All About Blues

Chapter 05

She still could freshly remember how she was so uninterested on stepping her feet in a church. Growing up, albeit having both family side pious in their distinguished religion and was christened into Catholic Church, she wasn't much shove to practice any sort of religion. Her parents was not wonting into such practice either. Her family is much into mundaneness. Nevertheless, she still do not consider herself atheist. As though she isn't much sure whom she believed into, she still believed that there was a so was called God.

And that finding herself sitting in a long bench of the church, listening to the homily, brought an elusive feeling inside her. She was smiling mindlessly. Wether she found her presence inside the sacred place absurd or that she relished and related to the homily, Klay irrelevantly wondered.

"Stop smiling" Azul nagged him.

"I am not" Klay pretentiously denied, trying hard to suppress a smile.

It's been a month since their second encounter and it gone successive after the second semester began. Their building are adjacent, they encounter each other almost everywhere in the campus. Spontaneous conversations are of course conducted in every of their encounter. At first it was awkward until they began jesting at each other followed by the omission of formality. Casual talks and ubiquitous jokes embarked intruding in their random verbal confabulation. They began finding the comfort at each other, that one has began developing complacency.

"Why did not you approach for the communion?" Klay asked to her right after he sat from kneeling upon praying.

Azul frowned to herself and began "Well I've got a pretty embarrassing experience back then" she turned to look at him and bit her lower lip.

"I expect that was something hilariously disrespectful to the church" he mumbled. How'd he concluded that was all due to how much he has heard about embarrassing yet as well scornful things she has done in her naive days. He already acknowledged her ridiculousness but never really judged her for it. That he has considered how much evil he was upon bursting into laughter every time he hears such of her stories.

"Well not quite" she smiled recalling an occasion.

"Would you mind telling me?"

"I've shared much to you, why would I be ashamed by just now?" she retorted and embarked recalling "Well that was years ago already but was the most recent and hopefully the last s**t I could ever done. It was communion of course, I was already second in the queue. I forgot what to say or what to do, wether which hands would be above in receiving the bread or should I just let the priest to put them in my tongue. I'm overly anxious that when it's already my turn I just mumbled my respond but that isn't it, I let the priest put that thing in my mouth and I had, unintentionally, licked his fingers."

He chuckled "Well that isn't really that bad—"

"No the priest elusively reacted as my tongue touched his skin!" She exclaimed, loud enough but isn't much audible in others ears. "He gaped, also I didn't even had to apologize because I was taken wholly by the feeling of embarrassment that I just skedaddled away. I even went out the church."

"Well certainly that was due to your anxiety—"

"Justifying my filthy action wont take away the embarrassment, Klay."

"Well can't I just at least lessen the negative feeling brought by such incident"

"You don't have to" you always do; she said at the back of her mind. She isn't dumb to not notice how'd the young man been always telling something that justifies her bad experiences. Yet as well, she isn't considering to assume anything from it either.

Minutes more and the mass ended. The both conceded on not yet going straight their respective abodes but then was uncertain where to go that they just ended up finding themselves trodding the concrete pathway at the back of the church heading elsewhere they do not know.

The church lot was as vast. However, the limit of their property is unrecognizable. There were no barricades that would at least indicate how vast the church's lands covers. Yet neither it was entirely indistinct as the woods was what surrounds the church and that there were parts outside the church in where the trees and plants was sparsely rooted, summing up the trimmed grasses.

"Why is it that this part of the town was greenly abundant?" Asked Azul.

"Well the adjacent lots has been empty for years. Back then a rumor circulated that a housing project of the government would occupy this, but it has been so long and that the empty lots are now serving for a corpse dumpsite"

"W-what?"

"Numerous dead bodies has been found in the distant part of the empty property"

"Really?"

"Yes"

"So you mean if we'd going to trod this path any longer we'd come to reach the part where corpses are commonly found?" Enthusiastically, she asked, halting Klay.

"Why do you sound enthusiastic about it?"

"Do I?" She as well halted and faced Klay.

"Pretty much"

"Well" the corners of her lips arched forming a thrift yet mischievous smile "Don't you find it exciting going there? Like what if along our way we'd also found a dead body?"

He frowned and crossed his arms against his chest "Seriously?"

"Or so if I feel like being criminal along our way and the thought of wanting to murder someone would emerge in my mind and then of course there was you—"

"Oh come on!" He groaned and Azul laughed. A sort of laugh that seems contagious that even Klay has ended up laughing as well.

Random and senseless...

The both was aware about how imbecile their conversation could ever be and yet none of them was cringing out of how juvenile they always sounds like. It's isn't the normal conversation they used to employ with other people, it isn't the proper conversation a couple of students undertaking or has taken social sciences would like to have.

Yet they like it that way, they relished it that way.

After moments of trodding the pathway heading to nowhere one has decidedly suggested to visit Consuelo's bookshop. Azul, of course she was the one to pursue such as Klay has really no interest with the books in Consuelo's vintage bookshop. The availability of books are only in favor of fictitious literature that are commonly aged written.

Fantasy and romance, that's what most of people get to come in there. Limited edition and rare vintage books as well. The very thought of rare books would indeed have many interested, though commonly was woman— guys also could be regaled by it. But Klay is entirely different, he do not find fiction regaling nor was it even necessary. He could not perceive the sole purpose of fiction. He concluded that it only romanticizes unrealistic concepts in life. Setting others standards as high and that disappointing them in the end, when they already had the taste of reality and mundaneness.

But his bitter viewpoint do not just affect literature of fiction yet as well the whole literature itself. He only, at least, do acknowledge informational and educational books that contains facts. As well considers philosophical and historical contents, nonetheless.

And just like how Azul never imagined herself inside a church, Klay as well never imagined himself in the aisles in between the shelves of the said bookshop.

"What were you searching?"

"Nothing really" she averred upon exchanging her gazes sidewards. "I mean I'm not much into reading books, but I prefer something historical if reading one"

"Fictions?"

"Fictitious or not, it doesn't matter"

"Well, most of the books here are fictions and are old. Some are historical perhaps but only in contents or genre. Not something historically educational."

"Why haven't we thought of reading the sections before going inside the jungle of shelves?" She rhetorically questioned.

"I noticed" he began "It seems you're a sort of fond with the past"

"What does that supposed to mean?" She asked after a brief pause as of absorbing his comment.

"Like, I observed in every of our conversation, you do always open up something from the past or so you was quite interested about a past of a matter"

"Is there anything wrong with that, though?" She asked, not sounding sarcastic yet certainly was rhetoric "I admit I am someone whose much interested into past and I would audaciously dig up into it. Yet, I don't pursue my interest if I weren't permitted to do so"

"I see" he just then respond. Uncertain wether that offends her, he just choose to remain silent in order to not make a commotion out of it.

"How about you?" She broke the silence, as well his suppose plan to not bring the topic any longer. "Don't you like the past?" She halted and turned at her back to view him.

He halted, stared at her subtle face for some moment before lowering his gazes down "As a law student and a pol-sci graduate, History is interrelated with the study. I could consider that the past has always been important and relevant in any course of generation. Nevertheless, interpersonal is another topic."

"So personally how'd you view the past?" She asked not even reluctant, neither she was worried if he'd find the question intrusive. He has all the rights to decline answering her question, and wether he'd left her question unanswered she do not really mind.

He sighed "I exactly don't know. But I think there were past that isn't worth opening up ones again. _Past is past, never discuss_ they say"

"Well you have a point" she turned her back from him and continued on waking. "I couldn't disagree more. Even me myself would not also like to discuss other past experiences, basically those traumatic ones"

"But I envy how you recall and vocal out your past experiences"

"They are just embarrassing and ridiculous not really a sort of insidious."

"Still, if that was me or other people, I still won't have the guts telling such story to other people."

"Well..." she smiled to herself.

"Aren't you concerning about others comment that they concluded base in your stories?"

"What kind of conclusions? Like if they'd think I'm as stupid back then?"

"Kinda"

"Do you think I'm stupid?"

"N-no!" He hastily averred, making Azul smile. "It's just— well, I admit that those you told me are indeed ridiculous but that doesn't make you any stupid—"

"Liar" She interrupted "Even me myself admits how stupid and naive I was the past years and if people would also conclude the same, I would not really care as it was as accurate to begin with."

"Aren't they a sort that cringes you off to the point that you regretted or have you wished you haven't done them?"

"It does, and I have told my self myriad times that I shouldn't have done them. Yet those memories from the past is not something I would like to get rid off" her voice lowered as her gazes did. "As albeit how much embarrassing they were, their presence in my past is as useful."

"What does the suppose to mean?" He inquired after minutes of pause. A bit bewildered yet as well has thought of a notion what was she implying, only he wants her to vocal it out.

Azul halted and so did he, she turned to look at him and plastered the usual smile she used to give him. But it's just the very moment in when he scrutinized how pretentious those smiles were. And that he began to wonder, if has it always been that melancholic?

"There were memories from the past that we indeed want to get rid of but our minds is difficult to restrain, disabling us to forget those we want to forget" she again turned his back from him and resumed on walking along, tracing her fingers on the piled books in the shelves. "The past couldn't be forgotten the same way as it couldn't be change. However, we make one everyday enabling us to pile up memories that would burry those that we made year long ago— bury those that we want to get rid of. Though it won't really fall into the abyss of oblivion, it could at least be buried through immemorial. In which we won't recall it unless we intentionally do so."

"And that's how we move on." He averred, interpreting her very statement.

"Ostensibly. Forgetting to move on. It isn't really like that because it's the other way around. We need to move on in order to not remember."