Snow White In Distress | ᴛᴀᴇʜʏᴜɴɢ

19 | awkwardness & pretence

1 9

AWKWARDNESS & PRETENCE

❝Don't you worry your pretty little mind.❞

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[ T W E L V E  M O N T H S  A G O ]

THE SKY WAS bluer than usual that day. Province No. 23 was exactly as I pictured it. People were cheerful and bubbly. Everyone seemed excited for what the day had for them. Beyond everything, everyone was happy. At least, everyone seemed happy.

And it was everything I had imagined it to be.

As elated and joyous I was at that moment, you felt lost. I seemed unimaginably small and insignificant in a huge province with no one to care for. Besides that, Ben and his wife had been unreachable. It was most probably because my data plan in my mobile didn't quite connect here in Province No. 23.

The streets buzzed with life. Each person in this crowd moved as if unseeing hands dragged them this way and that, pulling their eyes to one thing or the other. They responded in predictable ways, each of them with a goal to achieve for the day. But underneath that is free will, the ability to truly choose their own path. I wished to engage them in conversation just to wake up the part of themselves that is capable of taking charge, making choices. Then they were off, back on auto-pilot, the most dangerous mode a human being can slip into.

The city perked up in a whole new way and I realised that this was what I was missing my whole life. In that place I could be anyone, or perhaps no-one at all. The people flowed like rivers, never stopping for obstacles but swirling around them. On those wide avenues with wilted trees, their leaves curled and blackened in in the August heat, the buildings towered on each side. A hundred years ago I expect it was pretty, the golden light on the sandstone architecture, built in the days when curves and design weren't considered superfluous. Even the street-lamps were dreamt by an artist, built by an engineer following the teachings of a scientist. On days like this, crammed in with more bodies than I could count even in a photograph, I tilted my head to the sky. The empty blue gave me the strength just to walk at the pace of the crowd and bottle my claustrophobia inside my chest.

I after all, had to survive this town I had learned to love from the stories. The province for success and everything prosperous. At the moment, I had to contact Ben and I didn't know whom to ask for a phone in this crowd. Everyone seemed busy, and extremely caught up in the hassles of their own life.

Suddenly my attention drifted to a certain café in the corner of the street I was in. Café Edwardico. It wasn't that small. It wasn't even that big, but it stood out. The vibes that café intensely gave out was welcoming. I walked to the place, and gently pushed the door as I let myself in.

About two people were present in the café, seated. One had been scrawling her dreams in a piece of paper as she sipped her drink. The other was seated behind the counter, staring at her phone, seeming pretty uninterested with life itself. I walked to the counter, with hopes that the girl behind the counter would lend me her phone for me to make a call.

"Uhm, hey," I voiced out quite timidly, in order to grab her attention. She looked away from her phone, only to look at me with a confused expression.

"Hey," she drawled her last syllable. "Welcome to Café Edwardico. Would you like to order anything today?"

"I'm sorry," I bowed apologetically. "I want to make a call before anything."