Flawless
I kneeled by the old maple tree, looking through the hedge. The untrimmed grass by it cut off almost all of my view through it, so I pushed my index and middle finger through the metal hoops to push some of it to the side. Somehow I was curious, of what was on the other side of the steel barrier, I had never gotten out of this enclosed area (in the radius of a kilometer or so), except when my mother came and took me home for the day. My house is pretty far from my kindergarten, so mother always takes me by car. Seeing nothing but more tall grass and a few tiny flowers, I pulled my hand out of the fence and turned back around, feeling a bit disappointed. I mean, come on; what was I expecting - a land of candy and sweets? Yeah, the mind of a five-year-old, it's beautiful.
I averted my eyes to the maple, eyeing the place where I accidentally ripped its bark off while climbing up on the lowest branch. It looked like it was bleeding. It still looked like it even though it happened a few days ago. Stepping forward, I extended my hand and reached out to the bare tree, just to get my palm smeared with sap. I wonder did anyone see me; I just flung the bark over the hedge, pretending like nothing happened. In fact, I was quite scared. ''Oh no! The tree is going to die because of me,'' I thought in that moment. But now I don't think anything. I don't say anything either. A few drops of sap roll down the bare tree. I wipe my hand on the bark on the side and look up. The tree looks like a big house from the inside. The leaves are the walls and the branches are the floors. But is quite hard getting up the ''stairs'' of the green house. From the outside, it doesn't look like anything special. You'd say, ''it's just a tree''. Sometimes it's hard to realize the magic happens inside. A few green leaves slowly and gracefully fall down, landing at my feet. A sparrow lands on a dry and dead branch, making it crack and fall. It quickly hopped up and landed at another, thicker one. The branch sways a bit, but eventually stops moving. The bird looks down with twich-like movements, at me, and blinks, moving its head a little bit. I stare back, into its beady, black eyes, not moving, not blinking. The bird stared back for a few moments, but then, took off. I could barely see its little wings make way through the leaves, it was just gone. Like that. I shook my head and wiped my hand again, this time on my white shorts.
''Sasuke!'' a voice disturbed my thoughts, and made me turn around, facing the pre-school's playground. My eyes overlooked the small area, looking for the voice's owner. Everybody was busy with something else, hence I didn't see anybody even looking at me. The rest of the pre-schoolers were either playing on the metal rocket or the hoops, in the sandbox or under the medium-sized rowan trees and the white willow.
I was about to turn back around to the maple, when someone with ginger hair suddenly jumped in front of my face. The action of the stranger made me lose my balance and stumble back, but unfortunately, a root was standing in the wrong place and tripped me. I hit the ground with an rather unmanly squeak, making the intruder who was now standing in the place where I was before, flinch and chuckle. Another mop of ginger hair came out of the shadow of the old maple tree and hit their other half on the middle of the head. The boy held his head and cried out in hurt, eyes shining with a few small teardrops. He sniffed and fell down on his knees, giving me a look at the other ginger-haired child. The girl had a frown on her face, her eyes were giving away a bit of disappointment. Her green orbs turned to me and she stepped in front of the boy to help me up.
''Are you okay, Sasuke?'' she asked, reaching out a hand to me, her frown turning more upside down the lower her hand went. Her palm was soon right in front of my face. I took her hand and she pulled me up with humongous strength I hadn't known a girl could have. I regained my footing quickly and dusted myself off while watching the girl scold her brother. She had helped him up and dusted him off, wiped his tears away and told him that scaring people wasn't nice. The boy nodded and smiled, and then, turned to me. He sniffled and looked away in embarrassment, blushing a little bit. I couldn't help but notice how big and green his eyes were. He hooked his hands together behind his back and looked down, where he was kicking the ground mildly.
''I'm s-sorry... I d-didn't want to scare y-you like that...'' He said shyly, with a light stutter, and then quickly ran behind his sister, who was now smiling brightly at him. He looked at me from behind his sister, expectantly, so I had no choice but to smile at him a little.
''Apology accepted,'' I said, smirking at how his cheeks got even more red. The girl sighed and looked back at her brother. ''See? It's alright.'' Then, she tuned to me and held out her hand one more time.
''We haven't formally met, haven't we? I'm Emy, and this here,'' I took her hand and shook it, ''is Miki. He's my twin brother.'' She grabbed Miki's hand and made him shake hands with me, too. His face was completely red by now, but he didn't try to hide it anymore. I spotted dirt on his knees and on his white socks and sneakers. ''My name's Sasuke,'' I said, looking at them. The twins were completely identical, the only difference was their hair length. I was a bit amazed at the girl's advanced use in English. It was pretty impressive for a 5-year-old.
''I-it's nice to meet you,'' Miki said, linking his hand together with Emy's. I nodded and Emy smiled. ''We're gonna go now,'' she said and turned around to go. Miki waved with his free hand and stumbled back behind his sister. I turned back to the maple and smiled, ''it was nice to meet you too,'' I said, quietly, and sighed. I held up my right hand and examined the palm. There was a bit of dirt on it. But I didn't mind it. I simply smiled at the little bit of attention and affection I had gotten. I then looked at the hedge I was standing close to. I sighed again and slowly sat down in the soft, green grass under the huge tree and ran my fingers through it, falling back in my thoughts.
...The tree was hurt, wasn't it? Is it going to die? ...It's doing really good, if I have to say so myself. I would have thought it would have died by now. But it wasn't small, oh no. It was bigger than a medium-sized hill. I think. If I am correct, it's Miki and Emy's mom who's currently running the kindergarten. I should ask her how old the maple is. And the hedge, too. It's really rusty, maybe it was black or silver when it was new. I averted my eyes to the hedge, following the hoops from the top to the bottom. I slowly shifted my weight on my thighs and crawled a little forward, towards the closest hedge. ...A few more steps...
And I stop, refraining from putting my hand on a little butterfly. It was small, about as big as two of my fingers together. It's wings were yellow, with a red dot on the inside and blue on top of the red. It closed it's wings and opened them again, probably warming them in the sun. I got down like a dog who wants to play and lowered my face closer to the butterfly. It suddenly flew up and around a bit, and landed on my nose, so I crossed my eyes to see it better. The butterfly looked like it was looking at me. I blinked. The butterfly flexed its wings again, and I blinked again. It shrugged and flew away, to the old maple tree, I followed it with my eyes. It hit a leaf and fell down in the grass. I flinched. Ah, well. Then, I proceeded crawling towards the rusty hedge. I stop right in front of it, after a few more moments of crawling. Picking my hand up, I slide my fingers over the rusty metal, wondering, what color it was before it had rusted. Not seeing any visible spots through the rust, I try to scrape some off with my nails. The underside gore a bit orange, but no results on the color. I sighed and stood up with the help of the hedge.
Looking over the playground again, I notice that some of the kids are gone. Probably gone home for the day. I look up at the hill on the other side of the kindergarten's outside area, at the pre-school's building. It looked kind of like a huge yellow box on top of the hill. With bushes and shrubs. Up from the playgrounds to the building led long concrete stairs. I saw a girl with her father going up them, and I looked higher up. I saw my own mother and brother, so I slowly proceeded to the playground. Tsunade, my teacher looked at me and smiled. Next to her, on the bench were the Furiiku twins hand in hand. Miki was fast asleep with his head on his sister's lap, holding her left hand. Emy seemed to see me looking at them and waved with her free hand. I sighed another time and turned to the stairway, walking towards my mom and Itachi. I walked past the willow and the metal rocket, still looking at the twins. They seemed kind of like under-aged lovers, not siblings, but who am I to judge?
''Ah, Sasuke! Before you go, I wanted to tell you; tomorrow, we're expecting a group of kids from another kindergarten. We will be combining the class for 2 to 3 weeks,'' Tsunade said, before hurrying off to part two kids who were fighting. I sighed. More brats who were going to ignore me? Sure, let the game begin, I thought before Itachi messed up my hair and mother took me by the hand. We set off to mother's black Mercedes.
