"She would dwell in evermore"

[December 12th, 2021]

"Aurora, I received an email from your school." Her mother said while managing her father's bookshelf. "Graduation ceremony is next week."

"This early?" Aurora muttered as her eyes were glued to her phone.

Her mother hummed in assertivity.

"Why?" Aurora asked in confusion.

Her mother shrugged.

"You don't have to go if you don't feel like it…" Her mother suggested.

Aurora nodded and stood up to leave for her room. She texted about it in the group chat as she laid down on her bed comfortably.

She stared at her phone waiting eagerly for a text. Strangely, a single text from her could bring everyone together. So, she wondered where everyone was.

It made her uneasy. Why wasn't a reply showing up?

Maybe they were busy. She had to remind herself that she wasn't the only concern in their lives. She let go of her phone and stood up from the bed.

She opened her room's big panelled window that led to a small balcony; Not large enough for her to even stand on. Well, it was meant for standing, but Aurora had filled it with plants.

She looked at the withered milkweed they got imported the other day. If only her CSF wouldn't have leaked, she would've taken better care of the plant.

Or not, because it wasn't going to live out the harsh weather.

How that butterfly lived it out was still a mystery. Not that she was going to go all detective and search for clues but at least she could think of possible scenarios.

Her art teacher had explained it, but her failing memories weren't going to work now, were they?

She walked back to the living room, outside her room and made her way to the store from where she grabbed a few gardening tools.

It was the least she could do for other dying lives.

She made it back to the balcony, placed the bag of gardening tools on the floor and sat down to work on her little garden.

She grabbed a garden trowel from the bag and scraped off the soil about the milkweed plant to reveal its roots.

It's roots were still healthy. She grabbed pruners and pruned the dead leaves and flowers off of the healthy plant.

She assembled the soil back to its place, hiding the roots. Then she grabbed a gardening fork and poked the soil for better respiration.

If she was able to live, she would've probably chosen horticulture to major in.

She watered the little milkweed and placed it inside for warmth. She moved her eyes about the other evergreen plants she had. They needed work too. Good thing for them, she was determined to make every plant alive again.

After a long session of plant recovery, she needed a warm bath.

In her bubbly bath tub, she grabbed her phone once again. Still no text? It was suspicious.

How could all of them be busy at the same particular time?

If texts won't wake their minds up, a call should do the trick. She opened her contacts to see who to call.

She could call Ethan but chances were that he was at his work. She scrolled down. She could call Giselle for sure, so she tapped on the call button.

"Uhh.. Hey, Aurora." Giselle said hesitantly, out of breath, as if she had been running.

"Uhm, what're you up to?" Aurora suspiciously asked.

"Babysitting your boyfriend!" Giselle said. "Found him out of nowhere… UHh.. Talk to you later."

"W-Where-"

Giselle ended the call, leaving Aurora in mystery. It was really strange. How could she find him out of nowhere?

"So." Sean murmured. "Did she sound suspicious?"

"Totally." Giselle replied. "Lucy, I told you to keep the group chat in check!"

"But it's so loud! How do you expect me to hear a ring??"

"Guys." Ethan called out. "I just found the most amazing gift."

Alright, alright. So the crew was out to get some gifts for Aurora's graduation, right?

The malls were busy because of the upcoming Christmas. Though, it was still weeks later!

They had left their houses at 8am with absolutely no luck in getting a good gift… Before Ethan found something out.

He was pointing at an object afar, covered behind the glass walls of the big store.

"A plushie?" Lucy questioned his 'best gift'

"Not just any plushie! It's a dinosaur plushie!!" Ethan hyped it more, making it look better than it was.

"Aurora loves plushies. Ethan has good intuition." Sean mentioned slowly.

If the boyfriend agrees, then why not get it?

They all rushed to the store only to realize… There was a huge line. A huge one. An actually huge one.

The line extended all the way from the store entrance to where they stood; Approximately 6 meters apart, and between these meters were hundreds of people waiting to get that big dino plushie. Oh no.

They all stood in line hoping no one would get the dino plushie before them. Plus, why would someone want a pink, big dinosaur with big golden eyes in their room anyway.

"Oh. My. God." The girl standing in front of them looked behind with her short, blonde hair moving here and there as she turned, like a movie scene.

"Emilia?" Sean questioned upon finding his little sister at the mall.

"Hi, Ethan~"

Not again. Not her. Not the low-quality flirting.

"Emilia, we're on business here-"

"Hey, Emilia." Ethan somewhat liked her company. Maybe he was too dense to understand that she had been hitting on him. "Fancy seeing you here."

"R-" She cleared her throat. "Really?"

"Yeah, of course." He grazed Sean's elbow to agree with him.

"Y-Yeah.. Yeah… Whatever."

"He's a Tsundere brother, eh?" Ethan chuckled.

"Totally." Emilia said. "I would hate to have a boyfriend like him. I wonder how Aurora's managing."

"Hey!" Nope, he wasn't pleased to hear that.

"Ah, speaking of which… Where's Aurora?"

"Not here?" Sean sarcastically said.

"Tch. Ethan?"

"We're out here to get a gift for her. Graduation." Ethan explained swiftly.

"Aren't parents supposed to do that?" Emilia asked.

"We're getting the graduation one on behalf of her parents. They're going through a lot so we thought it'd be better to take some of their burden. Plus we got Christmas ones as well." Giselle explained.

"So you're here to get the combined gift?.. I see. That's pretty cool. Getting gifts together for one particular person is kinda rad. How did you guys keep her from joining you though?" Emilia asked.

"We couldn't. She's suspicious. But Giselle did make up something about babysitting Sean." Lucy said.

"Oh." Emilia muttered. "I can be your alibi. Say what? Baby Sean was alone on the streets and Giselle happened to find him on the way to his groceries. Ethan was at work. Lucy was sleeping. Giselle brought Baby Sean to me. End of story."

"Not bad but why do I have to sleep?" Lucy asked.

"Because you love sleeping?" Emilia said in a questioning tone.

Lucy nodded in acceptance. Aurora would totally buy a straightforward story as such.

40 minutes passed and the line in front of them shortened, but behind them was a warzone.

"The next 5!" The guard at the start of the store called out the next five.

That meant everyone before them, including Emilia. She waved to Ethan lightly while going to the store.

"She's so whipped for you." Giselle said.

"What? No." Ethan denied.

Giselle could start a perfect argument that she could've won but her eyes caught Emilia trying to buy… THE DINO PLUSHIE!

She gasped with all her might and had everybody's attention to the glass wall. Even the nobody's standing behind them.

"Oh my God! Stop her. Once she gets her hand on it, she's not handing it over. She could care less about Aurora." Sean explained, asking the guard to let him in.

The guard wasn't going to let them. And Emilia wasn't going to hear anything as she had already put on earphones in her ears. The earphones that said 'This plushie is mine'

Soon an elderly left the store. Meaning, 1 more could go. Giselle pushed Ethan in front to go convince Emilia.

He didn't know why, and he absolutely didn't believe that she had been into him. But, he took the leap for Aurora.

"Emilia!" He called her out from a distance while her eyes twinkled for the soft fellow in front of her.

"Ethan?" Emilia took off her earphones.

He ran towards her and stopped, panting.

"T-This plushie." He pointed at the Dino fluff. "We wanted to get this for Aurora."

Emilia looked at him with disappointment. Though he was her crush, she was disappointed he ran all the way here to stop her from buying a thing she set her eyes on.

"Better look for something else then." Emilia was determined to get the plushie after realizing how one-sided her love was.

"Uh.. I can get you something even prettier!" Ethan proposed. "Something even fluffier?" He added.

"Get that for Aurora then." She sulked.

Ethan wasn't necessarily good at convincing people. So he wondered hard, why did he have to be the one to convince her? Then he remembered Giselle mentioning it.

"Uh… A-Are you free after this? I'd like to buy you a meal. Hm?" Ethan hesitantly proposed another condition for her to let go of that fluff.

Her heart almost jumped inside but she wanted to play it cool.

"So." She said with a frown. "That alone won't compensate for my loss on this adorable plushie!" She heated it up.

Ethan suddenly wondered why she liked a broke guy like him. She could've dated anyone from the huge list of conglomerates. Why him? A broke nobody?

"I'll buy you one. A plushie and dinner tonight?... Will that work?" Ethan asked.

"Hmph." Emilia tried to look annoyed as she pointed at another plushie, next to the dino one.

She had been planning to buy that one anyway. But when the opportunity clicked, she couldn't resist. The other plushie was cute too. A cute little bunny rabbit. Though, way smaller than the giant dino, but cute.

Ethan gave her a bright smile before checking in both the Dino plushie and the bunny. One for her, and one for Aurora.

The others arrived shortly after to make a combined pay.

Ethan and Emilia later took off for their dinner; Which they didn't mention to anyone else.

Even after Giselle asked him how he convinced her, they didn't spill the beans.

Still, Giselle was going to call herself the 'Matchmaker' from now on. From Sean and Aurora's kiss to Ethan and Emilia? Damn Giselle!

She was secretly proud of her skills.

Lucy and Sean took over the big work of wrapping the fluff in a gift wrap for the big day. Oh how they spent the entire day trying to search for the cute guy!

[December 12th, 2020]

She couldn't recall any events from this day.