[Short Story Collection - Flower Crown] Episode 16: 'The Village of Records (Part 2)'
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The Village of Records (Part 2) - Salim -
Morning.
I could hear the chirping of small birds.
Father was swinging a hoe in the backyard.
Mother was looking up at the sky while hanging out the laundry.
As a young child, I walked through the grass, found a white flower, and picked it.
"You like white flowers, don't you?"
Mother smiled suddenly.
She looked so happy.
Inside the house, there was a vase just like yesterday.
The flowers in it were still blooming.
The room was bright like a sunbeam, and
the wind was gently swaying the curtains.
I suppressed an indescribable feeling deep in my chest.
The way Mother's hands accepted the flower.
The warmth seeping into Father's voice.
The softness of the gaze directed at my younger self.
For some reason, I had always been convinced that I 'didn't have' those things.
"Grage, even if this is truly a 'record'..."
"...Yeah, it makes one want to believe. That this is still 'alive'."
"Do you think it can be changed?"
When I asked that, Grage fell silent and stared into the distance.
At the edge of the sky, a single cloud drifted slowly by.
"I don't know. But..."
"But?"
"...It feels too orderly to be a 'record'."
He said that and peered into the room from the window.
"A bookshelf without a speck of dust. The embers in the fireplace that should have burned out.
The scent of the flowers earlier, too... it was exactly the same as the 'scent you remembered', wasn't it?"
I nodded.
"I feel like someone is arranging these memories into a 'form they want them to be'.
The record itself might have a will of its own."
He looked at me with serious eyes, then continued.
"Why would something so warm and beautiful be left behind...
It even feels as if someone is 'trying to show it' to us."
At that moment, something rumbled faintly deep in the earth.
A sound like thunder, or perhaps metal.
'...What was that just now?'
'It might have been my imagination. But... soon, something will...'
I stared at the flower that my younger self had picked.
Held in those small hands, it did not sway, but simply bloomed in silence.
My mother's laughter mingled softly with the breeze.
'It's a lovely day today, too.'
Those words dissolved into the air and vanished.
<<To be continued>>