Petals and Promises
Her name was Mayon. With a round, innocent face framed by an oversized pair of thick spectacles, she was a girl forever enshrouded in a mountain of books. Brilliant in her studies, she reigned supreme in every realm from fierce debates to science symposiums. Yet, in this modern age, Mayon harbored a glaring 'flaw' in the eyes of the world....she had never fallen in love. The concept of an infatuation was entirely foreign to her. Because of this, her friends constantly roasted her during their afternoon gossips.
"Are you made of stone, Mayon?" they would tease. "Watch some dramas, read a romance novel, let your heart soften a little!" Even at family gatherings, her cousins spared no jests. But Mayon remained blissfully indifferent. The youngest in her class and the doting darling of her parents, her universe was safely confined within mathematical equations, historical chronicles, and laboratory test tubes. She was the quintessential, unyielding nerd. For a girl who saw the world blur without her glasses, casting the vibrant hues of romance onto her heart was no easy feat.
Yet, life is seldom a straight line. Suddenly, an exquisite chaos disrupted the orderly, scientific mind of Mayon.
She began to dream. These were no ordinary figments of sleep; for four consecutive months, two or three nights a week, the exact same silhouette visited her. The strangest part was that she could never decipher his face. His presence was intimately familiar, yet his face were perpetually blurred by radiant light. Together in her sleep, they wandered through the world's most breathtaking and ancient sanctuaries... sometimes amidst the Pyramids of Egypt, sometimes wandering the ruins of Greece, and at times under the celestial dance of the Northern Lights.
The youth would explain the historical gravity and scientific marvels of each place to her. To Mayon, it felt as though she were sitting in the lecture of a masterful tutor. He touched the exact chords of her soul that vibrated for history and science. It was not a cheap allure, but a profound, intellectual affection that gilded those quiet nights. And then the end...
Their final dream unfolded beneath the boughs of a Japanese cherry blossom tree. Pink petals rained down softly, framing a tranquil pond. True to his nature, the youth was narrating the historical lore of the waters. Mid-sentence, he abruptly stopped. Turning to Mayon, his voice dropped to a soft, resonant whisper, uttering a confession of love...indirect, yet flawlessly tender.
Mayon stood utterly frozen. Her logical mind ceased to function; her heart leaped into her throat, trembling violently. For an equation such as this, she had no formula. Trembling, lost for words in the sudden storm of emotion, only a single syllable escaped her lips—"No."
The moment the word left her mouth, the cherry blossom garden withered into a pale ghost of itself. The serenity on the youth’s face shattered, and he broke into a weep of profound agony. The light died out, and a suffocating darkness collapsed upon them. Just before dissolving into the void, he cried out, a weeping plea, "Find me... Be mine, please..."
Mayon woke up with a violent start, her chest heaving like a blacksmith's bellows.
After that night, that man never returned to her dreams. Initially, the rational Mayon tried to dismiss it as a chemical anomaly of the brain. But as days bled into weeks, the void within her grew into a cavernous ache. A month passed, and Mayon confronted a shattering realization.... she missed him deeply. His absence burned. Whether she sat to study or worked in the laboratory, that ethereal voice echoed relentlessly in the corridors of her mind. She realized that in the quiet sanctuaries of her subconscious, she had fallen for her very first love... not a real human, but a phantom born of dreams.
Then came that rain-drenched afternoon.
As Mayon prepared to leave after her school classes, the skies broke into a torrential downpour. Reaching the campus gates, her gaze froze across the street. Standing in the middle of the heavy rain, completely unprotected by an umbrella, was a youth. He wore a black coat, trousers, and a tie....the exact attire from their final dream. He seemed to be waiting for someone with an aching restlessness.
Mayon's heart wrenched. Was this reality, or a trick of the mind? Yet, just like in her dreams, she could not see his face in the waking world either. The driving rain had completely patterned the lenses of her glasses with heavy drops of water.Still she can feel that he is crying..
In her breathless excitement and haste to wipe her glasses, they slipped from her trembling fingers. At that exact moment, a student sped out of the campus on a motorcycle. The tire rolled ruthlessly over her spectacles. A sickening crunch echoed, and Mayon’s glasses were shattered to pieces.
In a fraction of a second, Mayon’s entire world dissolved into absolute blurriness. Suffering from severe nearsightedness, the world without her lenses was nothing but amorphous shapes. Through that dense, hazy matrix of light and shadow, she saw the silhouette in the black coat walking away. Far away... moving further into the distance.
Mayon stared, paralyzed. Her tears mingled with the raindrops, tracing silent paths down her cheeks. At the absolute edge of her vision, where the road curved into oblivion, the silhouette paused. He turned around, raised a hand, and waved a gentle goodbye. And right after, amidst the foggy shroud of rain, he vanished into thin air.
Mayon stood there, a statue of bewilderment. Her analytical, studious mind was completely paralyzed. In a trance, her body soaked to the skin, she somehow boarded a bus. Dropping heavily into a window seat, she looked down at her shaking hands, and that was when a scrap of white paper caught her eye.
Lying in the sticky mud on the bus floor was a small note. Mayon leaned down, picked up the paper... She brought the torn piece of paper mere inches from her eyes, squinting through the absolute blur, until the bleeding blue ink finally formed words: "I still love you. But i can't reach you"
A sudden shiver of electricity raced through Mayon’s veins. Pressing her forehead against the cool glass of the window, she stared desperately outside. Through the blurry curtain of rain, her eyes locked onto the rear window of another bus moving in the adjacent lane. Everything was indistinct, everything was a haze yet Mayon saw him. The familiar silhouette was seated by the glass. Looking across the divide straight at Mayon beckoning her to follow.
The two buses veered into different directions. Mayon sat in silence, looking at
the hazy world through her sightless eyes, staring at the empty pages of her mind in search of a new equation. She did not know if this was reality or a beautifully woven illusion of her mind, but she knew one thing...she had to solve the greatest mystery of her life.
She had to find a way to reach him. Before he fade away again.
