Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Brave Soldier ❯ Eating Flowers ( Chapter 4 )

Chapter Four: Eating the Flowers:

There were things that I still carried with me as a soldier. I still have the memories and the scars. Now, Japan technically didn't have a military. We had and still have a Self-Defense force. I signed up for a better life. I had nothing going for me. Everyone else had already written me off as a failure. What did I have to lose?

I remember being in Thailand in 1992. This was before the war. I can't remember why I was stationed over there. My unit was doing training exercises. We were on break when I saw some chrysanthemums growing in the grass. The bright color drew me down for a closer look. A peculiar train of thought started to take root.

“Hey Okawa!” Someone smacked me on the back. I shouted as I tried not to fall over.

“Whoa!” I shouted. I turned to see a giant man smiling down at me. I frowned and rolled my eyes.

“Don't do that.”

That fast bastard looked down at the flower underneath me. “Oh, are you picking flowers or something?”

I wrinkled my nose. “No.” I looked down at that little mum next to me.

“I was thinking about if I could eat it or not,” I said.

“What?” that fat bastard asked. He asked that like it was the stupidest thing that he had ever heard.

“He's right, you know?” another one of our fellow soldiers spoke up. We turned to see a skinny guy with black-framed glasses looking at us. The fat bastard snorted and clicked his tongue.

“You're making this up,” he said.

“He's not,” I said. My mind went back to the first time I learned that you could eat flowers.

April 1990

It was she who told me about eating flowers.

“Did you know that you can eat some flowers?” she asked. I turned my head.

“Do what now?” I asked.

“It's true.” She turned the book that she reading around to me. I looked down at the pages she had open in front of me. I squinted and wrinkled my nose at the faded colored pictures in front of me.

“Bee Balm? Breadseed Poppy? Dame's Rocket? Dandelion?” I turned the page. Some of these flowers I've never heard of before. What the hell was a Day Lily?

“Mallow? Purple Dead Nette? Purslane? Red Clover?” You could eat violets and roses too? I lifted my head.

“What is all of this?” I asked. She pointed to a picture of the Shirley Poppy.

“Edible wildflowers,” she said. My brain acted like it was trying to process what I was hearing.

“Why?” I asked. She shrugged her shoulders.

“Like what if I get lost in the woods somewhere and I'm running out of food,” she said. I shook my head.

“No, I mean why are you reading a book about edible plants?” I asked.

“Because I want to. I always try to read things that interest me.” She pointed to the picture of the rose.

“Can you imagine if we ate roses and dandelions on a daily basis?” she asked. I regarded her with a curious look on my face. I could barely keep track of what caught her fancy in the moment. Sometimes, it felt like she was an alien trying to observe how humans lived on Earth. Maybe that was what I found so charming about her in a funny way. I could never guess what would catch her interest next.

“Do you have any flowers you would like to try?” I asked. She took a moment to think about it.

“Well… Dandelions, I guess,” she said. “I mean, there are plenty of them everywhere.”

“But you wouldn't just pick one and start eating it, would you?”

“Of course not! I don't want to make myself sick.” She straightened up in her chair.

“I would pick them, wash them, and then cook them in a stew.” She broke into a big smile after saying all of that. Wow. She's head everything planned out, didn't she?

You know something? Now that I think about it, her knowledge of edible flowers stuck with me. I'm not sure why. Even when she stopped talking to me for joining the Self-Defense Forces, I still carried her with me. In fact, I still carry her with me now. But her knowledge of flowers wasn't the only thing that stuck with me. Same with the book van.

There was so much more that I was starting to remember.