Fuschia Aftermath

That old obscureness was depleted; it had something to do with Mr Gruff once, but now it was just amnesia. He had curated himself within, but now he was free and mostly formed.

His house, a blossoming garland in the midst of high sloping hills, was a great fondness. He was in his mid-thirties, a bright mind indeed, and was a professor at the Royal College of Zeren.

His teachings were infused with a quixotic feeling, which was fun for students. His colleagues didn’t like him; he was different…

“Would you mind teaching anachronism to me? I’m undoubtedly poor in these chronic topics,” said Marie, a good-looking, fond of literature student (she had the most beautiful smile, Slerin, aka Prof. Gruff, had ever seen)…

She was, in his estimation, quite delightful.

“I’ll try; the weather is charged with fury, I’ll have you in the library this evening, and we’ll discuss it.”

Slerin was excited to teach Marie, but she didn’t show up; she wouldn’t come for the next few days. Worried and agitated, Slerin frowned.

He kept waiting…

Marie came back with a bleeding hand and, as though nothing had happened, went straight to Gruff’s chambers, but he wasn’t there. She went to the library, and there he was, sitting beside a bookshelf, watching out, as if he were desperately waiting for someone.

Marie plucked up some courage, tilted her head downwards, and said, “I’m here, Professor, won’t you teach me?” There was an awkward silence, and Slerin saw a face full of innocence, and there it was, that smile, which he was very fond of.

“You are late,” Prof. Gruff said with a bright smile that hid itself under his relieved face; he was very happy to find Marie back, near him.

“I won’t go again, Slerin”…

The city had turned the colour of old cigarette ash.

Collapsed buildings leaned into one another like exhausted men. The cathedral dome had split clean through the middle weeks ago, and the river carried soot instead of reflections. And still, bombweed bloomed.

Violent pink.

It burst through cracks in the pavement and curled around broken railings, bright as exposed nerves against the grey ruins. Marie hated how alive it looked.

Professor Gruff stood beside the shattered window of the abandoned library, coat dusted pale with debris. He had spent the last hour pretending to search for books while Marie wrapped strips of cloth around her bleeding palm.

“You tied that too tightly,” he muttered.

“You noticed?”

“I notice incompetence instinctively.”

She laughed before she could stop herself. The sound startled them both.

Outside, the bombweed swayed in the warm wind, releasing clouds of pink pollen. People said it altered the body somehow after the bombings. Made loneliness unbearable. Made strangers reach for one another in the dark.

Marie never believed them.

Then she looked up and saw Professor Gruff watching her as if she were a line of literature he could not annotate.

“You’re blushing,” she said quietly.

His expression hardened instantly. “Nonsense.”

But the colour remained, faint beneath the soot on his cheeks.

For the first time since the city fell, he looked embarrassed to be alive.

Marie stepped closer before thinking better of it. There was dust in his hair, silver at his temples, exhaustion stitched into the corners of his mouth. Suddenly he seemed terribly human, not the severe professor students whispered about in corridors that no longer existed.

Another gust carried the scent of bombweed through the broken library.

Sweet. Ruined. Intimate.

Neither of them stepped back.

Startled by the chatter, Prof. Gruff hurried back to his cabin while trying to soothe himself.

He heard something… something quite upsetting.

Marie and Slerin had been adoring each other since that evening in the library, amid the smell of bombweed… They were happy, but someone was green with envy.

“Sauvez-moi.” There was a mumbling in French, and Slerin figured out it was Marie. She was in grave danger, her voice was trembling… “No, she’ll be alright,” assuring himself, Prof. Gruff left.

He went to the office, called Marie, and there she was, standing confidently in front of him, smiling radiantly. They used to meet like this, exactly at the same time, to check on each other.

“I was quite worried the other day… uhm… you know, there was a call, and it sounded just like you, but it was French, and as far as I know, you don’t know French,” Slerin rattled off. Marie stood there for a while listening, and then she hurried off without any response. Mr Gruff was taken aback.

It was raining cats and dogs. Slerin set off for a walk through the woods… enthralled by the thoughts, he was feeling somewhat alright. In a moment, he decided to go to Marie’s place.

He reached there in a short span of fifteen minutes, but stood outside for more than an hour, thinking about a reason… but in the next moment, Marie came out… she was shivering. Before Slerin could utter a word, a massive, voluminous man came out of the house too.

He grabbed Slerin by his neck and hoisted him high in the air and then threw him down on the ground… A loud thump rang out, and Slerin knew he had been slammed hard into the ground… He felt dazed.

The rain had still not stopped.

It fell over the ruined city in thin silver lines, softening the sharpness of broken buildings and burnt streets until everything looked half-remembered.

Bombweed climbed through the cracks anyway. Bright pink against the grey. Almost embarrassing in its stubbornness.

Marie stood outside the house for a long while before realizing she was cold. Inside, voices had already faded. Whatever had happened between fear and violence and misunderstanding had exhausted itself hours ago, leaving only silence behind. The kind that settles into abandoned places and decides to stay there.

She thought of Professor Gruff.

Or Slerin.

Lately, the two names had begun slipping into each other inside her mind, like wet ink bleeding through paper. Maybe catastrophe did that to people. Maybe loneliness did.

The city had changed everyone strangely.

She remembered the library. Dust drifting through broken windows. The scent of bombweed in the air. The way he had looked at her as though he were trying to solve something impossible without letting anyone notice he cared about the answer.

Marie smiled despite herself.

It felt almost shameful to carry tenderness through a place like this.

Behind her, bombweed curled around the remains of a streetlamp, blooming wildly through ruin as though destruction had merely made room for it. People said the flowers altered the body somehow after the bombings. Made people softer. Hungrier for closeness.

Marie no longer believed it was the flowers.

She thought people had simply become too aware of how easily the world could end.

A distant door shut somewhere in the rain.

Marie turned toward the sound, then paused.

For one brief moment, she blushed.

And in the middle of all that wreckage, it felt unbearably alive.