Fiction: Yellow Flowers and a Bag of Bones

Chapter nine: The shopping trip

After such a big decision, I decided that it was time to lay low for a little while. This was hardly something I wanted to rush. If I was going to do it, I was going to do everything in my power to do it right. And doing it right meant having patience – something which I wasn’t exactly known for. Whenever I bought a new computer game, I would play it through to the end within a week, and then forget all about it. Whenever I bought a book, I would read it through as quickly as possible, then forget all about it for years.

So in order to pull back and not take any risks, I decided to take a proper break; get out and get some air. It was also time to re-stock my fridge and cupboards, something which meant seeing Maria again – in the time I had spent searching for Dakota and more recently, the mysterious woman with her mission, I had almost forgotten about Maria.

Although, not completely. I had seen Maria every week for several years now, she was the one person I had been in regular contact with for that long; she was a part of my life, and I couldn’t possibly just forget a part of my life.

“M-morning, Maria,” I said to her as I entered the little grocery store, and she looked back at me, surprised but smiling.

“Good morning, Kai,” she replied softly, and it struck me once again just how much I enjoyed listening to her voice. “You’re out early and cheerful today, do you have plans?”

I picked up the few things I needed; all the standards along with a few things that I usually never bought, such as supplies for actual, healthy meals. Not that I really believed I was going to suddenly start making proper dinners, but the morning was beautiful and I was in a good – albeit jittery – mood, so I figured why not.

“Not r-really, but I’m g-going to be out all d-day,” I said, smiling almost shyly at her. Maria had a brilliant tendency to make me blush, make me even more awkward than usual, but she never seemed to be bothered by it.

She went through the usual routine, tallying up my groceries and taking my money, nodding absentmindedly to the store owner when he walked through the door. “Kai, I… Can I ask you something? There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said, and I noticed that for once, she looked almost as nervous as I usually did when talking to her.

“A-ask away.”

Maria still hesitated a little, then went around the counter, suddenly being all too close to me – it wasn’t exactly often that I was close to girls. Especially ones this pretty “I’m off work now, and I have nothing planned for the day, so I was thinking… Maybe you and I could do something together?”

I nearly fell down. Something like this was almost as shocking to me as finding out the truth about Rei’s past, if not even more. “I… T-th-that s-sounds n-nice,” I said, struggling to get the words out even more than usual. It was obvious that Maria could tell, because her smile widened, and she looked strangely happy.

“Great! I’m going to go home and change, and I guess you want to get home with your groceries, but we can meet in front of the Buttercup Theater in thirty minutes, how does that sound?”

“S-sounds g-good,” I said, cursing myself for not being able to come up with something smarter to say. Talking to girls face to face definitely wasn’t one of my strengths, that much was certain. I had a feeling that the day could turn into a total disaster, seeing as it was a very different thing to talk to someone for two minutes a couple of times a week, and to spend possibly several hours with them in one go.

Oh well. If I could risk my life with The Four Sisters, I should be brave enough to face a date with a girl I really liked.

Still, as I walked up to Maria half an hour later, I felt far more anxious than I had so far with anything in regards to The Four Sisters. Maybe dating was far more perilous, what did I know. It wasn’t as if I had ever been on a date before – I wasn’t even sure if this could be called a date.

Maria offered me a warm smile and took my hand as we walked down the street, acting so naturally that I was starting to feel like even more of a freak than I normally did. She was too beautiful for me to handle, with her bright blue eyes and dark blonde hair, with her slightly chubby cheeks and lips that always looked too red. She reminded me of a fairytale princess, especially in the simple blue dress she was wearing. It was embroidered with tiny yellow flowers, and I found it nearly impossible to look away from them.

“I thought that maybe, we could go shopping, and then eat lunch in Doushi Park,” she suggested, and I merely nodded in return. I wanted to talk, I really did, but I couldn’t come up with anything to say. I wished I could find the words to tell her how pretty I thought she was, I wished I could tell her that I had liked her since the very first time I had talked to her, back when I first moved into my apartment.

Instead, I listened and Maria talked. She didn’t say anything particularly important, just told me things about herself that she said had never seemed appropriate to say when I was just a customer. She told me about growing up without a mother and with a father who was always busy with work. She told me about having two sisters and a brother, but that she had fallen out with her entire family when she grew up. She told me about how she thought they weren’t proud enough of their heritage, and that they would rather forget all about Germany and the fact that they had ever lived there. She told me about how she had wanted to open a school for children in The Slums, but that nobody would fund it.

I figured that all in all, it wasn’t the deepest conversation in the entire world, but I liked it anyway. I enjoyed listening to her talk, and I enjoyed holding her hand even more. We walked through the street, occasionally stopping at a store here and there – I wasn’t big on shopping unless it was online shopping, but I decided not to say anything about it because I would have done anything Maria wanted to do, just to be able to spend time with her.

She stopped outside a florist and let go of my hand, asking me to wait there. A couple of minutes later she came back with a single yellow chrysanthemum, holding it out to me before she changed her mind. I was just about to ask her what she was doing when she reached up, took off my hat and fastened the flower in my hair.

“I’m s-sure I look v-very manly n-now,” I said with a little laugh, pushing my glasses further up on the bridge of my nose. Maria grinned and stepped closer to me, reaching up again and combing her fingers through my hair, slowly and with great care, as if she wanted to make sure to enjoy the moment, make it last as long as possible.

“I love your eyes, Kai. They look like the sea,” she murmured, so quietly that I had to lean closer just to be able to hear her. “You shouldn’t hide behind your hair and your glasses and your coat all the time. I want to see more of you. I’ve wanted that for a long time.”

I wished I had been confident enough to kiss her. I really did.

As it was, I just put my hands on her hips and met her eyes for a moment that felt like pure magic. She was the one who pulled away, still smiling, though I was sure I could see a hint of disappointment in her expression. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. My habits of not trusting anyone carried over into matters of the heart as well, it seemed, no matter how much I wished that wasn’t the way it was.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I left the flower in my hair, earning me a lot of strange looks throughout the day, but I was used to that, and with Maria at my side it hardly mattered how people looked at me.

We ate lunch in Doushi Park, as Maria had suggested, baguettes and fresh fruit, and I thought that if I could live one day in my life over and over, it would certainly be this one. I’m sure that it wasn’t anything big for a girl like Maria, she told me that she had had a few boyfriends in the past, and that she had dated a lot, but that she wanted something different. I wasn’t sure whether to be worried or flattered, but decided that if it was really me she wanted, and then I should be flattered.

When we parted, I very nearly kissed her. I wanted to, and I didn’t doubt that she wanted me to either. However, for someone like me, kissing a girl was a big thing – I had to work up the courage to do it. Today had been about the date, about spending time together, and I just couldn’t add a kiss on top of everything else.

“I r-really enjoyed being w-with you today,” I told her, and almost gasped when Maria smiled and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me close. Instinctively, I hugged her back, almost not even daring to breathe out of fear to break the fragile relationship blooming between us.

“And I loved being with you,” she replied against my shoulder, her words slightly muffled by my coat. “We’re going to do it again sometime, and soon. Now that I’ve gotten you this far, I’m not letting you go.”

I grinned, almost embarrassed, because I couldn’t understand what she wanted with me, but I sure wasn’t going to protest either. “S-sounds good t-to me,” I said, and whispered a soft goodbye against her hair.

Quite frankly, I had always thought that people who said that they were walking on clouds out of sheer happiness were idiots, but I had to add myself to that group of idiots for the next few days – I went out more, I ate lunch with Maria again, I went by the grocery store every day to talk to her, and we even talked on the phone. I loathed having to talk to people on the phone usually, and now I found myself doing it voluntarily. My world had been turned upside-down on me, and I wasn’t even sure when it had happened.

Somehow, I found myself heading into The Slums, searching for a store that Maria had told me about – just why she knew stores in that area of town, I had no idea, but I opted for not asking her just yet. We might be officially dating now (though I still wasn’t quite sure about how that whole thing worked), but I still didn’t want to push her too far too early. Had to leave some of the mystery for later, after all.

Without even knowing it, I kept an eye out for Dakota while I was in the Slums, seeing as that was where I had seen her last, but I found no trace of her. Not so strange, really, considering that The Slums made up a fairly big part of the city, and that if she wanted to hide from me – or someone else – she most likely wouldn’t be walking around on the open street in the middle of the day.

I couldn’t for the life of me find the store that Maria had talked about, but I found something else instead – a bookstore that looked almost exactly like the Bookstore Inn, though the sign above the door was so old and faded that I couldn’t figure out what it said. Out of curiosity I went inside, only to be met by a stench unlike anything that I had ever experienced before.

I backed away instantly, holding a hand over my mouth, but I didn’t turn to flee the store just yet. Lying low or not, I couldn’t resist investigating when I stumbled across something. The darkness and the look of the store – the little I could see of it, anyway – made it feel like I had suddenly stepped back in time, as if this was a store that had gone out of business decades ago. Minding my steps in the dark store, I walked further inside, trying to block the intrusive stench. I squinted to be able to make out more details, but all I could see were rows and rows of bookshelves, just like in any bookstore.

The creaking from the back room was so faint that I didn’t even hear it at first, mistaking it for my own footsteps. Eventually I picked up on it, however, and after a couple of deep breaths – which nearly make me choke and gag – I walked through the door to the back room

The corpse hanging from the beam in the ceiling was rotting, and had clearly done so for a long, long time without being discovered.

For once, I realized that the life I had lived had been sheltered. I had never seen a dead body before, and the sight of a human being like this was enough to make me heave, though I managed not to throw up. I had no desire to walk into the room and examine the body closer; this was none of my business, after all. As far as I could tell, this was a suicide, pure and simple, and more a case for the police. I went back outside, digging up my cell phone and calling the police, who asked me to stick around, as long as I didn’t touch anything.

While I waited for the police to arrive, I went back inside the store, trying to turn on the light, but apparently the light bulbs had burned out a long time ago. Instead I left the door wide open, both to let in light and to let in some fresh air, otherwise the coroner and police might just end up nearly throwing up as well, even if they were more used to these kinds of sights and smells.

I glanced at the books on the shelves, finding that they were all old. They looked at least twenty years old; in fact the entire store looked like it was at least twenty years old, like it should have been renovated several times over. I had to admit that the atmosphere of the store made me feel incredibly uncomfortable, and it wasn’t all about the corpse, barely hidden from view by a wall. I didn’t like it here; it was as simple as that, though I couldn’t explain why.

Because the store in itself made me feel so ill at ease, I ventured into the back room, trying to avoid looking at the body. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a woman. Whether she had been old or young, black or white, I had no idea – it was impossible to tell. And I’d rather not get close enough to investigate it, either.

The back room bore signs of having been lived in, and it didn’t have the same strange atmosphere that the store itself had, which made it nicer to be in, regardless of the stench and the sight at the corner of my eyes of limbs dangling, revolving slowly. I walked around in a small circle around the room, taking in the couch, the desk, the tiny stove and kitchen corner, before a sheet of paper on the small kitchen table caught my eye.

I walked over, almost feeling how the color drained from my face as I read the two words scribbled down in a hand-writing that was disturbingly familiar.

I quit.


~tbc~