Life is a Cherry Blossom Tree.( Chapter 6.5)

A Dreamer's tale 2.


"Do you want to go on a real date next time?" She asked.
"I promise I won't run away this time," I said as we started laughing.
We kissed again.

Her lips felt so divine, so warm. Warmer than the cosiest blanket I could wrap myself  in.
As we exchanged the flow of love, my body started to melt away. The blood oozing inside my veins were no less than the boiling steam.

I held her tight around the waist. Clinging on to her like that passing butterfly on a windy evening who would try its everything to stick on to the branch
At that instant, she was my branch, and I was her butterfly. But no wonder wind was pulling her away from me, I didn’t need such external forces to cling onto her. The avalanche of emotions running wild inside me was enough.

We didn’t stop. At the moment of the night, when the world died, we lived. I lived, for the first time.
As I embraced her tightly into my soul, my body asked for hers. I wanted her, I wanted her to be a part of me. I wanted us to intertwine and we did. Her blood, I could taste it on my lips. They tasted of my redemption. A process of purification, cleansing my self with the passing of her life into mine. I might have collapsed if we were not so tightly wrapped into each other.

Her lips, that lively blood that continued to ooze and into my mouth were the honey to the restless bees inside my stomach. And so I bit her lips harder.
She didn’t stop me. And I, lost in the whirlwind of the emotions that my heart still carried around couldn’t care less.


“On second thought,” She said after we finally resumed the flowing of time around us.
“Would it be okay we go on that real date now?” She asked. Those shining eyes.
Now when I looked at them up so closely, I realized that they were just like mine.
Were identical eyes even a thing? I wondered.

“What are you staring at? I know I have the prettiest of eyes but still.” Said Kumi, rolling her heavenly vision away from me as the sweetest of a smile graced her lips.

“Twin eyes, we got twin eyes,” I whispered, pulling away from my hands from her.
“Do we now?” She asked as her thoughts took her mind someplace far away.
I wondered what she was thinking.
Her tiny brows frowned. They didn’t leave much space between themselves as if they were one.
I wanted us to be as close as her eyebrows.  The lines on her forehead dissolved and appeared every now and then, in a rhythm similar to our heartbeat.
These little things reminded me of how much she was alive, how much she was real. As if my mind still to some extent thought that we were in a dream.
Who would want such a dream to end?


She was imperfectly so perfect, this world couldn’t have asked for anything else.

 “Let me check.” She said, finally broking the silence while touching my eyelashes.
My eyes closed itself, being touched so gently wasn’t really something I was used to.
“It’s true. They were right all along” She said with the widest of the grin.
They? I wondered whom she was referring to.
Her touch made my heart race like a skateboard down the hill. Unlike that road, this one didn’t come to an end.

“So umm where should we go? It’s already past 10.” I asked, looking up at those glistening eyes, somehow I wasn’t afraid of them like any others.

She answered me by turning around and walking.
Confused, I started walking as well with a sense of excitement and disparity. Both hitting me from both ends of the world. She walked faster than normal. Balancing her feet so confidently on those narrow railings of the bridge as if death didn’t scare her. I wished I could walk into her shoes.


“There’s a mountain right behind Hakuo.” She spoke as we continued to walk into the coldness of the night.
I following her shadow.
“The moon looks the prettiest from there.”

I didn’t utter a single word. We just walked. The silent around us our only company.
Taking a right from the Hakuo’s front gate we continued straight, then took a left after reaching the edge of the campus boundary and continued uphill.
The mountain was completely hidden behind our school’s 11 floored building and god knows anybody even knew it existed. As she walked silently in front of me, her high knot pony swinging to and fro into the moonlight I couldn’t help but wonder.
First the tree-house and now this mountain, I had no idea how many other hideouts she had in entire Japan. The most important question that kept lingering was why she was taking me there.
These places contained a part of her soul, by taking me there she was letting me in, letting me into her world. The world unknown to the others.

As I continued thinking about her and my own uncharted feelings that I had been carrying inside for quite some time she suddenly came to halt and looked at me.
I smiled at her pretty face which glistened even in this obnoxious darkness that surrounded us, It’s like if the moonlight didn’t guide us, her face would.
. Without uttering a word she came and held my hands, and we started walking together.
No more was I following her shadow, our shadows became one.


It took us about 30 minutes to reach the summit of that little hill. All around us were tiny mushrooms growing in an uneven pattern, they danced under the magic of this enchanting moonlight without any hesitation or a sense of discomfort, a reflection of complete freedom. I wondered whether she came here when she needed to feel the same.

“Do you believe in fate Rin?” She asked earnestly. Her gaze straight into mine. Strangely enough, they travelled right inside me, exactly into the part of my wounded heart which made it skip a beat.
I was at loss of words. All I could do was stare right into her eyes. Those close set fountain of chocolates were so similar to mine. Why and how was this possible I hadn’t the faintest of the idea.
“Right now, at this moment Kumi, all I believe in is you,” I said.
She blushed, her twinkling eyes clearly indicating how she felt.

“Ayano and Kyou, they told me one day I’ll meet someone with eyes similar to mine.” She said as the gentle breeze played with our hair.
“They told me I would fall hopelessly in love with that person and would do anything and everything to protect them.” she continued as I listened, taking in her every word.

My insides had frozen, my mind was blank like an empty bottle. The words she spoke passed from my mind and into my heart, right where they belonged.
As my sleeping soul awakened, I was astonished at the amount of tears it brought in my eyes. Tears I thought were dried up, lost forever in this crazy world I lived in. No, they were still there, waiting to be reawakened, waiting to be re-loved, re-cared, re-nourished.

“I look at you Rin, I see such sadness, the sadness I want to drag you out of. I want you to show how beautiful this world is. I want to hold your hands, I want to take away you away to a magical place where you would find out what being alive actually means. I want you to breathe, I want you to laugh, I want to hold you in my arms, I want to heal you, I want to heal your beautiful soul and set it free so that it can find its place in this world. And together I want us to journey, a journey to the place where wishes come true. We can only do this if we are together.”

I looked at her face the entire time she spoke, that concern in her eyes she carried, the love that preceded it made me confuse. Why me, I didn’t deserve all this. Her smile looked so welcoming, she was an angel who wanted to save me, carry me away with her to a beautiful world far far away, the one I had dreamt of for so long. She was the one I had been waiting for all long, every path, every obstacle I faced, every time I died, it was for this moment so that she can revive me, revive the damaged Rin Kobayashi once again so that he can finally live.

As the fountain of tears fell down my cheeks after what seems like an eternity, my heart relaxed for the first time in years. She came and hugged me tightly. Her arms around my neck grazed my hair, I cried onto her shoulder. Letting out everything that I had been carrying on for so long. So long that my mind couldn’t comprehend the passage of time that had flown.
The moonlight shone brightly upon us, our heads. The wind stopped and admired us for what seems like forever.

“Rin?”
”Kumi?”
“Will you go out with me?”
Smiling and crying, I said something I never expected I would. But that’s how life is. It pulls you back right in when you’re about to give in. When the intensity of the darkness is the brightest, that is when the sun starts to rise.

“It’s the real world, everything is alive, she’s here. She asked you a question, answer it honestly.” my mind told me.
“Only if you be my compass and I be your north,” I said as we chuckled.

That night, we spent holding hands and looking at the moon as it hid away behind the clouds as the morning rays approached us with open arms.
And just like we promised each other , we embraced it with our heart and soul.

The Lost pages from The Lucid Dreams-1


She was sleeping right in front of me, her sweet soft breathe whispering to my left palm.
Her forehead didn’t reflect the slightest amount of responsibilities and the burden she carried around with her all day. The Starry Kumi Ishikawa they called her. My Kumi Ishikawa.

We were in her tree house,  her own little world which she found me worthy enough to share with.
It was New Year’s Eve. We had decided to welcome the first light together, our first and last new year together before we went to our respective universities.
It was snowing outside, The cold air outside wasn’t enough to freeze my heartbeat but the thought of her moving away from me did.

Her breathing, which when looked from outside would look like any other soul breathing in oxygen for life but for me, that little action defined my whole life, my whole world. She was that precious to me.

I continued to stare at her absentmindedly when suddenly she clutched my little finger closest to her hand tightly. I thought she was dreaming.
A scary dream perhaps? She has had such encounters in the past.
Blushing I kissed that warm palm of her and to my surprise, a mischievous smile graced her sparkling teeth.

“Hey what happened to sleeping hmm?” I asked, my beady brown eyes asking her shiny close set ones in the most earnest way possible. Did I ever tell that we had twin eyes?
She chuckled, her voice being a fuel to my downtrodden thoughts.

“Oh, I was just pretending to see whether you check out  only my hands when I’m asleep or more.” She said, grinning her widest of the grin.
“But you were not making a move and I was getting bored you know, just lying there.” She continued, rolling her eyes leftward, a gesture she only used when she blushed.
“Oh, so that’s the way the wind blows hmm? I might have been analyzing you from afar through my eagle vision. You never know.” I winked as a pillow hit me on my head in reflex.

The wind picked up outside, it was as if they were excited for the new year to come. The trees and the little animals who lived nearby were probably dancing and celebrating in their own way I wondered.I could hear foxes howling every now and then as if they were all gathering up for a midnight treat. The New year provided everyone with a reset button right? A reason to celebrate? I didn’t want to reset anything. Every moment with her I spent was a celebration on its own.

“You reading dark stuff again? How many times I told you not to?” She said in a firm voice after seeing the book I was holding in my right hand. She came out of the rosy blanket and sat straight over it, her face inches away from mine, the face she only made it when it was time for Intervention.

I thought for a moment before answering.
“ I read dark stuff to make myself realize the importance of my life. To make myself grateful for what I have and how it's much much better than the characters suffering in those fictions. This gives me a little hope when I’m down.” I said, looking downwards.

At times it was hard to gaze straight into her deep dark eyes. If you looked closely you would notice how every little vein in there was clinging tightly to each other, making it one big unit, an indestructible force, ready to face any and every obstacle life threw at her. Every time I looked at her, this thought would flash up in my mind, making me fall in love with her even more, how proud I was of her  I couldn’t describe.
  
“But why are you feeling down Rin? Is something up?” She asked, her tone becoming serious every passing second.
I had to break the ice. Suddenly the atmosphere inside was colder than the Hirishawa lake nearby.
I got up from the chair I was sitting on and walked towards the little square window at the rightmost side of the tree house.

“Well you know, since you are moving to Kyoto in a few months to study music,” I continued as  I gathered the little snow stacked up on the window pane. “I won’t be able to do this anymore-” I said as I ran and jumped over the bed, my frosty left hand that had the snow splashed all across her face and down her neck.
She hated it and that made me want to do it even more, sometimes though. It was almost impossible to mess with her.

”Ugh, Rin!” She screamed after kicking me out of the bed as I rolled around laughing and holding my stomach. There were only so little of times when she didn’t hate pranks like these and I never failed to take advantage of such moments.

“You know if you just want a reason to touch me, you don’t have to be so ditzy.” She said in a sarcastic tone while making a poker face.
I was still laughing my head off on the floor and before I could answer her the faint sound of fireworks in the distance grazed our ears.
“IT’S NEW YEAR ALREADY?! shit!’” She said while jumping out of the bed and looking towards the window.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t see a thing but who cared.

”So umm ain’t kissing during midnight brings good luck throughout the year?” I winked.
“Oh no no you ain’t getting away so easily with the prank you pulled out just now!” She said while laughing and jumped back to the bed.
“But that’s like a tradition” I tried protesting but was cut off mid-way.
“There’s no such things as tradition or rules. We do things my way.” She said sounding all high and mighty.
I sighed, she was a queen after all and this is what I loved the most about her.
”You’re the boss lady.”

”Good, so this is what we are going to do.” She grinned as she switched on her portable speakers and put on a familiar tune, a tune that sent butterflies down my stomach.
“Come here, my king.” She said, kneeling down and asking for my hand as gracefully as possible.
: ”May I have this dance? She asked.
“You know I was thinking the same-” I said as I took her hands in mine.
”And this is why we are together. We will always be together.” She said, looking straight into my eyes and down my soul.  I did the same. 

I could see our entire future in that little moment, that ecstatic little moment made life crystal clear for me and the thought of her going away just a little far physically didn’t scare me anymore. These mere things didn’t matter when you were in love. Distance didn’t matter, surrounding didn’t matter, how different you two are didn’t matter, how much you fight didn’t matter, it didn’t matter whether one was a shade of black and the other white.
The only thing that mattered was the passion and that magic that held everything together. In this imperfect world, where almost everything was shady, this love of ours was impeccable.

“Look up when the world gets you down,
And you're gonna get by.
Hang in when the world counts you out,
And you're gonna be fine.
Sometimes that's life,
Some days nothing never goes right.
But when your hand is mine
I'll be floating on cloud nine.”

We kissed.

THE END.

 ******************************************************************************************************
Hey Guys! Shrey here! 
Since I passionately love and adore Rin and Kumi so much, I had to pen this one down.
As I already mentioned that I'm currently writing the Prequel to my "Life is a Cherry Blossom Tree" known as "The Starry Kumi Ishikawa", I decided to fill in the long gaps in between by adding some little stories like this so expect more in the coming months.

 "The Starry Kumi Ishikawa" is a very passionate project, one I have been planning since a long time and it's going to take time so please look forward to it as I pour my heart and soul into writing it. That being said, I hope you enjoyed this little slice of Rin and Kumi's ongoing romance.
Thank You!

Reflecting back on 2018 and gazing my way towards 2019.


2018 has been a blissful year for me, that’s why this post is even more important.
As we all count the remaining days off for the next adventure in our lives to begin.
I personally wanted to reflect on my journey thus far in 2018.
Like I already mentioned, 2018 has been a blissful and magical year for me, something I wasn’t really expecting because the past few years have been the most haunting years of my life and when 2018 started I wasn’t expecting this one to be any different.
But then I’m an optimistic person. If anything Adam’s music has taught me thus far is that its hope that we can always rely on and fortunately I did just that.
This blog grew up to be such a huge affair, I got my dream job ( and is getting paid for it, which I never fail to mention), and most importantly found myself as a writer.
At the beginning of this year, my first and foremost goal was to start this blog.
Take a huge leap forward and don’t look back, and for the most part, I did that.
I poured my vision, my perspective, everything I feel in here.
As I grow up, every day I have this realisation that I’m a difficult person to understand and be with and so this blog has been even more immensely important to me because this is the only way I can express my true feelings for everyone and everything around me.
Anyways getting back to the blog, I’m really grateful how far we have come as a family.
The Katsura Family has received more than 8000 views as of now which accounts to an average of  600 views every month. Time after time, I have acknowledged how much grateful I’m for every single view, because of all them reflect just one thing- your faith in me, and that means the world.

So umm 2018 right? Why was it different than other years of my life? I mean yes the blog means the world to me but what else?
Well, to be honest, I think this year has been all about me finding myself.
Yeah it sounds very cliché and weird but trust me I hadn’t really discovered myself I guess until now.
The more I indulged into writing and thinking, my perspective started to change, I grew as a person, I started defining myself, I figured out my character and what role I have to play in this world. This actually changed the way I think and approach things.
I started accepting things, I started accepting myself, believing in myself and trust me that means a lot.
People tend to judge themselves a lot but I believe now that doesn’t take us anywhere.
You just gotta let it go, take a deep breath, and in your veins, in your blood, your true nature will flow and that’s one of the best feelings in the world, accepting yourself the way you are.
So yes, at the end of 2018, I’m more original than I was back at the beginning of this year if that makes any sense?
Okay, enough of my personal shit.

Looking up into the horizon, in 2019, I want to take this blog to an unprecedented height and I have a lot of things planned.
As I mostly write on the basis of my emotions, not for the sake of pouring out contents, there might be some delay every now and then but trust me I’ll  be posting more often than I did this year.
For the things, I’m currently working on,
Well, frankly I have three things planned for now.

One of them is which I announced is the prequel to my first original series “Life is a Cherry Blossom Tree,” which I’m immensely proud of.
It’s actually not a prequel but a deep dive into the past years of one of the most important characters and the one that ’s closet to my heart- Kumi Ishikawa.
As one of my best friends once said that “ Kumi is your moulded piece of art.”
I find it incredibly beautiful and mesmerising to give more life to this beauty I myself created. Look out for “The Starry Kumi Ishikawa” you guys, I will try not to disappoint.
Aside this, since I get strangely attached to the things that I watch and play, characters I have met and continue to do so in Animes, Video games and other media inspire me like none other and so I have been planning to start a fan fiction section where I’ll be writing short stories set in their worlds, the worlds I adore and love the most.
The first one in this section is “The Lone Wolf”, set in the world of The Last of Us, one of my favourite video game of all time and I’m incredibly excited to share that with you guys.
Last but not the least is a third mystery project I’m working on whose scope can’t be described at the moment, It’s something you guys won’t see coming, Its completely new, beautiful and terrible at the same, This new project is actually for me, how I look at the world and I believe it will help me grow as a person as well as a writer, and I’m hoping you guys would be able to relate to it when it comes out.
In the end, I just wanna say that all I have is gratitude towards God, myself and some of the most interesting personalities I met throughout this year for making 2018 for me what it has been so far. To finally learning to live life to its fullest and I’m incredibly proud of where I’m standing as of now- Independent, Original with no regrets to hold me back.

In 2019, I don’t wanna change the world, I just wanna paint my own version of it.
Arigato gozaimasu!

How "Kimi no na Wa" & "Life is a Cherry Blossom Tree" made me spend the best summer of my life.


You know there are certain things, or basically most of the things that you don' plan but it happens nevertheless,
like a gush of wild wind blowing away at your face, indicating its presence, indicating its heavy presence.
Depression hit me just like that, outta nowhere at my darkest hour more than a year ago.
The time, to be precise the day when my girlfriend broke up with me, the day one of my closest friends died, and my so-called best friend abandoned me.
Seems pretty rough right? Trust me, it wasn't that bad, In fact, I didn't feel a thing, to be honest.
Things just happened and I didn't know how to react, my body failed me that day and I believe I was immune to every emotion this world has to offer.
Fast forward to this year, the late winter was trying to scare us away with its coldness and Spring was trying it's hard to spread life, spread life into me.
And so I met her, outta nowhere.
The person, the girl responsible for my redemption was just another ordinary girl in my class, Sitting alone, reading a book as if just like me, the real world people didn't interest her.
And so she interests me.
Back in the day, I had just started this blog and creating stories were my first priority, maybe that was my chance to Redemption I thought?
Seeing her, her eyes, the way she moved, the way she laughed, the way she behaved and most importantly her voice, that voice, made me feel something I hadn't felt for anyone in about 4 years.
Was it love? I have no idea since I didn't know her.
You can't fall in love with a person you don't know.
This was something else.
Who was she? 
She was my Kumi Ishikawa.
The same Kumi Ishikawa that gave birth to a so-called story "Life is a cherry Blossom tree", Kumi Ishikawa which made me revive a person called Rin Kobayashi.
And so one summer evening, when I missed her.
I imagined a version of her in my mind, an alternate reality which I penned down on a piece of paper in my parent's bedroom back at home.
That was the very first night in months, I had a good sleep.

 You know when you believe you are a talentless piece of crap with absolutely nothing to show off, its hard to let go of something that finally comes up your way.
You cling on to something or someone, that one hope towards the light.
That person for me was Kumi Ishikawa,
who made me find a writer in me.
I didn't brainstorm or had to think a heck lot for how I wanted her to be.
It all came out naturally, within a span of 10 minutes I had known how my Kumi Ishikawa was going to be.
The perfect person I always wanted or dreamed about, Somehow I saw such a person in that girl I met in my class.
And so by the end of Chapter 9 of "Life is a cherry blossom tree", I had fallen in love again, fallen immensely, deeply, passionately in love with a person who didn't exist, or perhaps she did who knows?
That girl in my class wasn't that girl, she was just a real-life figure of that girl I wanted or dreamed about, but she wasn't the one.
The one I fell in love with existed only in mind.
But it didn't matter, I had started healing.
Seems pretty confusing right? 
I don't blame you, It took me a heck of a lot of time to realise this myself.

 Reading all of this might seem very cinematic but it wasn't.
The fuel to this story and to my real life was given by a beautiful movie called "Kimi no na wa."
A movie, that I watched almost every day while writing this story and even after that.
My life was full of adrenaline rush back then.
I would wake up to those treacherous sunny mornings which seemed as beautiful as waking up on a meadow full of pine trees.
The sweat across my forehead would seem like tiny drops of heaven falling from the sky, that much happy I was then.

 Kimi no na wa, would make me a little kid every morning, the kid full of every emotion just ready to flourish, whether it be love, hatred, happiness or sadness, and if I had  to emphasize on something
then it's love.
So that's what happened. Seeing Mitsuha and Taki's story almost every day made me believe in my own love.
You know I think love is underrated.
People don't really know what love is and so they curse it.
Love is as beautiful as a sweet whisper of wind on your face every morning, as calm as a kiss under the moonlight.
And so, Love it was which hit me again with full force, but only because I allowed it to.
And I healed, healed faster than the bullet trains running in Tokyo as of now.
Healed faster than the time a raindrop takes to fall on my cheek on a rainy evening.

 And that's how I spent the best summer of my life in a long long time.
A much-needed summer to find myself, to love again, to love myself.
And it wouldn't have been possible without any of you guys, the  one's who are reading.
Especially the real life Yuto and Hayate, who made me realise that I didn't have to stray far from reality to find interesting characters.
And of course, to the real life version of Kumi Ishikawa, Thank you.
You did so much for me without even doing anything, and for that, I'll be forever grateful to you.

 The moral of this story is that at the end of the day, its love that will save you, its love that will give you the much needed light, the much needed hope, and that love could be anything.
The trick is to find that love, believe in it, and keep a part of it inside you always, let it light a fire inside you, the fire that will replenish every emotion in your body and boom! You're alive again, you're born again.
That's what Kimi no na wa taught me, that's what my own story- the one I crafted with all the love and warmth I could find in this world, my  most prized posession-Life is a Cherry Blossom tree, taught me.
That's what Kumi taught me, My Kumi, my version of Kumi.

xersevx


I met him two autumns ago one freezing morning.
Cold as Winterfell his expressions,
Sleek as moonlight his looks.

His character as complicated as his Instagram name, Hooked my interest in a world where everything is grey.

People see him as  just another geek, I see him as a thriving romantic with love for nature like no other.

He talks about mountains, he talks about technology,he talks about oceans, he talks about gadgets,he talks about changing the world yet he doesn't like changes himself.

He wears black but is more colourful from inside then most of us degenerates.

His laughs are louder than the guy next door when he's with me yet he's the quietest when he's alone.

He thinks I'm cool yet he doesn't know he's the coolest I have met.

He's just not one of those characters you grew up watching in soap operas, He's different, He's insanely beautiful in his own way.

Grab a beer, share a burger and he will pour himself out like a hot chocolate sizzling outta a lava cake.
He's xersevx, an astronaut on the ocean floor.
Don't know him? You never will.

The Netherworld


"Where are you?" 
Rubbing my eyes, yawning a big yawn I said, 
"At the end of the world."

 "Funny, I'm reaching your house in 5 minutes." 
He said.
"For what exactly?"
"We are going. Now get your lazy ass up."

 "Going where?", I asked all irritated.
Looking outside my window, it seemed all but clear.
"To the end of the world," he said and cut the call.
I got up, the floor a mess as always.
My head hung in the hangover of last night's highness.
All thanks to those bottles of beer I had.
It was just another day in my miserable life.

 "Rias Gremory", The mirror reflected back.
 The temporary tattoo on the left side of my neck was coming off, just like the crush I had on this girl; She wasn't even a real girl.

 I was just putting on a shirt when my doorbell buzzed.

 "Will you tell me exactly where we are going?"
"Told you, the end of the world, where the parallel world meets, where all the non-humans exist; The Netherworld."
I sighed.
"And what exactly are we going to do there?"

 "Camping", He said while grinning his best.

 "It's raining," I said, pointing outside.
"So? Let's just break all the rules for once, see where it leads." He said, determined as always.
"Oh, and by the way, he's coming too."

 And just like always, I gave in.

To be continued.
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