Somewhere in Time
I'm happy that people are still interested. When I started to write this story at the end of January I was in the worst place imaginable. In the last five months things have brightened up. A lot of amazing things happened that I didn't think would happen so quickly. I know you won't see this: I love you very much in a way I've not felt before. You made my personal life shine and because of that I can't seem to write. :)
08
Syaoran sat in silence in a rather small room with a modest dining room set. In front of him sat a bowl with a small portion of rice, a larger bowl with some sort of broth-based soup in it and a cup of steaming tea. For the past week he had struggled with himself to eat. None of his favorite foods enticed him enough to finish his meals. He had settled for a lighter course of food for this evening and still he struggled picking up his chopsticks to feed himself a few grains of rice.
Was there really much of a point to eating anymore? The rice smelled decent enough. The soup had more broth than vegetables. In the liquid two eggs floated to the top with a piece of spinach below. When looking from his angle it almost looked like the soup was smiling at him. He frowned at it and used his chopstick to swirl the contents around. No. No smiling allowed.
The rain had not stopped at all today. It was about noon and the sun had yet to come out of hiding. Instead a mass of dark gray clouds had ascended over the sun and seemed to have permanently perched themselves in front of the bright rays. The full-length window that looked out across the bustling city let very little light into the apartment and tinged everything a drab, lifeless grayish color. That was perfectly fine with Syaoran. It matched his mood. It matched his soul.
He brought the small bowl to his lips and tipped it upward to pour the warm contents into his mouth. There was no taste to it. Supposedly it was chicken broth but none of his taste buds picked up on that or any flavor in the egg or any other vegetables hiding in the broth. Syaoran's eyebrows furrowed and he pulled the bowl away from his lips in disgust.
"I hate myself." The tone of disgust echoed against the walls. It was so sparsely decorated that the sound was amplified. It tormented him. It was nature's way of rubbing it all in, pouring the salt into his festering wounds. He was unhappy, she was unhappy. Everyone was silently unhappy and continuing a charade of nonsense that finally came crashing down in the worst possible way. Regrets...
Syaoran pushed the stupid bowl away and got up from the table and moved slowly into the only bedroom the apartment contained. The four walls in the room were the same gray color as the rest of the apartment, blanketed in the depressing color by the storm outside. His bed was tiny, only big enough for himself. There would be no one to keep him company anymore. There would be no ray of sunshine to wake up to. Here he would be trapped in his own prison. There might as well have been bars on the windows too.
He crawled into his unmade bed and pulled all the blankets up over himself and closed his eyes. Each and every day was the same now. Monday was the same as Tuesday and then suddenly it was Wednesday; the weekend had no meaning as it was exactly the same as the other days. There were no Sunday night blues. Indeed, there were no things to even remind him of the date. There were no clocks and no phones. A television sat in the living room, but it had accumulated a considerable amount of dust over the past few weeks because of it falling into disuse.
In bed, Syaoran turned onto his back and looked at the ceiling. Nothing. Nothing to see up there, still. After all the searching he did on this tiny piece of ceiling above his bed, he still found nothing; he still found no answers to his questions.
What was going on in his heart? What in the world had made him lose it all?
Those questions were tough and he would spend half his days trying to make sense of it all and the other half trying to drive all those thoughts clear away. He found himself in this vicious cycle unable to escape. Not even the allure of Hong Kong's vast open air markets and vibrant energy could snap this. He grabbed a fistful of of the gray blanket and pulled the material up to his face and rubbed his eyes with it. The motions irritated his eyes further and red pigment flushed into the whites of his eyes. A few tears had accumulated In the far corners of his eyes; the gray blanket absorbed them into it's fibers. It would hold his secrets and be the one to offer the comfort her needed as he began his soul searching for the afternoon.