hi t h e r e
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When he first met her, he must've thought she was eight, max. When he first met her, her back was to him, and she sat on the floor fiddling with some dirt. He raised an eyebrow. She was making a mess.
"Excuse me, little girl, but could you please play somewhere else?" he tapped slightly on her shoulder, extending a hand for help. He bowed and smiled politely. "My name is Gil. I run this town with my father, the mayor."
She scoffed and swatted his hand away. Her two pink pigtails swayed as she kept poking the dirt. There were flowers on them, spread throughout. Gil paused and took a closer look at the flowers. They were Toy Flowers, and the mountain-side was scattered with them because they were in season. Her dress was a different matter. It was short and pink— cute, he might have said— with flowers adorning that too. She was a Lolita.
He decided she was far too young to be able to speak and understand proper English. He placed the small stack of papers he was holding in one hand, and reached out for hers. He did it slowly and cautiously, not wanting to scare what he thought was a five year old girl away.
"Listen scumbag, ignoring you kinda means get the hell away from me!" she yelled, and she stood up and turned to Gil. A flower fell on her scowling face, and she blew it away.
"Wh-what?!" Gil stuttered, but his face flustered and he could only make incoherent sounds.
"Don't play dumb, you sicko! If there were any cops in this stupid town, I would have called them already!"
"…" Gil stood motionless at the midst of the whole lecture. He didn't know what to say. He didn't think a five year old could know all this… "colorful vocabulary".
She huffed and swirled around to the patch of dirt, and bent down to tend to it.
"How… how old are you…?" Gil muttered under his breath. To his surprise, the girl didn't kill him, nor did she turn around.
"I'm fifteen, sicko."
"R-really?!"
She sighed and stopped swirling around the dirt. "Mm-hmm. Don't believe it, I don't care."
Gil became deeply interested what a girl of fifteen could want in a dirt patch, so he swayed his head left to right to get a better view.
He noticed the girls' stare, and immediately stopped, suddenly pretending to be shuffling in his stack of papers. He looked back down on her, and their eyes met for the first time. They stayed like that for a while, until the girl stood and stepped back.
It was Gil's turn to sigh. Yeah, the dirt was a mess.
The girl paced around Gil, seemingly looking for something. Her eyes scanned the immediate area, one hand over her eyelids, the other waving frantically at her side.
"I-I lost them!" she belted, and raced around the dirt patch.
"Lost what?"
"Seeds! I know I had them with me!"
"Oh, so that's what you were doing!"
"Don't stand there and critique, bozo! It's a tiny pink bag. Really tiny. I … I had them with me!"
Suddenly, she lurched forward, in a fit of hysteria, and something flew out of her pocket. A lot of "somethings". Gil jumped back, and watched as the girl stood dumbfounded at the bigger mess she had made.
"Well there they are," he said jokingly, and quietly laughed to himself as he bent down to pick a sole seed up.
She bent down too, and began stuffing the seeds in her bag, which thanks to her mixed panic, began to miss completely as she hung her head in shame.
Gil laughed again at her childish antics and grabbed her tiny hand. He took the seed he was holding in his other hand and plopped it onto the dirt, covering it up with his hand. She nodded slowly and brought over her small watering can, and spread a good amount of water over the seedling.
Gil turned to look at her while she was watering. Her face lit up, and her smile was too wide for her face. The smiles were contagious. There was already one on his face too.
"T-thanks!" she whispered as Gil started to place the other seeds in their bag. He nodded slowly, ushering them in singlehandedly.
"I'm not such a creep after all, am I?"
She shook her head, swaying. "Nope. You're a sicko."
Gil irked and laughed nervously, scratching his head. "Ah. Do I really deserve that?"
"Maybe. Oh yeah! My names' Roomi! See ya around, sicko!" With that last parting word, she waved and clocked around speeding down the path, pink pigtails flying around her.
He waved, and ultimately sighed.
He turned to the dirt patch, where the flower had just been planted and cocked his head. Someday soon, they'd meet again. Someday soon, she would drop the 'sicko' nickname and call him Gil. Someday soon he would see her holding his blue feather in her hands—
But for now, he was content with a simple wave.