All About Blues

Chapter 17

"I'm very sorry." Klay drawled.

Azul just glanced at him. At some point, feeling guilty for making Klay feel sorry. After all, she believed he do not have to be sorry about asking. He is curious, he is as well entitled to at least be informed.

"Where are we heading anyway." Evasively, "I am no longer familiar with this road."

"In the City Library." he replied in a tone that is far from how it seemed before. They certainly are trying to revert the conversation into what they normally have.

"Why I haven't heard about that place before?"

"Oh well it was already a bit distant from the heart of the city. Reckoning that it dwells in a street almost kilometer distant from the highway." He explained.

Azul gently chuckled and asked "Why did they even decided to locate it in such place?"

"That is something I no longer have information about. But just recently they announced they are going to move it in the downtown." Then, "But the location of that place is really not that bad. The dusk settles there so beautifully—unlike how it does in the downtown where towering establishments almost blocks everything in the vast sky."

"Is there really much of difference?"

"Well the sky seems so immense there."

"You often go there?" She asked. Not really out of mere interest nor curiosity, she just want to fill up their conversation.

The insincere question that did made Klay uneasy as the thought of his fiancee creeped into his very mind. He suddenly remembers how he used to visit that place resolutely. He first saw her in that library. He embarked on his pursuit of Yngrid's affection in the same place. The time when he willingly drives for minutes just to wait for her in that place as he could not approach him in the university that they both went in. That place witnessed his restlessness to pursue the young lady, who was at that time is yet in the rudiment of reciprocating what the young man has and is to offer.

"I used to." And as someone who is raised not habitually untruthful, he added: "I have someone before who often goes there. Then I also just found myself frequently visiting that place with her."

Azul did not paid much attention to his words that she fails to perceive such notable remark. She almost just half-listened to him in the first place. A factor that could be good or not.

She just then respond. "I see."

The rest of their journey passed with sedating silence—or so only to Azul that she sooner just then finds prosaic and boring invoking her eagerness to get to their destination sooner. As for Klay, his mind is in great tumult. The abrupt thought of Yngrid makes him want to drove back his way and adjourn their errand. He regretted deciding to get back to that place.

And yet there is Azul—just right next to him. Azul who he have interrupted. Azul, he who have waited for minutes just to ask her to hang out with him. Azul, whose pressence is relished by him. She just stirred him, after months of mere disinterest from other things, she came and stirred him.

At the very moment, Klay admitted to himself, to his very conscience and to his very denial mind— that she invokes an interest to him. He now acknowledged the curiosity that embarked lurking to him since the day they met.

As soon as they arrived they both decided to settle themselves in a certain table. They took out their textbooks and notes and other more stuffs they'd be needing. Klay took some moment to search for a certain book and gets back sooner. They are silent, not only that the place necessarily permits them, and yet also they have been individually absorbed on reading and reviewing.

Klay fortunately managed to evade his troubling thoughts out of the realization he did came up earlier in their journey. He restrained himself to roam his very eyes around the place and to even glance at Azul as those might distract him.

Azul on the other hand did noticed his stillness and as well his evasiveness but she chose not to make a big deal out of it. She also just then minded her own business and remained silent while reading.

Yet almost an hour later Azul decided to break the silence between them as she told Klay she is starving. They both agreed to leave the place and find some fastfood chains or restaurant to eat. They sooner found a fast food chain, decided to order a take out and as soon as they got their order they left. They drove through and stopped at a coastal road, parked in the side of it and consumed what they bought.

They arrived when the golden streamer already started withdrawing. The sky is getting dimmer and so does the water in the sea that sooner seemed to have gotten far distant like it was already at the rim of the world.

"Something seems bothering you." Azul finally had to disclose that. She glanced at him whose gazes seemed lost in the void as he gulped a cola.

"A lot," after a long pause, "a lot of things is currently bothering me."

Azul finds him strange at the moment. It is not his honest remark, Klay has always been so honest and frank, it is just strange how he seems to appear quite troubled. Azul hasn't seen him that way before.

"Azul," without even turning at her, he spoke in that slow, thoughtful manner, "How often do you break promises?"

"Won't you even ask first if I ever broke a promise?"

And that is when they turned at each other.

"Pardon." He lowered his gazes down. "That must be offensive."

"Not quite," instantly, "but certainly not a question that must be asked in the beginning."

"I am—"

"Stop apologizing, Klay," She nagged him, "there's nothing to be sorry about. Besides, I get what you are trying to say."

"Well you always do, you always try to."

"That is what I am good at;" she turned at the now pitch voided surrounding. The sky is certainly no clear and a rain seems soon to pour. The are stars and the moon are not visible abroad. "At least as I thought."

"Perceiving people?"

"And the bigger side of the picture." She added. "Promises," she reverted on that topic, "it has always been meant to be broken—such of a cliche. It makes sense, and evident enough reckoning various circumstance and experiences. And to answer your question, I would admit that I frequently breaks a promise."

"But why?"

"Because I am untruthful."

"Does breaking a promise makes you dishonest?"

"Not necessarily; it always depend on the circumstance."

"So you are in such of a situation..." with a questioning inflection.

"In my case—I always say something like— "I promise I would not do that" or "I promise to come" even though I know I won't. "I promise I haven't" but I already did. That are the promises I often break, promises that in the first place are never true— that makes me untruthful and dishonest."

"What about promises that are never untrue nor resolutely said to covert. Promises that are genuine and sincere—"

"—that is not constant." She interrupted hastily. "Sincerity that is not constant. Promises that has long been said but is yet unfulfilled; otherwise, is yet on the process of being fulfilled. But when the process takes so long the urge of fulfilling it might no longer be there. When the guts is gone the sincerity, which could serve as the foundation of the promise, would chafe after. Then everything's marred, promise is broken."

"E-exactly." He drawled.

"I don't do that, Klay." She muttered. "I don't do promise as sincere as that. I do not want to impose a responsibility to myself. To fulfill a promise or promising itself is not worth it. Not pragmatic. Not far different from an encumber that weighs your present living down." And she released a silent chuckle. "But what do I know?"

"You seem to know everything."

"I know it is not as simple as how I prefer it or as how I do it. People, they have lived enough in this world and have experienced enough and you are in the same page. And that here I am, a girl who only lives the present."