Kono Yakusoku

Dennis M. Mongoc

BaBRC 1 1- D

Prof. Elmer Brabante

ENGL 1013

“Kono Yakusoku”

( This Promise )

Two children, a boy and a girl, played happily in the depths of the sandbox they were in. The girl suddenly asks if the boy loves her, and he nodded in response. Then the girl proceeds to kiss the boy in the cheek, in which the boy responds to with a crimson blush. She then tells him that if two people promise to go to the same university under the bloom of spring, they’ll live happily ever after. The boy then marks his vow by reciprocating her kiss. By these actions, the two seal their fates, in which both will be shocked in the event that will inevitably set them apart.

After two days, the girl suddenly didn’t come to their sandbox. Frantic, the boy went to her house, but she wasn’t there, no one was. He kept running around town until finally he saw her climb onto a moving truck. Fresh tears stinging his eyes, the boy runs toward the now accelerating truck. He yelled in frustration for not being able to chase the truck, but the girl hears his yell and looks out from the side window, and yells at him that she will be waiting at that university they promised to go to. The boy heard this, and ingrained the words to his heart and mind. The boy’s life will never be the same again.

The boy grew up studying towards that goal, neglecting the need for friends and love, just for that single purpose. But slowly, and unconsciously, he started to forget where he made that promise, and then he forgot the feeling of her hand and kiss, and at the end, he even forgot her name and what she looked like. But he never forgot the promise itself. Never did he remove that promise, those words from his mind, like a permanent tattoo.

Fifteen years later, he trudges the steps where he made that promise, slowly and surely, starting to remember that sunny day under the care of the fully- bloomed trees. Halfway through the long, stone stairs, he starts remembering the playground, the...