source!!!

source; chapter one.

I can’t feel anything. My soul is transparent. My legs are melting, pooling around this mystic amalgamation of myself. I can’t breathe, yet I ease back into reality. Soft tapping echoes my subconscious.

-

         Karisu slips from the swollen depths of his mattress. He's puzzled by the flickering sunlight bleeding through his curtains and the silence. Scrolling through his room, echoes of his room began to form together into the familiar picture it always was. Textbooks oozing with sketches of the moon and solar system. A faded white color soaking his walls--no posters--and uniforms suffocating his closet. His kick back into reality danced its way at the trademark Rolling Star High logo. The patterned black blazer and crystal clear white bled into the ray's shade, shining ebb and flow.

  	The shadows of his mother that painted over the softening light fall away, and he hurries to crawl out of bed. 6:00 AM, the birds sing their song.  He scrolls through the rows of solid blacks and grays. No holes, no stains. A disgusting type of formal reeked, stains of anything fashionable turning invisible. Nothing riskier than a gray had any voice in his wardrobe.  His collar slumped below his collarbone, and nothing clicked together. But time had began to tick away, seconds--minutes--then eventual hours.


He yelled out his farewells against the silence of his mother, with his voice hoarse and clogged with disorientation. Once he rushed outside, beams of heaven stroke through the gaps of coiled trees on the swollen lane. The sensation of rocks gently kicked up and down his back the entire jog to school. Shimmering cherry blossoms spat paths along the high roads and boulevards--reflecting off the beaming rays. His coat bulged with petals, his sleeves leaking.

       Small children swim in the growing pool of petals, some sneezing at the sensations flaring their nostrils. Men smirked as they trekked the streets. Way before, he had found himself shoved or teased, yet no one even glared in his presence nowadays. In all reality, everyone separated their auras from his. They had already picked up the routine--the busy high schooler running to get to school on time.

   The jog to school became difficult once he came across an intersection flooded with cars--he leapt across to the other side, nearly snapping his leg and landing on a car in the process. Limp, he bolts down the rocky hill, disjointedly throwing himself down the hill. He leaped forward once more and rolled immaculately, fatigue biting every part of his body. His heart pounded against its chambers, his throat quivered and tightened, his hands were piercingly numb, and his legs had been sucked of all feeling, leaving him in never-ending pain and discomfort while he fought for any oxygen.

He cocked  his head. The three signature cherry blossom trees surround the entrance of the school gates. Flushed with euphoria at the mere sight of those cherry blossoms—he pressed himself to his limits, fighting the suffocating flare of pain licking his body.

"KARISU!"

Whoosh, his head slammed into hers-- an unimaginable piercing pain screamed inside his body, and he grimaced, grinding his sharp teeth against one another.  Stammering and holding his head in pain, he crashed in the shoveled piles of blossoms. Warmth trickled down his face, and his vision stained deep. Hesitant, he raises his head and stares at the blurred figure overseeing him. And then his stomach sinks--the way the ends of their hair curled and swayed behind their back--the purple glimmer dazzling every blade.

A school girl--long, wavy purple hair that danced behind her every second and coiled at the ends--dopey, soft brown eyes, flooded with amusement, resting proportionate to her ears. Short and petite, only four feet tall. She seemed to have jumped out of a comic--her clothes  a disheveled mess. She wore a long skirt with the same type of blazer Karisu wore--clashing colors fighting for dominance in insecure reds, blues and even blacks. She was the whole package of out of place, desperately fighting to stand out in a crowd of uninteresting high school students competing for the Ivy League. She acted and checked twelve, bubbling with energy, positivity and an aspiration to improve. This made Karisu sick. The overbearing sweetness of licking the icing off of the cake, or gum drops. It was the type of nausea that burned your stomach. Worst of all, her voice rung with familiarity, bitterness resided. Every shrill of that young girl's voice kissed him a migraine and cursed him.

The petals pooled around him swirled and danced away, rhythmically bouncing up and down the street, as he's forced to face what's in front of him. Yuri Kirisame.

"Oh my god, are you okay? I swear, I didn't see you!" she sung, her voice sweet.

He stood silent, trying to silence the brewing anger that scorched his stomach. His temples were on fire, and that voice brutalized it. He scraped up his books and waddles to the doors of the school, grunting and groaning, trying to escape. A rough force snatches his collar and heaved him to the side, as Yuri hops in front, beginning his walk with him.

"You shouldn't leave that cut open, it could cause an infection."

"I’ll visit the infirmary, no need to worry."

"Bro, they're going to ask who did it, and they stop at nothing to find out stuff like that, and I mean it."

He glanced at her and notice no scar or bruise on her at all--as if she had never been hit in the first place. He couldn't stand that small detail. The fact she had felt no pain whatsoever, not even a wince.

He pressed silence against the blowing winds and her high voice, and kicked his feet up against the paths of cherry blossoms, following his way into the front school grounds. A water fountain parked in the center of the entrance, with petals gushing from the inside, and scattering the floors. On the very far left and right were bundles of big cherry blossom trees, and in front of them was a tall building--blues, whites and soft purples.

"Oh yeah, Karisu!" Yuri exclaimed, shuffling around in her bags and unsheathing a long envelope from her front pockets. Karisu was way ahead of Yuri at that point, but she skated her heels across the jagged concrete to pop in front of him once again. While Karisu was glad his collar was saved from being mercilessly strangled, he grimaced tight at the sight of the envelope. A heart-shaped ink stamp kissed the envelope, the insides dripping black ink.

Opening up, a scroll twisted and unfolded from the inside. His eyes widened, swelling at the complexity and professional technique that breathed in the letter.

"What type of Microsoft Word template did this require?"

"Correction: one of our club members is a graphic designer~! We'd really like you to join our Ping Pong Club. It was absolute hell to rebuild it back up ever since that incident."

An undetermined silence pierced deep between the two. His eyes squint and scan the paper, as he reaches and reaches to find any ounce of interest. His eyes narrowed with an equally puzzled look of Yuri’s surged as he clenched the paper tight until his knuckles drained white. Yuri’s eyes shifted, her heart thumping against her chest. Her hands start to sweat.

His eyes. They scan and scan, moving left to right, up and down, as his grimace fades into a disinterested sigh.

Her face was written in shock—no one could say otherwise. Her pupils dilated, her eyebrows raised and her heart took drumming thumps. She bit her lip, almost drawing blood. Karisu could not read her slack, puzzled expression.

"Why do you insist on wasting your time on something so trivial? You knew the club was gone for a reason, yet you still are desperate to bring it back. And then, the desperation to have me join. I certainly decline." He spat, hurling the letter to the side. The tornadoes of wind swallowed it up, ink gushing from the inside of the letter, trickling and bleeding through every single printed word. The wind violently ripped, whipped and crinkled every edge, stretching it back and forth. It amalgamated into a gooey, black mess swirling and dancing with the scattered petals.  Battered, blistered and pelted became Yuri’s heart, and the soggy remains of the paper.

The bell clicked and rammed throughout the schoolgrounds. He was reluctant to stay a moment longer, but he drew fascinated by the dance of the paper in the Spring breeze. He knew he had killed all his time speaking to Yuri. But it wasn't completely too late. Not yet. Three minutes before class. Karisu had completely disregarded Yuri at that point. With Yuri's head hung low, her hair masked her disbelief.

Her stomach burned, belted--bubbling with humiliation and anger. Her heart shrank, and so did she. She felt small in the vast space of scattered petals. They grew tall, almost ten times taller than her--the branches coiling and bending, caging her in a nightmare of her own disbelief.

Karisu skipped inside the school corridors, and she threw her head back, watching the paper swim into town. Along with that burning came the tinge of dust skipping across her cheekbones. The question sank deep inside of her, why keep trying?

But her heart beat once more, once more for Karisu. Once more, because she'll do whatever it takes to win his compromised affection. It may have been the twenty-fifth time, but she was determined. Even if she soaked herself in leaked ink, even if she stood with her uniform damp and dripping from the water fountain's spit, and even if he had shoved her or gave her the cold shoulder. Her heart blew up in her chest real tight, cramping every organ in her body. Her heart rubbed against the chambers of her chest, eager to explode.

Thump.

She cocked her head to the right, seeing his shadow melt away into the daylight shade as he jogged upstairs.

Thump.

A smirk forms at the ends of her lips, her teeth grinding. Her legs began to throb from the tickling sensation the wind kissed on her thighs.

    Thump.

Floods of students fill the entrance’s empty gap and she joins the crowd, following her normal schedule.

"i know the reason i keep trying.”