⊱La beauté des fleurs de cerisier⊰
Beauty of cherry blossoms
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Flurries of delicate pale pink petals danced around me to the melodies of the spring breeze. The sweet vanilla like fragrance of the blossoms enveloped me in its warm embrace, lulling me into the beauty I was witnessing.
Cherry blossom season was here.
Elders and kids, families and friends, people from far and wide gathered around the cherry blossom trees, basking in the festival that welcomed a new era of life, reveling in the lavish spectacle of buoyantly blooming flowers. It was the fleeting beauty of them that made this time of the year so special.
Blooming season was enchanting, enrapturing and entrancing. The monumental display of feathery canopies of light pink was such a glorious sight to behold that spread joy throughout. The end of all things dark and cold. The beginning of everything new and warm.
So delicate and so so beautiful...
So overwhelmingly beautiful but so so ephemeral.
Cherry blossoms were the embodiment of life itself... Humans were cherry blossoms because life, too, was fleeting...
It was fragile. It was transient. It was brilliant.
And most of the people, if not all, failed to revel in it like they would with cherry blossoms when life could end anytime.
Every moment was beautiful... perhaps even more than the soft pink petals of cherry blossoms.
A small petal did a twirl in the air before falling gracefully on my palm, and my lips curled up in a soft smile. "Such a pretty color," I cooed, marveling at it.
Cherry blossom viewing festival was such a delightful experience for me. The view, the scent, the chatters of the people around us were simply sublime. The blue sky blanketing over pink landscape was such a perfect combination. It made my fingers itch to grab a brush and paint the whole park on the spot.
Envy handed me a convenience store sandwich from the picnic basket and I thanked him before unwrapping it.
"Look at you being so composed," he sighed, unwrapping his own one. "Let me guess, this is one of your map destinations."
"Of course! Besides, we could find someone from-"
"Okay, okay, I get it," he exclaimed, waving a hand at me. "A little lady said the exact same thing a few days ago before getting into trouble, you know?"
With a tight lipped smile, I continued unwrapping the plastic and ignored his snide remark. Not long ago, I gave up on finding anyone from Korea and we started going from country to country. Time wasn't of the essence, at the moment at least, and I came here to enjoy while I could. With sweetened floral scents permeating the air, the atmosphere was just too pleasant to argue with anyone.
He pushed his flat cap up a little and slightly leaned back to look at the others who were having picnics like us. "The envy of modern Asia... or so they call this country... Great economy, technology, education... Japan seems to have it all, huh?"
"Ac-"
"You're mistaking if you think we can find someone from here," he firmly stated, making me hold my tongue. "Envy doesn't disappear when we go to a different country... same as how bullying certainly doesn't occur in only one school."
Ignoring the chills I felt from his words, I rolled my eyes before taking a small bite from my sandwich. "It's like you're not too far from saying every person is trash-"
"Every person is trash."
My mouth stayed open as I couldn't string together the right words to express how much I wanted to inflict illness and pain on him and make him eat his words. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps human misconduct was everywhere. But he had no right to slander others like that based on only one bad thing he knew of.
"Just say what you're trying to say with that," I demanded, narrowing my eyes at the man who was peering at me from under the flat cap.
"You can't find anyone no matter where you go."
His dark eyes didn't hold the usual wicked glint in them. They were dull and devoid of whatever I was searching for in them. The weight of his words was too much for me that my first reaction was to scoff in denial.
"Are you serious? Look around you. So many people, so many families who have enough necessities and more than enough of happiness today, and you're saying I can't find anyone?"
"It's not how enough of things they have. People don't appreciate them anyway," he deadpanned, challenging my fiery gaze. "It's about what another person has that gets them obsessed and mad about what they don't have... And anyone can be envious of anyone. It's a common sense at this point."
I had no words.
I simply took more bites of my sandwich and let his words sink in my head to try and come up with a proper rebuttal. Although I could say not everyone was envied by everyone, he would definitely argue that. It was difficult to do so when he had hundreds of qualities other people would be envious of in truth.
Was the absence of envy truly nowhere to be found?
"As long as they don't cross the line with their envy, it's not-"
"It's not dangerous?" Envy chuckled dryly while chewing on the bread. "Sure. But what-"
"Gosh, can you stop interrupting me for a fucking minute?" I furiously stood up and walked away from the overbearing man. Just another second with him and I might just punch his jaw. "Call me when your asshole-ness has toned down a bit."
Chatters died down the more I walked. Chanting in my head that I wasn't a violent person, I headed to the river not far away where the feathery pink canopies extended to. The wind had turned turbulent, blowing my hair away and pushing out storms of pink petals around me, and the streams were burbling and splashing, creating a powerful symphony with the rustling sounds of the cherry blossom trees.
No one else was there but a young man standing in the middle of the bridge with his eyes fixed on the river below. He was in his late teens. The dark rims under his eyes and the pale tone of his skin were telltale signs that he was miserable for so long.
There was so much beauty around him but he was lost in his own mind to see any of it.
In a blink of an eye, he switched his position to sitting on the rails of the wooden bridge and I rushed to him with my heart clenching and strangling my veins.
Grabbing his arm, I stammered, "Wait, what are you doing? Please take a moment to think of the consequences of your actions. This won't solve anything!"
His dead eyes searched my distorted face for a short while. "Who are you to say this won't solve anything? This will solve everything for me. Don't interfere in my life, Miss."
I frantically shook my head, gripping his shirt tighter. "Life has so much to offer, just look around you. You shouldn't let a moment of misery take your whole life away. Please get a grip."
His frown deepened and I saw a glimpse of unfiltered rage enlivening his lifeless expression as he broke his arm free. "How do you even know it's only a moment of misery? My whole life was just a pitiful loop of being thrown around. Being pressured by my parents to be better than everyone else, constantly being reminded that I wasn't worth anything if I didn't achieve higher, getting bullied at my school for focusing on my studies... Even if I achieve something, people always focused on the one mistake I made and torment me with it!"
His eyes glistened with tears but he rubbed them immediately and took a deep inhale. "My life isn't worth anything as they all say. What's the point in living like this, just to get stepped on by others? There are so many people out there who are better than me..."
Yelling in fear, I pulled his arm when he leaned forward and gripped it even tighter. "Please! It will pass! Don't listen to them!"
"I can't," he whispered and broke my hold before falling into the raging river.
"No!"
My blood turned cold as I looked at the waters splashing down below. I let it happen. I wasn't able to save him. I let a life slip away from my grip.
No... I can't let this happen again...
I grabbed the rails and lifted myself up on it but a hand pulled me back, stopping me. I whirled around to come face to face with Envy whose eyebrows were knitted together and eyes threatened me with an intimidating gaze.
"Stop. You can't save every suicide victims, you know? You can't swim, either."
I scowled. "I'm a Virtue. My inability to swim shouldn't be a concern. Life like his should be."
Turning around, I quickly climbed up on the rails and jumped into the river without a second thought.
I wouldn't die...
And I definitely wouldn't let another person die like this while I was there.
Flailing my arms and legs, trying my best to swim, I fought to keep my eyes open even if the water stung them and desperately searched for the boy. When I found him drifting not far away from me, I mustered up all my strength to reach him even when my vision blurred from suffocation and finally took a secure hold of his arms.
In that moment, I opened my mouth, unable to hold in my breath anymore, and swallowed the mouthfuls of water that entered it. My legs were tired and struggled to fight against the currents of the river, but soon, they ceased moving, turning numb.
Within a second, my whole body shut down and I might had hallucinated, but I felt a strong force tugging me just before the whole world turned silent.
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"I wasn't too late."
Words sounded muffled and distant when I lifted my heavy eyelids open and saw the deep blue sky I thought I wouldn't see ever again hanging over me. I coughed out water and wheezed repeatedly to regulate my breathing.
"Kindness," a female voice called in worry and I was raised up from the ground with an arm wrapped around my shoulders. I blinked a few times to have my vision focused on her. "Are you okay? Should we go to a hospital?"
I shook my head and looked around to catch a sight of the boy laying on the ground, unconscious. "Oh my gosh, he's-"
"He's fine. He's alive," Temperance assured me and went over to him to touch his forehead, using her powers. "I'm strengthening his mind. He'll be fine with a stronger mentality for now."
I breathed out and lifted my hand. "Why is my power like this? All I can do is... hurt others... I wasn't even able to save him..."
"I'm sure we got our own powers for a reason, Seoyun." The blue haired woman gave me a soft smile before looking at the boy. "I'll take him to a hospital. He's Humility's responsibility, so you shouldn't worry. Get a rest, okay?"
I was reluctant to do so since his life sounded like it was tainted by Envy, but I nodded to not have her worry over me.
Strong or weak, every mind had a breaking point...
When they disappeared, I heaved a sigh and stood up from the ground. My clothes were drenched and all I wanted was to teleport back to the hotel and take a nice shower.
I turned around and froze when I saw Envy standing a feet away from me, silently watching me.
"I told you not to jump," he muttered and I let my eyes fall to the ground, resisting the urge to fight him.
The lower parts of his pants were dripping wet.
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