Day 94: 9 February 2026

 Short Story -- Among the Cherry Trees

The girl wandered among the cherry trees.

The pink blossoms created a ceiling above her. Her feet made a soft thud on the wooden planks of the bridge with each step. She could feel a gentle breeze. The branches swayed slightly above her causing shadows to dance on the ground.

This was her first visit to Alishan.

She had ridden the train up. She’d enjoyed the ride. The train had rocked gently side to side. The sun was shining. She’d past fields of tea — the dark green rows lining the sides of the mountains — and a couple of small wooden stations.

Now she was walking and thinking.

She was a university student. And it felt to her that she’d worked her whole life to get there. She’d spent more of her young life studying than playing or enjoying hobbies. Although, she played violin, and she found peace (and pressure) in that. She’d taken more monthly tests than she cared to think about. She was lucky, because she’d often been in the top five students of her class each month, and her parents were satisfied with that.

And now she was studying engineering. Which, she liked well enough. She’d always thought there was something soothing about numbers, the way equations would always work out as long as you followed the steps.

Words were quite different.

She thought back to a few nights ago. She had been out to dinner with some friends. They’d gotten hot pot. And they’d all been laughing together, sharing stories from their classes and about their classmates. When it was time to head home, one of them said, ‘I’ll walk with you. I’m headed that way anyways.’ And she knew that to be true. They’d known each other since they were kids, after all. Their parents had been neighbours.

The night air was feeling cool now that the sun was down. They walked side by side in that silence that comes from knowing someone a long time. It was a comfortable silence.

As they’d neared her place. He turned and said, ‘I love you.’

She didn’t know how to respond. Certainly she cared about him as a friend. Yes, she loved him like family. But she wondered if he was saying more.

‘Just think about it,’ he said gently. And kept walking.

And she was. But it brought with it a complicated mix of emotions. It was why she’d decided to take a trip by herself this afternoon. She’d always done her best thinking alone. She needed to untangle her own feelings and ideas before she asked her friends to weigh in… and they were their friends, which might make it more complicated. Or less. She’d find out.

Right now, she was just a girl walking under an archway of cherry trees.