Ice Cream

Yui tied back her long sandy, honey colored hair into a sloppy, half done braid. A few hairs escaped her quick, skilled hands and accommodated themselves neatly on her smooth forehead. Three long, dismal months have passed by since she had finished attending Jonan Academy and she had started college. She liked the whole new feeling of it, seeing new faces and such beautiful people with such a wide variety of personalities. It was all so colourful for her in the beginning, but it did not last for long. Even though every day she would go there and be surrounded by thousands of people, including her friends, she still felt so alone. Yes, she had her friends but they were not close, or very good. They always expected to see her with a large smile stretched from ear to ear and in a good mood. But when she was down, they completely ignored her, not even bothering to ask, "What's up?" or "Are you okay?". And that irritated her. She wanted someone to understand her and love her for who she was. She let out a sigh and then watched the vapor of her breath dance wildly in the frosty sky intermingled with the small, slightly visible snowflakes that gracefully fell from the sky and melted away as they touched the sodden ground. Snow... She had always known there was such a beautiful thing and she had felt the bite of the delicate flakes on her rosy cheeks before, but it was different today. She closed her eyes as she felt them falling rapidly and accumulating on her long black scarf. She shook her head and her hair shifted slightly then slowly it accommodated itself on her shoulder. As she walked on, she could feel her hair sliding slowly from her shoulders and revert once more to the position it was before. She spun around. She felt that someone was following her. Her heart beat ferociously and her blue-gray colored eyes widened as she wondered who could it possibly be. A strong gust of wind encircled the frightened young girl as they tore away a bunch of papers she had just securely put away in her textbooks. They flew frantically and scattered all over the sidewalk completely stained with mud and ugly brown leaves. Yui accommodated her textbooks by a creaky old rocking chair next to a pile of old newspapers wrapped and ready to be thrown out and she ran after the precious papers. The weight of her schoolbag slowed her down but she was a fast runner and ignored the horrid burden on her back. She had gathered all of them and slammed them into her brown Advanced English textbook. She picked them up and shifted the weight of the books in her arms holding her treasures close to her chest. Yui never liked the cold. She hated the feeling of it. It was just so unfriendly, so harsh not to even mention it was a big contrast against her warm personality. She continued walking keeping the same normal pace ignoring the emptiness, the loneliness inside her. Solitude had always been a faithful companion to her. It was with her every cold passing day. It was with her in the night when she would lay back down on her warm bed and close her eyes. Yes, loneliness had been a good friend to her and never left her side ever since her mother died two years ago on that sunny autumn day.
She felt the grip around her neck the scarf had on her loosen and slowly and slip down her back and fall to the already snow covered ground without much of a noise. Things definitely were not going her way today. She rolled her eyes and turned around to pick it up. Surprisingly, she found it in the hands of a young boy roughly about her age. He was a pretty thing. The boy wore a brown, old-fashioned hat on top of his short uneven brownish-blonde hair and an ugly trench coat. He smiled mischievously as he stretched out his hand to Yui to hand over the scarf. She stood there quiet and motionless not looking at the boy. Finally the boy spoke.
"I'm sorry to frighten you miss, but you dropped your scarf."
Yui took the scarf from him and mumbled a few thanks. The boy nodded, saluted giving her not much of a wink and walked away. She watched him blend in to the roaring, hustling crowd. With her free hand, she stuffed the soggy scarf into her pocket. "Thank you" She quietly whispered to him even though she knew he would never hear her. But a strange feeling in her told her the young boy did. Yui simply ignored the feeling and turned around once more, walking away onward the same dismal road she crossed every day to get back home.