Swim in a cherry blossom-colored sea

“Really? You guys wanna tag along?”

Breakfast gave Diana a nod.

“Because the Forest was one of the closer light-touched areas to the center, it was usually the one we had the best view of.” she explained.

“It managed to spark all kinds of conversations about what may be occurring on the surface before the link was made.”

“Psshaw! The real reason I wanna get there is because shipping prices from hobby shops there are crazy!” Hajime interrupted, completely shifting the mood.

“Apparently they got rare stuff there that Dory’s been eyeing, yeah?”

“...Could you have at least let me pretend that there was some kind of deeper meaning to it?” Breakfast groaned in response.

“Dude, you’ve been acting weird serious lately. Is something up?”

Breakfast shook her head.

“Ugh, sort of, not really. In the past, this was the time of year when we’d be evaluated for our work back in Lunaires, but…”

“But? We’re not there anymore. So who cares!”

“I know, I know! But it’s hard to shake that sort of… need to fake being all ‘official’ and ‘presentable’.”

“Ugh, tell me about it…” Diana interjected, wanting to re-include herself in the conversation – but also to switch the topic.
“But, uhm… I was more wanting to get info on the deep woods and the shrine there, less go shopping… so, we could just go our own ways and then meet up at the end of the day?”

“That sounds like a plan! I think we’d need your help navigating the transit there for the first bit, anyways.” Breakfast replied in agreement.

For her own reasons, Diana had been tasked with trying to find some answers around the Ultra Forest – now that school was technically on break. And being the expert at seizing opportunities that she was, Breakfast decided to see if she could tag along – with Hajime, of course.

Hajime had his plan of scouring the vintage and hobby stores for rarities already, and to Breakfast? She could live with that.

While she didn’t want to fully admit the extent of her frustration, it was indeed a stressful time of year. She knew she wasn’t on that job anymore, but the ingrained stress of the work audit was still putting her on some kind of edge. The stuffy, artificial nature of the space station city didn’t help at all.

In her mind, a break was perfect.

So, she waited while Diana and Hajime got their things together, and the three eventually made off for the central station.

The trio found a bench to sit on, before the train-like hovership arrived and boarding began.

“Guess I never asked, did I? How long is this gonna take, anyways?” Breakfast chirped up, as Diana handed over the trio’s boarding passes to be scanned.

“Hmm, I don’t really remember? I haven’t taken this exact route before…” she mumbled.

“But the route from the Station to the beach on the Forest’s border takes like… four hours? It’s a bit of a ride.”

“Four… HOURS?!” Hajime exclaimed in shock.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me, dude!”

“I guess that’s the surface, after all…” Breakfast groaned.

“It’s… huge. Limitless, even… for better or for worse.”

Diana simply rolled her eyes, and the three managed to find a quieter area of the ship to sit down in. She was quick to pull out a book and begin reading away, but it didn’t take long before Breakfast and Hajime began their complaints.

“Did you two just… not bring anything?” Diana asked.

Breakfast shook her head.

“Man, the subways in the Lunar Capital take maybe… 15 minutes at worst? Four hours is…”

“Unheard of! Bullshit, even!” Hajime chimed in.

“Considering how vast the surface is, I’m surprised the long-distance travel isn’t like, teleportation-level already.”

“Can you guys just like… look out the window, or something? I mean, considering it’s your first time on surface transit… there’s gotta be some entertainment value in watching everything go by, right?” Diana huffed.

“That sounds boring.” Breakfast groaned, with Hajime quickly nodding in agreement.

“Well! It’s your problem, then.” Diana said, grabbing some headphones out of her bag and putting them on.

“Don’t turn it into my problem.”

“Ugh, what a buzzkill.” Breakfast mumbled with a roll of her eyes.

“Right, Hajime? ...Hajime?”

And, as things would have it… Hajime seemed to be content watching the surroundings race by outside.

Breakfast sighed, and though she didn’t see the appeal of it, joined him in watching anyways… and was quickly entranced by it as well.

Seeing the surface from above everything wasn’t the same as watching it all go by on ground level. Even though it was dark, there were intermittent scatterings of civilization in the sparsely-populated area as the hovership went through its route.

Breakfast wasn’t quite sure how long she’d been staring when the shift happened, but it hit both Hajime and herself like a flashbang – when suddenly, it was light outside.

The two were both in such deep concentration that it caught them both off guard, and they both made their own startled reaction noises upon the unexpected shift in lighting level.

Diana closed her book and took off her headphones.

“I guess that must mean we’re almost there!” she said with a smile.

“I usually like to wait a little bit after the ship stops before getting off, so I don’t have to dodge getting trampled by others.”

It took around 10 more minutes for the hovership to reach the station, and for that short time, Breakfast found herself occupied staring outside the window again, after her eyes adjusted.

It was unlike anything she’d ever seen in all her life, the way the greens and pinks combined with the soft blue of the sky.

The ship came to a stop, and as she’d requested, the trio stayed behind waiting for everyone else to get off first.

Upon finally getting up to exit, Hajime had to nudge Breakfast on the shoulder a little bit to break her out of her zone.

“Diana…” Breakfast started, once the trio had gotten off the ship and made their way onto the outdoor platform.

“The… pink trees… those things can’t be real, are they?”

“What? Of course they are!” Diana said with a chuckle.

“It’s springtime, so all the fruit trees here go into full bloom! There’s usually lots of festivals around it too, so that’s probably why there was lots of people actually visiting here today.”

“Ohh, I see!” Breakfast nodded.

“...Hajime, you… don’t seem super surprised by this?”

“Eh, I sort of knew stuff like this existed down here before I arrived.” Hajime replied, shrugging.

“It was the imported media from the surface that got me real psyched to visit in the first place, yeah?”

“Right, right… that makes sense, I guess.” Breakfast said.

There was a pause, as Breakfast and Hajime noticed Diana was looking at the map of the local area in the station. The two went up to join her, and it took a few moments for everyone to figure out where they needed to go.

“Hmm, right okay!” Diana exclaimed.

“I know where I need to go, so I’ll be heading off! Would it work for you guys if we met back here at around sunset?”

“Geez, I don’t think I’ll need that much time to look around the stores here…” Hajime replied.

“But yeah, sure, whatever works.”

And so, with a nod and a wave, Diana set out in a different direction from the road towards the Forest’s main small town.

The walk into the small town’s main square wasn’t too far, and soon enough, Hajime and Breakfast found themselves investigating the square’s surprising variety of stores dedicated to vintage trinkets.

But… after the second or so store, Breakfast found that the same stuffy feeling each of them had was getting to her. That it was too familiar to the stuffy feeling of somewhere else she’d found herself tangled up in before…

“Oi, Hajime?” Breakfast piped up.

“You cool if I just… look around outside?”

“Yea, sure, whatever. We’re gonna meet up at the station in the end anyways, right?”

“Of course.”

Doing her best to subtly jog out of the musty store, Breakfast took a deep breath once she found herself in the sweet-smelling spring outdoors once again.

She hadn’t really looked at the transit station’s map as closely as Hajime had, so she figured she could just walk around and find out where she’d end up.

The town was relatively festive looking, with pink and red-hued lanterns and banners hung all around. That, and the ground was littered with the petals of the pink flowers of the fruit trees… Breakfast wanted to take a closer look, but also felt a bit awkward grabbing semi-trampled fallen petals off the ground in public.

But, after a gust of wind, Breakfast found she didn’t have to.

Alongside a few disembodied petals, there was a fully intact cherry blossom that found itself caught in Breakfast’s downy chest after being blown by the wind.

Carefully, she picked it out, and examined it closely…

How odd. It looks fake.

But… it wasn’t. Because the closer she looked, the closer she could see the faint veins of the flower stemming from the bloom’s center, which was colored a deep red.

Though Diana and Hajime didn’t find it to be anything extraordinary, it was anything but to Breakfast.

The Lunar Capital, while over-abundant… was too pure. The trees, the grass… they were always the same color.

Not to mention the stale white of the capital’s metropolis itself.

But this…

It was beautiful. It was alive.

The day was young, and sunset was still a ways out – so Breakfast figured that it’d only be right to give the breathing nature of the surface a true and proper introduction.