Just like the previous years, they would go back to the exact location and celebrate all through the twenty four hours forming the day.

But tonight, it was a different story.

She was still holding onto the tradition, but instead of celebrating, she was grieving.

She had lost all sense of everything that has been surrounding her for the past eighty days as she drowned herself into depression; she was left with a simple breeze of inner hollowness dancing through the cracks of her being.

No emotions were able to follow that gush of wind.

No vivid sensations were able to enter those same crevices.

Numbness was protecting her, shielding her like a knight would shield his princess.

She had the heaviest and largest wall built up, preventing her from escaping and diving her way back into reality as it kept rolling through every twenty-four hours without her.

She has been this way since the night she had lost the love of her life, her soulmate.

He was murdered, but it felt as if she was the one being killed; she constantly felt a sharp pain piercing through her heart, a constant reminder of her never lasting eternity.

They had it all figured out and somehow, just as they were ready to march on towards the next chapter of their lives together, everything crumbled right in front of her eyes.

She was stuck on that same page, without any ink to fill the blanks.

She couldn’t move on; she wasn’t strong enough to turn the page, its heaviness weighing her down.

She had no choice but to stand still and stare at the empty piece of paper in front of her, or turn around and fall back into her past where thousands of scribbles filled up the pages, one after the other.

Sora was in her corner, sitting on a couch, and watched the crowd as they moved heavily to the booming music of the underground club.

She was intoxicated by the several drinks that made their way down her sore throat, letting the liquid sting her insides for a better emotionless state. It’s been this way since day one; a relationship emerged between her and the liquor, inseparable ‘til the end.

She was ruined, and she liked it that way.

Nothing mattered anymore.

While she was drowning in her own drink, barely paying attention to the people in front of her, she suddenly froze in her spot when she locked eyes with a familiar pair of brown iris; a chocolate aftertaste suddenly appeared on her tongue as a heavy weight was hovering above her lips.

Her heart stopped beating the more she stared into those eyes. Her breath grew heavier, the shock settling inside her veins as it let the current create sparks to the speck of nerves forming her body.

Her surrounding was slowly becoming a blur, leaving that one pair of eyes the only clear thing in her line of view. There wasn’t anything else pulling her but that gaze staring right back at her. She didn’t even comprehend that the man she has been looking at for the past few minutes was gazing at her too, holding in a much more alluring feeling into his eyes.

She tried to shake the feeling away, knock some proper sense back into her mind, but the nostalgia was running deep into her core making it impossible to reach back into the surface and breathe.

She was lost in her mind, remembering the warmth she felt whenever she would stare into those dark colored eyes, but there was nothing.

No tingle running across her skin, no butterflies flying inside her stomach, no heart beating uncontrollably against her chest; she was still numb.

And suddenly she was suffocating.

The musky air was reaching up her nose and down her lungs making her cough up harshly. She quickly picked herself up and rushed towards the exit of the club, pushing her way through the crowd to get outside.

Once the cold air hit her face, she let out a breath of relief as the chilly wind danced around her. She zipped up the brown leather jacket up to her neck and crossed her arms over her chest before she started to slowly walk around to clear her mind. She kept on with her steps until she was marching right into the alleyway, the same one that changed the course of her life just eighty days ago.

Approaching further into the narrow street, she leaned her back against the wall and pulled out a pack of cigarette, before singling one out and lighting it up for a smoke. One puff out of and she leaned her head back against the bricks, closing her eyes while trying to calm herself down.

She took another sip out of her cigarette and breathed it out, blocking out the distant noise from the club.

She didn’t realize that she was being watched by the same stranger from earlier; leaning the side of his body against the corner of the same wall, and his hands in his jeans pocket, he silently watched her, observing her with the darkest shade of black that was ever known to man painted in his eyes.

Leaving his spot, he started making his way towards her. The cracks of pebbles under his feet caught her attention just as she flicked her cigarette to the ground. She looked up to see a figure approaching her without a word. The closer he got, she got a better look at the stranger and finally recognized him once her eyes settled on his gaze, the pitch black iris color cutting off her breath short.

By now, they were standing within a couple of inches away from each other. With his height, she lifted her head up to look at him, trying to grasp his features but the lightless area made it hard to notice anything distinctive from the man. She was heavily breathing the moment she felt his touch just by her jawline as he gently tugged some strands of her hair behind her ear, grazing his thumb on her cheek.

She held in her breath as she felt his lips brush against hers for just a second before he caught her in a sudden kiss; small at first, the more their lips touched, the more the caress grew in its depth. Tilting their heads for the perfect angle, he parted for a better taste of her tongue while his free hand slid down to her lower back, pulling her further against him as he stuck both their bodies against the wall.

He was taking her breath away and replacing it with his own as he gently took things into his own hands, giving her the oxygen she needed while still having his lips latched onto hers, addicted to the taste it left on his palette. Her mind was swirling, and her body was limp; a roller coaster of emotions were riding through her veins, sending electric shock up and down her figure.

She knew she was mistaken.

She didn’t need to see his face anymore because she knew that he wasn’t the one she yearned for.

She was fooled, and it sent a needle right through her heart.

But she couldn’t pull away.

Not that he was stopping her, she just didn’t want this unwritten feeling to go away.

He was growing impatient and needy, his urges crawling up through his hormones as they sent sparks of lust and greed through his hasty action, his hands traveling up and down her body, feeling every inch of her forming physique.

She could feel his eagerness and yet, all she was capable of doing was to simply let it be; her mind was blurring her rationality, giving it no space to place proper common sense on the ground.

She gasped quietly from feeling his fingertips sliding up her waist from under her shirt, creating a wave of chills down her spine. She was dizzy from the lack of air, making her break off the kiss, and finding herself settling with his lustful gaze. Their foreheads pressed against each other, their breaths mingled while his hands kept traveling up and down her body; from her bra down to the hem of her pants.

His eyes were different, this she knew, but there was still something similar that made her heart squeeze at the thought of her past. She couldn’t put her finger on it, the more she was staring at him, the more she felt like she was staring right back at her departed boyfriend; even though her instincts were telling her the opposite, there was this voice in the back of her mind that pushed her to believe that she might have just found the same man that unwillingly left her.

She might have just gotten back her eternity.