Trigger Warning // Sexual Harassment
“Hi, Sara! Welcome aboard!” a woman in her light pink kebaya cheerfully greeted a young girl who was just entering a spacious white room. She materialized from a surge of pixels transcending from above into a complete and healthy human being. The woman eagerly waited for a few seconds and smiled at the girl before slowly approaching her.
“You must be the new avatar,” said the woman, inspecting Sara’s look and reaching for her smooth delicate hands she gathered in front of her stomach.
“Yes, Mrs. Fatima. This is my first day on MindCure,” Sara immediately replied and clutched onto Mrs. Fatima’s hands. She brought her sweet face to her mentor’s, revealing the brightly lit spark in her brown eyes as she deeply anticipated her first day.
“Thank you for accepting me as your mentee. I hope my presence here will be of great benefit for my future Buddy,” she continued, slightly squinting her eyes in joy. “Don’t worry, Sara. You are expected to learn more from me so I’m more than willing to try to achieve that goal for you. And also for myself here,” promised Mrs. Fatima as she ushered Sara to the rest of the room.
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“Oh, look, Mrs. Fatima!” Sara called. “What is this?”
Mrs. Fatima came closer to see what her mentee had discovered. For almost two weeks now, she enjoyed Sara’s company and spent so much time teaching her necessary skills so the hints in Sara’s words might suggest that she had learned enough to experience the next exciting phase of her life.
The empty white room was not absolute anymore. A small portion of it transformed into the scenery of a twenty-foot tree, holding red bright apples on top of its branches. Heavy evergreen leaves cascaded from the top, canopied the solid brown trunk held firm by the ground. Sara watched the change of atmosphere in awe and exchanged looks with Mrs. Fatima, begging for an answer to fill her curiosity.
“The person. My Buddy. He had a blast of a party yesterday. His birthday was on the first day of May. The same date as his best friend’s. So their friends planned this huge surprise party so that they could spend the happiest day of their lives together to their heart’s content,” “That’s so cool!” Sara giggled after listening to such a beautiful friendship.
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“Mrs. Fatima!” Sara shouted. “Something wrong going on here,”
Mrs. Fatima reached for her voice and went to the same spot. The scenery of a different tree once again replaced the previous part of the room. Massive rain heavily poured on the tree and it no longer had apples between branches as most of them snapped and fell onto the ground. The rich soil under the trunk drifted away from the tree and into a distance where Sara’s eyes could neither keep up nor believe. She held on to Mrs. Fatima’s sarong and landed her gaze on her mentor’s wrinkly face.
“What happened to your Buddy?” she carefully questioned.
Mrs. Fatima scanned everything and paused for a second. “His trust was shattered and ground to filthy pieces when he found out that his friend could not keep his secret. The news about him being harassed by his uncle bombarded the school even though he specifically told his friend not to tell anyone about it. He was devastated that he refrained himself from talking to him which was both soothing and torturing as he remembered the reasons he believed in him,”
“So what can we do to make it stop? How can we have the apples again?”
“We can’t stop a storm from coming. We have to wait until the cloudy days abate,” Sara clenched her lip and pulled her gaze back to the falling droplets. She knew she had to face it eventually but the thought of it only screamed a different story to occupy her little head.
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“Look, Mrs. Fatima!” Sara yelled. “What is it doing now?”
Already standing next to her, Mrs. Fatima tucked her hair behind her ears and adjusted her sight to view the tiny thing in which her mentee towered. A plant shoot emerged from the pockets of the soil where the roots dug and sank deep. The leaves were as fresh as Sara’s eyes, infused with green that came vibrant and strong for the sun’s warmth.
“It is growing in the way it wishes. Be careful. Let it see the light,” Mrs. Fatima uttered. Sara took a few steps back and asked her mentor, “What happened to the old tree? I want to hang a swing on the branches and play with the squirrels. This is taking too long,”
“I never promised the same tree would appear after the storm ended. You know, sometimes a tree is too old to start over. Of course, you can rejuvenate it but why make such rules? Aren’t we, our very own seeds and soil?” Mrs. Fatima explained, allowing Sara to beam for the second time and trust in her gut not to always pay too much attention to the apples.
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