true?