The car leapt almost soundlessly over the road stretched in the valley of low hills. The asphalt was covered with magnolia flowers: the delicate fusion of white and pink specks splattered over the charcoal gray surface.
It was Sunday evening and they were returning from a country birthday party of a friend of Misaki's.
His large hands covering the wheel effortlessly maneuvered the vehicle, and his eyes - narrowed despite the disarming serenity of the landscape - glued onto the road in sharp focus.
They were not even passing through a folliage, he thought, but rather encountering sparse rows of the trees scattered along the freeway. Where did such an abundant heap of flowers come from then? - he wondered.
It was quite beautiful, he had to admit. Yet the the falling magnolias stirred a vague feeling of disgust in his gut. The petals - torn away from the branches by the breeze were, after all in the first stage of decay.
That's what they were, he thought, dying beautiful little things, dancing in the air. It was ironic how they took one's breath away as slowly life left them, only to end up rotting away on the ground like roadkill.
He glanced at her sitting beside him. She was half-heartedly playing with the radio switch, her unfocused eyes captivated by the scenery.
He smiled when she made a little face as she encountered a particularly rough patch. A loud unpleasant noise roared for a second or two, before she quickly resumed her search. She was trying to find a tune that matched the view.
It was a hot day and despite the airconditioning in the car a wet cur was clinging on her sweaty neck.
His eyes fell on her stomach.
The foetus growing inside her was in its first stage of life, he thought, and something in his throat tightened. The uncomfortable feeling spread through his neck, descending lower through his spine. His shoulders tensed up.
Get it together. Focus.
"A-ha !" She had finally settled on a tune she approved of, smiling delightedly. She leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes as the soft, smokey voice of a female singer filled the interior of the car.
"Nice." As he spoke he felt her contemplative eyes latching onto his profile, studying him silently.
He had been trying his best to ease up around her, knowing she was worried about him. He was grateful to her for giving him space and not trying to get to the core of his recent state. Sometimes, however, he could not help but wonder if she believed him to be stronger than he really was.
When she started singing along the tune, half-forgetting the lyrics and making up her own lines along the way, he hummed along. Their eyes met briefly and a semblance of a smile crinkled up the corners of his eyes.
Yet he knew that the farce barely eluded her. He had felt her observing him when she thought he was distracted. He could feel her growing sense of helplessness and fear. She was afraid of him, alienated by the drastic change his personality had undergone.
Of course she would be: even he felt estranged from himself.
Softly, his voice synched with hers, trying to keep up with her.
The song ended, followed by the quiet voice of a man announcing the next musical piece: Cesar Franck, Sonata for violin and piano in A major.
This time the couple stayed silent, neither of them able to identify the unfamiliar tune.
Now this one definitely matched the atmopshere, she thought grimly, as she submitted herself to the melancholy poetry of the tune.
She stole a glance in his direction. His eyes betrayed the saddness of which she had been seeing less and less in the week following the incident at his work.
During the weekend, at the birthday party he had jovially chatted with the guests, charming everybody the way he always did. He had danced with her and stood by her with his arm wrapped protectively around the small of her back.
She had heard some guests commenting on the unusual pallor of his face, but from the swoony and gyshy tones she knew it made his presence even sharper and more seductive, with a hint of unnamed danger. She had overheard a couple of girls giggling and wondering between each other if he was exhausted by his wife, because there was no way she could keep her hands off that foxy speciman of a man.
She had smiled benevolently, playing along the spectacle, but she felt that the distance between them growing. His attempt to disguise the darkness looming in him produced a facade that she was not familiar with.
As if sensing her troubled thoughts, a comforting touch of his palm on her thigh shook her out of her reverie. Her eyes darted at him in surprise. His expressionless gaze was still plastered on the road, but the warmth of his palm was brushing the skin several inches above her knee. She gazed at it in wonder as his fingers pressed slightly into the flesh, rubbing her soothingly.
It had been too damn long. His touch had a more powerful effect on her senses than usual, she thought as she bit the tip of her tongue. The pregnancy hormones had been driving her crazy, leaving her body sore and tender. A mere touch of his hand made her body feel like a bundle of bare wires, shocking and electrocuting her.
She could not help recalling graphic images of his fingers digging into her thigh like that, but in rather different circumstances: when she straddled him in the lotus position, their foggy exhales mingling together, his wiry arms crushing her body close, so their sweaty chests pressed together as he supported her movements.
A car sped past them when his hand inched up higher on her leg. Thankfully it was moving too fast for the driver to wittness the scene playing out in the car. Not that it mattered.
She took a sharp inhale and shut her eyes, not making an effort to hide her arousal any longer. His touch was simply too delicious. She was addicted to how he made her feel. Lately whenever she had touched herself, in her mind she would revive the day she told him she was going off the birthcontrol. The look he had given her, a mixture of disbelief and awe. Or rather what had followed next, on the thick carpet across the fireplace.
A loud honking noise startled her, causing her eyes to shoot open and his hand to quickly recoil from her thigh.
A large truck loaded with tree logs had caught up with them and was now flancking their car. She blushed when the driver honked again, his loud laughter audible from the open window.
Her discomfort, however, did not last long. The feeling of embarrassment and irritation was replaced by a flash of panic, when all of a sudden she saw a lorry on the opposite lane approaching them at an alarmig speed. It started honking repeatedly at the truck still occupying the lane.
The distance between the two large vehicles quickly kept decreasing and Misaki knew that if the truck driver did not empty the lane, a collision would be inevitable.