58 3.15- How Could You Do This To Me Twice In A Row...?!? (2/2)
I asked what happened and the bystanders said that the incident happened all of a sudden. They mentioned the bus driver had somehow lost control of the vehicle and had smacked its side against the wall, striking one person down before the bus rebounded against the side boundary wall and stopped a few meters away.
The bystanders mentioned that luckily the bus driver was able to evade a more disastrous incident but unfortunately a standing passenger waiting for a bus got hit instead. My head was spinning and my eyes were losing its vision as I walked with jelly-like legs to a policeman who had cordoned the area with the red white and blue tape.
I asked the policeman to ask who got hit earlier and he replied was someone waiting for the bus. The victim was a girl, as young as a high schooler with two sides of ponytailed hair and wearing a white blouse and blue short skirt.
My heart choked on my throat as I fiddled with the phone and tries to contact Akira for a few times but failed to connect. I glanced around and apart from an oil slick, a few debris where the bus had hit the boundary wall and some blood splatters on the way... I saw something familiar sticking out from the grilled gutter next to the boundary wall.
It was a piece of heart-shaped origami that was made from some shiny material...definitely from something I had familiarly seen before...!!!
The foreboding feeling came again and this time with a severe intensity that I had to clutch my chest in order not to have a sudden cardiac arrest as I slowly reached down to grasp the heart-shaped origami from the gutter.
I held the heart-shaped origami in my open hand, and the world around me seemed to be shattering into a zillion pieces as my legs turned to jelly once again and my weight fell underneath it.
I was opening and closing my mouth just like a goldfish gasping for air as the small bowl aquarium fell and shattered on the floor.
An old man who was the permanent newspaper vendor underneath the myriad of train and bus platforms overhead wobbled his way on his walker towards me.
”Son; is your name Shiro-san...?”
I looked up and faced the elder as to ponder on how he knew my name.
”You better hurry Shiro-San... The girl screamed out your name when she was knocked down earlier... I was unable to pull her to safety... It happened so fast... I tell you... The emergency ambulance... It is from Ookuma General Hospital... Its just 5 minutes down the street... Go now, Shiro-San...! Go, now...!!!”
I thanked the elder, stuffed the heart-shaped origami in my right pant's pocket and picked myself up. My eyes were already clouded with streams of hot tears as I stumbled at first then sprinted as fast as I could towards Ookuma General Hospital...
”I am coming, Akira...! Please be safe...! I'd be there darling...! I'm so sorry I never waited for you at the bus stop earlier or else.....”
”A... KI... RA...!!!” I screamed on top of my lungs as I raced down the road amidst the traffic of a Sunday evening... I was gritting my teeth as my uncontrollable tears streamed down in torrents and I could taste the saltish tears as it entered the gaps of my gritted teeth. Honks were heard on the road as I zigzagged against the flow of traffic wildly to reach there at the shortest time possible...
I screamed aloud in my head, ”How could you do this to me twice in a row...?!? WHY... WHY... WHY...?!?