It was summer time, a season to celebrate the blue skies and fresh air. Yumeko, a carefree, jolly country girl freely welcomed the wind as it touched her face. Hearing the sound coming from a man at the side of the road playing koto, her body just moved along its rhythm. Wearing a pink kimono with chrysanthemum flower pattern that just went along with a red hakama topped a yellow obi around her waist, she pranced feeling the joy she had at the moment. Her healthy short black hair, danced along her cheerful movements. Today was a fine day.
It was the day of Tanabata. She was exhilarated to write her wish to the stars this year as well. The villagers gathered by the river to write their wishes on lanterns and let them float along the river of Taisho Wonderland. Yumeko, on her beautiful Kimono walked along the old village, greeted people who were all dressed-up in kimono and hakama for this special event. She arrived and wrote her wish,
“Let me find romance, hoping to have a crazy heartbeat this year.”
She prayed to Gods and let her desire shone as it floated away from her eyesight.
Yumeko continuously witnessed a man and a woman who were deeply fond of each other.
She softly prayed, “I hope I can have someone to share my burning love with!”
She just ate dango— or should I say over-ate, while appreciating the beauty of the things around her. She smiled as she said,
“This gives me peace. I wonder why I love this era.”
And she ate more dango carelessly, until some pieces of it fell on the ground. She attracted sparrows, but she kindly chased them away. Suddenly, a sound was heard and she took something from her bag. It was her phone and she got a call from the rental kimono owner.
“Miss Hosokawa, it's time to return the kimono. Your two hours is over. You’ll have to pay for extension if you’re late.”
She was startled, and sad that she could only savor the surreal moment as a Taisho woman for two hours. She tried to run fast, but her tight and perfectly worn kimono prevented her. She was ten minutes late and paid additional five hundred yen to the middle-aged kimono owner with a kind yet intimidating face.
She changed into her school uniform—a pink plaid skirt with length three inches above the knee, a white blouse, a pink plaid ribbon along the collar matching the skirt, and high-socks with cosmos flower logo.
“Yosh!” she exclaimed and forced a smile.
"Hey world! I’m back!” She calmed herself by thinking, she could always comeback, rent a kimono and be in the peaceful past again. She left the place with skipping feet, a swaying hair, and humming happy heart.
Yumeko walked home. It was eight in the evening of the same day. She looked up the sky.
“If there were millions of stars in the sky, then at least one of them could grant my wish.”
The next morning came, Yumeko always looked outside the window to check the weather of the day for this will decide her mood.
“Yosh! Today is sunny! Happy mode on!”
She set her smile by stretching the corners of her lips, checking her teeth if there were some yellow stains—yes, tartar as you say it, plus a light slap on her cheeks. That was a morning routine, the Yumeko way.
“It is a ‘sunshine Yumeko’ for today!” said the school librarian, the advisor of the library club where Yumeko belonged to.
Her job included a little bit of arranging books, a bit of inputs of the borrowed ones, a slight cleaning and more of her “secretly not allowed personal reading time” during her work hours. Yumeko almost read all the history books in a span of five months. She was a super fast reader of the past!
The school librarian was an old woman, with a curly shoulder-length browned hair, she had a metal hairband with pearl design, pushing her hair and bangs back. She had been working as a librarian for almost five decades. You could ask her anything about everything.
Yumeko asked her, “Murakami-sensei, why do some people love reading history books?”
She replied with a soft tone, “Do you ever wonder how chaotic this world has become? Maybe these people thought they could have a life well-lived in the past.”
Yumeko calmly agreed. In the old times, people were happy just by listening to the wind, feeling the land on their feet, and listening to water as it endlessly flowed along the river. With an intense heartbeat she added,
"And a confession of love was treasured forever!”
The school librarian was reminded that Yumeko was a modern woman, with the purest heart of a fading tradition. Yumeko thanked her for a sincere and beautiful conversation and bid goodbye.
Whenever she was almost a few footsteps away from their door, Yumeko always felt the pressure and fear from her own household. Her family was composed of professionals with high paying jobs. She was the youngest who enjoyed the life of present and an imaginary past. Her family continuously reminded her to study hard and stop binge reading for it was not only aspect to get high scores. These ear-deafening reminders caused her trauma and extreme pressure ever since childhood. Yumeko, with a polite manner would always answer “Yes, mother.”
Yumeko’s mom was as strict as those villain mothers, that defied their daughter's love interest. She was obsessed with success and took care of their family’s credibility.
Back in fifth grade, her mother, who was a chancellor in a well-known university in Saitama, threw all her books out of anger. Yumeko managed to get a hundred, that was the perfect score in social studies that contained about history but got disappointing scores in other subjects. Math seventy five, English eighty one, Physical Education eighty three, Science seventy five, and more subjects—whatever score that started with seven and eight. From then on, she always pursued and made sure not to make her mother angry and just do things as she said, well at least when only she was looking.
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