Waiting – a short story
Waiting. She waited for him and she knew that he would come.
No matter what, he would come. They said that after the war, they would meet at
their favorite coffee shop where they first met. He was a decorated marine in
her eyes, and an American hero for all she knew. He represented the pique
masculinity and the gleam for his shining teeth would make her heart quiver.
But apart from his physique, she fell in love with the man he was at heart, and
it wasn’t the love for his country that made him so emotionally desirable; his
genuine kindness towards others around him is what sparked her interest in him.
Even though she didn’t know him well, that scrawny middle-schooler would always
stand up for his friends when they were getting bullied. He usually would’ve
ended up getting beaten to a pulp, but he would still stand up for them. But
the thing that really made her fall in love with him is the fact that he never
made a scene if he was bullied and used to shrug them off like it wasn’t
anyone’s business. That’s what she loved most about him, and although they may
have not spent as much as time as they would’ve liked, he was – and always will
be – her cornerstone.
It’s funny how things would work out in the end. She
wouldn’t have, in a million years, thought that she was the man for him. It was
not until a fateful encounter between them in a coffee shop where he worked that
he had finally had the guts to ask her out. And she was so glad that he did.
His father was crippled, which had made money sparse within the family so he
had to get a job to help his father have a somewhat decent lifestyle. This only
made her love him more.
*
Pearl Harbor was a navy ship that most marines would be
proud to work on as an American soldier, protecting the nation was a matter of
pride. But to him it didn’t matter, at least not anymore. The bombardment of
planes, destruction, and injury was not he stood for. His vision of protecting
his country seemed more heroic when looking at the posters ‘America needs you’.
It was only when you are on the battlefield that you realize that it is the
most cowardly thing governments can do; perilously putting the innocent in risk
for feuds that don’t matter. This is what happens when one man thinks he is
above all else and has the power to command thousands and million troops with a
slight nod of his head. That is not justice, and that definitely is not what
the founding fathers were hoping for. “War is a cowardly escape from the
problems of peace”. Indeed, whoever said that was absolutely right. This is not
justice, just torcher.
But that didn’t matter. Everyone was too worried about
surviving the genocide, hoping to dear God that they can see their children,
wives and girlfriends one last time and tell them ‘I love you’. So did he. It
was kind of funny, he knew these were his last moments, and even if he did
survive, the hell he had experienced would never be erased from his memory. No
one wants to live with the pain he had experienced and no one should. It was
ironic how his girlfriend had made him origami crane before he had left, a kind
gift cultivated from the culture from a country he was aiding to destroy.
