Faded Stars

“Kohei?”

A beautiful girl stood before him. She waves.

Afternoon sun beamed through the plain glass windows, casting a halo of light around her silhouette.

A banner at the doorway:

2014年度 北海道大学 卒業生の皆さん、おめでとうございます
(Congratulations to the 2014 Hokkaido University Graduates)

“Watcha reading?” she asked, skipping over to him.

“The Trial,” he replied.

“Sounds boring.”

“Well, in a way, it is.”

“Why not join us at the ceremony?”

“I think I’m okay,” he said. “I find it all anticlimactic anyway…”

He shut the book partway and rested it in his lap. “…four years of anxiety attacks… and all you get is a lousy pat on the back and a piece of paper.”

“So you’re just gonna sit here with your face in books all day?”

“Probably.”

A moment of silence. Then she took his hand.

“C’mon, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Same as always.”

He followed.

Outside, the golden beams hung lower over the mound-swept landscape. Wildflowers bobbed in patches, dotting the field with white and yellow polka-dots atop an infinite backdrop of green.

They lay beside each other, gazing up at an endless blue. Strands of the girl's blonde hair kissed the boy's face with every early-spring breeze that came. Her hands were tucked behind her head. He mimicked her.

“I kept thinking about that scene,” she said, eyes not leaving blue. “When Stevens sits at the pier and has a conversation with the stranger, it’s like all of his mistakes come to a realization at that moment… but, by then, all he can do is quietly try to convince himself it wasn’t all for nothing.”

He listened.

“He doesn’t cry or fall apart, he just… accepts it,” she continued. “But what he didn’t say, what he should’ve said… it’ll forever haunt him. That, he'll never truly let go.”

“Perhaps, he should let go,” he replied.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe remembering is better, even if it’s painful.”

A quiet followed. A breeze swept.

“You ever feel like you’ve reached the top and it just wasn’t all that satisfying?” she asked.

He glanced over at her. “What do you mean?”

“This,” she answered. “Like you said… It feels so, I don’t know, anticlimactic?”

“Many things often are,” he replied.

"I guess," she whispered, more to herself than anything. “Time’s just moving so fast,”

The orange in the sky stirred into a blood red, and the endless blue transformed into a bruised purple. They lay silently, watching fading stars. Just Kohei and the art student.