The Book Nook

31

 My mind was still boggled over waking up next to Alexandria. And not just next to her, but we had been intertwined like two lovers on their last night together. I was just dejected I wasn't conscious for any of it until just a few moments ago when we were awakened.

I checked my memory from just a few seconds ago, also checking myself; my pants buckle, my shirt to see if it was on right. Everything was as I remembered. I hadn't seen Alexandria putting any clothes back on, so that likely hadn't meant that any had come off.

What was I thinking? It's not like I had been drunk or anything. My mind was going places where the story of this strange night had certainly not lead. Though a part of me longed to see her in that scintillating blue dress again, but she had, sadly, dressed back into the clothes she had worn beforehand by the time she had joined me in the book nook.

Kyoko led us out the backdoor, unable to refrain from smirking the entire time. Neither I nor Alexandria said a thing; we only followed her to the back and snuck out the employees' door into the back parking lot. Not a soul was in sight. It was probably for the better; I felt like a tired mess, hair disheveled and a look of lost-in-space likely on my face.

Alexandria took off across the pavement and I rushed to keep up. Moving my legs like that felt impossible this early in the morning but I ran with no more than a grimace showing on my face.

We sprinted nowhere in particular, just away. She stopped finally when we got to the next block; me, bent over, gasping for air between our snorts of laughter.

"Isn't it great being fifteen again?" I remarked, sitting down and splaying out on the grass near a bus stop.

"This time is so much better than the first time." She sat down next to me. Hit me in the ribs and I flinched with a playful yelp.

"I gotta go though, high school sweetheart. Boss'll be expecting me at work. I'm gonna quickly cab it straight there." She whipped out her cell to call one. I thought about slinging her on my back and carrying there and I'd do it if I could. I really wished I had a vehicle at times like this.

"Your day off, ain't it?" she confirmed with me.

"Yeah."

"Great. Come over later. My place after I'm off. We have a tour to finish."

Luckily there was a cab nearby and pulled up in front of us in almost no time at all as if manifesting the moment I had looked in the opposite direction.

"Is the tour close to finished?" I asked aloud.

"Just a few places left."

"Okay. Can't wait."

She left on a taxi before the morning hubbub would begin.

I figured that I too would end up having to hitch a way to my destination, not knowing exactly where it was until I took out my phone. Luckily it wasn't dead, and also just as lucky, it wasn't on the opposite end of the city. It was not too far.

On my cell I searched the city map app and located what I was looking for. I didn't know it's name, so I merely had just searched for the nearest cemetery to Alexandria's apartment.

I happened to be sitting exactly at a bus stop so I hopped on the next one that came along going in the desired direction. It took me out of the central district where the library was, and away into a more scenic part of the city, a more suburban hilled area where, off to the side away from the homes, a particularly large cemetery stretched away from the nearest street and away into the horizon where a distant drop took the ends of the graves out of view.

The memorial park seemed like a city in and of itself. I had no idea where it began nor ended. Just wandering through seemed more daunting than I'd expected. Plots of masterful gardening rose up in places throughout the stretches of grave markers, lending a feel to it similar to what I imagined walking through New York's Central Park might've been like. It was beautifully serene. It was evident why Alexandria held a deep fondness for the place.

Mister Kim too. Remembering Alexandria's story about him, I could almost see him wandering the chrysanthemums.

I just walked. Strolled like I knew where I was going and had someone to visit. I wasn't alone; you were likely rarely alone in a place this vast. The occasional person or couple could be seen at a distance, inspecting the rows, looking for the correct one to where their loved one was buried; or standing alone like I saw an elderly woman - motionless, hat sat tilted on her white head, staring down upon the words engraved on the rock at her feet. I always felt such sorrow from people who visited graves. You never knew just how sad their stories were.

The woman looked up as I walked past, perhaps twenty yards or so away. I lifted a hand to wave and she returned it.

I had suspected that the cemetery would be on Alex's list of tour stops. I didn't know this for sure, but thinking back to the earliest story she had told me, I was sure this place would make an appearance at some point. I had free time to spare, so why not cross one more place off the list? I was sure she wouldn't mind. Besides, it were possible that we might end up back there anyhow, if there were someplace specific Alex had wanted to show me, but this way I at least got to feel what it were like to be her, wandering amongst the field of stones alone in the early morning when nature was still hushed.

I had been walking perhaps twenty minutes or more, wandering nowhere in particular, only following the paved paths when I spotted a man inspecting the height of a sunflower. He tilted the nearly ten foot high stalk down towards him and peered inside the flower's centre.

He was elderly, thin white hair, wearing a jacket beige in color with pants of coffee-brown.

I moved closer, slowly as to not want to look suspicious. (Suspicious of what I could be attributed to in a wide-open cemetery, I had no idea.)

Walking near him unquietly, as to not startle him with my sudden presence, I moved past the flower garden with its large sunflowers and the man turned to watch me go by.

I made as if I too had just noticed this fellow nature observer, but I was sure it was him. When he looked in my direction, I knew I had stumbled upon Mister Kim roaming the cemetery gardens just like in Alexandria's story.

Dating back to the first time we ever heard about Mister Kim way back in Alexandria's story from one of the very first chapters, all the way up until the recent chapter where we found out who Kyoko is, did you think at any point we would meet Mister Kim face-to-face? What do you expect the Narrator meeting him will be like?
Until next week,

Brendan