Kiss/Hug

First Bloom: Cornus Florida Part 1

First Bloom: Cornus Florida

It happened during my foolish ordinary days, when my love was still hovering on the border of admiration and reality.....

"Senpai is so cool! He's actually your boyfriend right?" my friend asked me excitedly. "Out with it!"

"Like I said, its not like that between Sei-chan and me!" I protested. "He's like a brother that I knew when I was small! I cannot think of him as boyfriend material at all!"

"Really?" my blond-haired friend, Satomi, asked me. "Then, it's ok if I have my eyes on him?"

"Don't you have someone you like already, Satomi?" I asked her, giggling.

"That's right!" my black-haired friend, Sumiko said. "You like way too many guys."

"What's that all about?" Satomi complained, moaning. We burst into a fit of giggles, until our attention was taken by a pair of guys harassing a girl.

"The girl I saw during the Kagura dance..." I muttered to myself. I could distinctly hear their conversation over the noise of the crowd.

"Hey~  lets go have a drink later, eh?" one man said to the girl, while the other guy stood next to him with a smirk on his face. The girl tried to pull her hand out of the man's grip.

"Please... I -" the girl stuttered, pulling her arm. Without thinking, I ran towards the trio. I distantly heard my friends calling after me, but I ignored them. Taking off my shoe, I chucked it at the blond guy's head.

"Hey! What the-" I heard the man curse.

"Can't you see that she doesn't like it?" I yelled at him, "Guys who can't read the situation are the worst! We are in the middle of a Shinto ritual right now too!" I could feel the crowd's disapproving stares from behind my back, and hoped that they were staring at the two men, and not at me.

"Tch!" the guy muttered under his breath. Grabbing the arm of his friend, they left.  I walked up to the girl.

"Are you ok?" I asked her gently. She nodded and turned a little pink.

"Thank you." She said to me, and left. I sighed, when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"There you go again!" Satomi said worriedly. "Don't stick your nose into other people's business anymore. It'd be troublesome if you attracted too much attention."

"But she was troubled!" I protested. "I can't just leave her alone right?"

"Depending on the situation, it's possible that you  might help someone who doesn't need help, right?" Satomi argued.

"You have a point.." I muttered sheepishly under my breath. "But... I don't want to later regret that I didn't do anything. So, yeah." I was distracted by the pitter patter of rain.

"Ah! It's raining!" Satomi said.

"I brought an umbrella!" Sumiko said proudly. "I had a feeling it would rain!"

"Kya!" Satomi shrieked, "That's Sumiko for you!" We laughed for a while, joking around, until we calmed down.

"You know," Satomi said, "I feel sorry for Vega and Altair when it rains during Tanabata. They won't be able to meet for another year."

"But they were able to meet each other before it rained, right?" I replied.

"Haha!" Sumiko laughed, "That's so like you, Yukino."

"What do you mean, so like me?" I asked, but my friends' attention was on something else. Following their stares, I found a tall guy with crow black hair.

I couldn't take my eyes off of him.

It was raining, yet he was one of the only people not standing under an umbrella, tall and straight, he stared ahead, not noticing the lustful glances by the girls around him. Satomi's voice broke me out of my reverie.

"Yukino! Don't get outside the umbrella! You'll get wet!"

"Yeah," I replied back distractedly. After getting under the umbrella, I turned around to look for the guy.

But he had disappeared.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Translations:

Tanabata- Japanese Light Festival

Vega and Altair - Folk tale about a couple that could only meet on a certain day, and only if it did not rain.

Kagura - Japanese Folk Dance

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