The sun was already setting, the once populated Shizen Park was quickly turning to a deserted location as the people began going home as soon as the lamp posts all turned on in unison. The only people left in the park were the staff who are responsible for cleaning, keeping the wellbeing of the plants who decorate the park and the guard who ensured security during the night…
Then here I was with Hiroshi, dragging what amounts to a statue of Chie, wearing the same face she had after the lone encounter with the two surfers, an expression of someone about to explode from severe social anxiety. Dragging her to the nearest bench so we could have a moment of rest. We got a few looks from the staff members, warranted looks, it is not a very normal scene to witness, especially at night. we did get to a bench: right under one of the lamp posts, surrounded by bushes with these white puffy flowers with a yellowish core, they look very pretty. Nevertheless, we carefully placed Chie’s statue down in the middle and then sat down ourselves.
A weird mood quickly forms around us… Chieis currently not with us, well, her mind isn't at least, waving in front of her eyes does nothing, it’s like she completely deactivated because of the encounter from earlier. Meanwhile on the other side of the bench, Hiroshi was looking a little bit down from this journey we went through. We really did fail badly huh. The first ever club activity from the Phoenix Club ended up going very poorly, and we did not even achieve our goal today, which was to get the flower for the girl Hiroshi likes. To add insult to injury, I can't even keep the promise I made to the flowers at school…
Augh, why did it have to end up like this!?
“It’s okay.”
“Huh?”
“You were making weird expressions while thinking again. I assumed you were also upset about all this.”
It's that obvious huh... “Yeah, I was getting upset.” I replied after, letting out a sigh.
Silence begins to dominate the air around us after this brief exchange…
“I’m sorry that we couldn’t find that flower, Hiroshi…”
“I said it’s okay. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind mec oming back empty handed for once.”
“Are you really sure? It seems like such an important step for you…”
“She would understand my situation, even if I feel disappointed in myself for not holding up to my promise.”
Promise huh… “I hope everything goes well tomorrow.”
“...”
“With your confession for the girl you like and all.”
Hiroshi’s face of ‘accepting defeat’ quickly turned to one of confusion after what I said.
“Wh- confess??”
“Hahn?” I responded with confusion as well: “Wasn’t your goal to confess to her tomorrow?”
“What are you talking about?? I never said I was going to confess to anyone!?”
“You didn’t!?” Wait, what did I hear back then?? Come on Seiko, think!
I remember him talking to the flowers back in the garden, he was saying that he would be disappointed in himself if he could not bring that special flower to a ‘Her’ tomorrow… wait… that’s right, I was too focused on my own imagination rather than eavesdropping…
Buf if it’s not for a confession, what is it for??
“Then, who’s the flower for, Hiroshi?”
“Didn’t you hear that while you were eavesdropping?”
“Oh, I was… uh… too focused on imagining things than listening…”
“I thought it was for a girl that you liked at school and wanted to confess to using her favorite flower…”
“...”
“He- Hey, don’t give me the look of disappointment! I never said I was good at eaves… dropping…” That might not be a good skill to develop actually…
“I don’t know what you heard back then, but-” Hiroshi lets out a deep sigh as his expression turns to a bit of a depressed one: “It’s more difficult than that.”
“Oh, uhm… Wh-” Actually, no. Seiko, remember what dad said ‘you shouldn't pry people for their secrets’… he has his reasons to not tell us, and I have to respect that.
“Nevermind… sorry again that we couldn’t find it.”
“It’s alright, as I said before, it’s none of you girls’ fault, it’s mine for not anticipating this. You were all only trying to help…”
The air is filled with silence once again as things get a little awkw-
“I should be the one apologizing.”
“Wh- what do you mean?”
“If only I asked for your help, maybe we would've already found the flower days ago.”
“But I can at least tell you why I needed the flower.”
“No, no, it’s fine. You have your reasons to not tell us, it’s fine.”
“No, I insist. You two have only been trying to help me, you deserve to know… everything.”
Umm, ugh…“If you are really, really, REALLY okay with it then you can.”
“That flower was- …for my mother at the hospital.”
Oh… I was so far from the truth! “I-I’m sorry to hear that, I had no idea it was something like this.” I feel really bad for him…
However, Hiroshi does not respond, he is looking down full of sorrow...
W-Wait, is he starting to cry…
“-I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me going there empty handed for once.”
“Hiroshi… I’m really sorry for not planning this more carefully. Because of my careless leadership, we ended up wasting a lot of time and got nothing.”
Hiroshi wipes the tears from his face. After taking a bit of time, he responds:
“It’s alright, I should've asked for help before. It has been a long time since she was hospitalized by her coma… But I-I think I can trust you two with this story.”
“...”
“My mother used to talk to flowers about any problems she would have, because she really felt like the flowers listened, and I truly believe that they do…”
“About five to six years ago, when I got home from school, I didn’t see my mother anywhere. She would usually be closing her shop by the time I got home, but the shop had been closed early that day, something she would usually never do. I went looking for her inside our house, but she was not there either… It was when I peeked through the door connecting our house to her flower shop that I saw her talking to a group of green Gladiolus she grew at home by herself… but she wasn’t talking about trivial things anymore.”
She also talked to flowers, just like Hiroshi, maybe that's how he began to talk with them as well. But this moment of reminiscing was cut short, as Hiroshi's expression changed to a gloomy one.
“She talked about how she had to close early because of her increasingly worse chronic pain she had from a disease. Taking all the correct medicine, seeing many doctors, she did everything, but things weren’t getting any better. This would happen every day since: she would try to hide her weakness from me when we were around, changing topics every time I asked if she was okay. Only expressing her pain and worries deep down when talking to the flowers.”
That’s… such a terrible thing to experience. “Nothing worked? Really nothing?”
“She didn’t get any better no matter how hard she tried. One day, I brought some cookies from school to give to her, thinking that it may help her, even though the most likely outcome was her denying them. For some reason she always denied anything sweet. But miraculously, she accepted the cookies that day, which made me happy. Hopefully she would get a little better by eating something nice… but the next day, while eavesdropping on her conversation with the flowers, she said “I fear that I might not have much more time left… So if anything happens to me, please be the first ones to alert and bring my husband and child together okay?’ And the next day…- When I took a peek at the shop, she wasn’t there anymore… and the Gladiolus were all dropping their petals…”
Hiroshi was visibly shaking, clutching his fists, crying, trying to recall this memory…
“It-It’s fine, you don’t need to continue! I-I get where it goes…” I-I do not know what to do now, how do I comfort him with such a tragic past like this…? I could only encourage him to take a deep breath. He has been dealing with everything all by himself… it must be so horrible to sustain all this alone…
“One of the last things she said to me w-was-”
“'Hiroshi, I know you might not like your father that much because of his constant absence, but please don’t hate him. He’s a troubled man, give him a chance to do things right, okay?'”
“...”
“Then-Then
She-
She-
She- huh?”
It was at this moment that Hiroshi suddenly felt something wrapped around him, like someone was hugging him… it was Chie!?
“Ch-Chie??”
“I-I-I-” She could barely form a sentence, as she was also crying and forcing herself to do this, barely able to form the sentence “I felt li-like you needed a hug.”
Hiroshi and I were both caught off-guard by her action, she never did something like this before… but I do get it, he does need one…
Following behind her, I turn the Hiroshi and Chie hug into a group hug.
“Wha-wha-”
He stops for a bit and then quickly whispers.
“Th-thank you…”
The moment of peace and warmth lingers for a bit after…
“When did you turn back on Chie?”
“Turn back on?”
“Uh, how do I explain this… were you listening the whole time?”
“Ye-yeah, why?”
“Then why didn’t you say anything??”
“I-I… didn’t want to interrupt this, it was way too important…”
“That’s… fair actually.”
Now we fully know the reason why he wants that flower tomorrow, it was for his mother in the hospital all this time… what a bittersweet story.
“Hiroshi… Did you, ever tell this to anyone else?”
“I don’t like telling people this, it feels like I’m only trying to get them to pity me… Regardless, I didn’t have any friends at school to begin with, so no one other than the school staff knew. Even then, they only know that my mother was hospitalized, nothing else. That’s part of the reason why I take care of the school garden.”
“Those two are connected?”
“I had to find something to do after school hours because… I would rather stay there than at home. That’s when I found the garden in Gakumon. It was a complete mess and really run down, no one took care of it ever since the gardening club was disbanded because of a lack of interest. Over a couple of years; after some cleaning, gardening and a bit of convincing to a janitor who isn’t at school anymore, I managed to make it into a place I could go to and relax with no worries. Almost like a second home…”
That’s why he’s so overprotective of that place…
“You… don’t like going home?”
“Hm… it’s a bit complicated. My father took over things after all that and… I just don’t want to see him… I can’t forgive the fact that he did nothing to help with all of this, too focused on work.”
“Hiroshi…”
Hm… that flower means this much to him…
I-
I can’t let him go back there empty handed! I’m not throwing in the towel just yet, there’s still tomorrow to find that flower! Now, think Seiko!
We need to find more florists shops, so who is someone that you know who goes all around the city, who would also know the location of every business… augh, do I know someone like this? It would be so… helpful…
WAIT! I DO KNOW SOMEONE JUST LIKE THAT!
I jump from the bench in excitement and raise my fist in the air, exclaiming:
“The mission is not over yet!”
Chie & Hiroshi were very confused about my sudden burst of energy. Of course, they can’t read my mind!
But I did feel the weird looks from the staff… One of the guards patrolling walked by us very slowly while staring at us, making sure things were in order… Maybe screaming in a park during the night is not a very good idea.
“The mission is not over?”
“What do you mean, Seiko?”
“There’s still a chance for us to find that flower, I even know someone perfect for this job!”
“I-I don’t get it…”
“Don’t worry, I still have to iron out the details, but I do have a plan for tomorrow!”
“Ah, tomorrow?”
“Hm? Yeah, tomorrow is the last day.”
“Tomorrow is the day I promised that I would practice sewing at home…”
“Oh…”
“N-no! It’s fine if you guys do it by yourselves. I just won’t be able to participate tomorrow… sorry.”
“That’s fair, don’t apologize. Everything today happened way too suddenly and fast, it was impossible to predict or plan around.”
“What is your plan exactly Seiko?”
“That is still being developed, but I can guarantee that we WILL find that flower tomorrow, okay?”
“Hm…” Hiroshi looks at me with a bit of suspicion, but then lets out a sigh and says “Fine, I guess we can give it another shot.”
“Alright! The club is dismissed for today!”
“Good luck to you two tomorrow!”
“Thank you, I hope things go well too.”
“I’m sure it will!”
We all said our goodbyes and “See you at school tomorrow” to each other and went back to our respective homes. This flower means so much to him and his mother, I’ll make sure that things go right this time!
The idea I had was to ask my mother for help, she is the perfect person to get this kind of info; her job revolves around talking to people, gathering information and securing deals for the place she works at, she is pretty good at it too! … Unfortunately, her expertise was not enough to keep us afloat in the place we lived before, things just got harder and the work there had to close down… either way, she is the last hope for this mission!
Using the map my dad made, I followed the directions he wrote backwards (or is it forwards if right and left were switched to begin with?) to get to Gakumon and from there to home. But something struck me just now, I never walked in these streets during the night. This part of the city is like a ghost town when the sun goes down, there’s almost no one walking around here, eerily quiet, not even a single car passing by the road.
This emptiness made me a little scared, which made me pick the pace and walk faster to get home quicker…
I made it to my apartment safe and sound, all the spooky thoughts I had were just imagination after all. But right when I was about to press the doorbell, I felt something creeping up behind me… Something bigger than myself, right behind me, not making any sound whatsoever… it made me hesitate from pressing the button, just enough time for it say something:
“sei-i-KO!”