Three

 2. “L’aventure” - C4C x kokoro

During my spare week. I took a flight, alone, to Japan, and at the footsteps fo mount fuji, I stepped once again onto the volcanic coal that cladded the ground. It was that summer, when I travel by myself for the first time, and came to this exact spot at the foot of mount fuji. I was brought down by life, concerning myself with the various calamities and injustices that life poses in my path on a daily basis. I traveled to escape, yet at the moment, all I felt was the fear of traveling alone, to a foreign city, feeling alienated amongst strangers that traveled with me with no other reason than to get a group discount from the travel agency. It was at the exact place, the foot of mount fuji, and the exact moment, when the sun hit the brink of horizon at dusk, as the sky turned a smooth gradient from light blue to the orange and red hues of the setting sun, that I saw you, in a blue shirt with oversized collars tucked into an elegant mid-knee dress of a much deep navy blue. Your aura, like your colors, stood out from those I traveled with, where you projected a calming wave of maturity and of kindness. You hair glowed as it swayed to the cadence of the gentle breeze. I haven’t heard you spoke yet, but I could already feel a soulful voice about to be ring. Perhaps it was your stance, perhaps it was your eyes, but that day I met you, and for the first time in ages, I smiled. And today, being here again, decades after that day, I held the polaroid we took many nights ago just as the sun hit the horizon. giving your once black a silver cast and magenta tint, and for a moment, it was as if you were really there, comforting me with those endearing eyes that saved my troubled soul all those years ago. But that ethereal moment was bound to end soon, and reality will once again sweep over our dreamy past.

Two

 2. "Black Rose" by J.T. Peterson

It was never foreseen. The war always seemed too far away, so fantastical, and only accessible thought the radio where bits of official announcement would tell the masses the current progress of the war. It all seemed impossible that she, at home, at a place so far from the front lines, would get injured at any way. It was that morning, where the radio, with its monotonous messages about eastern war fronts, talked about a remote location in the plains filled with only civilians, was suddenly and abruptly attacked. The radio spoke, 

“The flames from the city rose miles, as smoke and ashes drifted to nearby towns, alerting villagers of peaceful, secluded places, of war.” 

With anxiety he never felt before, he jumped on the first military flight out of base, at the opposable of his superior, and rushed home, in nothing but a hoodie he wore the day before. He arrived, only to see a catastrophe, and felt again the shock that he endured during his first sighting of war and his first killing. He ran through the wreckage, and in the midst of fire and hell, he found her, the girl that taught him humanity, in the ruins of the most inhumane act that humans could perform. Her blood stained his clothing as he carried her away from the flames. And now, with the last of his humanity connections gone, he fell in the infinite abyss of despair against the morals of humanity. And so he, the Angel of Death, was thus born.

One

 1. “Amour Ex Machina” by Tomaya Naka

I walked to the edge of the world. where a seat was there as if knowing I would come by today. I stopped in front o the sign, a station marking the end of the world, and let my attachments go. Hearts flew out of my hands as I clapped them together, glad to have to found a place where the littering of past loves is not a crime. Yet, in that moment of supposed release, a flood of memories came back to me. As if close to death, my life, and those that loved and cared for me, flashed before my eyes. The times we spent together, the glories of a lost past that we cannot returns to except in our memories. I am overjoyed, not just with the release of my longing for the love of others that I cannot realistically obtain once again, but also by the fact that the past happened, that all these beautiful memories had actually occurred to me, sometime in the past. That day, I sat down on the bench on the edge of the world, and while the windows blew the clouds apart, I found peace under the setting sunlight. With my emotional burdens gone with the wind, I opened my eyes once again and began to see the world with a new foresight, starting by appreciating the little things. I see the mild painterly greens of the grass, the fertile soil beneath them, and walked back to begin a new chapter in my life.