Fixing The Broken One | BroCon

VIII. Winter-Like Eyes

"I would tell you about him but there isn't really much to tell."

She started to open the torn pages of her history with a predictable line. Her fingers lightly caressing the worn cover of an old book, pages by pages skimmed through in lightning pace before they stopped on a point she knew all too well.

"I met him when I was fifteen and it was spring, it can't be any other season because the cherry blossoms rained on him the day we met."

A vivid picture of two high schoolers came to view: a girl with a regular sailor uniform was looking straight into the camera as the wind seemed to blow her hair away and a boy with ashy brown hair smiling sheepishly to the camera as his eyes was looking at no one but her.

***

"Then, if you hate it so much, I'll rename you." He gave me a sheepish smile, his hands were busy tangled in mine as we were laying in our favorite spot, "How 'bout it?"

"That's stupid."

"Alright! From today on, you're no longer Amayuki Minoru!"

He smiled, I barely looked at his kindness.

"Nice to meet you, Hoshino Rin."

***

"Days went on as usual and it was around his sixteenth birthday when I started to notice him -- everything of him."

***

"You're not going to give me a birthday present?" Sakuya offered a teasing smile, peeking into an unfinished sketchbook the girl was working on, "Aw, how mean and here I thought I was your friend!"

"Your birthday is still a month away, Sakuya." She calmly told him off, huffing in process as she pulled the sketchbook away from him. Haruki gave a chuckle in reply, stretching out his hands towards the sweet-scented spring sky.

"Well, I'd accept any present you'll give me, anyway."

At that moment, Rin felt like they were laying in a field of freshly fallen cherry blossom and she could feel them falling on the pit of her stomach. She continued to graze the pencil on the paper as what she's looking at right now is a picture perfect moment.

***

"I learned his beauty -- the way he could be easily captured inside of an artwork, the way reality could suddenly disappear without a trace, and the way he hides his pain and flaws away -- and  I understood his beauty."

***

The scene before her eyes was washed out of colors -- it was grey and black and white and grey -- and her heart was thumping like jackrabbit but it wasn't a pleasant one. In instinct, she could only grab his hand and yanked him away from the edge of the building. They fell to the floor together, she pinned him down and tears was barely holding inside her eyes.

"Rin."

She flinched at his voice -- it was cold and so far and it was barely winter. She let go of his hands, leaning her head into his chest before she soaked herself in his scent. It was a familiar feeling of home and warmth, in which she almost lost. His hands were shaking as it stroked her head, she barely realized her own cries until he told her to stop. She was shaking from holding her own breath for too long and after relishing in his touch once more -- the thing she almost lost.