They met in the fourth grade, during the season that the cherry blossoms bloomed. I can recall in vivid detail the first time we ever saw her. We were walking home, the blistering sun paired with our heavy backpacks causing us severe discomfort. The dainty pink cherry blossom petals lay all around us, some scattered on the sidewalk and in the street, some floating through the air awaiting their collision with the unforgiving pavement. It was there we saw her. Her hair was windblown, petals randomly buried under her own locks. The two were so alike in color that it was almost hard to see the tiny flowers. Her white dress whipped around her, though she didn't seem to mind. Then she turned to us and smiled. He never stood a chance.
In all honesty I can't blame him for falling in love with her, different as they may have been. She turned out to be exactly what we all thought she would. Undeniably beautiful, smart, and the most kind person any of us had ever met. In contrast he was cold. He wasn't mean or rude or snobby, just cold. Indifferent, almost. Like nothing in the whole world mattered. Until he met her that is.
All through our schooling they were together. Whispering secrets into each other's ear. Secret that we, their peers, could not understand. They were the secrets of two people who were madly in love with each other. The secrets of a couple wiser then their age should have permitted them. The love they had for each other was something special, one that we didn't think could ever be duplicated.
The years that followed our high school graduation we the hardest for us, the people who knew them well. We thought they should have tied the knot. They were in love. They were old enough. They had the money. Why they chose to elude the event confused us greatly.
Needless to say, when he finally did propose to her, we were all ecstatic. We partied and toasted to them until it seemed like we would waste our whole lives celebrating their engagement. So caught us were we with our partying that we failed to notice the couple's withdrawal from us. They did not attend our parties, or even call us. After our profuse weeks of celebration we finally realize the curious behavior of our friends, and I was elected to spy of them in the hopes of getting to the bottom of the crisis.
So, one night when I was quiet sure that they were home, I pressed my ear tightly against the paper thin walls of the house we shared. I thought that surely the reason for their apparent depression would be reveled to me. And it was.
The first thing I heard was her desperate sobs. I had been her friend for over 11 years, and never, never, had I heard her cry like that. To be honest, it scared me.
"A baby," I heard her cry out, voice strained and choked. "Can I do that? Raise another human being?" I nearly passed out from the mere shock of the news. She was pregnant? It seemed unreal to me. Her, my innocent little sister, carrying his baby
"Hmm? What's so wrong about a baby?" His voice was smooth and settling. An undertone of encouragement surged through it. It amazed me how much his voice calmed her. Her cried softened considerably, though her fears remained untouched.
"It's a baby! As in a human! What if it hates me?" The panic was rising in her voice again. I can almost imagine. She's on her knees, face buried in her hands, with tears streaming down her face. She is scared. He drops to his knees and pulls her tightly against him. He plays the role of macho husband, who deeply cares for his wife almost to perfectly. Together they will sit like that until dawn breaks and a new day starts. The conversation continues.
"Sweetie, calm down. I want you to have it. Our child. I want you to have it." And I hear her sigh. She was undoubtedly frightened by the prospect of his react. Though she shouldn't have been. He would have stayed with her even if it had been another man's child.
"Can we afford it?" Another question that she hadn't wanted to ask.
"Don't worry," he murmured sweetly to her in a tone that overflowed with confidence, "we'll manage." And it was done.
She had gone into labor at the mall. No time was wasted in calling an ambulance and getting her to the hospital. The whole way there, I was later told, she smiled with a happiness that could not be extinguished. She was having their child.
He would be the last to arrive, of that we were certain. It was understandable. He worked downtown, and at the hour of day traffic would be heavy. She seemed a little disappointed, as any woman would have been. She wanted him to hold her hand and whisper sweet nothings into her ear. Wanted him to hold his new baby as soon as he could. But, as fate would have it, he never would.
The news came so suddenly it sent our head spinning. It rained down a shower of sadness upon us, so much so that we completely forgot the joy that had dominated us only moments before. After her bloodcurdling scream, the room was silent. Not even the new born baby boy in her arms dared to make a sound.
He was dead.
Rushing to the hospital to see is new baby, he had failed to notice the drunk driver on the road. It was coming straight for him. But the time he took notice of it, which was not until the very end they said, it was much to later to avoid a collision. Officials announced him dead at the moment of impact.
Her child, so very new to the world, was placed in the care of her very best friend so that she may have time to grieve. And grieve she did. She rarely left the sanctity of her room, and when she did so she seemed lost. Like a child stranded in a new world, a world in which nothing and no one made since but her.
On the rare occasions when she left the house, it was only to visit his grave. She was like a moving corpse. An empty body drawing empty breaths. We meant nothing. Her son meant nothing. Her whole entire life meant nothing. Not if he wasn't with her. Her eyes begged to join her beloved.
"5 centimeters per second; the rate the cherry blossoms fall."
It was the first thing she ever said to us, on that day when the petals were in her hair and her dress flowed around her.
And t was the first thing she said that made him fall in love with her.
And it was the only thing she would say now that he was gone.
And it when she said this on a day long after his death, that reality hit me harder then a tone of bricks.
The day he died, she died with him.
-Naruto Uzumaki
In memory of Sasuke and Sakura Uchiha