A special Wmatsui OS made for Sherin~
Happy early Birthday~~~ 
Now you owe me something~OS #3 Guardian Angel (Wmatsui OS)A single drop of blood hits the pond's surface, sending small ripples across the clear water. The red murky liquid doesn't dissolve, but stays its own as it twists and tumbles 'til it hits the sandy bottoms. Only then does the blood disappear, seeping into the small crevices between the tiny crystal like sand grains. I dig the blade deeper into my palm. Blood begins to trickle off my finger tips and run down my wrist. I grit my teeth and choke down the shrieks that want to escape my frozen, chapped, lips.
“Why are you doing this, Jurina? You've never done this, you've always thought this as pathetic and weak!”
I can just hear her yelling at me for cutting myself, but it's the only way - the only way I can feel better. The pain that is shooting up and down my arm is much easier to cope with than the internal emotional heartache that is tearing me into shreds.
It's all her fault for me being like this. She is the reason I feel depressed, weak, pathetic, and fragile. She left me. She had to go off and ... and get herself killed. She should have called me - I would have been there in a heartbeat. I should have gone - I could have made sure she never got drunk. I should have asked if we could do something different - all of this would have been avoided, no temptation of alcohol hanging over our heads.
But no, when she called asking if I could go to that party, I refused and said see you later. Unknowing that I would never see her alive again. I would never feel her soft breaths in my ear, hear her murmuring heartbeat, or listen to her soft soothing voice. I would never be able to hold her hand again. I would never be able to feel her skin against mine, no small gentle squeeze to reassure me that everything will be fine.
I need her to squish my hand again, one last time. I need to know that everything will be okay. But I will never know if I will be fine, or if she will be fine. She's dead, forever gone from this world, never to hold me, never to assure me again.
I look down at my bloody hand and glance at the knife. I see a bloody reflection of my face, the whole scene of my parents telling me the news about her comes to mind. No. No. No! I don't want to remember, I want to forget, but I can't. I can't ignore the memory.
My mom knocks on my bedroom door, soft and timidly, "Jurina?" she asks, slowly opening the door. I glance up from the book I'm reading and look at the tears in her eyes. She's pale and shaky. My dad comes into the room after her. "Jurina, we have some news for you. D - don't ... " and then she just stops and cries. Salty water drops fall out of her eyes, runs down her cheeks, and drips off her chin landing on the back of her hand.
Dad pats Mom's back, and then looks at me with his dark brown piercing eyes. "There has been an accident," he begins, glancing between my mother and me. He wants to continue, but the rest of the sentence is lodged in his throat.
"Dad, Mom, what accident? Who was in an accident? What happened?" I scream, wanting to know. I need to know, what if ... If they say -
"Rena isn't coming back from the party," Mom says in between her sobbing. I stare at her in shock. What does she mean she's not coming back? Of course she is, she has to!
"What?" my voice was shy, nervous, scared.
My dad sighed, and took a seat next to me on the bed. "Sweetie, Rena was driving back home from a party and she didn't see the stop sign, nor the other car coming ..."
"She's not ... she didn't ...?" I ask, my breathing becoming heavy with each word, each thought.
Dad shakes his head, "She forgot to wear her seatbelt." he doesn't have to finish. I don't need to hear the rest, I don't need all the gory details.
All I need to know is that Rena, my best friend, is gone forever.
I feel soft water drip down my cheeks, and land on my black dress. Today is her funeral. I am supposed to be there right now, praying and giving a eulogy, but I can't. I can't go there and see the faces of crying people, people who didn't know her like I did. So I'm here, letting myself bleed. Letting myself think about everything. Letting the thundering clouds above me rumble and try to scare me to go away.
Rena had to die, she had to get drunk, and she had to forget her seatbelt.
One stupid mistake and it killed her.
~~~~
I was always a loser. Seriously, I was. I got picked on at school for every possible reason: Mama’s child, nerd, totally out of style, ugly, etc. The usual stuff, I know, but it hurt all the same. High School wasn’t any better. I never had a girlfriend. Hell, I barely had friends, and they weren’t exactly the socialites of the century either. Like minds stick together and all that I guess.
Once I got into the real world, I drove a crappy car, because I couldn’t afford a nice one with the crappy pay from my crappy job. I barely even got the job I had, and only because the shear mass of my pathetic life weighed down on my boss’s conscience so much that it’d have been like kicking a three-legged puppy while it was down. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job and the people I worked with. It was just crummy pay, which resulted in the crummy car.
I did manage to move out on my own, but much like my car, my place wasn’t exactly fantastic. The roof leaked, the tap leaked, the shower leaked… pretty much anything that could leak, did. On top of that, it was above an Indian fast-food joint. This resulted in everything I owned smelling a tad too strongly of every kind of curry and spice known to man, and all at the same time. It had one window, and it was small. Really small. Insanely, stupidly small. I paid too much rent for it, but I was too much of a sucker to say anything.
I hadn’t kissed anyone until I was 24, and I won’t even bother embarrassing myself further by going into the details of my non-existent sex life.
Suffice it to say, I was pathetic in every possible way. I was the definition of ‘last place’.
Then I met Rena.
Rena was a girl I met at a coffee shop while waiting in line in a coffee shop to buy a coffee that was far too exotic and far too expensive for me. I have had a rather good day at work, and I felt like treating myself. She was in line behind me, though I only found this out after I had bought my way-too-expensive drink.
As I turned around, our eyes met.
I was in love, simple as that.
As I walked past her, I knew that she was ‘The One.’ I had to talk to her. I had to talk to her and find out her name and what she likes and what she hates and if she had pets and if she liked to read. There were a million other things I wanted to ask her, but at that moment I slipped on a wet tile and went down like a sack of potatoes.
When I came to realise, I was still on the coffee shop floor; my coffee raising the price of the tile that it had spilled on, and many a gawking person hovering over me. Rena actually had the decency to try and help me up. It took a couple tries as I was slipping far too much. She told me to sit still because I was bleeding, and it would probably be best to get a doctor to have a look at me. I’m pretty sure I agreed, but the whole thing is a little hazy. I remember asking her name (Rena), but after that I forget. From what I gather I passed out.
When I came around again, I was sitting in a gurney. Rena was sitting there, as worried looking as anything but hadn’t noticed I was awake. I managed to steal a couple moments to appreciate her.
She wasn’t the cutest girl in the world, but she had a charm about her that blew me away. Just looking at her nearly brought me to tears, though that could have been the endorphins wearing off. Time slowed as I took every part of her in: her eyes, her hair, her skin, her mouth, even the way she sat. Everything about her was breath-taking.
Then the doctor came in, and time resumed its normal speed. He used some of that faux ‘trauma doctor charm’ and said that he was glad to see me conscious. Not exactly a high bar, but it was good enough for him. He asked Rena what happened as he didn’t trust me to retell the tale. He had a look at my head and said that I was indeed going to need a couple stitches. He left for a moment, and returning with a nurse in tow, he told me to turn around so he could “patch me up.”
When the doctor had finished stitching me up, which took a couple tries because apparently my scalp rejects local anesthetic, he told me that I’m lucky I didn’t have a concussion and that my friend was smart to call paramedics. With that, he disappeared through the doorway to treat some other person with minimal enthusiasm.
Rena asked me if I was okay, and I asked her if she wanted to go get something to eat.
I didn’t expect myself to say it. Asking her that showed way more confidence than I actually had. I still blame the fall to my momentary lapse of Loserdom. She was so blind-sided that she actually agreed! My first date in years, and I got it from a trip to the hospital.
If only I had known it was that easy.
We walked to a little diner near the hospital, because neither of us had transportation. I had ridden in the back of the ambulance, and apparently she had as well.
We started to talk, awkwardly of course. I asked her about herself, if she had pets, if she read, and about three percent of all the questions I wanted to ask her. In turn she asked me similar questions, and we ended up having a lot in common. It was at this point that my previous feeling of The One had been confirmed. I had to be with her, and that was that.
Finding a diner, we went inside and got some late breakfast. We finished dinner, and I asked her whether I could see her again in a less hospital-related way. In a shocking turn of events she said yes, and I nearly choked on my much-less-expensive coffee. She thought I was cute in an awkward, nerd-next-door sort of way. I decided to take this as a compliment and asked her for her number. She scrambled through her overly-large purse and dug out a pen and paper. She scribbled her number down, handed it to me, and then somehow managed to flag down a near-by taxi.
This girl was magic.
I walked the 43 blocks home.
Our first so-called-date is something that was so wonderful, so pure, that it will forever be burned into my memory. We met at a park half-way between our homes. I brought a picnic basket filled with the nicest foods I could afford. Granted that didn’t really add up to much, but as Rena put it, “It’s the thought that counts, silly.” I can believe in that.
We met with it feeling almost like it was the first time all over again. We walked down a wide path surrounded by trees, both of us afraid to start talking. Mothers with strollers would walk past us, giving us knowing looks. Children would run blindly past us oblivious of the awkward air that they too would have to deal with when they grew older. I listened to the world, trying to glean some knowledge from the winds and the trees and the dirt.
She broke the silence by asking me how my day had gone, and told me about hers. I couldn’t trust myself to talk much, so I listened. I didn’t mind being the silent one since it’s something I’m used to. No one bothers to pay attention to me, so I end up being a listener anyway. She was thankful for someone who was such a good listener. Who would have thought that being ignored for a good portion of your life would finally pay off?
When we came to a nice clearing, I set up the picnic and we sat down to eat. The sun was just moving through the trees providing us with a semi-shade, and the wind blew through the leaves softly, creating music that you can only hear in your memories. If the day could have been any more picturesque, there would have been little ragged mice with violins playing to the side, tears in their eyes.
As we ate, I made it my mission to sit beside her. Juvenile I know, but I didn’t have much experience at this. Back to basics and all that. My self-induced mission took roughly 2 hours of eating, drinking and conversation, all the while my minds wheels turning on how to find any excuse to move closer. She either didn’t mind or didn’t notice; I assume she knew what I was doing but let me do it. She was always so understanding; she could read me like a book.
I made her laugh, and she made me smile. I told her jokes that I had heard, and she told me about her life, and the little things that made it special to her. I told her she was special, and so special things naturally came to her. She blushed, and I blushed, and we sat there on the ground silently competing for who closer match the shade of an apple. This would be later be my fondest memory within what is already my fondest memory.
As the sun started to set amongst the trees, and the winds started to cool, we opted to pack it in for the day. If I had had it my way, we would have sat there until the ends of the earth. She made everything brighter and more wondrous. She opened my eyes to all the little things I never appreciated. Her laughter was music, and her smiles fought the sun.
We packed the food and the wrappers; the forks and the plates. I folded the blanket we sat on and stood up. We walked back to the entrance to the pack in silence, listening to nature sing us to the end of the date. The air was no longer awkward, but full of magic and a creeping joy. I would have jumped and clicked my heels if I hadn’t been sure that I would have fallen right onto my face. I opted for allowing my insides to vibrate in happiness.
When we were parting ways, I stumbled over myself asking of she’d had a good time, if she was happy, and if she’d like to go out again. I know I got all three questions out but they may have all been one word. She laughed, put her finger on my lips and shushed me. She brushed her hair behind her ear and leaned towards me. Before I knew what was happening, she was kissing me. This soft, electrifying, burst of joy. It wasn’t a hard kiss, or even a long kiss, but I returned it, and for a moment in time, everything in the world was right.
We separated, the world returning to normal. I watched her walk out of the park and hail another taxi. It was only after I watched the taxi leave that I had no idea if I would see her again.
I still think she did that on purpose to make me call her again.
Our relationship wasn’t like any other relationships. It was in the borderline of best friend and a girlfriend. After a couple months of meeting up, we were officially mad for each other. We had done all the stupid cuddly stuff that hideously cute couples do together: going to the beach, going to carnivals as I spent way too much money winning her a stuffed animal (I’m not a very good throw or aim), watched the night sky, the whole lot.
We were together whenever possible.
The best part about it was that I didn’t feel like such a loser when I was with Rena. She was so cute and smart that by simply being around her, I felt smarter and cuter and not as much of a loser. She helped me find a nicer place, helped me find a better car for the same money, and even convinced me to ask for a raise at my job. She turned my life around, little by little.
In return I gave her the only thing I could offer: myself. If she ever needed help with anything, I was there. If she needed laundry picked up, I was already on my way. If she needed someone to call in sick to work for her, I was on the phone. Whenever she needed to cry about something, I held her like it was the end of the universe.
We were in love like it was the only thing that mattered.
Eventually things got more… intimate. After meeting up for nearly a year, our occasional snuggling had been pushed further and further into an adult-oriented scenario. I’m not going to gloat about it or release any sullen details because I don’t need to. Our love was progressing physically as it was mentally.
One night after going for an evening walk and getting ice cream (again, very sickly cute couple) we came back to my place and things got a little more serious than usual. We made it onto the bed, and after some tossing and turning, It happened.
It was wonderful, magical even. All of our emotion and our love was concentrated into that one moment, and for a split second we became one person. I know it sounds corny, but that’s honestly how I’d felt at the time.
As we lay in bed after, we just looked at each other for a while. Things were different now; we’d crossed that line and there was no going back. This wasn’t like a one night stand (which I had never had, thank you), or a fling. This was the real deal. As our eyes stared into each other, I asked her if she’d like to move in with me because I wanted nothing more than to wake up to those eyes every morning.
She started to cry, punched me lovingly on the chest, and called me an ‘idiot puppy.’ I just smiled and said “If you want to call me that, that’s fine. Just say yes.” And you know what? She did. Between her happy sobs, she smiled at me and I knew that I had achieved the one goal I had ever set for myself. I would be with this girl forever. I’ve managed not to screw everything up, and now she’s going to be with me forever.
We slowly fell asleep holding each other, and I cherished that moment more than anything else in my life.
Then the day comes. Rena was invited to a reunion party in which she invited me along. I denied her invitation as I wasn’t feeling too well on that day. So, she ended up going to the party all by herself.
Little did I know that she was drunk. Little did I know that she had forgotten her seatbelts. Before I knew it, she was gone.
I could deal with having a crappy place, a crappy car, and a crappy job. I could deal with being a loser with no hand-eye co-ordination. How could I deal without Rena? I loved her.
I still love her.
And I can still feel her when I fall asleep.
~~~~
I drop the knife into the water, a loud splash cracks the wall of silence. And just as the stillness of the water is broken, the clouds start to growl and cry. Rain pours down, first as a small sprinkle, then into a down pour. My hand is pounding, a searing pain that won't stop pulsing.
I'm not sure what I should do any more. I don't know where my life is going any more. Where am I heading? It's been two weeks since Rena's death, and I can tell how much I've dropped. I'm almost at rock bottom. I just need her hand, I just need to feel her touch, I just need her to whisper those simple words: Everything will be okay.
Gusts of wind wrap around me, my hair whips across my face, and the rain starts to come down lighter. Then the wind stops suddenly, I think there is a break in the storm. A golden ray of light blinds my eyes and everything has become calm. Then I hear her.
“Take my hand”, she purrs into my ear, sending chills up and down my spine. It can't be her, I'm just going crazy. It's just the wind, it has to be.
“Jurina, take my hand”, the voice sounds more demanding, but still sweet and gentle.
"You're not here, this is all a dream!" I yell, covering my ears with my hands. I can't let this get to me, in the end when I figure out that this was all my imagination, I'll be crushed. I cannot sink any further to the bottom.
“No, I'm real. I'm right here, just look. Look up, Jurina.”And I have to. Something deep in my soul is forcing me to look up, because it believes that Rena is right there. My eyes look into the golden light and there I see a shimmering figure standing right before me. Black sparkling eyes, soft raven black hair, Rena. I know I'm dreaming, this doesn't happen in real life. Angels don't just fall from the sky. Dead best friends don't just appear in front of you.
“Take my hand”, she repeats holding out her hand. It looks real except it's blurry and not holding a specific shape, it keeps disappearing and reappearing. I'm scared to take it, won't my hand just go through hers? But I let my bloody hand reach up to hers, and miraculously she grasps it. Her touch is firm, like she'll never let go. I am completely befuddled, this isn't real.
"How?" I quiver.
Rena just smiles and embraces me into a hug, the entire world around us melts. It's like she never died, she never got into that stupid car crash. We're back at her house, watching a movie in her room. Me, cuddled in her lap and she, stroking my head. We're just two best friends or lovers hanging with each other. Nothing in the world can tear us apart.
“Everything will be okay”, she murmurs, stroking the back of my head.
“Everything will be okay, I swear”, Rena takes a step back, and grins at me.
“I love you, Jurina. We'll be together again ... Someday.”The wind picks up again, the light begins to fade and the rain comes back down to earth in large amounts. And the pain is gone. Just gone. I lift up my palm, and there is no more blood, not even a cut mark from the knife. It's like I never pushed the blade against my skin.
Everything will be okay. And for the first time in the last couple of weeks, I do believe that everything will be fine.
"I love you too, Rena." the wind catches my voice and sends it up to the heavens where Rena is looking down on me.
"I now know that everything will be fine. And she's waiting for me, up there in the clouds. Rena has a bowl of popcorn and our favourite movie waiting for me when my time comes, and we'll be together forever, as the two best friends that we are," my voice rings out across the crowd of people at the graveyard. I take a step down from the speaker and head back to my parents. Out past crowd, I see a golden angel, smiling. Some people may say it was just a trick of the light, or I was thinking things, but I'm positive that shimmering figure is Rena, my best friend, my lover, my guardian angel.
OS#3 - Guardian AngelENDI'll write an epilogue for this story~
Topic: [Atsuko_love's OS Compilation] New OS # 19 En Garde (Mayuki OS) (Read 59569 times)