Like a Paulownia

Chapters

Volume 1 - First Move
Volume 2 - Closure
Volume 3 - Up a Hill

Volume 1 - First Move

Light shone down from above, illuminating the young youth shackled to a chair. He bent forward, looking down on himself. Dazzling darkness surrounded him, punctured by the chaotic light above him.

He felt lost, but he was right where he needed to be. He felt homeless, but he had a home already. The rusty chains that were locked onto his wrists chaffed his skin, and the links between the chains rattled as he cupped his head between his shoulders, just wanting it to be over.

He heard a click in the distance, and looked up to find another light shining down. The person was bound to a wheel chair, an IV drip standing right beside it. That person started to look strikingly familiar to him, and as he sat there, helpless, the wheel chair person moved in his direction.

He stared at her . . . moving closer to him. He couldn’t think at all, his brain was firing off thoughts left and right, backward and forward. His mind was in a frenzy of thoughts, and he couldn’t help it.

She appeared right in front of him, looking exactly as the day he last saw her, though . . . now she had a medicinal scent to her, as if she was a walking hospital.

Her eyes were closed, her mouth fixed in a malicious smile, and her face as clean and pure as the day he had last seen her. Her bright and shining blonde hair was dull, and her skin had taken on a shade of grey, as if a storm cloud hung above her.

He looked at her, staring at her with eyes the size of discs. She tentatively touched his cheek in a tender way and smiled at him, the edge of her mouth turning crooked.

She cooed, “It’s not your fault, Starburst. I don’t blame you.”

He tried to utter out anything, but felt nothing. He couldn’t say anything, he felt as if his throat was just . . . gone.

It’s not your fault you couldn’t do anything. It’s not your fault you let everyone down.

She cupped his chin, forcing him to look at her. “You have a home, a life to live, and a stable job.”

No, I don’t, he thought morosely.

“I feel sympathy for you.” She said, stroking his hair. That little subtle motion brought a maelstrom of emotions within him.

“Oh, you’re waking up . . .” She grinned, waving him goodbye.

No, no, no! Don’t let it end like this! DO SOMETHING!

He rattled the chains futilely, trying to dislodge from the ground as he pulled against them.

“I’m sorry . . . but goodbye . . . have a good life . . .” She kept on waving as she shimmered in the air for a split second before bursting into a cloud of white sparkly lights. Almost like a specter . . .

No . . .

He doubled over as he felt the light shining down on him contract and lessen, until . . . he was left alone in the dark-

Starburst woke up as listlessly as he slept, keeping his eyes trained on the rotating electric fan above him. Light appeared hazy through the frosted windows, and the whole view outside looked as if it was stuck in a perpetual fog.

He sat on the mattress, holding his two legs close to his body and stared right at that foggy window, at the light shining down from above. His mouth grew into a frown, his mind a tumultuous hotspot of raging emotions. He closed his eyes, and let out a long, ragged sigh.

The cold hit him first, like a freight train passing by him. Then came the shivers, and the instinctive need to pull his coat closer towards him.

The rising sun did nothing to stop the cold, only being there as a constant reminder that he had to wake up in the morning, instead of just letting him sleep in again. Clouds drifted in and out of view.

A high railing was a few paces away from him, and past that, was a scenic view of the strangely chosen name of this small town, Ponyville. He started towards the lift of the apartment complex, keeping his head pinned down to the floor, even as the lift went ‘ding!’ and he exited the lift.

He pushed open a pair of glass doors, walking towards his destination, which was just a couple of blocks down. Convenience struck again.

Wind brushed his hair, rippling his coat. Trees swayed under its gentle push, and small dots of leaves drifted past him.

Only the scraping of his shoes against the pavement destroyed this serene scene for him.

He subconsciously counted the number of cars passing by, taking his mind off of doing nothing at all. 25, he counted, and most of them were painted red.

People walked past by him, ignoring, trapped in their own worlds, sharing their worlds with others, and some just looking at their phones.

He jammed his hands within the depths of his coat pockets by the time he reached the place he needed to be. A non-descript sign stood above the door. A bell jingled as he entered the shop, and he took in the sweet scent of freshly baked cakes and other goodies in the kitchen, making his mouth water instantly.

Without uttering out a single word, a plump woman, with skin the color of cerulean appeared right out of the kitchen, with an expression of delight at seeing Starburst in the doorway.

“Dearie, what are you doing standing out there?” she asked, wiping her hands off with a dirty and arguably oily cloth, “Isn’t it cold?”

Though the cold seeped through his vest, and he felt as if he was shielding himself from a hurricane, he still shook his head, saying, “I don’t mind it. It isn’t bothering me all that much.” He stepped in, shutting the door behind him. The pin drop silence of the shop as it was now, broken only by the two of them, had always made him feel calm.

It was different in contrast to the radiant light that shone from everyone’s faces as they chatted their lives out in the shop, never thinking about the future, as if they never had any problems to deal with in their lives. It irked him to his very bone.

So much so that he stayed away from large pods of people, a problem that the Cakes had never quite figured out, but never questioned.

“Where’s Mr. Cake?” He asked, after noticing that the husband of this woman was nowhere in here at all. Was he running late or something- but that wasn’t possible, it was Mr. Cake! Did his wife arrive earlier than he did?

Did it have something do with Starburst? Did it?

“Oh, nothing of that sort, dear,” Mrs. Cake answered him, noticing the look of worry that passed by his face. “He just went out to buy flour, we ran out of it last night. He’ll be back in no time soon.”

“Right.” He replied, feeling silence fill the void between their conversations. There was nothing left to say, at that point. He walked past her, brushing past her pink hair that resembled the tip of cake frosting for him, up to the counter, sat on a stool by it, and stared at the ticking clock right above the window.

At this early hour, there was no point in doing anything. Something drove him to come here early, every single day. Maybe, just maybe . . . this intoxicating scent of pastries . . . the lovely married couple and their bombastic baker . . . reminded him of home.

He stood in front of a rustic house, a place he unfortunately remembered vividly of. He was in a dream, he knew that, and yet he felt as if the house in front of him was actually solid, as if it really was there, and not just some figment of his imagination.

A monotone grey replaced the blue sky above him, and the ground he stood on was a featureless black. With tired legs, he took his first step towards that house, shimmering brightly against the colorless background behind it. The gate and wooden fence disappeared with a flash as he soon as he touched them.

Unfazed by this, he walked on.

The once modest lawn was now flat and devoid of anything. Nothing was living there at all. He walked past it all, entering the house. The creak of the door moving in sounded deeper than what he expected. The atmosphere in here was darker, everything stayed exactly the same, exactly as it was when he left.

As he subconsciously made his way to the living room, everything behind him started fading out of existence, as if it had not been there at all.

“. . . no . . . can’t . . .” He heard a faint voice coming from behind a door. The same door that led to the living room. The wind in his head starting picking up, raging like a tornado as he approached the door, reaching out to grab the handle autonomously.
He held the door handle, and with a firm twist, entered the living room.

“Starburst? Hey, Starburst!” He heard a snapping sound, which drove him out of his self-induced trance instantly. He blinked twice, holding his forehead to shake off that blurriness that was beginning to muddle his mind.

He heard some chatter in the background, but he blocked it off as he retreated into his mind, trying to assess the situation desperately . . . despite it really being him staring at a clock for a couple of minutes with deadpan eyes.

“. . . hey, you in there?” The familiar, perky baker of the Sweet Shoppe asked once more, her words finally getting through to him.
“Huh?” He uttered out, escaping the confines of his mind to the real world. “Y-yeah. I’m in here.”

“Great!” She clapped her hands together, “because we have a whole lot of orders to fill!”

He looked around in confusion at the still desolate shop. It had been a few hours since he’d arrived, and when Pinkie had entered the shop, he had been stuck staring at the clock over the glossy window.

“But there’s no one here.” He said.

“Exactly! We have to be prepared if anybody comes in here with a . . .” She spiced up the word with a flourish of her hands. “. . . major order for us to fill!”

“When has that ever happened?”

“Who knows? It might happen soon.”

He thought about the likelihood of that happening, even for a moment. Besides, he was feeling sort of restless. Pinkie’s ecstatic nature must’ve been infectious.

He never thought a nerd like himself could ever feel restless.

“Right then . . .” He let out a heaving sigh and stood up from the chair, feeling his butt equalize itself to the surrounding air pressure with a barrage of pins and needles that stretched down to his legs.

“. . . let’s get to work.” He ended, taking his first step to the kitchen, and almost keeling over from the pins and needles to his legs.

The kitchen in the Sweet Shoppe looked just like any other kitchen in any other bakery in any other town, in any other city, and in any other country, if you added a much more homely feel to it.

That was the feeling Starburst got when he and Pinkie were cleaning up the kitchen after a day’s worth of baking.

“Well, that could have gone better.” Pinkie said, wiping off patches of flour that dried on her apron with a dirty rug.

“At least the whole kitchen wasn’t covered in flour again.” Starburst murmured, throwing cracked egg shells into the trash and putting on a pair of oven mitts, all the while mulling over the complete silence in the shop.

It was already 10 in the morning, on a Saturday. Usually there’d be people rushing in to buy their pastries, and Starburst would reluctantly act happily towards the patrons, but till now, there was a complete lack of people. Mr. and Mrs. Cake for example.

When Pinkie arrived, the married couple immediately had a call from some friend over at the neighboring city of Canterlot. In a hurry, while struggling to carry two babies at once, they entrusted the Sweet Shoppe over to Starburst and Pinkie, more so to Starburst.

They were anxious, he could tell, with the bombastic baker around with her electrifying personality that could power up an entire city but the explanation that Pinkie gave him spoke otherwise.

“That was one time!” She retorted, dropping the rug, and pouting her mouth.

“One out of many.” He glanced over at her with a sharp expression. He could’ve come up with umpteenth examples, such as last Tuesday’s reckless adventure, Thursday’s mishap, and so on and so forth to prove himself right.

After some thinking, Pinkie gave in, “. . . fine, you win. I’m never good at this!” She still pouted, but picked up the rug again in defeat.

He felt a sick sense of satisfaction fill up in his gut, and said, “Though, you do beat me at baking amazing pastries.”

“Thanks!” She piped up, expecting to hear more from him, instead getting nothing but silence in return. Starburst headed over to the oven, opening the door and pulling out the tray of steaming hot taro pies from the oven carefully. He pulled out his oven mitts and set them on the marble countertop.

“Ooh, they already look so delicious!” Pinkie stood beside him, looking at the small, golden outer shelled, rectangular taro pies on the tray with delight.

Starburst touched the surface of one of the pies and retreated his finger at the burning sensation. He hissed in pain and waved his finger, trying to cool it down.

Pinkie giggled, getting a tissue paper from one of the drawers and handing them to Starburst. “Here silly. You should learn to be more careful.”

He thanked her, locking his gaze onto a now interesting looking open drawer, avoiding looking directly into her eyes, and took the tissue paper, picking up a taro pie and blew on it.

He bit into the pie, and felt like he was on cloud nine, no, higher than even cloud nine. He felt as if fireworks were going off in his mouth, his taste buds were literally buzzing with charged satisfaction. The fact that it was still hot enhanced the flavor of the rich taro within the pie.

“Tastes good, doesn’t it?” She gave him a knowing smirk, raising her brow in a prideful manner.

“Yeah, it does.” Starburst agreed, swallowing the taro and finishing it within a handful of bites. “This can sell, Pinkie. Where did you learn to make taro pies?”

“The Internet. You’d be amazed with how many recipes you can find on the Internet. I just adapted the taro into a pie, and this was the result!” She ended with a wave to her creation, and she added a gleeful smile with it.

“Yup.” He licked his fingers clean. “This can really sell.” He wiped his fingers on the hem of his jeans.

“Want to put this on display?” Pinkie asked, already putting on her familiar blue oven mittens, emblazoned with her ‘mark’ as Starburst liked to call it that was frequently associated with Pinkie.

“Why not?” He said, knowing that the taro pies would sell out faster than the time they had tried coconut shavings on a cupcake, or the time they had put lime instead of lemon in their merengue pie. The merengue pie incident was an eventful day to say the least.

“Yes!” She whooped, carrying the tray in her hands and bounding over to the display cabinet outside, bouncing her hips slightly to what looked like an imaginary song in her head.

He grinned, wiping off a smear of butter from his cheek. She was so full of cheer and pep . . . and rightly so. He had seen her juggle twenty cupcakes, plus her pet baby alligator, he had seen her heading over to the Sweet Shoppe with her friends, chatting animatedly towards them.

Her special talent was making people happy, he understood that from the numerous times they’d to work together under one roof.
Yet what did he have? A home, a job with one of the world’s most caffeinated person's on the planet, and . . . nothing else beyond that. It was as
if his life was just one big full stop after the ‘and’.

There was something in his life that he was good at though . . . something that he was afraid to go near to, yet was scared to let go off.

“Hey, Starburst!” Pinkie called out from outside the kitchen. “You going to help me put these other taro pies in or what?”

He shook himself out of his morose thoughts, visibly and metaphorically, and spoke, “Yeah, I’ll be there!” He exited the kitchen, walking briskly.

His coat rumpled, stained with flour and butter, his hair swayed gently and his eyes locked onto the pink skinned baker behind the counter, brushing past a door on the way out.

Lamp light shone down on the young youth, sitting on a stool behind a counter, keeping himself awake from the daze that he was beginning to slip into.

The two of them were left alone in the shop, until the sun was beginning to set, and the word called evening was beginning to become a reality, when every customer was just about finished with their order or until they had finished whatever business they had come here to accomplish.

Starburst kept drumming his fingers on the countertop, sounds from the kitchen occasionally snapping him out of his lethargic daze, bringing him back to a reality where he worked at a Sweet Shoppe with a pink skinned, cotton candy haired perky baker that was currently making up new recipes by herself.

He had left alone because it was Pinkie’s ‘thinking’ time, as she called it, where she basically used whatever leftover ingredients that were in the fridge and basically made a new recipe from that.

It was beginning to sound like a frenzy inside there, a maelstrom of flour, butter, food coloring, and vanilla extract. He shuddered at the thought of what was going on inside there.

He glanced at the clock, muttering it out under his breath as if he wanted to confirm it for himself, “5:55p.m.”

Only a few more minutes, he thought, glancing down at the distressed black coat sitting on his lap. A few more minutes left before I can go back home and rest . . . before the next day calls.

For a while, the sounds within the kitchen became even quieter, and quieter, dying down by the second. Eventually there were no sounds at all left. Was she done already?

“Hey, Starburst!” He heard Pinkie call out, a pink-skinned hand shoving the door leading to the kitchen open and holding out its palm. “Mind passing that jar of coconut shavings under the counter?”

He raised a brow, but did as he was asked to.

“Thank you!” She said cheerfully, and slammed the door shut, resuming the frenzy once more.

He glanced once more at the clock and muttered under his breath once more, “5:57 p.m.”

He stared at the clock, feeling as if he could move the minute needle by frightening it into moving to the twelfth minute. He tapped his feet impatiently as if time would move faster if he was even more impatient.

Starburst’s drumming on the countertop was in sync with the ticking of the clock, and as he continued drumming, the clock continued ticking.

If he drummed faster, he would be out of sync, which he did not want to be.

“5:58 p.m.” He muttered under his breath, tapping his foot even more impatiently, increasing steadily with volume to the point where Pinkie could’ve heard it, and started tapping her foot as well.

“5:59 p.m.” Was he really doing it? Was his bending time and space to his will with the power of his foot and finger tapping?

The final seconds ticked ever closer, closer, closer, closer, closer . . .

“6:00 p.m.” He muttered, standing up from the stool, putting on his coat, saying goodbye to Pinkie behind the kitchen door, and walking right out of the shop, sparing a second glance behind him to see whether she had come out of the shop. She hadn’t, but that was normal.

His shoes scraped against the pavement. Starburst kept his head down and studied the ridges and grooves within them with faked interest, anything to get his mind flowing. Grey clouds drifted across the sky, blocking the radiant orange beams of the sun as it silently began to end its journey across the horizon. He was worried that the clothes he had left out to dry would become wet when it started raining, and if he didn’t reach home fast enough.

Yet he barely increased his pace, thinking of it as nothing more than a trivial matter.

Why was it trivial? Did he consider it to be nothing? Did he think that they weren’t worth his time?

He walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, even as the first signs of rain begin to drip down his coat, matting his jet black hair so that it clung to his forehead.

He walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, and walked as the rain started drumming against the pavement, and people scurried into office buildings, restaurants, and under umbrellas to avoid it.

He walked, and walked, and walked, and walked . . . thinking of nothing else but these thoughts, because he couldn’t think of anything else, because he needed to remind himself of who he was:

My name is Starburst Galaxy. I’m 17, and I live alone.

I was once a pro-shogi player, a game which I’ll probably never play again.

I’m perfectly content with my life so far. I’m . . . satisfied . . . with my life so far.

END.

Chapter 2
The cold chills of the late morning seeped into his skin, despite the fact that he wore a coat, which was a pointless effort. He was afraid that his coat might fly off into the wind as well, he struggled to hold on to it. His hair was being tousled by it, as if it were a mother tousling the hair of her child.

Walking to and fro somewhere would seem monotonous to the average person, but not to the oblivious Starburst, who paid no heed to any other distractions . . . other than the occasional cars that passed by, which by the way, were 25 today. Though most of them were an aquamarine now.

The sun still rose, casting cascades of red, orange, and yellows down upon all who were there, shading their skin in a deep purple. A child holding the hand of his mom. An old man reading a newspaper that was slowly fluttering out of his grasp.

All of them were shaded in that purple.

The people around him . . . were ignorant of that fact. As if they didn’t care at all. They were still radiating that joyous light from the day before, and the day before that . . .

How were they so good at it?

Pushing those thoughts aside, he twisted the doorknob open, struggling to stop and smell the homely scent of freshly baked pastries every time he entered the shop.

He bounded over towards the counter, pulling up a stool by it, and sitting on the stool.

He glanced over at the clock. 1 hour since opening time. He was subjectively early. Silence still greeted him, and he wasn’t worried at all. He certainly did not have drop of perspiration bead down his forehead.

The Cakes were still in the city of Canterlot . . . unexpectedly. Their friend must’ve been real important to risk handing over responsibility of the Sweet Shoppe to the two of them.

Pinkie was . . . today was a Sunday. She usually came at around 11 . . .

The clock ticked by, hitting the eleventh hour mark. No sign of her entering the door.

In fact, there was no sign of anyone, actually.

This is just a repeat of yesterday then. I should’ve come here around 1:20 . . . why didn’t I come here around then-

The bell jingled, and the door opened, letting in a gust of wind. He stood up, anticipating the stranger to be Pinkie. He was dead wrong to be frank.

“You . . . aren’t Pinkie?” Starburst said, his tone laced with moderate disbelief.

The two men that stood in front of him resembled twins to him . . . albeit one with a slightly different appearance than the other. They wore pinstriped shirts, a pink bowtie, long white jeans that stuck to their waists, and what resembled a sort of halved apple badge on of their chest, the other of a full apple with a part of it missing.

But despite all that, the thing that attracted him the most were their facial hair, surprisingly. He found the red moustache of the yellow skinned man distracting, and he found the plastered smirk of the other yellow skinned man off setting.

It took only a few minutes for him to realize that without Pinkie around, he needed to run the show.

“H-hello, welcome customers!” Starburst said, faking cheeriness and putting on a half believable smile. “What can I get for you today?” His hands hovered over the display cabinet, ready the minute the two men chose their order.

“We’ll have . . . a case of the Sweet Shoppe to go.” One of the yellow man spoke.

“That’ll be $12.99 . . . wait, what?”

“You heard me right, employee of this well-established café! Soon, I and my brother are going to turn this dump, into the second branch of ‘The Flim Flam Brothers’ Everything Under the Sun Emporium!’” the man beside the other one who spoke, said.

“Oh . . . well then,” Starburst gave them the kindest smile he could muster, before pointing to the exit. “Please leave, before I call the cops.”

That seemed to stun the both of them for only a minute, before they regained their composure.

“You meant that as a joke, right?” The mustached man laughed, patting the back of his brother. “This young boy right here is a riot!”

“I’m serious.”

That again, stunned them for only a moment, before they picked up their imaginary bags, and left the premises, before the both of them said in unison, “We will never forget this day! We will return!”

Starburst closed the door in their faces, muttering, “Yeah, whatever.” under his breath.

Those two hadn’t seemed like potential customers anyway, in fact, they seemed like a bunch of hype-men riling up an audience, or a bunch of auctioneers riling up the bidders.

He sat back down on the stool, and waited. And waited.

If someone had looked through the window of the Sweet Shoppe then, they would have noticed a 17-year old boy with unkempt hair, dozing off with his head squarely in the middle of his palms.

The sun would have shone through the window, awakening the poor youth, but instead, he slept on further.

So much so, that it was through the jingling of the bell that he woke, and the sounds of numerous people entering the establishment, ignorant of the boy sitting on the stool, ignorant of the fact that he had slept off just moments ago.

“Whuh-huh?” He murmured, wiping his tired eyes and feeling pins and needles immediately as he moved one inch.

“Ow, ow, ow,” He muttered once more, feeling pins and needles invade his legs, and looking with shocked eyes at the crowds of people swarming in . . . and at a familiar cotton-candy haired girl amongst all of them.

“Pinkie?” He managed to say – and after all this ‘he’s’, thankfully, there doesn’t seem to be any ‘he’s’ after this - as she managed to push her way forward, and out of the throng of people that were starting to thin now as everyone made a beeline for the best seats, namely right by the godly AC. As he took one glance at Pinkie, he couldn’t help but feel . . .

“Starburst?” She sidled into the counter, panting furiously, her appearance disheveled and unorganized.

“Hi. Why so late?” He asked as she drew up another stool and sat on it, wiping beads of sweat that were beginning to drip down her forehead.

She panted before answering, making a wide flourish to the still open door with still hungry customers that were beginning to pile on each other and or being stuck.

He stared at the congestion and stood up, bringing along a jar of melted butter.

“It’s a really, really, really long story. Isn’t it hot outside today? I think it’s hot outside today. I’m sweating everywhere!”

He commented back, right as he smeared some melted butter on the sides of the door, making sure that it was lubricated enough, “It’s hot? I came in just a few minutes ago, and it was a bit windy then.”

“Well . . . it is kind of windy. But the heat is masking the cool breeze!” She tapped the stool that she sat on lightly.

“Heat doesn’t mask a breeze. It can’t even mask a breeze.” He reminded her, pulling the unfortunate customers out from the small, and narrow door which was never meant to hold this much customers in. Each and every one of them thanked him as they walked by him towards the counter, some just to hang around the place and sit anywhere they wanted.

“So?” She asked, raising a brow and pouting. “The wind did mask the breeze.”

Starburst sighed, pulling the last customer and closing the door with a soft bang, cutting off the rays of light that once shone through the open space.

“It doesn't, Pinkie. Look, I shouldn’t be standing around here explaining this to you,” He placed his palm on the countertop and leaned on his hand. “I should be standing at that counter, receiving orders, while you bake pastries in the kitchen . . .” He looked up, thinking at how he phrased that sentence, and added, “I apologize with how I phrased that sentence.”

“Don’t worry! I’ll be making and cracking new recipes and pies in no time!” She shot up like a rocket from her stool, skipping over to the kitchen doors in an exaggerated, but admittedly cute, fashion.

He grinned and mouthed out, “Of course you will.”

He faced the line of people, eagerly waiting for what they had come thousands of miles for, a huge un-understatement, and sat down on the stool, his fingers hovering over the buttons of the cash register.

“Who’s hungry?” He asked, unintentionally riling them up and causing them to cheer out loud.

“Here’s your order. Thanks for coming, have a nice day!” He thanked the previous customer, giving the other customer a split second glance before moving on to the next.

“A quiche, with extra cheese.”

He nodded fervently, picking out a quiche instantly from the display cabinet and pressing buttons on the cash register.
“$6.99.” He said, “with extra cheese.”

He handed over the order, taking the money and keeping it in the cash register, moving on to the next, and moving on to the next, and moving on to the next, until their orders were just a blur and he only muttered out ‘Thank you’

Hours passed by. The clock ticked by, the AC spewing out magnificent cool air, and the lamp above them both casting down a warm shade of yellow on him, despite it not being night at all.

Orange light shone through the window, signifying the time of day it was now, and how much time had passed by since he had come here, at a somewhat early time for the Sweet Shoppe.

“How long has it been?” Pinkie asked, stepping out of the kitchen, and he could look in anticipated shock as she came out looking brand new, as if her earlier look was just a short phase.

Her pink puffy hair still stayed pink and puffy, and her smile still stayed bright and jovial.

“Three hours.” He answered, tapping the countertop absentmindedly, his bottom feeling numb from how long he had sat down there.

“That long?” She exclaimed.

“Time flies fast when you’re actually doing something.”

Pinkie nodded understandingly at that statement, twirling her hair also absentmindedly. “That’s true.”

“Looks like the last customer of the day is about to come through.” He said, staring at two human like figures bounding over to the entrance of the Sweet Shoppe at a brisk pace.

“Yeah . . . how about I stay out here for once?”

“Here? At the counter?”

“Yeah! I bet it gets boring when the customers have to look at your gloomy face all day long.”

“My face does not look gloomy!” He defended, exasperated.

They were interrupted by the clinking of a bell, followed by the appearance of two suddenly familiar looking people in the doorway of the Sweet Shoppe. The orange light from outside shone behind them, casting the both of them in a veil of darkness.

“We told you that we-”

“-would return!”

The two brothers, or twins, said at the same time, stepping into the establishment, and except for one of them, Starburst wasn’t surprised to see Flim and Flam enter the Sweet Shoppe.

“What are you two doing here?” Pinkie demanded furiously. Her hands were tight, and she looked about ready to pop out her party cannon and blast the two brothers out of the Sweet Shoppe in a burst of confetti.

“We said-.”

“-that we would return-“

“-and so here-“

“-we are.”

“When the both of you came here the first time, you didn’t really talk in disjointed sentences.” Starburst commented on their little ‘performance’.

“That was just us staking out the competition!”

“Now, we begin our ultimatum!”

“Ultimatum?” asked the two employees in unison, one out of extreme curiosity, the other out of single-minded boredom at the two brothers.

“Yes!” It was then that he noticed the bulky package underneath the arms of one of the two brothers, the one with the red mustache, and as they both slowly unraveled what was inside, he wondered what would’ve happened if he had just walked out of the shop right then and there, and didn’t have to participate in this ‘ultimatum’ of theirs.

“Behold, our ultimatum!” The two brothers yelled out in unison, and Starburst stared in fear at what it was, Pinkie looking at it with a confused expression on her face.

Sitting right there, in the palm of their hands, was a wooden board, with two smaller boards jutting out from opposite sides of the wooden board itself. What he held was the one thing that he had hoped never to see again. A shogi board.

END.

Author's Note

I hope this becomes a success among you guys! See you in Volume 2!

Volume 2 - Closure

Chapter 3

Starburst could only stare in complete shock at the shogi board in the hands of one of the brothers, light from the open door cascading in shades behind the two of them, making them look like something that Starburst could never achieve.

“What . . . is that?” Pinkie asked, staring at it with a look of utter confusion, leaping out in surprise as Starburst stood up suddenly, and looked at the two brothers with an expression of fear.

“A... shogi board.” He answered her, his hands shaking furiously, and his eyes darting from object to object.

“Yes, it is a shogi board! One of you two will play me, or my brother, in a simple game of shogi.” Starburst’s pupils seemed to dilate at that statement of Flim’s

“What’s the catch?” Pinkie asked, her brows furrowed in suspicion. Though, there was another question that was nagging her at the back of her frivolous subconscious, and that was, "Just what is shogi?"

“If we lose, we will not set foot in this here establishment ever again.” Flim said, making a huge show with his hands, moving them back and forth.

“But if we win, you must sign over the Sweet Shoppe to Flim and Flam’s Everything Under the Sun Emporium and all of its subsidiaries,” said Flam, stroking at the tip of his mustache, “so that we may be able to turn this place into the second branch of the Flim and Flam’s-!”

That statement of Flim snapped Starburst out of his fear, cutting him off, his tone full of questioning at this ludicrous and absurd challenge of theirs, “On what merits are you basing that you can simply take the Sweet Shoppe away just like that? And what’s stopping us from kicking you out?”

The two brothers simply chuckled, Flim pulling out a piece of crumpled paper that looked suspiciously like a legal document, with a smirk.

“It is here, under Ponyville Law, Section D-13, under Property Management. Note this: 'Any property, or properties, owned under this town, can be signed over from their respective owners from a game of the challenger's choosing, though, if the owners are not present, then the tightly-knit employees of the establishment may participate. This exception is given to the superbly magnifique Flim and Flam's Everything Under the Sun Empori-"

“That’s enough, dear brother.” Flam hushed him, feigning a forced smile for the two suspicious employees.

"Right," He faked a cough. "And so adhering to this law, either one of you must play against us. You will be a representative of the owners, considering they are away, it seems."

Pinkie raised her brow in suspicion, crossed her arms in suspicion, staring at the two awfully sweating brothers in suspicion with a bundle of suspicion, “Soooo, you’re sure that’s a credible legal document?”

Their explanation rolled right over her head, going from one ear to the other... but she could faintly remember reading some of Ponyville's set rules as a pastime when she was younger, out of sheer boredom, and she could discern that the document Flim read from wasn't believable in the slightest.

“It is a perfectly credible legal document!” He said as-a-matter-of-factly, jamming the document within the depths of his pockets.

“Right, it totally is.” Starburst muttered, a piece of lint on his shorts distracting him slightly.

“Now, who will play against us . . .” Flim asked once more, gazing around the Sweet Shoppe, stopping his fruitless gazing about the establishment at Starburst, looking right at him with a knowing smirk, and subtle superiority.

“. . . or maybe you would like to play, Starburst, professional shogi player?” He added, deepening his smirk, his brother following suite.

He felt a shocking sensation travel up his spine, followed by something stirring within his stomach, festering wildly. He looked at the two brothers with an icy, glazed look, unable to completely fathom what they had said, and unable to accept what they had just said.

“Starburst?” Pinkie asked them, her voice tinged with an incredulous tone. “A professional shogi player? I don’t think he fits the description... whatever that description is.”

Thanks, Pinkie. I so needed that.

“Oh, but it is true, young lady.” Flam justified, pointing to Starburst. “He is a professional shogi player . . . or at least one who had gone professional during his freshman years of high school.”

“I – hold on-!” Starburst put in, being interrupted by Flam once more.

“He is one of six who have gone pro during high school, and the other five have gone on to become masters.” Flam ended with a slight mocking bow to Starburst, who gritted his teeth, clenching his open hands into a pair of fists.

“Starburst?” Pinkie asked, astounded, “You never told me that! That’s amazing, if I knew what it meant!”

“Oh, do not worry. What he did, means a lot to the shogi community.” Flam answered.

“It’s a shame, really that he left-”

Starburst slammed his palms on the countertop, startling the three, and he defended himself, “I did not leave shogi!”

“Then what would you call it? Taking a leave of absence for a certain amount of time?” He taunted, his words only meant to provoke him.
And they worked.

He clenched his fists harder, till they were completely white, till he could see crescent shaped slits in the middle of his palms.

“Then why don’t you play with me, just one game?” He laid down the board on the table, his eyes glinting with eagerness. “Then we’ll see whether you’ve improved.”

“What makes you think I’ll go through with this? What’s stopping me from just walking out that door, or calling the cops?” He challenged, anger lacing his tone. Pinkie was starting to shrink back from Starburst, not used to seeing him like this, her eyes and her shocked look slightly off-kilter.

She’d never thought that he could feel anything other than nothing . . . she was presumptuous with her first thoughts about him.

“That wouldn't be very gentlemanly of you? I thought you were a professional!” Flim taunted even more, followed by the snickering of his brother beside him.

“Fine.” He uttered out plainly, unclenching his fists and walking towards the both of them. He pulled up the chair towards him, plopping into it with a silent rustle of his shirt, giving the unfortunate brother a placid stare.

“Let’s play.”

The shogi board, its glossy wooden surface composed of eighty-one rectangles set in a rectangular outline. Nine rows, nine columns each. The pieces, twenty for each player, wedge shaped and in varying sizes, comprising of mainly the king, the rook, the silver general, the gold general, the knight, the pawn, the bishop, and finally, the lance. The rules ... force the opponent to surrender, or somehow, though it was extremely unlikely and hard to do, stop the game at a stalemate.

Starburst analyzed all of this, as he struggled to remember what he had forgotten.

What he had nearly forgotten, he corrected himself.

“Let’s start then.” Flim said, his words falling on deaf ears as the two looked at the shogi board. Starburst had chosen black first, being the one who was challenged, and Flim having chosen white, waited for Starburst’s turn to move.

“Why isn’t Flim moving first?” Pinkie piped up out of curiosity. “Didn’t he choose white?”

“In shogi, black moves first.” Flam answered, concentrating on the board, on his brother’s face, on the veins pulsing through his brother’s neck.

“Oh . . .”

Starburst began, moving his pawn, and with this first move, the game began.

Flim’s playing style was untrustworthy, full of cunning and risk-taking, and riddled with opportunities for Starburst to strike where he was weakest. Starburst moved his pieces exactly where he had planned them to without fault from the start, each satisfying click of the pieces against the hollow board bringing him closer and closer to the endgame.

“How have you been all these years?” Starburst heard Flim ask out of the blue, barely hearing his words as he moved his piece to the next tile, his expression as placid and cold as ever before. Suddenly, the unruly hair, the cold cocoa brown eyes, and his general appearance made sense to Flim now.

Starburst’s playing style reflected his personality, his self.

“I’ve heard that you stopped playing, using the ‘I’ll get better at shogi’ excuse, after you surrendered during one of your important rank-deciding matches.” He spoke, trying to cut into him with a knife, and Starburst retaliating with nothing but his willpower.

Click. Click. Click.

The sun outside had set, but the two kept on playing. Now, the sky was blanketed in a lavender, and the two spectators ate pastries while the two fought.

Flim asked his brother for a pastry, and he complied, paying for one and handing it over to his brother. Starburst on the other hand, remained as still as he ever was. Minutes ticked by as the both of them had a silent showdown, under the watchful eye of Pinkie and Flam, and whichever being was watching them at the moment.

Click. Click. Click.

Gold General to 9-F? Bishop to 6-G? What is this boy thinking? Flim thought furiously as he tried his best to battle Starburst’s offense.

Click. Click. Click! Click! Click!

Each click of the pieces began to increase in fervor and intensity.

Click! Click! Click! Click! Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Flim looked at the board with a knowing smirk on his face. He was going to win, the odds were in his favor.

Click. Click. Click.

. . .

Click.

With one final click, Starburst hit the nail on the coffin, and shut it completely. Flim’s king was defeated. After over eighty-nine moves...
Starburst won the game.

The knot of tension that was tightening within his stomach like a noose finally loosened, until it felt like it had never been there before. But it would always be there, lingering. He let out a breathless pant, heaving in and out air as his concentration led him to hold his breath in.

“Great . . .” Starburst panted. “Now . . . get out . . . of this café.”

Without so much as a single word, Flim picked himself up, and adhering to the terms of their agreement, the two brothers walked out of the café, board and a pouch filled with pieces in hand. Before they both walked out however, they turned to Starburst, and said in disjointed sentences once more, Flim uttering the first, Flam the second and vice versa:

“You may think that you have won –“

“- but it is you who has lost.”

“The next time we meet –“

“-I will destroy you.”

“What do you mean you will-?”

The sound of the door slamming cut Flam's trailing sentence right off.

And with that, the two brothers walked out of the Sweet Shoppe, sullen and defeated, bickering futilely among each other. Pinkie still stared at the window, even after the two brothers had left, just to make sure they wouldn’t go back on their word.

“I didn’t know whether I was going to win.”

“Huh?” Pinkie looked shocked at his sudden statement, and marveled at how he was still able to talk, despite him looking as if he ran a marathon, or like he just came back from a war zone.

“I didn’t know whether I was going to win.” He repeated, more to himself than for the benefit of Pinkie.

“I didn’t mean ‘huh?’ as in ‘huh?’ I meant ‘huh?’ as in, ‘you still have enough energy to talk?’” She corrected.

“I do.”

Pinkie shook her head, headed over to the counter, plucking out a pastry from the display cabinet and handing it to Starburst.
“Here, take it. You look like you need it.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look like you’re fine.”

“I really am.”

“Look, Starburst . . . if you won’t do it for yourself, at least do it for me.” He looked up at her with an innocent expression, as if he still wasn’t exposed to adolescence at all, despite his age and despite his maturity. Starburst was shocked, but he barely showed it. The lamplight behind her was almost overshadowed by her hair, it seemed to be glancing off in pointed rays behind her.

Her face was cast in a slight shadow, so slight that even he didn’t notice it.

He bit his lip, his brain hesitating, but his fatigue blocked all other thoughts off declining her offer behind, and he reluctantly accepted the pastry, biting into it with a patient manner.

Pinkie took a seat beside Starburst and asked him, “So you were a pro-shogi player? I never knew that.”

He stopped munching abruptly and gulped down, “I never wanted you to know, nor Mr. Cake and Mrs. Cake.”

“Why? You were amazing.” She tried to come up with similar words that meant ‘amazing’ off the top of her head at that moment, but failed,

“Even though I didn’t know what was happening, you still looked amazing.” She said with a slight grin in his direction, Starburst staring at the half-eaten slice of cake in his hand.

He felt his response choke within his throat, refusing to leave, refusing to escape the safe confines of his mind and into the world, for if he did speak; it would forever remain etched in stone.

“I wasn’t amazing . . .” He answered her response, unwilling to look her directly in the eye, and biting into the cake, feeling it drop heavily into his stomach.

“No.”

“No?”

“No. You were amazing. Better than Flim.”

He did not have the audacity to scoff at Pinkie, nor did he want to at all. “Flim was . . . an amateur player. That’s the only difference . . .”

“What’s the difference?”

“He plays shogi for fun. Professional shogi players . . .” His voice faltered, staring at the half eaten cake, as if it understood him completely, as if the next sentence he spoke would seal his fate entirely. The gears in his mind stopped to a grinding halt as he felt time stop for him.

“. . . sacrifice everything to play shogi.”

“What did you sacrifice?” Pinkie asked with a curious look. Even though that question sounded harmless, to him, it sounded insensitive, and brash of her to ask him that. She didn’t know, nor would she ever know what he had to sacrifice, and what he now wouldn’t have to sacrifice.

“Nothing.” He answered her in a cold tone, standing up abruptly from the chair, stuffing the last bits of cake within his mouth and munching them forcefully. “I sacrificed nothing to become a pro-shogi player.”

“W-wait! What do you mean by that?” She walked up to him, keeping her distance, as if he was a bomb about to explode.

He let out an exasperated sigh and turned back to her, one hand firmly gripping the doorknob, the other clenched into a fist. “Exactly what I meant. Nothing.”

He stormed out of the shop, adamantly refusing to take a glance behind him, ignoring Pinkie’s pleas and rushed apologies. His shoes hit the pavement angrily, his hair being violently whipped across his face from the wind, the moon shining brighter than it ever had before, brighter than the stars itself combined.

Storm clouds dangerously drifted in, and the rumbling of thunder in the distance worsened, threatening to bring down rain as he walked.

Pinkie’s apologies soon become nothing but dust in the wind as the rumbling turned into a deep, earth-shaking, sound.

“What did you sacrifice?”

Everything. I sacrificed everything.

And then, with a pull of the drain plug, all the water rushed out. He felt droplets of water sting his face, splashing against his face in tiny explosions.

His shirt was cold, his hair was dripping with rain, his shoes felt slushy, and his breathing became ragged and heavy.

A flash of white against a dark night sky.

The scrape of his shoes against a cold linoleum floor.

The ding of the elevator.

The creaking sound of his apartment door opening.

He stepped in, taking off his shoes without much care for it, closing the door behind him and took only a few steps forward, before crashing onto his mattress, feeling the cold spread through his body like some disease. He shivered pathetically, pulling his legs close to his body.

Lethargically, he crawled onto his bed, taking off his shirt that stuck to his skin, stripping himself down to his boxers and pulling the blanket over him, hoping that it would dry him off.

His head was throbbing, his mind aching with this one burst of thought, this one burst of random words connected together by context, before he drifted off into pained sleep:

I made a silent oath when I played shogi.

I thought I cut the thread to it.

I was wrong then.

And now, it’s bringing me back.

And I’ll spiral down even further.

Deep down . . .

. . . into its effervescent depths . . .

END.

Chapter 4

The cold still hadn’t faded away yet. It was still lingering around him, like some disease. His head felt heavy, his throat felt sore, his nose was runny, and his shoulders ached badly.

He was having a fever. He just didn’t want to admit it to himself.

He scolded himself for walking back home even though it rained heavily. He should’ve at least waited for the rain to stop. Though . . . he was silently asking himself another question.

How was Pinkie doing right now? She obviously had to wait for the storm to die down, and even if she told him that she used her hair as cover, he could slightly accept that as logic. Pinkie was illogical, like a burst of fireworks flying everywhere at once, not staying under one set path.

He shivered once more, pulling the blanket close to him, hoping that it would provide some semblance of warmth for him.

Was he sleeping? He didn’t feel like he was sleeping. The fever distracted him from it. It distracted everything else, as it always did.

He... He needed to get some medicine... he needed to go to work... he needed to get money... he needed to pay hospital fees... no, that thing could wait.

For now, those three things were important for him. For now, he needed to sleep to be able to do those any of those things at all.

The sun had barely risen then. The sky was in the middle of the twilight zone, some sort of middle ground between dawn and dusk.

He tried to sleep. He forced himself to sleep.

He couldn’t. He tried once more. He still couldn’t.

My body won’t let me sleep.

He tried again, forcing his eyes shut.

No.

He wiped his runny nose, distracting him.

I can’t.

He yawned involuntarily.

Sleep.

He turned in his mattress violently, groaning from the dull throbbing ache in his shoulder.

Please . . .

That one thought was the final thing that drove his body to accept sleep. Though he still felt the symptoms, at least he could finally sleep, even if he did sleep with the bridge of his nose crinkled, and his brows furrowed across his forehead.

He could sleep . . . that was all that mattered for him . . .

Sleep . . .

I have this constant dream every time I have a fever.

I don’t get a cold very often, but if I do get it, I try my hardest to get better, to avoid that dream.

The first time I had it was when I was still in middle school. I came down with a fever.

I struggled to sleep, to get rest. But I did it.

I am walking down a spit of sand in the middle of raging black sea, the waves crashing against each other, like gunshots in the night. Above, the skies crackle with lightning, and the sounds of booming thunder fill my ears.

A strong wind pushes me, pulling my hair back violently, trying to tear me away from that spit of sand and send me back to where I started.

Instinct over cold logic kicks in, and I push my way through the wind, even as it howls relentlessly past my ears. With every step I take, I feel as if I am reaching something... something that can... help me. Something that I need desperately, something I would leave home, get a job, contemplate my life for.

Waves crash against me, stinging me, and hampering whatever progress I had made. It washes away any footprint that I leave behind.

Holding my hands in front of me, I trudge forward, the urge to accept the winds permeating my thoughts as my hands sting from it.

I walk, and walk, and walk, the spit of sand seems endless now.

Finally . . . I make it.

Only, there’s no there. At the end, is just the end of the spit of sand, and all this dream is leaving me with . . . is this feeling of loneliness . . .

Being the only one there at the end . . .

I crane my head back, and find the spit of sand gone. It's an island of sand now. I’m stranded and there's no way back from here.

A huge shadow creeps up on me, enveloping the small island in darkness. I barely hear my own cries as the wave crashes onto the island, and sends me struggling into the depths of the murky, black water.

Completely opaque . . .

I hold my breath, and watch helplessly as bubbles of air drift around me. The water keeps dragging me down.

I feel myself start to asphyxiate from the lack of air, and my head starts feeling dizzy. I start hearing voices, voices of people that I’ve met and played shogi with in the course of my adolescent life, though...

...only one seems to be louder than the others:

“It’s your fault. It was always–”

“-your fault.”

Starburst opened his eyes, letting in sunlight into his half-closed eyes. He squinted, holding his hand out to block the light and standing up on his two feet.

He felt his sore throat worsen, and he was beginning to feel nauseous at nothing.

His still damp clothes lay beside his mattress, in a wet slippery stain on the floor.

He cradled his clothes in his hands, and walked over to the bathroom, his thoughts lingering on the familiar dream he had, before fading away . . .

. . . into absolute nothingness.

END.

Author's Note

Heh, over 46 views for Chapter 1. Never expected this at all though . . .

Chapter 1 just got a review! Though I asked him . . . and I should probably post this on Chapter 1 . . . meh, live and learn.

See you in Volume 3!

Volume 3 - Up a Hill

Chapter 5
He made a ‘tsk’ sound at the depressingly - almost - empty space in his medicine cabinet, ironically named; for the fact that there weren’t any medicine inside.

Very faintly, but he still remembered using up most of the medicine in his cabinet after catching a cold one year ago, to rid himself off the fever that hung over him on that solemn week.

“Nothing…” He murmured, shutting the cabinet, and taking a glance at his overflowing bathtub, steam rising from it. The dripping water collecting in the drain, fixed onto the floor beside it.

It splashed onto the floor relentlessly, each splash becoming more louder than the last.

“I hoped that I wouldn’t have to go outside…” He took a step into the water, its warm touch calming his deeply rooted nerves.
“…looks like all that hoping didn’t work a bit.”

Time seemed to stand still for him, as he waited anxiously for his fever to swell down, just enough for him to go outside. He spent all that time sleeping deeply, trying to preoccupy himself with the growing fever that was beginning to worsen with each day that he let it fester. Two days after, he dared to venture out, putting on a random T-shirt he found off of the floor while bounding around for his coat, pocketing his wallet and buzzing phone with piles of unread messages from one cotton-candy haired baker.

The sound of a door creaking open, and the lift descending filled his ears as he headed out of his apartment, on his way to the pharmacy, which if he were to believe the non-descript map he had gotten from the travel agent when he first bought his apartment, was right down the corner.

Puddles of water collected in at the edges of sidewalk, in little potholes, and in corners of buildings he passed by. Morning dew was starting to set on the trees he passed by and went under, and the air smelt of something humid.

About halfway through, he started to realize something, something important. He was lost, very lost. Every winding pathway had led to a dead end, and the map he had in his hands was pure garbage. He still had the damn thing, as if it would help any more than it already has!

He crumpled the paper into a ball and flung it down an alleyway, walking away from the alley as the thing fell into a puddle, the map soaking in the dirty water.

He wasn’t sneezing yet, or coughing, which was good, but his head was starting to feel dizzy. Snot was running down his nose like running water, and his throat was getting even sorer by the minute, if that was even possible.

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and kept on trudging, hoping that if he just walked around for a bit, he would find it.

And he did.

He passed by a couple of people, but none that he was ever familiar with. Some he recognized as people he served in the Sweet Shoppe.

Speaking of the Sweet Shoppe, the summer sun was about to reach its highest peak soon, and Pinkie would certainly notice if he wasn’t there. She’d start to question where he was, and recall yesterday’s event. She’d start to wonder.

Why did he storm out like that? Why did he have to make her anymore curious than she already was? If he had just stayed there, told her everything, then she would understand, if she could.

He began to feel less sure of his own actions as he sluggishly walked right up to the pharmacy, right past it, stood for a moment, and turned around.

He would worry about that when the time came. He needed to get the medicine now. That was all he cared about.

He entered the pharmacy, a little tune playing as he entered. A feigned light shone from the ceiling. Racks and shelves of pills and bottles lined about half of the entire pharmacy.

He weaved his way through the first shelf, searching intently . . .

Vitamins. . . inhalers . . . where’s-

“Starburst!”

He looked up, startled at the . . . almost familiar voice.

“Over here!”

Who was . . . wait . . .

He turned to his right, and over there, at the end of the shop by a counter, was a person he recognized. His pupils dilated at the sight of her. She still wore the same nurse cap over her head, and the exact spotless coat as before. Her pink hair tied up in a neat bun, and her blue eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

“Starburst! What a surprise!” Nurse Redheart said from the counter, her mouth up in a huge grin.

The corners of his mouth turned up in a small smile as well. A familiar person from his past.

“I never expected you to be here!” She chimed at him, Starburst weaving his way towards the counter, wiping his nose once more, and stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“Same here.” He answered her, holding back his questions for later.

“What are you doing here in Ponyville? I thought you lived in Manehattan.” She questioned him. “Isn’t that where you grew up?”

He cast his eyes down as he answered her, in a low voice that only she could hear, “I moved here. I wanted . . . to . . .”
“. . . leave everything behind.”
“. . . find work here. I can’t just keep on living on the money I amassed from playing shogi.”

She nodded at his explanation understandingly, “Mhm, I get that. You’re trying to be independent.”

“Yeah . . .” He murmured. “What about you? I thought you were working up at the hospital.”

“Yeah . . . see, my friend who works there caught a fever, and he asked me to sub him while he rests.” She shook her head, still putting on a grin. “Though I’m not complaining in the slightest. Taking care of others is what I love to do, but being a part time pharmacist is sort of easier.”

He looked around at the vacant space, and answered, “I get what you mean.”

She stared down at the countertop, her mouth tight-lipped. He stood quietly, digesting her words. The silence around them thickened like fog, shrouding them.

He felt a cough rise up his throat, and he tried his best to hold it back.

“Starburst? Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

The cough filled up his entire throat, and he felt as if he could explode at any moment.

“Yeah . . . never better.” He winced, letting down his guard.

Damn it-!

He exploded, coughing hard into the palm of his hands, each cough sounding like a ricocheting gunshot.

Nurse Redheart’s eyes dilated into one of shock . . . and concern. She stepped out from the counter and patted Starburst’s back, who was squatting down on the ground, coughing.

He gradually stopped, standing up slowly, sniffling. Nurse Redheart could see his face, could see tears welling up in his eyes; probably from the phlegm in his nose. She could see his nose, red from who knew how many times he blew it. His breathing was ragged, heavy as if he was carrying a weight behind his back everywhere he went.

“You’re having a fever.”

“No, I’m-.” He could barely protest as she slapped her hand on his forehead, taking it back as she shook her head slowly.

“You’re burning up! Have you been eating right? When did you get it? Did you bathe in warm water? Have you had anything to drink?” She asked, looking at him as if he was completely stupid, but with some level of motherly affection underneath it.

“I-I’m-.”

“Open your mouth, open it wide.” He stared in confusion, but opened it begrudgingly. Redheart pulled out a thermometer from her handbag, putting it gently underneath Starburst’s tongue.

“Waif da ya haftha themomemer in yaur bagh?” Starburst asked through the thermometer in his mouth.

“Sorry, what was that?” She asked, raising a brow at his slurred question. She pulled out the thermometer so he could speak.

“I said: why do you have a thermometer in your bag?”

“I always carry a thermometer with me. It's proved itself useful from time to time, I could tell you a lot of stories . . .” She checked the temperature, and furrowed her brows, “but they’re not important right now. Look at this.”

She showed him his exact temperature, and his lack of surprise showed through his thousand-yard stare at the digital screen on the thermometer.

“39 degress Celsius. How?”

“I . . .”

“You know what, save the explanation for later.” She headed towards the display case, stacked high with what Starburst could only see were, medicines. She sorted through the shelves, searching aimlessly until she found the right shelf.

“What are you-?”

“Aha!” She swiped a pack of pills from the shelf, turning to face Starburst with feverish energy.

“Here.” She held out the medicine, and Starburst hurriedly fished out his wallet from the depths of his pocket. “No need, just take it.”

“But shouldn’t I-?”

“Take. It.”

With nervous hands, he accepted the medicine, a single question reverberating within his mind. “You don’t have to do this.”

She shook her head, “It’s not that I have to. It’s that I want to.”

He was silent. He had nothing else to say to that. Formulating a response to that sentence was harder than baking a double-tiered cake.

Thanking her, he left the pharmacy, the same tune playing. This time, he took notice of the tune, noticed the highs and lows of its melody. Up-up-down-up, in an electronic beat. Like the beats he learned in music theory during middle school.

A deep pit emerged within his stomach, the light metal sheet of pills weighing deeply in his hands. He stared despondently at the pills, feeling the pit widen, expanding more, covering his entire gut.

Only one small pinprick of light shone through that inky darkness. It was lonely . . .

A buzz in his pocket snapped him out of his thoughts, startling him for a moment as he desperately fished his phone out of his pocket. He flipped the device open, seeing to his surprise, two message notifications, coupled by more.

Both from the same person, Pinkie Pie. Both sent a few minutes after each other. Both just another pile of messages in another pile of unread messages.

He checked the time, sighing, and cleared the notifications with a single swipe of his thumb, staring blankly at the time. He pocketed the phone and the sheet of pills, walking, before gradually starting to run, and running faster than that. He started all out sprinting, coughing amidst his running.

Damn it, damn it all! How long did I spend in the pharmacy? Though technically, it wouldn’t matter if I was late . . . but I’d be damned if I lost all bragging rights to Pinkie!

Bright light filtered past tree leaves as he ran past them, glinting off of pedestrian mirrors. A cooling breeze began to sweep past him, and he was thankful for it, as his head was beginning to bead with sweat.

He ran down the winding path which he started, going back to the place where he first started his journey. He was a heaving mess, panting on his knees. Sweat dripped onto his nose, and he tasted its saltiness on his lips. This running wasn’t doing anything good for his persisting fever.

Through the windows, it seemed as if the place was empty, what with the closed sign over the doorknob. But he could faintly see movement inside, though it was dimly lit. With heavy hands, he gripped the doorknob, and gave it a firm twist.
END.

Chapter 6
“Hey, you!” Pinkie called out to him as he entered the shop, waving at him with a wide grin on her face. He nodded in her direction, heaving in and out lightly, toning down his lethargy for the moment. He pulled out a chair, laying his coat out behind it, and sat on it.

Sweat matted his forehead, there were bags under his eyes, and his hair was messier than usual. These things Pinkie noticed the most, and she curiously asked, against her will, “How are you feeling?”

“Good . . .” He answered, staring right up at the ceiling. “I feel fine.”

“Not sick or anything?”

He twitched his leg in surprise and stuttered, “N-no, why would you think that?”

“No reason,” She said, her voice muffled as she nestled her head squarely in the middle of her arms. “You haven’t returned any of my messages, or showed up for work in the past two days.”

He hiccupped with bubbling anxiety, feeling queasy. “Y-yeah, wonder why’s that?”

“Yeah, I wonder that too.” She stared at him, with an unfamiliar glint of seriousness in her eyes.

They sat in completely silence for a moment, appreciating the birds chirping outside, the stalking nature of a gang of stray cats beyond the Sweet Shoppe, and a group of sea gulls flapping their wings in the distance, silently skimming over the Ponyville River – which separated both the town of Ponyville and the city of Canterlot from each other.

The sound of the clock ticking by permeated the solemn, yet pent up excitement mood of the occupants of the café.

“Starburst, I want to ask-.”

A sharp ring from behind the kitchen doors cut her off, Starburst dashing up from his chair in a surprised move, Pinkie as well.

“Was that a phone?” He asked the confused baker in front of him, who was silently deciding against picking up the device, and finish her earlier question, or just picking it up.

“I’ll get it.” He volunteered, stepping through the kitchen doors, in search of a phone. Never once had he seen a phone in here before, though to be fair, he was more concerned with making sure the kitchen didn’t blow up.

He followed the ringing sound to an unnoticeable alcove, fixed onto the wall, its red cord reverberating with each ring. Cautiously picking up the handset, a feeling of apprehension, he could hear a click at the other end, and a distorted voice spoke from the other end, “Hello, is anyone there?”

He could faintly make out what the person had said, and deftly responded, “Yes, I’m here. What are you calling here for?”

And how did you get this number at all? Was this phone here the entire time?
“I’d like to order a parfait, please. Two parfaits.”

He didn’t know what was that, he wasn’t even sure it was local. Starburst was pretty sure that the Sweet Shoppe didn’t have . . . whatever he’d just said.

“Sorry, I don’t think we serve . . . parfaits here.”

“Two semifreddos then?”

“I don’t think we have that either.” Whatever that is.

Silence fell on the other end, Starburst waiting anxiously for their order. And to question Pinkie on what other things he hadn’t heard about that were just lying around in the Sweet Shoppe. He could hear bickering on the other end, bickering that sounded almost familiar to him.

“Fine, two cream filled puffs then, and make it snappy.” The voice finally returned. “The both of us are devilishly hungry.”

“Right, where do you want it delivered?”

“At this address.” Right after that, the caller rang off a serious of words and numbers that he wasn’t sure he could memories in under one hearing, and he had to pick up a pen and paper the second time. Once the last word was spoken, the caller hung up, leaving Starburst with a piece of paper in hand.

He exited the kitchen, opening up the GPS app on his phone.

“So who was it?” Pinkie asked him, her hands behind her back.
“Just got an order for two cream filled buns at an address. It's a delivery. Can you make it while I find this place? I’ve never heard about this street in my entire life.”

“Two cream filled buns, coming right up!” She uttered, stepping into the kitchen quickly before he could the word 'up!'.

“What kind of place name is this?” He murmured angrily to himself as he typed in the jumbled up words, hitting search and letting the magic happen. In under the space of a few minutes, Pinkie had made the two cream filled buns, and Starburst had the location.

He stared in utter annoyance at the location, his brow twitching. The location wasn’t far from here, per say; if he had a car. He let out an accepting sigh, and pocketed the phone once Pinkie had finished with the pastries, setting them down in a box.

“So, got the ‘loc’?” She asked, using a word from her own made up lingo that would’ve been complete nonsense to the general public, or to an extremely sane person. Starburst was not a sane person, if he could understand her perfectly. She boxed up the pastries, sticking an already tied up ribbon onto the box.

“Yeah, the ‘loc’,” He answered, using her lingo, “is in…”

Canterlot.

Wow.

He made it.

Starburst stopped to just stare at his momentous accomplishment, for him at least. The town of Ponyville stared at his behind, but the city of Canterlot looked at his front. His shoes scraped against the solid concrete of the bridge he walked on, connecting one far off world to another.

The metal railing beside him was hot to the touch, though the wind was cooling it down for now. Sunlight glinted off of the Ponyville River, like light shining on diamonds.

Cars passed by him, people driving on with lives of their own, living without complaint and without a single care in the world, without giving a single crap about the sweaty 17 year old walking under the hot sun.

He followed the narrow winding paths that his GPS showed, often times relying on city dwellers often times reacting in a confused manner when he told them the address.

The sprawling city never seemed to end, he ended up stuck in dead ends in alleyways, up against lamp posts, and once, bumped into a cello wielding teenager by mistake. He apologized though, and scurried away before getting a response.

But... there was some sort of refined taste lilting through the air of this city, unlike what he had seen in Manehattan: the city where he was born in. Unlike the daily hustle of Manehattan, Canterlot was quiet, but not quiet to the extremes of Ponyville, but just the right amount of quiet. If this wasn’t his first time here, he would’ve been astounded at this place, and would have stopped to stare at the tall skyscrapers that seemed to almost touch the clouds, the small thatched shops on the ground below, metal struts and scaffolding in the distance; showing the inner waffle framework of a building under construction.

The cars that passed by him gave way to limousines speeding off into the distance, taxis rushing forth, and news-reel vans that captured daily life here. After what seemed to be countless other paths, he finally found the place, the sun past its zenith and ushering in the predominant yellow and orange of the evening, the pastries now cold in his hands.

He stared in disbelief at where he was. A storefront dominated by large, bright and attention grabbing signs, the one catching his eye most being the expertly cardboard cut-out of the brother duo, Flim and Flam . . .

He was having second thoughts now on entering the shop, but the pastries reminded him of his sacred duty, delivering pastries to weird strangers.

Entering the shop, his anxiety and apprehension tripled, he expected to find the duo jumping up in his face, belting out some sort of cheery, money grabbing song of theirs in his face. He didn’t expect to find them ashen faced, sitting on plastic chairs, staring into vast emptiness.
When they saw him, they immediately shot up from their seats, ire positively burning in their eyes. Starburst took a step back in shallow fear at them. But then, that ire mellowed and they slumped back onto their chairs.

“You were the one to send the pastries.” Flim uttered out. “Figures.”

Starburst looked around the shop, raising a brow at some of the antiques put on display, a bass guitar hanging on a hook, a viridian coat and tie worn on a mannequin. This place looked like it had everything under one roof. A single cold fluorescent light hung from the ceiling, shining like a cold and unwelcoming beacon.

He stepped forward, taking cautious footsteps, holding out the box to the two brothers.

“Here’s the order.”

“Put it on the table over there.” He nodded to a desolate table right by Flam.

Wordlessly setting the box on the table, he stepped back, taking another curious glance around the shop, and his gaze finally landing on a familiarly haunting object right by the box of pastries on the table.

A shogi board, glossy and reflecting a dull light on the surface, the pieces strewn atop it. Papers littered the space around it, jotted down notations and what looked to be, points all written down. It was a big mess, was all he could say.

He stared for an eerie amount of time at the shogi board, starting to realize with faint recognition, that this was the same board the two brothers had used when they challenged him for the Sweet Shoppe.

When he looked back at that memory of them bursting through the doors of the Sweet Shoppe, it was actually kind of funny then. He couldn’t recall why it was funny then, though it was probably from the memory of Flim arguing with Pinkie about the credibility of the ‘obviously-a-farce’ legal document.

And then he blurted out the question that had been nagging him for as long as one day ago, he just never had the courage to ask it out loud, “How did you know about shogi?”

The two brothers looked at him suddenly, too preoccupied with their thoughts to even engage in a counter-argument with him, just to change the subject away from shogi.

“I mean… what drew you in?” He reiterated himself, slightly embarrassed, turning to face the duo.

They begrudgingly answered him, Flim starting it off, “What drew us in was the calm serenity of the pieces clicking on the board, that satisfying sound was like my favourite thing in the world-”

“-and the people that we’ve met, and admittedly cheated from. We’ve met a lot of interesting people from shogi, at matches, and at regular meetups.”

“That’s what drew us in.”

“That’s… it?” He asked, curious.

“What did you expect?” Flam questioned Starburst. “Some sort of long epic?”

“No…” He answered him, his voice trailing off, “I guess I was expecting something more than just the calm peace that shogi provides. Something almost from a comic book.”

The two brothers stifled a laugh, sharing a pair of knowing grins, before suddenly shooting up from their plastic chairs; pointing right at him with smirks etched into their faces. “Looks like that explanation wouldn’t sate your eager curiosity!” started Flim, before the two brothers nearly yelled at him in unison, “Looks like we’ll have to sing it out to ya!”

Starburst took a step back, his hands waving in a universal ‘no’ gesture frantically, “N-no, I think it’s okay-.”

But he couldn’t stop them from suddenly belting out a song, a free verse song, twirling around a pair of assorted items from the stack; Flim a golf club and Flam a walking stick, and donned a pair of beaten bowler hats, Flim starting the song,

“So there we were, in the middle of noon, the pair of us sitting idly by,”
“And this stranger with a peculiar package came bustlin’ in, looking like a man on a mission,”
“I say to my brother, ‘He seems like a peculiar fellow, dear brother!’”
“And I say back to him, ‘Be quiet, he's here!’”
“This man gives us an offer!”
“A shogi board, for only ten dollars, how cheap!”
“What a steal!”
“We were taken in by his board, and pawned it right off his hands, with extra money on our hands!”
“What a deal!”
“We played the blasted thing every single day!”
“We started to learn the basics!”

In a rising crescendo that Starburst only wished to end, the two brothers held each other by the shoulders, raising their sticks high . . .

“We would gloss the blasted thing every morning!”
“We would go to the shogi hall!”
“We’d bet! We’d play! We’d win!”
And then rather abruptly, the crescendo stopped, the cheer fading . . .
“And then, we heard about you,”
“The expectations, oh, were those a pain we heard,”
“We felt bitter, here was a boy who knew how to play, we thought,”
“Who never whined, never complained about his misfortunes, yet gave up so soon,”

What? He felt a sense of subtle anger from their tone, the way they looked at him, their meaningless disdain for him masked.

“Year after year, the boy that riled up the shogi world,”
“Slowly faded away,”
“His obvious destiny,”
“Becoming more worthless as he threw it all away.”

The two brothers stopped, tossing their makeshift sticks and their bowler hats into some distant piles where no one would likely find them again. Starburst stared at the both of them with both complete surprise and in the pits of his stomach… grudging respect for the pair. If these two had gone the extra mile, they would’ve become pro-shogi players in no time, but to them, it was just a hobby – something to enjoy doing just for the heck of it.

“Starburst, look…” He didn’t know which brother spoke, as he was staring at the floor of the shop then, his mind drifting off into other thoughts. Their words . . . it spoke right through to him. He was slowly fading away, but what else could he do?

His thoughts were turning ever more out of focus by the second, even to him.

“...we know we were more than jerks to you. We brought up past events that you had probably regret ever doing. We brought up your previous profession.”

He kept on staring at the floor, his focus wavering slightly.

“We taunted you into playing against us.”

He still stared at the floor.

“We just want to say that we’re… sorry. We apologize. We… feel bad for all of it.”

“Two days made us realize this. Not one hour, or even after one minute, but two days.”

“We may be just mere con-artists, but even they have hearts. For if they didn’t, then they would just be another soulless robot controlling the system.”

He brought his head up, facing the two brothers with an etched frown on his face, one that would forever stay there; he thought, an expression that would stick with him for the rest of his ungrateful life.

“Why tell me all this?” He asked them. There was no real purpose for them to tell him any of this. Tell it all to Pinkie. She would be far more suitable for it. Hell, she would be leagues more suitable than him.

“Your co-worker won’t give us a chance. She thinks we’re just mean con-artists, and maybe she’s right about that.” Flam spoke, a hint of gloominess beginning to set upon his face.

“But you… you’ve experienced loss. You’ve gone through hardships,” His brother continued. “We’re just con-artists! We don’t want know anything about it! You can understand what we feel right now.”

“Pained," Flam said.

"Defeated," Flim said.

"Lost," Starburst murmured.

The two brothers stared at the frowning Starburst, his dark brown eyes, so dark that they were almost black, that were dark enough to blot out any light that fell on his eyes.

“At least that’s what I feel.” He hastily added, the two brother ignoring his franticness in changing the subject, looking at each other, almost as if they were having a silent conversation -as siblings often do; for Starburst at least- before nodding. Flim turned to Starburst, his expression filled with none of that conman charm, but instead… respect, and said to him, his voice with a tone of finality permeating it.

“Why don’t you come with us tomorrow to the shogi hall in Ponyville?”

A small breeze passed by the shop, tapping the windows dully. A slight overcast was settling over Canterlot, casting the city in a perpetual grey darkness. Rain again, in the middle of summer.

“W-what?”

“Like I said,” He repeated deftly. “Come with the both of us to the shogi hall in Ponyville tomorrow.”

He was wide-eyed at his request, his fever all but forgotten now.

“Bu-but why? You already know that I left shogi, and that’s all I’ll ever do!”

“But we have reason to believe that you can go back to it. Just try.” Flam urged Starburst, the teenager rubbing his wrists together in contemplation of their offer.

Flim dared to step closer, cautiously of course, and held out his clenched fist, unfurling it to reveal a couple of dollars and assorted cents.

“Here’s for the pastries.” Furtively, Starburst took the money, pocketing it immediately without checking whether he had given him the right amount at all – though to be fair he had a fairly good idea of how much he paid him.

Giving the door a gentle push, he stepped outside, craning his head back to face the two brothers, “It’s going to take much more than that to gain my trust, after all you’ve done.”

Their eyes dilated in shock as he shut the door, walking at a fast pace away from the pawn shop. Lazy grey clouds drifted through an equally grey sky, and the slight breeze played around with his hair and shirt a bit, as if it were just a toy. He stopped for a moment, gathering his thoughts into one single tightly-knit ball.

Before… the two brothers… was that even genuine? Were they actually genuine?

And moreover… there was a shogi hall in Ponyville… how did he not know that?

Why did they want me to come with them? If they know all that about me, then they’ll know the real reason why I left shogi, and not some botched up ‘I want to get better’ excuse.

He let out a single scratchy laugh at whatever they had said.

Good at shogi. As if I was ever good at it.

He started back down the path to Ponyville, his bowels filled with an empty satisfaction, a perverted satisfaction at deprecating himself even further.

Does it even matter?

At the end of the road, there’s a destination. At the end of the journey, there’s a light that shines down upon you, and the people – the friends and rivals that you’ve made are with you, congratulating you for making it all the way to the end.

Isn’t that how those stories usually go?

At the end of the light, what’s there? After the journey, what’s left? Just that light, still shining down upon you? Do you still bask in your own loneliness, after everyone’s moved on?

…

I started playing shogi when I was still in middle school, finding out about the sport through my father who was also an avid player. I’d play against him, on a battered old tatami mat that would rustle under our weight each time we moved, cupping our chins in our hands with deep thought; staring intently at the board in front of us.

My father was a kind man. He was generous. He was an avid player of shogi, reaching to pro level. He loved his two children, his son and daughter.

Every single time that I’d play against him, I’d try to get him in a tight spot. He would put on a tight expression laced with concentration, and I would stare intently at his face, fantasizing about how I would soon look like him, how I might have that concentrated look of his one day.

That was all in the past though. Something that would stick to my mind; that I’d cling desperately to, even years later.

Somehow, that memory surfaced again in my mind as I walked back to the Sweet Shoppe, my stomach pained, and my forehead sweaty. The cold evening air swiftly passing through the city of Canterlot as the hectic hustle and bustle died down, to let in the quiet and calm peace of the evening.

I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but I’m grateful. I’m grateful that it was not any other memory, and I’m eternally grateful that it will remain only a memory.

The Sweet Shoppe soon came into view, the long walk from Canterlot back to here nearly tiring me out, but I still had enough energy left to do one more thing before I returned to the safeness of my humble and messy adobe…

“You’re back again!” Pinkie chirped as he entered the shop, the cold lamplight from above casting down on him and her.

“Hmm, I am.” He took out the money from his pocket, setting them down on the counter, before picking up his coat and putting it back on. “And now I’m going out.”

“It isn’t even closing time!” She pouted, crossing her arms together.

“Then I guess you’ll get your chance at manning the register.” He replied, setting out of the shop once again, his hands stuffed deeply into his coat pockets, and his breaths becoming ragged with each step he took.

He took the same path back to his apartment, looking past it, eventually passing by his apartment. If he remembered correctly… it was supposed to be around here. He followed the same path he walked years ago, Nurse Redheart’s hand nearly cupping his whole palm with worry, himself staring down at the grooved pavement, occupying himself with something tedious instead of facing his stark reality.

Ponyville was the last place he had to wanted stay in, but he had no other choice. It was either that, or stay with his grandfather, and his growing tension with him were… unnerving, to say the least.

The paved pathway soon gave way to a tarmac road, a winding path cutting straight up a hill. Overhead, the moon was snaking out of the horizon, bringing with it the shining pinholes in the night sky.

Up and over the hill… wasn’t that how Nurse Redheart put it, back then. Up and over.

Up and over the hill, the local Ponyville Hospital appeared, supposedly the best hospital in the entirety of Equestria, boasting some of the best medical care and contingency plans… at least, he was sure that it said that. It was nearly six years since he’d last been here, and he hadn’t had any other reason to visit during his time with his grandfather, what with him poring over shogi books and slowly rising up to a professional’s level during those 6 years.

The tarmac road soon became narrower, until it finally evened out into a parking lot. The parking lot was idle, only a few cars to be seen. The same went for the hospital, and despite the best medical care that it provided, it didn’t really look like there was much going on. The lights were still on, but there weren’t many people milling about. He mostly saw people with crutches and bandaged wrists coming out of the hospital.

Past the receptionist desk, and into the lift. His brain was going into extreme overdrive, and his hands were starting to fidget. He nearly punched the floor button in the lift with his thumb, and his legs were starting to jellify. His nerves were shot, bursting through the roof and into the stratosphere. He hadn’t seen this person in over six years, and despite the reasons he received from his shogi mates, he still felt guilty for what happened then.

His shoes squeaked ear-piercingly loud on the linoleum floor, the smell of antiseptic hanging in the air and wafting into his nostrils uninvited.

A cold fluorescent light fixture appeared on the ceiling every few metres he walked, casting down an unneeded amount of light down on the shining linoleum floor. Ward doors passed by him, numbers bolted onto doors, leading into unoccupied rooms. Everybody that had been in this cut off ward left, sooner or later… except for one.

It was a simple thing, what he did, but he didn’t know he would end up regretting it for the rest of his pointless, irrefutably worthless life-

He stopped, his attention focused on the ward door in front of him. The only left occupant of this lonely and desolate ward, the ICU ward - call it what you would so please.

The name had been taken down years ago, replaced with a lone filing code:D3-121

He let out a breathless sigh, tensing his muscles as his sweaty palms rested on the cold doorknob, a weird sensation filling his brain. Warmth and cold meshing together… yes, that was exactly what the relationship between him and his sister was going to be, if she woke up, when she woke up.

Warmth and cold, two different forces.

Pushing the door open a crack, he peeped into what had become her room. The room was painted a sickly green, and a single painting of a blooming flower hung to the side, a bright contrast to this otherwise gloomy room. He creaked the door open, pushing the door close as he entered the room.

“Hey,” He uttered out, his voice penetrating the silence that had hung over him. “It’s been a while…”

He gazed at his sister’s still sleeping figure on her hospital bed, pulling up a chair and plopping down beside it. A cabinet stood beside it, and a heart rate monitor beeped off into the distance. A dying flower, a chrysanthemum, rested in a gleaming purple ceramic vase, its yellow petals drooping downwards.

His eyes turned into slits as he stared at the chrysanthemum, and then at her. Her dull blonde hair resting on her head, her face as clean and pure as the day he last saw her, once alight with joy.

“…hasn’t it?”
END.

Author's Note

I feel like this chapter isn't up on the wow factor yet. It's not up 'there' yet.
Anyway, next up is Volume 4, I hope to see you guys till then!