The snow was dense.
It was so dense that it made it difficult for my feet to move across the street.
The fog created by the falling snow gave the impression that it was smoke.
The street I was walking on was wide, and from here, it seemed endless. The thick layer of snow covering it only emphasized this.
By this point in the winter, the trees didn't have any leaves. Even though I knew it was winter, it surprised me that the trees didn't have leaves at all.
For me personally, I like to think of it as a message. A message from nature itself telling us that everything falls. Everything dies.
The air was cold, so I took the ramen I had bought out of the bag I was carrying and used it to warm up my hands a little.
Looking closely at the bag, my eyes wandered over the rest of the stuff I had bought. Eggs, more ramen, and that stupid chocolate milk that tastes horrible but my mother loves.
Mother...
Sometimes I forget about her. The thought is completely stupid. How could someone forget their own mother? But that really happens to me.
My mother wasn't a bad person who would insult or abuse me. No. The thing about her is that she was always... invisible.
She would rarely speak, and our interactions could only be described as polite. Sometimes she wouldn't even come out of her bedroom.
[Don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you.]
That was the only true advice I ever heard from her. Although, as the years went by, every time I repeated it to myself, it sounded less convincing.
According to what I know, the postpartum depression and other mental illnesses she suffered during her adolescence left deep scars on her.
Still, she is my mother, and I feel some kind of love for her.
-Plamp
"Damn it."
I was so deep in thought that I didn't see the dry branch in front of me. It was for this reason that I didn't want to go to the grocery store myself, but my father told me that someone had to do the chores.
As the snowflakes kept falling on me, I wondered if my father would be drinking tonight.
He wasn't an alcoholic, but he had the habit of drinking whiskey and rum alone in his study on his so-called "nights of thinking."
"I'm very thoughtful tonight... yeah, maybe he is drinking."
[You live your life alone and die alone, so you might as well drink alone too.]
I once told him that phrase sounded too depressing and dramatic, but he just shrugged indifferently.
Our relationship wasn't very close.
The only way I could properly describe my father was that even though his wife had mental problems and she hated him, he never wanted a divorce because the idea of giving up on something was ridiculous to him.
That was the kind of person my father was.
"I wonder if there is going to be another snowstorm tomorrow." My voice sounded louder than I intended.
Tomorrow was the day I would take my college exams. I wasn't nervous, not because I had studied, but because I didn't care much about them.
I didn't care?
Since when did it start?
Maybe when the fights in the house got louder, or maybe it was when my friends started to part ways, or was it when I started wandering across the city, hoping that when I came back everything would be normal.
To be honest, I don't know. At this point, I no longer remember.
Through the dense fog covering everything, a light could be seen in the distance. I thought it was a house or something, but it was getting closer faster.
Thinking about it more closely, it reminded me of the friendships I once had.
They appeared suddenly, and I remembered how I used to laugh and make jokes with my friends. I was truly happy back then.
But just as quickly as they appeared, they were gone.
There was no big fight or massive conflict. Everyone simply went their own separate way. They all set their goals and, like leaves on a tree, drifted off with the wind.
Everything dies.
The light was getting bigger, and the sound of a motor running at high speed could be heard even from here. The snowflakes were still falling.
"Perhaps..."
Soon, the light covered my vision, forcing me to narrow my eyes slightly.
This reminded me of all the big explosions I used to see in movies, though I was clear that this wasn't a movie.
In movies, characters have happy endings or at least thrilling endings. My life doesn't have either of those.
"Haaa..."
Maybe I should have done something.
Maybe I should have tried harder to fix the relationship between my parents.
Maybe I should have looked for help.
Maybe I should have surrounded myself with good people instead of isolating myself in my own misery.
Maybe, maybe, maybe...
The light and the sound overwhelmed me, and something impacted me.
Everything fell into silence. I didn't feel the snowflakes anymore, neither the cold nor the snow under my feet.
Yet, I was still thinking.
[Everything dies.]
Slowly, the darkness began to fade away, replaced by multiple, changing colors.
Sound started to come back, but I also started to feel pain. It burned. My entire body burned.
Voices started to fill my ears, and all kinds of new sensations were overwhelming me. Just as everything became bright again, a sentence popped into my mind.
"If I could get a second chance, I would do things better."