The speed of a falling cherry blossom is 5 centimeters per second.
Light can travel 299,792,458 meters per second.
They say that time is relative to speed.
The faster you go, the more time slows down.
If so, how amazing would it be to travel near the speed of light?
To perceive the universe in such brief instants,
To have enough time to understand eternity, love, and happiness
And if time and space are truly the same,
Then at such high speeds,
Wouldn't we conquer the uncaring distance?
The distance that separates love and hate,
The distance that separates dreams and goals.
The distance of stars and galaxies,
Cowering at such speeds.
Humans will always dream of light.
But they will always only be dreams.
Because Humans are really only cherry blossoms,
Forced at such a slow pace to fall,
Forced to view the world as it passes by us to quickly,
Never stopping for us to catch up.
Forced to watch as lovers go by and dreams fade to dust.
Forced to watch as gravity takes hold
Pulling the already distant stars farther away.
And the thing about cherry blossoms is,
They don't fall forever
Unlike light, that can stretch out to the vast expanse,
Going to infinity, and never looking back,
Beyond the Milky Way, the clusters,
Perhaps into other worlds of other possibilities,
The Cherry Blossoms, us,
Will fall at 5 Centimeters per second
Until they hit the ground.
Beep…
Beep…
Heartbeats beat at 72 beats per minute, each beat cycling blood through our veins and capillaries, providing oxygen and taking out Carbon Dioxide waste to perform respiration, for the energy necessary for life.
Life… That's right, each heartbeat provides life. The blood the courses inside us are the rivers of life, the signs that we are living and conscious.
If so then, Akari knew that the time was growing near.
Each heartbeat, each sound of life, was slowly growing fainter… and fainter…fainter.
Despite the wrinkles growing on her skin and the hair on her head now grayed, she was still as beautiful as she was so many years ago. But beauty is useless in the face of death.
She smiles still. It is interesting is it not, that the greatest of men waste away their lives trying to outrun death yet she, an insignificant human in the grand scheme of time can be content with her life.
She considers her life a good one. She got to experience love and heartbreak, births and deaths, happiness and depression.
She coughs once. Her son, who has been caressing her hand, looks worried for a small instant but stopped once he realized that his mother was fine. After some reassurances she reclined once again in her bed.
It was at that instant that the thoughts hit her like lightning.
They say that before you die you see your life flash before your eyes, perhaps this was it then. Memories, ones that she had forgotten so long ago, resurfacing like a phantom from the past that had long dissolved into darkness, visiting her one last time.
Two kids watching the cherry blossoms together…
A passionate kiss under a snowy sky…
A letter unsent…
A chance meeting at that train station after all those years…
She didn't understand why but she thought of him at that moment, he who watched the cherry blossoms with her all those years ago, who after that fateful day at the train station, she never saw again.
But there is one thing that no one ever told her. When a person dies, it's not just their lives that flash before them.
In that one instant she saw and understood things only a person on their deathbed could understand.
I think you'll be fine no matter what happens from now on…
I'm sure of it!
Those words, they came true didn't they.
He really did… move on and…turn out alright.
In a voice so soft that even her son couldn't hear, she said one last time "Takaki…kun"
As if on cue, she erupted into a violent coughing fit. Her son tried to soothe her but he knew that this was finally it.
And that was okay.
Akari Sinohara died at around noon. Spring was almost over and the cherry blossoms were about to go out the very next week. Outside the window of her hospital room, pink petals fell like snow.
Far away, in another hospital bed an old man awakes from sleep. His breaths are ragged with age and his body frail. It was hard to tell that at one point in this man's life, he dreamed of going to the stars. He didn't dream of that anymore.
Stars were beautiful but cherry blossoms were just as lovely.
He looked out the see the brightly colored fury outside his window. His body hurt all over but he still had enough strength to look at the falling beauties one last time.
His daughter sat at the opposite side of the room. Her face was soaked with tears and eyes beat red. Through her sobs though, she somehow managed a smile on her face. Her father had always loved the cherry blossoms. How fitting they should be his last sight.
He continued staring beyond the glass for some time before he jerked his head back in his daughter's direction. However he wasn't looking at her, rather his focus rested on something far beyond her, deep into a direction that has no name.
She didn't know it but at that moment he saw something he couldn't have possibly seen. A message in that unknown direction or perhaps etched on the falling cherry blossoms.
With a final breath he said one word: "Akari"
Her daughter should have been surprised. On his deathbed he mentions a name of a person he had not met for so long. She knew of course, her father had told her the story of his first love and subsequent moving on first when she was young and many times after.
But why say that name now?
But her cries for her passing father soon drowned out her confusion. The color had left his face permanently, his eyes just milky white pearls. Wordlessly, she put her fingers on her father's eyelids and closed them.
Takaki Tono died at around two hours after noon on the same day that Akari Sinohara died in another hospital in a different part of Tokyo. The cherry blossoms fell well into the afternoon and didn't stop until a week later when both were buried.
This concludes a story about two cherry blossoms, so insignificant to the world yet glorious nonetheless. They came from the same tree, the same branch, and started falling at the same time. Although they were so close to begin with, the winds of fate only blew then farther away. However, both continued falling at the same pace eventually hitting the ground together.
So I was re-watching the last episode of the mini series 'John Adams' when I suddenly had the strange idea to write the ending in the context of 5cm per second only with Akari and Takaki replacing Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
P.S: Regarding spouses, I had the idea in mind that they had died before this story. As to the identity of Takaki's wife, I'll leave that for you to decide dear viewers.