Is it possible to love this city anymore?
He, for one, finds loving inanimate objects a very strange idea. It is a one-way love, an infatuation, at the very worst. The cement, roads, metal, neon... all lifeless and cold from the constant overcast. Every colour that he sees is dulled shadows, making the whole field of view nothing but a mess of molten oily refraction and diffraction. The population passes by each other, each to their own. He sees all faces, yet he looks at none of them, for every single one of the appearances are dull, meaningless. Torrents of shoulders pass by each other, completely chaotic and absurd. He cannot even stand more than a minute in this orgy of deathly wanderings.
But one thing draws his attention: The cherry blossom trees. For some irrational reasons, the trees emit an aura, a pink, cordial aura, drawing him in. His physical body remains intact, yet his soul gets absorbed in the fantastical world of nostalgia (or is it nostalgia?). He feels that his memory is forever embedded in these waving blossoms, and only here, in this magical summer night, where orbs of light glow softly, yet perpetually. And only here he finds the meaning of being, the meaning of love.
Yet, the dark waves of malice crash upon the shore of this city every day. While the cherry grows day by day, and the technology of this city (along with the blossoms) advance rapidly, the melancholic acid seeps through the bastion known as civilization. He dislikes the idea of being confined within the walls of security, yet it nonetheless protects him from wallowing in his past, his irrational past.
He would gaze beyond the bastion, beyond what light can cover, into the abyss if you must. and he would see none but his own reflection. Terribly religious, ridiculously devout to the faith of future, for he believed that beyond the miles of shadows laid with corpses with a stench known as regret there would be a beacon of light, or just a torch of hope, a slit of warmth, or a glowing orb, beyond the blood covered ground of violence and greed.
He has been told never to venture anywhere beyond these walls, for any conceivable distance from the front door is uncertainty, chaos, and no one would, in their right mind, expect to confront the chaos. Yet something seems not right. This is not confinement: He can go wherever he wants, provided he is within the safety of the walls; nor is this imprisonment: He has freedom! It is most reasonable, rational to protect oneself from the wallowing macabre darkness in front of him.
Right in front of him. The future. He is ever closer to it, second by second.
He knows the cherry blossoms are but memory, holographic projections onto his mind. So real, yet so impalpable. It did exist once, but in his mind it existed forever. He fell madly in love below these trees. He did the most irrational things, the most sensational of all sentiments flowed as a waterfall. He sang, danced (though he had never done any of these in the past: He would not even conceive himself doing them!). It was where he found himself, his true self.
Yet it was all in the past.
Will there be cherry blossoms beyond this wall?
His thoughts grew, blossomed, expanded, like a bright spark, a concentrated burst of pure light. The brightest candle flame emerged within him, slowly permeating outwards. It propagated through his thoughts, his time, his memories, and cleansed his heart. Soon, the blossoms sang its flames, a harmonic unison with the city, which, no later than an instant, clapped in combustion. Nothing material is left in him anymore, nor is there any left within the city around him, that he loved dearly. He, the observer of this city, the one of million, the speck in the crowd, becomes no more, and so does the town, the blossoms, the wall... and everything that he once remembered and loved, hated, was passionate and infatuated about. He no longer has a self, nor a past. The future opens up to him, like an endless cave, an infinite tunnel, a converging, enticing point.
It is from here that he truly knows that he exists.
Take me there, Nagisa.
