The Illusion of Unfortunate Memories
One thing Sora had yet to do, despite all her reading, was read a fiction book. She had confined herself to nonfiction books because she read them for the sake of learning. The idea of books being printed and read for pure enjoyment of the storyline was completely foreign to her. In fact, she didn’t entirely understand that fiction books were not the stories of real people that were simply recorded and distributed for the masses. And, it seemed, that this fundamentally misunderstanding lead Sora to feel an overly emotional connection to characters in these stories, thinking the events to be things that really happened to be. Having only chosen realistic fiction books, she hadn’t encountered a story with things in it that weren’t possible in the world she lived in yet.
Sitting on a bench in the campus gardens, enjoying the warmth and sunshine of the spring months, Sora had a book propped open on her lap. She didn’t notice the stares of passersby who were confused by the huge range of emotions they saw flicker across the girl’s face as she progressed through the book. Sora didn’t even noticed the one person who stopped and watched her for a solid ten minutes before moving on and writing her off as crazy as they continued on.
As she passed the half way mark and the story took a turn for the worse, she found her eyes welling up with tears which she made no effort to try and hold back. Sora thought nothing of showing emotion where she thought it was deserved, as long as she wasn’t speaking out against someone like her fiancé. In her mind, the awful events of the story warranted her emotions. In her personal opinion, casualties of war were the worst way to lose a loved one.
