I wanted to run away with you...It was during another Sunday when he looked at the clock and saw that it was 1:09 in the afternoon. There was nothing to do so he had stared at the books lined up on his desk and the pieces of scratch papers slipped behind two of his small journals. He sat back in his swivel chair and gazed up at the ceiling for maybe a minute or two before he leaned forward and rested a cheek against the coa.r.s.e polished wood of his cramped table.
"It sounds like oblivion."
The deafening emptiness of concrete reality against his ear had reminded him of a Sunday in an alternate universe, where he was walking alongside the highway with a mischievous, musically-inclined girl from a university eight train stations away from his own college. She would have commuted and would have met with him outside his condominium or maybe stay in the convenience store next to the building where she would buy a bottle of water. He would have fetched her and escorted her to the streets and they would have wandered around until they reach that cafe where they had tea once, on a different, much long ago Sunday. They would have talked about their summer and she would have complained about the start of her semester the following day and he would have boasted about his starting a week after. They would have looked out the window and would have commented on the sun high in the graying clouds and would have wondered if it was going to rain or not.
"Let it rain," she would have said and he would have nodded.
"I"d like that," he would have replied. "But do you remember why we"re even here?"
She would have smiled sheepishly to herself before she would have raised her cup to press her lips against the rim and not really take a sip. Instead, she would have hummed against the gla.s.s and then she would have put the cup down and laugh. "Why don"t we take our time?" she would have suggested.
He would have looked away from her and would have turned his attention to the life outside the homey shop. He would have thought that he didn"t want to be there any longer if she still wanted to let time drag on without acknowledging their real intentions. "I think we took our time for much too long than both you and I expected," he would have explained quietly without ever looking at her and her crestfallen expression.
"You"re right," she would have said in defeat.
"Shall we take this somewhere else?" he would have replied a bit coldly as he would have stood up to walk ahead of her to the door. And she would have followed with her attention glued to his back and her words of optimism lodged painfully down her throat because she would have known that it was that Sunday and she would have to watch him go all over again.
I wanted to start again with you...
It was already 6:35 in the evening and oblivion was on repeat, like how it always was ever since the 8th of December the previous year. He had relapsed and had pa.s.sively daydreamed about what could have been and had dazedly tried to imagine the future but it was terribly blurry and he wasn"t feeling well enough to shed a light on it. He simply wanted to feel alive and over-thinking, he finally understood, killed him more than if he was already dead. It was a far too meticulous activity and though he was particular with most of everything he did, for once, he didn"t want to be.
He glanced at his bed right beside his desk and found that his three suitcases were taunting him and ultimately reminding him that he had to move and, truly, just move. He had stuffed them with foreign books and a couple of random country guides that he didn"t really need (at the moment) but bought anyway. He was terribly impulsive, and she had admired him for that.
"I should..."
Go, he thought, but then he was on top of her, his ear against her chest and her arms wrapped around him to secure his stay. He had heard his heart in his head while hers beat against him. She had held him tightly, almost possessively, because the words he had said a minute ago both stunned and relieved her and all she had thought of doing afterwards was to hold him, and she did.
"Can I stay here longer?" he had whispered, his cheek cushioned upon a wildly beating heart.
"For as long as you want," she had whispered back, her arms tightening around a trembling body.
But someone had called and he had stood up while she smiled to herself and fixed her hair. His was disheveled, too, but he had forgotten that every part of him had been.
Dinner was about to be served – he could somehow smell the fragrance of roasted chicken – so he shook his head, turned back to his books and sighed. He would pack later, he decided, but got up anyway to get his backpack from under his bed. It was a black bag, not too bulky, one that was best suited for a quick getaway. And just where would he want to go?
There was supposed to be a trip to London and a spontaneous infiltration of the famous clock tower where they were supposed to see the real Big Ben; the bell, it was, and they were supposed to hear it chime but he was supposed to—
"Ah, yes," he said, "I almost forgot."
There was a small box placed at the edge of his desk where he kept very few yet rather special mementos throughout his short life and one of them was a mixtape he made over the summer. He took that out, popped it into his old-fashioned radio and, with his eyes closed, listened as songs danced out into the open and flooded his room with a year"s worth of regret and a day of absolute happiness. Song after song, even in between, in the gaps of lyrics and draw in of breath, she was there, and they had been.
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He smiled. "Oblivion."
The sun was setting and they had watched with a silence that both started and punctuated what they could not have, and never did.
I wanted only you.
Song: Lullabies by Yuna