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One smile. Two smiles.The dices are thrown ; *** It’s been years since he’s been here, he has never once questioned his place down here on earth, up here in this building. And yet, it feels as though the whole building he built in his mind for the entirety of his life, all its foundations, everything is so so shaky. It wants to crumble. He wants to crumble along with it, to build himself back up again from scratch. All because of this girl. She’s nothing like what he’s seen before, all the girls he’s been with have got nothing on her. She’s glowing from the inside, she’s breathing life into every place she walks into. All the elegant dresses of the passersby who used to look so shiny now look faded. She’s always in green when he sees her, a bright color, very fitting as she always looks so vivid. It’s always the same simple dress, with a few blotches of colors he can’t distinguish from the distance on her neck and hair. This is what makes her stand out among the sea of people milling around. That and that smile she always seems to sport, no matter the circumstances. He’s seen her getting shaken off by the few persons she approached. He’s a coward, still sitting in his office, watching from afar, such a beauty being altered by their rotten world. Such a pure radiant smile, he sees it flicker whenever she’s bumped into or pushed away, and yet it always comes back in full force. He feels she might just be that much stronger than him. *** The game is on,It’s nothing vile. *** It went like this for him. He had lived his whole life without knowing such a creature existed. She wasn’t there, until she was. And then, it was impossible to ignore, impossible not to look at her, right underneath his window. She was what people seemed to call a nymph, he had heard one of his colleagues mention that name. It was so easy to piece together why she stood out, after hearing his colleagues’ gossip. That first day he saw her, she seemed to be giving out small sprouts, or maybe these were merely seeds. He had watched as people around had stared at her as if she were crazy and had proceeded to ignore her very existence. He had watched as she continued to smile, approaching any passerby to offer them seeds that were always declined. And he had watched as her gaze strayed around on every building shading her from the sun. Did she need sun to be healthy? He had wondered. Or was it the lack of trees and greenery in this place? Or maybe she felt so alone, surrounded only by black and white humans. He wanted to know about her. Maybe when he went home, she’d still be here. She was still there under his window as he went to the CEO’s office after he had gotten through his workload of the day. Upon knocking, he was ushered in, and as he sat on the luxurious sofa across the desk, the rustling of a pen moving against a sheet of paper was the only sound he heard for a few seconds before it was discarded to the side. “My son.” The man in front of him had said with a proud smile, “You’ve been doing well, lately, much better. I see you’ve understood what we spoke about last time.” He had paused a few seconds to hum in appreciation, “I believe we’ll be able to make changes soon enough to appoint you as my successor.” “I– Yes, father.” He had said, a bit shakily. If his father had seen his hesitation, he had not commented on it, just shaken his hand at him as if to mean “Shoo” while saying “I’ve still got loads of work to do tonight, go home first.” That day, as he had gotten out of the building, she hadn’t been there anymore. And that evening as he had laid in bed, he had typed “nymph” on his search bar and dived into any and every article he had been able to find on his newfound fascination. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly if you take people’s avoidance of her, there weren’t that many as it seemed that her kind did not like to mingle with humans. But the most promising one had told him that they hypothetically could not stray too far from their tree. He had dreamed of green that night. *** One leap of faithAnd another, *** Now, it’s been three days since he had first seen her. She still comes without fail to show her bright colors to the human world. She’s always gone by the time he gets off-work and he doesn’t dare go down during his lunch break. He’s still a coward. Three days of watching such a sunny creature hasn’t turned his whole demeanor on its axis. He’s still the same boy, tiny under his dad’s powerful hands, a human living in this black and white society, where he does not feel joy anymore. There’s only fear remaining. Fear of losing money, fear of getting out of his parents’ house, fear of this black and white world that stifles him. As if to feed his morose thoughts, it’s pouring all of a sudden, an unending flow that fills the gutter in but a dozen of minutes. He sees her, still in her green dress with spots of colors all over her. She doesn’t run like most passersby do, she’s calm, she seems almost content as she spreads her arms around and twirls while tilting her face up to the sky, letting the rain soak her up. When he sees her open-mouthed smile, her eyes closed in bubbling contentment, he can’t help but smile too. He wants to go down. For once, he does what his heart tells him to do, and not what his head tells him to. He goes down the stairs with light bouncy steps, he doesn’t want to wait for the elevator. He skips down the stairs in a flurry of movement, he has never gone down these three floors’ worth of stairs as fast as he does now. She’s closer now than ever. He can see her through the glass panels plastered all around the lobby. *** It gets easierTo bridge the path. *** She’s there, in front of him, still twirling in the rain. She notices him, their gazes stay locked onto each other. He sees the drops trailing down her face, her pale skin, rosy cheeks, blue eyes, blond hair clinging to her forehead and neck, the splotches of color, he can now see, are butterflies and flowers entangled into her hair and into her dress. All those details make his pulse sing under his ragged breathing. They’re so close now and she takes his hand with an even-bigger smile than what he’s been able to see on her face. She’s other-worldly. And now, they’re twirling together in the rain, the two of them dancing to a song only they know of. He doesn’t even feel his father’s enraged gaze at the back of his skull as he twirls her round and round, as they laugh freely to the sky. He’s never felt that much freedom. He honestly loves it. More than anything he’s ever experienced before. He feels like a child again, having fun with life again. He wants to feel that again. Over and over again, until nothing exists except the two of them. *** Until between our hearts,There is no in-between.