The cigarette between her dainty fingers had burned all the way down to the butt, and yet her shivering hand didn't seem to feel the heat steadily making its way through the remains of the plasticky filter. Rain pelted against the back of her muddy green jacket, dripping onto her cheeks from the top of the semi-waterproof hood that was pulled over her pastel pink hair.
Sakura often wandered the streets in the early hours of the morning. Half drunk and mostly stoned, she would walk around until dawn crept over the city. Sometimes she had people to talk to, sometimes not. It never really mattered to her. Whether she was by herself or not, she rarely noticed.
Some time after she had finally dropped the last of her burnt out cigarette, the girl found herself sparking up another as she passed a darkened alleyway. However, she was having much more trouble lighting this one than she had before. She knew the packet of Marlboros in her pocket would have gotten wet eventually, but she hadn't noticed that the downpour had been so heavy that the packet had become totally sodden. She sighed cold air and threw the tobacco stick into a puddle, marching onwards in a pair of battered and worn Doc Marten boots.
Through the darkness and without the light pollution, Sakura thought she might have been able to see stars - until she remembered the storm clouds above her head. What she saw were raindrops falling from the sky and getting caught - just for a moment - in the orange glow of the streetlights.
…
The morning after had the girl with the pink hair rolling out of bed and vomiting bile into the porcelain toilet bowl inside her tiny apartment and proceeding to chug a large bottle of diet Coke until she felt awake and - forcefully - less queasy.
Pale hair a mess, she scraped it back off of her forehead and settled down onto a soft black sofa, reaching blindly for a television remote and watching someone tell the world about the damaging effects of the storm that had occurred last night. Someone had been hit by a lightning bolt.
Sakura wished it had been her.