#shoumaxringo

Ringo, at twenty six, was beautiful, bright, and utterly desirable. She was also eternally single, much to the chagrin of her mother.

Even Himari and her other friends had voiced their concern. But Ringo was content about the current state of her love life, or lack thereof. She had no need for a boyfriend or a lover and especially for a husband. 

"Aren't you lonely?" they asked her.

"No," she would reply with a quiet sort of conviction that made people back down almost immediately.

-

Every night, in her dreams, she clung to the lean frame of a boy who told her "Thank you, I love you," before he burned away in flames.

And every day, in her every waking moment, she would look for the shadow of that boy in the passing faces of strangers.

So no, Ringo wasn't lonely. 

It was the boy who always held her hand.

It was the boy, Ringo was sure. But he was also different somehow.

It’s because he’s real, her mind told her.

His hair was messy as if he had just gotten out of bed. The sleeves of his shirt were carelessly rolled above his elbows. A plastic bag bearing the name of a convenience store dangled carelessly from his fingers.

He was beautiful and real and she couldn’t look away.

-

Ringo was walking west to east, and he east to west.

She wanted to talk to him.

But what could she possibly say to him?

For some reason half a dozen corny pick up lines that boys usually told her flashed through her mind in rapid succession. But she knew none of those would work.

Curry, then? She had a dream once that she was standing on a kitchen with that same boy and they were making curry. Should she ask him about curry?

Or perhaps she should just tell him the truth. That every night she saw him in her dreams and every morning she woke up feeling empty because she knew what better felt like. 

-

Ringo was still walking. She continued to traverse from west to east, and she was getting closer to the boy who lived in her dreams.

And she suddenly realized.

It’s his hair. His hair was different. It shone brown-black under the sun and it fell over his brows and ears in waves. She wanted to push back his fringe and run her fingers over his scalp.

She took another step and another, until she was a mere three feet away from him.

Her heartbeat started to speed up. 

His eyes were still the same shade of green.

-

She passed the boy in her dreams in front of an empty park.

Ringo had taken a step. And another. And she would’ve continued walking west to east were it not for the fact that the beating of her heart had become unbearable.

So she stopped and looked back. And as she watched that boy walking away from her Ringo could hear her heart in her ears and the memories suddenly came rushing back.

She remembered the taste of the egg rolls he made.

She remembered the conversations they had while staring up the floorboards of someone else’s house.

She remembered the rain falling down like knives and watching his prone body on the asphalt, backlit by headlamps.

She was running towards him before she could think and she had grabbed his wrist before she could hesitate.

“I love you," she said in rush.

And she concluded with: "Don’t go.”

The truth had tripped on her tongue and had slipped out of her mouth. But Ringo wouldn’t take the words back.

She fixed her gaze on the pale skin of his wrist and the thrumming pulse that told her that this was real and this wasn’t another dream she would wake up from.

“P-please don’t leave me—” Ringo choked on a sob and suddenly the tears wouldn’t stop.

Ringo remembered but she still didn't know his name.

-

She remembered, “You’re you, nobody else.”

She remembered crying in the middle of a crowded street watching the same back walk away from her.

She remembered holding the same hand in hers and what it felt like to press her face against the curve of his shoulder.

Ringo’s knees buckled under her. Tears blurred her vision. She remembered all the hateful words she told him and she remembered all the hateful words he told her ("You're heart is pitch black.") but she still couldn’t remember his name.

-

She stumbled and she felt like she was going to fall for a moment, but suddenly there was an arm around her waist and the boy in her dreams was closer than before.

She blinked away her tears and the world in front of her disappeared into nothing but a white button down shirt and the faint smell of grass.

Ringo still hadn’t released his wrist. She wasn’t planning to, actually.

“Don’t leave me again. Please.”

Ringo couldn’t look up and meet his eyes. She had gathered all her courage to tell him the truth. She had nothing left to give her the strength to look up and have her heart broken.

Because what she was doing was plain crazy. The boy in her dreams might not know her after all. There was a very real possibility that she wasn’t the girl in his dreams.

But memory is a funny thing and Ringo remembered, “Thank you. I love you.”

She tightened her hold on his wrist. She remembered that she had love in her grasp only to have it burn out and turn to ashes in the next moment. And pleaded some more, “Please don’t go.”

-

On a narrow side street in a sleepy neighborhood, Ringo walked past someone she knew from a dream.

But she had turned around, grabbed his hand, pleaded with tears, and somehow she had ended up sobbing into his shoulder.

The boy from her dreams loosened his hold on the plastic bag he was carrying and let it fall to the ground.

He cupped the back of her neck in his hands and she hoped.

-

“I won’t, Oginome-san.”

-

Ringo looked up.

She still couldn’t remember his name but the rueful curve of his smile and the green of his eyes were achingly familiar.

-