Tell Me About Your Day

 “So, tell me about your day,”

The woman smiled, “My day? Well...”

She told him about the new store that she saw during her walk here. The lamp was in a medieval design that shone in an orange dim light. She told him about the black cat that tries to seduce a gorgeous white cat down the road.

She told him about the avocadoes that were displayed in front of the local fruit store. “They looked ripe,” she said with a smile, “I would love to buy some of them to eat with my housemate after I went back home.”

“My housemate… well, he likes some fruits. Usually pretty picky about them. But he loves avocadoes. So why not bring them home?”

She then told him about the gutter, in which the water flows flawlessly. She said she is fond of them and she loves how clean they were.

She talked about how the birds chirped cheerfully as she walked the streets that morning. Squirrels jumping on the branches trying to run away from the local cat.

“Well, in conclusion, today is a good day,” she concluded, “Morning came, the sky was clear, animals and people were living their lives happily. I smelled bread being baked when I passed the bakery, and I knew they just baked my favorite, so I came by”

“Oh? You want to know what bread it is? Well, I still have some leftovers. I wanted to eat them during the bus ride, but here you go! You can take it.” she pulled out a paper bag with L’oeuf written on it, “Ahaha, I also have no idea why they use egg as their bread brand name. What I know is that their breads are delicious! My housemate keeps getting annoyed with their branding, well, your good ol' French Literature graduates, eh?”

She took a deep breath, cut her bread in half and bit a portion of her own. “Oh! There’s our bus! Let’s get in!”

She raised from her seat, “Hm? You are not going to get into this bus? Huh, I thought… oh well! Then see ya, I guess”

She grinned and hopped on the bus and disappeared into thin air.

He stared at white smokes that she left behind. Slowly, those smoke dissolved and became one with the air.

It has been his three hundred and twenty-two times hearing the same story over and over again. Like a broken DVD, keeping the same recording running and repeating.

A year ago, after a traffic incident happened to his housemate, an old lady with a cape handed him a blue hourglass during her funeral. And since then, the memory of the place where she was last seen living appear and disappear with white smokes in the same time, same place.

He walked down the street, watching how the details that she mentioned as ‘new’ slowly becomes old and no longer foreign.

He now develops a new habit to stop by the L’oeuf bakery that he used to mocked for their out of place branding name. She got a point; they are delicious. The naming still pissed him off, though.

He started to pay attention to the little things that he used to miss—the chirping birds, the clear sky, the black cat that keeps trying to seduce a new female everyday...

06.06.2022