Part 17: Deep Memories

What Cherry said made me realize I could trust her. She wasn’t trying to mess with me. She was tired of being disowned too. No wonder she rarely talked to anyone. Everyone she met must have tried to control the way she was viewed. I felt her pain in so many ways. I couldn’t help being born like this. The only thing I can do is make the best of what it is I am. To me anyway, that is what mattered most.

With what she had just said, I sprung up from my seat and hugged her with heavy silent tears falling from my eyes. I couldn’t stop it anymore. I needed to let it go. I already held it in long enough. Never did I expect for this to be what broke me. Regardless of that, it did. As I gripped onto her body, she whispered closely into my ear.

“Haniki-chan. Your brown eyes are cute.”

I began to fall helplessly in love with her gentle smile. It was more comforting than even Princess Candiere’s. She was like a cold puffy marshmallow pillow wrapping around me.

“I want to stay here with you.”

Those were the words I said as I started to stare into her eyes. They consisted of this green color richer than the sparkling insides of a juicy kiwi fruit.

After ten minutes of sitting in a chair next to Cherry while leaning on her shoulder, we returned back to the focus of the conversation which was the mystery fruit.

“Alright. These are called stella cherries. It is not a fruit that is known in this world. Where I used to live though, they are very common. The UVOCA agency had certain laboratories that turned these into some sort of super stella cherry. Whenever you eat one of these, you obtain the ability to travel across towards a selected reality. I saved two of these and ate the other three, hoping to find Star again and…”

She stopped into that thought with regret. Like she was blaming herself for what happened to this Star girl. That’s what I got out of it anyways.

“Who is Star?” I asked with curious incentives to further get a clearer idea of what she was talking about.

“She was my first real friend. I met her when I was practicing a piano solo in the planetarium’s auditorium. I think they once had actual customers come in to listen to performed songs in that place. The thing is, this facility became mysteriously abandoned. From what I know, it led to UVOCA creating a base inside the place to figure out what the problem with it was.”

“What was the problem?”

Cherry began to take another thing out of her backpack. It was the aforementioned book from Candiere’s Cafe.

Tales Of The Time Keeper.