April's POV (Flashback) 8 Years ago continued.

Moments passed and the person kept rambling on and on asking me questions that I didn't feel like answering.

With a friendly and sympathetic voice, they would ask "Did something sad happen to you too today? is that why you're crying? I saw you with your mom, I'm sorry that happened to you. My mom isn't even here yet and I miss her so much so I understand how you might be feeling.

You look younger than me, how old are you? You're probably around the same age as my sister, she's here too. Do you like dolls? My sister loves dolls. She left home without her dolls so I brought her her favorite doll to keep her company."

Time seemed to speed up as the person was talking, but slow enough for me to take a second to get a better look at them. My eyes couldn't help but look at him as if it was a forced habit. his eyes looked tired and drained, and when he talked the dark circles that were creating shadows under his eyes seemed to light up and fatten every time he smiled, his eyes were innocent, but that's to be expected from a child. his innocence was different from other boys his age, it was mixed with sadness, the kind of sadness that adults try to protect us from.

every time his big dark brown doe eyes hit the light his eyes would sparkle as if it was glass; the light revealed the size of his pupils, it was as if there was no space in his eyes for anything other than his pupils.

his nose looked like mine but a little bit smaller and his skin looked like mine but a little bit lighter. he had caramel for skin, but the redness of his cheeks wanted all the attention. he had light brown curly hair with a hint of red and thick bushy brows that hid under the messy curled hair. the brows were curved and the right brow was thicker and bushier than the left brow.

When he smiled the edges of his mouth would create arrows and when raised the arrows pulled and changed his entire face. the smile was him but unnatural I wondered why he looked so sad even when his smile said otherwise.

"what's your favorite book? Do you even like to read? my sister loves to read, and her favorite book is still at home, I wanted to bring that instead of the doll but I couldn't find it in time. so which do you like more books or dolls?" he said while patiently waiting expecting a response from me but the silence kept building till I had no choice but to say with a quiet and shaky voice

"B-books I love books".

those four words unexpectedly held power because within less than a second his patient and stagnant face rose and beamed and the happiness that I saw in him before became true. his excitement was something that could be seen from a mile away and it shined a light on my seemly extreme lack of it. after saying my first words to him it was no surprise that I was now stuck in a conversation with the son of the sun.

"so you can talk for a second there I thought I was the only one in the room," he said with a witty and playful smile.

we were now facing each other and he enforced eye contact and I had no choice but to follow. what surprised me was his determination to see me through my eyes when all he could see were bloodshot veins and puffy eyes. I figured it was too late now to ignore him so I might as well continue talking to him.

"Sorry about that I'm not good at talking to people," I said with a hesitant and flat voice.

I knew what I was saying wasn't entirely true because if it were any other day if I was not in the situation that I currently am in, and if everything that had happened in the past couple of hours had not happened this boy would not have met the April that was sitting next to him.

"thats ok you don't have to be sorry for being shy, I get shy sometimes too, and being shy doesn't mean that you're a bad person it just means that you're a good person who's afraid of other people being bad to you," he said with the most caring and genuine voice I've heard the whole night.

I blushed and broke our eye contact at his effort to bring me comfort and understanding when we were complete strangers. out of all the people that have tried to comfort me tonight his was the most believable and honest. other than my mother, all of the people, and strangers I've met tonight talked to me in a way that made me feel guilty for not appropriating or acknowledging their efforts for trying to bring me comfort. I thought maybe he saw me as all the adults saw me, as someone who needed to be pitted.

I responded with "You don't have to say that" with a sullen voice and while turning my head down to face the ground.

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I took a peak at his face to see his reaction and he looked confused, his thick brows frowned and his doe eyes squinted, and out his mouth came "I wasn't forced to, I'm curious though I overheard you and your mom talking about your dad is he ok? is he the reason why you're at the hospital?"

At that moment I realized that this whole time I had forgotten about my worries, my dad. I learned how distracted I became because of this boy and then suddenly all that managed to slip out my mind came rushing back like a heavy storm. All of my unanswered questions that rang in my head as an unstoppable force rang again.

All of my fears and emotions that were consuming me before came back for seconds. I think the boy noticed from my sudden frozen state that what he just asked shocked me. I stopped moving and my body which was feeling a little bit lighter and free now felt heavy and cold. but something was different this time, when I was in the same frozen state with Officer Kim even though my mind was loud and overwhelming I wanted to hide and be as quiet as a mouse. this time I felt a need to speak, I wanted him to know about what had happened to me before coming to the hospital, what had happened to my dad.

it wasn't that I felt pressure from the boy to answer his question it was quite the opposite, he quickly noticed my silent panic and said "Hey! Are you ok?! you don't have to answer me if you don't want to, I'm sorry that I brought up your dad I should have known better, we can talk about something else but just say something so I know you're ok".

I let out a quiet and soft sigh before looking back up at his eyes. Somehow his already big doe eyes got bigger and wider but unlike its usually relaxed but saddened state, it was now alert and scared. Was he worried about me? The girl he had just met less than an hour ago? His head kept swinging left and right while maintaining eye contact as if he were looking for something past my eyes.

"I'm fine, now let go of my shoulders and stop looking at me like that," I said while I held onto his right wrist with my right hand, gently forcing it down.

He looked shocked in disbelief at my strength and scoffed.

"Well, I see you got your strength back and here I thought you were the type of girl who would break by the sound of the wind" he looked at me with a smile so genuine that it was contagious and i couldn't help but smile at it.

"Oh!" He suddenly shouted with a snap of his fingers.

Then reached for his jacket pocket to pull out three pieces of hard candy. It was the type of candy that an old lady would always have in her purse for no other reason than to give it to young people or kids.

I guess I couldn't hide my surprised expression by the randomness of it all because almost immediately after he saw my face he said, "You don't have to make that look you know these are the best candy ever made so don't judge them just yet."

"I'm not judging", I said while looking down at the piece he was trying to hand to me.

"Here take this You will soon regret judging it before you even tried it."

I looked at the candy in my hand then looked back at him with frown brows full of skepticism. I twisted the unnecessarily loud wrapper paused for a second then put the candy in my mouth.

"Mm, huh, mmmmm" I moaned then closed my eyes and let the flavor of the candy hit my taste buds.

It looked like any other hard candy with its caramel color and plastic brown wrapper but the taste is everything but Carmel.

"Mmmm, why does this taste like strawberry and chocolate?" I said with the candy half melted in my mouth.

"Wait, it'll get amazing real soon so just let it melt in your mouth," he said with a half grin and a proud face while leaning back with his arms crossed.

I looked at him with one brow raised then scoffed, wait for what? Its good but the candy wasn't something to feel highly confident about.

Then it hit me. My eyes suddenly widen and my heart started to beat a little bit faster. Memories I thought had disappeared suddenly started to flow back into my mind. One was the first time i saw snow; i was 5 and we had just moved from a place where it was always sunny with no true winter to here, my moms hometown. Where everybody had accents that felt out of place. Then a new memory flowed through, one i wasn't sure was my memory. I was walking through the forest alone then saw a bright light shining distance away. The light grew so I decided to follow it and i was lead into the center of the forest where there was a lake. There i saw... it stopped.

The candy finally melted in my mouth and my heart stabilized. My eyes relaxed and scanned the hospital. I sighed then said with my hand on my head "what was that? I feel so tired"

"Sooo, did you like it? What did you see?" He said with the excitement of a dog.

"Yeah but i saw something strange" i said

"Come on what was it? Im dying to know cause all i saw was the whites of your eyes" he said while tapping on his chair.

I rubbed my hand on my head squinted my eyes then sighed again "i think i saw a lake" i said

"A lake?"

"Yeah a lake and it was in a forest there was a distractingly bright light coming from it" i said then put my hand down and looked at the boy.

It was strange his reaction to me mentioning seeing a lake was not what i had expected. Throughout our whole conversation i was always the one who stayed frozen but this for the first the boy i had just met was left speechless.

He first looked at me with confusion and curiosity to what the candy made me remember but then that quickly turned into a realization.

"Hey you ok?" I said while quickly shaking him.

After seconds of him staring at me i could see his brain working. His eyes moved in search of something and when he found it he let out a relieved sign.

I repeated my asking, "hey you still there? Youve been quiet for a while. You ok?"

"Yeah yeah sorry for... yeah i... what you said just made me remember something from before." He said back while rubbing his eyes and scratching his head.

"Anyways again sorry about that, my names Diar by the way, Diar Pines"

"Diar?"

"Yep thats me! What's yours?"

I hesitated for a second before responding but then took a deep breath and said "im April... B-Blossom"

"Well April, it’s nice to meet you."