the banter between them is absolutely insane 😭
Between us : Sugar and Cherry Blossoms
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by Rehan Azam
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the banter between them is absolutely insane 😭
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Between us : Sugar and Cherry Blossoms
by Rehan Azam
The train doors opened with a sound like an exhale, and the morning came in with them - coffee, wet pavement, the low murmur of people who hadn't yet decided to be awake. Kai stepped aboard without meaning to notice anyone, and noticed her anyway.
She was by the window, hair catching what little sun made it through the glass, a notebook open on her knee that she wasn't really writing in. When she looked up, she smiled the way people smile when they've decided, just barely, that the day might not be a write-off after all. There was something distant behind it, though. A held breath.
He sat across from her before he'd fully decided to.
"You're staring," she said. Her voice had the softness of something said without much expectation of being answered honestly.
"...Was I?"
"Yes." A small, teasing tilt of her head. "Do you always look at strangers like that?"
"Only the interesting ones."
She flushed, and covered it by rolling her eyes. "That's a terrible line."
"Maybe. But it made you laugh."
She closed the notebook, resting a palm flat on its cover like she was keeping something in. "True. I needed that. Long morning."
"What kind of long morning?"
"The kind where the alarm doesn't go off, the coffee machine gives up, and the sky feels heavier than it has any right to." She glanced out the window. "Then a petal landed in my hair on the platform. Maybe that means the day's turning around."
Something shifted in his face, barely, but she caught it. "They don't land at random, you know. Sometimes they choose."
She blinked at the strange gravity in it. For a second he looked older than the boy who'd made a bad line at her ten seconds ago. Like someone carrying something she couldn't see the shape of.
Then he laughed, light again. "Or the tree was clumsy."
"Better. Stick to funny. Serious looks dangerous on you."
The train rattled on, and their conversation went where easy conversations go - books, food, the small confessions people hand each other when they've decided, without saying so, that they'd like to be handed some back.
"Let me guess," she said, studying him. "You're a night person. Falls asleep at three, hates mornings, drinks coffee like it owes him money."
"Close. I like mornings, actually. Just not mine. Yours seem better."
"Mine involved a broken coffee machine ten minutes ago."
"And yet here you are. Charming a stranger on a train."
"I'm not charming you," she said, though the corner of her mouth was already giving her away. "I'm tolerating you."
"That's the first stage. I've read about this."
She laughed properly then, the kind of laugh that surprised her a little, like she hadn't planned on enjoying herself this much before ten in the morning. "You liked ramen too spicy?"
"And you like too much syrup on your pancakes."
"Sweet things make life worth it."
"That explains why talking to you feels like sugar," he said, quiet enough that it was just for her.
Her cheeks went warm. "You're... dangerous with words."
"I've been told."
"By who?"
"People who didn't stay long enough to find out if it was true."
She tilted her head, curious now in a different way. "And is it true?"
He looked at her for a second longer than the question needed. "Ask me again sometime. When we're not strangers."
"We're not strangers," she said. "We've been talking for twenty minutes. That's basically a relationship by train standards."
"Then as your almost-boyfriend of twenty minutes, can I ask your name?"
"Elara."
"Elara," he repeated, like he was setting it down somewhere safe to keep. "Kai."
"Kai," she said back, testing the shape of it. "You don't look like a Kai."
"What do I look like?"
"Trouble," she said. "Charming trouble. The kind my mother would've liked and warned me about at the same time."
"Smart woman."
"She'd have liked you," Elara said, softer now, some private thought passing behind her eyes before she blinked it away and smiled again. "Don't let it go to your head."
"Too late."
Outside, the city slid past the windows, ordinary and golden in the early light, and for a while neither of them looked at it. There was a comfortable quiet, the kind two people only fall into when a conversation hasn't run out, just paused to let them both catch up to how easy it had become.
"Tell me something true," she said suddenly. "Not a line. Something real."
He considered it. "I don't usually sit across from strangers."
"No?"
"No. I keep to myself, mostly. Today felt different." He shrugged, like he wasn't sure why, or wasn't ready to say. "You had a petal in your hair. I told you, they choose."
"That's still a line."
"It's also true. Both things can happen at once."
She studied him for a moment, like she was deciding whether to believe him, and then decided she would, at least for now, at least for the length of this train ride. "Okay. Your turn to ask me something true."
"Why the notebook?"
"I write things down before I lose them. Feelings, mostly. Bad poetry. The way morning light looks on wet streets." She glanced at it, almost shy. "I don't usually let people ask about it."
"I'm not people. I'm your almost-boyfriend of twenty-five minutes now."
"Twenty-five," she echoed, laughing again. "You're keeping count."
"I like knowing exactly how long I've been lucky."
She looked away first this time, out the window, cheeks still warm, a small smile she didn't try very hard to hide. Whatever the rest of the day held, this part of it, this ordinary train, this ordinary morning, already felt like something she'd want to write down before she lost it.
The lights flickered once, and neither of them noticed.
Part One End
Part Two: The In-Between
© Rehan Azam,'Between us : Sugar and Cherry Blossoms' An Short story by Rehan Azam , All Rights Reserved.
For any Query email to: rehanazamauthor.gmail.com
Thoughts
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why does she write things before she loses them instead of just remembering? is it the forgetting or the having?
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i recognised that. when you meet someone and suddenly your bad morning doesn't matter anymore.
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the banter between them is absolutely insane 😭
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she writes things before she loses them like i do. that notebook is full of people she might forget.
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what is he actually? the way he talks about petals choosing, is that a metaphor or is it real?
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hair in the sun. his hand before he decided. the notebook like she's keeping something in.
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the way she laughed without planning to - you know that's when someone gets under your skin.
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so the petal thing is supernatural too? is that how he shows up before the chaos starts?
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