2024, New York, Christmas time.
Walking alone in this flourishing city, she sighed and, possibly because of the freezing weather, dug her hands deeper into her pockets.
The laughter in the plaza was unable to lift up her mood; the sound was ear-piercing to her...
A Christmas without snow, without companion, without him.
⋇ ↢ ♥ ↣ ⋇
Los Angeles,
Where she spent ten years of her life, but now was unable to face again.
People say, "when you fall in love with the person, you fall in love with that city as well."
And she fell in love, but was never able to face the city again
↢ 𝒯𝐸𝒩 ♥ 𝒴𝐸𝒜𝑅𝒮 ↣
It was already ten when I returned to the building. The gloomy night towered over and compressed the city.
Winter, the cold and dark season, broke the supposedly normal day.
After greeting the old lady at the door, I gently walked upstairs. Since it was an old fashioned apartment, the first floor had two turns, and the sound of dropping water seemed like a count down of mere seconds...
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The lights in the hallways never got fixed. Nowadays, there was only a faint light, but it was still useful for guiding the way home. A cigarette was still burning at the corner of the ninth floor, which got thrown away not long ago.
My heart leaped with worry. I raised my head, glancing at the door, and froze out of panic. All the memories flooded back in my mind again, suffocating me.
Never again!
The person by my door leaned against the wall, resting. The ground was also covered with several cigarettes, still not yet extinguished. He was hidden in the shadows, but I still knew who he was.
Didn't I decide to forget him? Didn't I escape to New York just to forget him?
But now, we met again. What should be my emotions?
All I know was --- I had to leave --- I must leave now.
But then ---
"Long time no see," the familiar voice pulled me back to reality.
Long time ...... Is how long?
Everything that I thought I had forgotten rushed back into my consciousness when he reappeared by my door.
One year, an entire three hundred sixty five days.
"Summer Asher," the person said, coming towards me.
I smelt something familiar but foreign ... I wanted to escape, but I was stuck... stuck between fear and ignorance.
Who was I kidding?
How could I forget ten years of memories in just a year?
I raised my head, watching someone who was an entire head taller than myself. Gone for a year, he was still the same as before, simply decorated with a little more maturity.
Facing him, I kept my head up high to show him that, without him, I can still live well.
But now...
I calmed my emotions, trying furiously to smile to preserve the only dignity that was left in me.
"It's ...been quite a while," I used all my strength to say the name, the name that I locked away for a year --
" ... Tristan Mallory."