Eighty
One of the wounds in her thigh ached as she moved slowly down the path. Inside her ever energetic partner, Inner Sakura, snorted at the pathetic speed at which they moved. She swung her pink head around, the words on her forehead glimmering as she walked off into the dark.
It was amazing how fast time seemed to go by. Was she eight already? She felt as though she had walked a journey of one thousand miles. But wasn't life supposed to be like this? Wasn't it?
One trembling hand reached down and gently caressed the bud of a rose. It was still early spring, yet this valiant little flower tried to pry itself open to be caressed by the sun. Maybe some day it would do so, and reach farther and higher than the other roses, blooming like a rich red sun. But what if it failed? What if it was beaten by the cold and torn down by the wind? What would happen then?
Life would go on.
And that was what would happen with her, and what had happened to the rest of them. Life had gone on, even though they had finally been beaten. People were smarter than that. They knew that things would never get better if you stopped time right there, reliving that moment again and again. That was what she had realized. They would laugh at her, if they knew that she mourned them. She did, but she did not let it get the best of her.
Strike a pose.
And she had. Just like the little rose head that she stroked with her aging hands, she too had made her place. She had helped people, though maybe not here, and had made sure that someone would think of her, even if just once.
"I did it, Ino," the old woman sighed as she stood, eyes still on the flower slowly uncurling its petals. "I did it."