This is the tale of two cousins in their teens, living in a society where the laws of society are absolute.
Both Yamato and Takeru are born into one of the highest noble families, but due to his lack of spiritual power Yamato is more or less ignored, disapproved of, and neglected while Takeru is kept as the heir to their family. It is Takeru's most precious dream to be the next head of their family.
Fiercely independent, Yamato defies society to the point where he befriends people of the eta class, lowest in the social ladder and people considered to be little more than demons in human form, born of darkness, therefore safe to use for all and any dirty work. For that reason he is considered to be more of this class than his actual noble class by his family, and contact with him is seen as horrifying.
Both Yamato and Takeru are rash, quick-tempered, and fiercely proud, resulting in a swordfight breaking out between them every time they meet. The only words they speak to one another are angry curses. Otherwise their relationship consists of sitting on opposite sides of a wall, Takeru inside and Yamato outside. Not a word is spoken.
One night the clan discovers the head of the branch family killed by Yamato's hand. For someone of a lower class to kill someone of a higher class is a crime punished only by death. The order is given to pursue, capture, and later execute him, but Yamato escapes. A bit later Takeru discovers that the self-righteous attitude of the nobility is a cover for their...less honorable ways. People are constantly doing whatever they can, from blackmail to murder, to gain power. As a result Takeru was targeted by the branch family of his clan, who are tired of being treated like second class citizens even in a high-ranking noble family. The eta class, as usual, was hired to perform an assassination. Because he has friends in the eta class Yamato heard about it and attempted to warn the clan, but was ignored because of his low position.
And so Yamato killed the head of the branch family. (For the eta, if there is no one to pay them, there is no need to do the job they were hired for.)
Yamato is pursued by Takeru to a floating doorway called the World Gate, which leads to a world called Earth. There they engage in their usual form of interaction: Fighting. As usual they didn't say anything beyond angry words, except:
"For what would you kill for in cold blood?"
Saying those words, Yamato loses hold of his sword, which distracts Takeru. He takes that chance to escape through the World Gate.
“ You won't again!”
“ That's what you said last time!”
“ Well, this time it'll be true!”
“ But didn't you just lose this time!”
“ Well then next time!”
“ Sure, but only if you can somehow manage to reach me! Bet you can't even do that!”
“ You're gonna eat those words!”
“ Make me!”
The words echo inside my head as if they're real, but they only were at the time in which they were spoken, a very long time ago.
I can't imagine it anymore, a carefree life in a town gold as honey and tinted with rose at sunset, the streets always sloping, curving, and rising in steps, one particular set of stairs leading to the only train in town, and it goes nowhere but to other sections of that very town. It is a place that's far away in my memory, yet I still see it, two boys running along a black iron railing, ignorant to the fact that if they fall, and they do fall three town levels down. They leap; they rise so sigh that they see nothing but rooftops and the sun.
Somehow they land safely, stumbling but safely, and continue to fly along a sidewalk curb, where adults watch and shake their heads, smiling, and a few other children impulsively join in the reckless run. They run and they run and they run, until suddenly they reach the endless green plain that surrounds the town and plunges out of sight into the grass, exhausted. The children roll over onto their backs and stare at the sky until the lost energy returns.
I can see it but I can't imagine it, that old life of mine. I don't recall what it means to be a twelve-year-old boy, to be reckless and exhilarated, much less in days spent impulsively and nights spent peacefully. What did I do other than run? All I do now is sit here in this chair, one leg crossed over the other to be comfortable, and my face leaning against one hand in case I fall asleep before the next battle comes. How long has it been? I'm still young, it's obvious enough from the lack of wrinkles, but I'm not sure if I'm taller or if I look older, or I have even aged at all beyond a certain point. There are no details anymore except one.
I open my eyes but one is kept in darkness by a piece of black vinyl. Rising up from the chair my body is silent even as I walk across the smoky marble floor, taking no care as to sound. I'm not aware of a door as I pass through to the next chamber, where squares of glass are embedded into the marble. Am I a ghost? No. A ghost would not bleed or bruise, or feel something, a slight rise under the skin, as he treads on top of the squares and the names carved upon them. There are many squares and many names, enough to cover all three floors of the immense cathedral. One room alone is so vast, if I were to make a soft sound it would explode and shake the very walls like thunder.
PENNY
THEO
STELLA
CORY
NUE
I know the names are there, but I no longer know where they are, or to whom they belong. Not that I visit them anymore, because the battles have become more frequent and I need my rest in between. But I know they all wished for the end of this war, and I will do that. There is only me against the monsters that come clad and disguised in soldiers' armor. There are endless numbers of them because of what they are, but I will do as the names on the squares have long wished.
Even when I can no longer feel the determination and the sorrow.
Two doors loom before me, so large that most of my vision is taken up by the rusted silver handles alone. They're actually positioned at the outer corners of my eyes, or rather, they were wrenched apart so that it appears that way. This I can remember. It was the last time someone other than myself was alive, and the last time I felt my heart give rise to an emotion. It was...a friend that had died. Or maybe just someone I'd known for a long time. I'm not sure. That too has become a vague haze. Sometimes, like now, I can remember that this person who was the last to die should have had a square carved out in the floor, neat and embossed like the rest, with his name etched in the center and perhaps a sentimental phrase as well.
CIEL
The letters are crooked and ugly, half scratched into the steel, half hacked on top of the original frayed lines. Who was this person to me? I remember nothing, not a hand, not a word, not a face. Inside my head I can see the mouth of my younger self opening. Is it to scream, to wail, or to shout? There is a figure with both hands slumped against the doors, the back hunched so that it blocks the sight of a hanging head. Is it me? That hair, that back, I recognize it as mine from the old days, but I don't feel anything from it.
Pressing my hands against the name, I push open the doors slowly and they groan in protest. Sunlight comes in, yellow and filled with dust. A steep staircase sprawls out at the foot of the landing, vanishing into the desert that stretches on forever, literally forever.
Back then, if we had been suspicious or at least curious about what lay beyond the green plains around the town, would the sky have been unchanged? If we had known that there was nothing but green plains, would the Falls have failed to appear? Nothing will be affected by asking such questions, but sometimes I find that I do anyway. What if, what if, what if. What if that pale gold mist of a cloud on the horizon was not an army coming forth again to destroy this cathedral and make vanish the last that came from there?
I reached up to the eye patch, closing my eyes. In one smooth motion the eye patch is shifted to cover my right eye. My left opens. The iris there is a pale blue-green, luminous even in broad daylight, quite unlike the yellow-brown of my right eye. For some reason, whenever I do this, that name reappears in my head.
CIEL
I am just in time. Without warning the sky drops the bright pale blue of day and lets fall the darkness of night. A blade materializes in my left hand. It is a dark and sober thing.
Let the armies come. I will fight you.
I can hear them.
Dull, distant voices. Blurred white shapes that have vague human form. Everything is distant, blurred, far away. I've stopped feeling much of anything.
I can't remember when it started, who I was with, where I was, I know who I am yet a name fails to come to mind. Was I always here, in this place? Always submerged in this iridescent sphere and the strident glow of the liquid gel, rivers and streams of red against a dark shade of pink. I remember panicking when I first woke up here, unable to breathe, and cold air was being puffed hard onto my mouth and nose by the air mask. The feeling of that plastic cover was more stifling than helping. I remember trying to tear it off. Something was coming out, coming out everywhere, something warm at first but then icy cold, something thick and steady and thinking about it made me think 'four pints'. (Why 'four pints'?) The mask was ventilating, sucking out something as much as it pumped out the cold air. I was being drained. I HAD TO GET IT OFF.
It's cold. So cold that I can't breathe. I think I'm wheezing but I can't hear it, only feel. My lungs constrict tighter and tighter, without expanding, and tries to force lukewarm air up my throat. It's choking me.
FEEL. I remember something about nerves, nerve endings that feel pain and other sensations, and remembering that I feel like I'm going mad. I want to tear out my nerves and crush them into a pulp. I DON'T WANT TO FEEL ANYMORE. When did those words loom large in my head? Did I feel pain? I must have. I remember...pressures. Needles. Cold needles. Needles that turned my blood and my flesh to ice. Needles melting once it punctured my skin—something pops, like a bright red balloon, every time—and then it dissolves into my blood, my body.
Me. It focuses on my back. My shoulders. I think of...bubbling surfaces, bubbling because they're burning so hot, so furiously and so intense. Black tar. Burning. The air in those dream-like pictures turns into invisible heat waves that distorts my vision. I need to focus on something, so I open my eyes. No use. Every time I see, rather than look, I see those people in white. They're just standing around, watching me, watching something that's shaped like a rectangle and shines brightly. There's lots of those, neat and orderly in columns and rows.
I can't focus. My body feels numb, thick, as if there's a second layer of skin stuck on my body, a thicker, more leathery layer. I wonder if I've turned into a football. Ha ha. I feel no humor, but sometimes I find myself pretending. I can't laugh. I barely get enough air through my stuffed up nose and mouth as it is. Something's piercing both layers of skin, more needles, IV needles, and they don't melt like the others do. They pump yet more liquid ice into me. So much ice. I'm so cold. I almost feel bits of frost clinging to my face.
...A name. I hear a name, and I see a face. A boy's face, caught between childhood cuteness and adolescent good looks. He looks nervous but he's smiling. Or he's practicing. He's standing in front of a bathroom mirror. Someone calls to him, and he replies. He hurries out into a hallway, past a door and down a walled in staircase. I see a woman, longhaired and pretty. I feel nostalgic when I see her. I don't know why. She looks confident and calm. She teases the boy quietly, and another female, a teenage girl a few years older than the boy, smirks and grins, and builds up on the joke. The boy is crushed. I felt that first bit of dread before it blossomed into a flower of dismay and depression. It's like saying how a purple iris is laced with blue at the edges of the petals.
His feelings turn to anger. The women laugh. He sits down at a table and they all eat breakfast together. Afterwards the boy has to leave. For school. I know it. I've seen it before. A big white building with a clock high up on the front outside. Lots of kids his age milling about but generally moving towards the glass doors. Rows of lockers that they used purely for switching one set of shoes for another. Bright hallways, bright because of the morning sun turning it vivid and white and pale yellow. The boy enters his classroom, and immediately becomes embarrassed at the sight of a girl he likes.
I know who I am, minus the name, and I know that boy. He's the twin I was born with. He's the one they let go while they took me and told my mother that I'd been stillborn. He's the one that grew up in that bright place, that soaring freedom, while I have always been here, feeling a pain that I always forget, drifting about in red.
I think, so they say, it's normal for one deprived person to envy the other, but I don't feel much about that boy. I see what he sees through his eyes, and I see how more or less happy he is, a normal boy. What am I? Sometimes I feel curious but it never lasts for long. What am I compared to him? He doesn't know that I see what he sees, as I always have, day and night, sleeping and awake, since the day we were born. He comes to my so-called grave sometimes, when he is especially depressed. Why? I gaze at my own tombstone, at the silver-white strains of incense smoke and the lily flowers whose curved white petals seem strange to me. There is a name. I know it's a name, and I know what those lines say, but still a name does not come to mind.
I wonder. And then I wonder what it was that I was wondering about.
...They're moving. The people in white are shifting to one side or the other, leaning in close to exchange murmurs that they think, or it never occurred to them, I can hear. It's true that most whispers are reduced to headache-inducing waves, because I know what they are but I can't find their meaning. I know but I can't find it. I can't even search for it. I'm drowning, I'm suffocating, I'm floating in red. What are they saying? What do they mean by that? Have I always been here?
My hand slowly clutches itself into a grasping claw, then flexes outward yet more slowly. I moved. It's a blank surprise to me. The second skin attached to my body dissipates, first coming off in clumps and pieces broken up by the pressure of the red water, then dissolving into ash. Then nothing. A strange sensation runs through me. I can visualize myself moving my legs and my arms, but in reality I'm still immobile, still floating and drifting. I can see my head lifting and my eyes opening. I can see my hand gliding forward to press against the crescent curve of the glass. In reality my head is still bowed.
I know what I look like, generally. That boy and I are identical. I can base my looks off of his, but I'm sure...there are scars, bone-white scars, that criss-cross my face and my body, everywhere but my hands and my feet. My hair...is white. Or was at first. Now...
The needles. The melting needles.
I feel heavy. My body is actually dropping to the bottom of the glass. The people in white are turning to look at me, surprised. A few seconds later they burst into excited discussion. My body rolls backward a bit. I open my eyes. I feel no fear, no pain, no doubt, only a deeprooted calm that is a part of me as much as my skin is part of me. It's both a shield...and a sheath. A shield because of what I once needed to be with me but never was there, and a sheath because I knew and understood what I was going to do, even as I felt that I had forgotten why.
One day you will all disappear in red, break out in red butterflies, and that one day is now.
[Uniquely alone in a million]
I'm never really quite sure that I exist.
You can have a name, a gender, a birthdate, but in the end you have to rely on others to give substance to your existence. If no one notices you at all, then you must not exist. What proof is there, since no one acknowledges your existence? On the other hand, if people just see you as a classmate, a neighbor, a friend, etc., instead of a name or a feeling, you exist but barely. When somebody tacks 'a' before a noun, and always refers to you by that combination, you're anonymous. It makes you wonder if you're unique or special, or even liked or tolerated. Forget being hated or loved. If you're an 'a+noun' no one has the interest to feel something that intense about you.
Then comes the part where people do call you by your name, but they don't sound happy or content while doing so. Maybe they're too polite to call you 'a+noun', and since you've got a name they might as well use it, or else one wouldn't know who exactly they were referring to. They might smile when they say your name, but it could be an automatic smile, taught to them by well-mannered parents and society, at the threat of being disliked. Some people don't care if they're liked or not, so long as no one hates them.
So do I exist? I've been called a friend, a kid, and that guy who's always going around with his ear phones on, listening to a music player as if nonstop. People find that last part funny, so their smiles are genuine when they allude to me but only because they find me weird and funny. They're not particularly glad that I exist, or something along those lines. I'm also that guy who's always reading a book, which people seem to find strange. (Maybe what's strange is that they don't read books.) I have a name, and they know that, but it's only used when they're specifically referring to me. I'm not the only guy, teenager, son, or student out there in the world.
Maybe uniqueness it what doesn't exist after all. Why then make such a big deal about each person having something special about them, if we're all the same in the end?
Do I exist? I want to know, just a little bit. It's not that I particularly need to know, but sometimes I find myself wondering. Watching a movie, reading a book, seeing people in real life, it all makes me wonder if I exist, because I'm not like them. There's no one special to me. I'm not one half of a couple. I care about my family and the friends I have at school, but I'm perfectly fine being by myself, doing things by myself. Sometimes I deliberately make an excuse to get out of a social gather-ing, sometimes without even pausing to think about it beforehand. I'm fine by myself.
If I have no one to acknowledge me, and find me special to them, do I then not exist?
[Aimlessly drifting around again]
If only I had done it, there would be no regrets.
Back when I started high school I started to notice that I was way behind the other kids. They'd always be talking excitedly about the usual stuff—singers, clothes, guys (or girls, if one was a guy), school—but sooner or later they'd move on to something more serious: their futures. It'd all start with an interest that they had, cooking for example, and they'd end up saying that they want to be a chef or a plain but happy restaurant cook. That interest/future plan was enough of a hobby for that person to do it often, almost every day, and whether consciously or unconsciously turn it into a skill and talent. I had no such thing. You can't exactly make a living off reading mystery books or taking walks, much less have it as a talent that you can hone into a skill.
There were other things I was interested in. I like videogames, writing, doodling in my note-books, and songs that actually roused emotions in you and that was the reason you liked it, not how good-looking the singer was. The problem is that I'm not interested in any of them enough to put some serious work, knowledge, and research into it. None of those things was enough of a hobby to put enthusiasm into, mainly because I barely had to spend any energy at all doing it. I guess that by nature I'm lazy. At the very least, I was definitely procrastinating. My schoolwork will attest to that.
The reason that I worry about my lack of a future is because I have a lack of skill, and the reason I have a lack of skill is because I have a lack of enthusiasm and a sense of satisfaction via hard work. If only I just put a little work and concentration into something all my problems would be solved. There would be no worries. I wouldn't be looking back on things and wishing that things had been different somehow for me.
It's the same with everything else. If only I tried to overcome a natural shyness, manuveur into situations that didn't spark my temper and get me tongue-tied, and do things that I'd never regret or embarrass myself with, then those things wouldn't bother me. Life wouldn't be too bad if only I didn't have regrets, but the only reason a person would have regrets is because they could've done something about it, and didn't.
My grades, my future, my looks, my temper, and my ever changing sense of self esteem. They're all things that I could have worked on and made better, but I didn't. I could have, but I didn't, and some things you can never pick up and start working on again. Worse than that is when the word 'didn't' changes to 'don't'.
If only I'd done it, if only I would, I'd have no regrets to push me down.
[Turning away and turning back again]
I want somebody to care about.
Every now and then I say 'somebody love me', yearning, but always in someone else's voice, as someone else. It's only when I'm daydreaming and playing out a character's part that I ever say those words. If it were just me, the real me, I would never say something like that because I don't particularly need anyone to love me. I'm fine without anyone to go out with, friends or lovers. No one believes me when I say 'I don't mind not being in love', they'd just say I was in denial, smile, and grin as if they know the truth better than I do and they always will.
Whatever.
I don't want a two-way love. I just...want something, someone, to care about. Whether it's love or friendship, it doesn't matter to me. I just want to know what it's like to be close with someone, close enough to be the person that they run to or depend on. I guess I want to feel that I'm strong and precious. It doesn't have to be love, or friendship, in particular. To be close enough with someone so that silence becomes comfortable, that's all. Love, friends, business, whatever. I don't need any one of them particuarly.
No matter what anyone says.
I'm thinking of getting a dog when I'm older, either when I'm in college or out of it. I'll get a puppy, so that it won't grow old and die while I'm still young and have got eternity in front of me. (Nobody but teenagers seem to think that way, for some reason.) About that, I guess I'm afraid of living without the person I care about the most. I don't want to meet someone, become close with someone, and then be alive while they're dead and forever gone. Dogs, having shorter life spans, will do that to you, and so will people and tragedy. When you're in a time of your life feeling that you want something to hold, it's not exactly encouraging to have that someone die when you're still young. You start looking at eternity alone, with nothing but a memory more painful than it is good, because it was good.
Occasionally I get confused. Do I want somebody to care about me or not? I've pretty much accepted that I'm nothing special, and I've got nothing to make myself special. I'm not smart, athletic, skilled, clever, patient, handsome, etc. Luckily, I know that enough to keep my hopes from leaping up way too high (and then making the fall much, much worse), but not enough so that I start going suicidal. I hate sharp blades and needles anyway. It's a kid thing I never got rid of.
Of course, I'm only sixteen. Still a kid now. Still got plenty of chances and time to find someone or something that I can care about. Too bad I'll always feel that time's running out.
[Feeling a ripple in the glass]
Things begin when things change.
For me, I didn't even feel it change. Much. But I did know that something had started that afternoon. That's when I stopped self-analyzing and letting my mind drift off into the clouds...like a cloud. ...Just thinking about it makes my head go fuzzy...
Well, anyway, things started to clear up and become detailed, like a story, the day we of cram school got locked out of our respective classrooms. The teachers took a long time running off to find a key. (They were almost frantic.) So, being a creature of habit and comfort, I started to put on my ear phones to start listening to my music player again. Already my mind was drifting off to some parallel world, where I was the unknown director in a youth drama taking place halfway across the world. At that time I thought, how amazing it is, that I can flesh out an entire tragedy in my head, but it's so hard to put down on paper.
“ Um, you're in the same class as I am, aren't you?”
'Aren't you'. Those two words are enough to make anyone feel gratified, because then they feel that they've been worthy enough to be noticed by someone. Therefore, by means of logic, they are just a little more special than they thought they were. In my case, I was just surprised. Some guy I didn't know appeared before me and talked. To me. Some guy I didn't know. Looking back from now, it's sort of sad because by then I'd been attending that cram school for over a month and yet I didn't recognize him. At all.
That guy was...I don't know. Strange yet not strange. From a girl's point of view he was the type of person to be really popular and to be found that it was true. He was a contrast to me, almost a stark contrast. Longish hair (that made me think of a rabbit-elf-person for some reason...) dyed a pale fluffy yellow, soft face, easy grin, two inches or so shorter than I was, and a personality that was actually timid underneath that free-flowing talk.
He was also, as I soon found out, an idiot. Somewhere along the way starting from our awkward introductions, he started talking about going to another world in the same way a bus driver would talk about going to his bus to drive it. Being enclosed in a world compromised only of my mystery books and my music player, I didn't know anything so I never had anything to say.
Not that he cared whether I did or not. He just went on talking, about lots of things. I don't think it mattered to him if anyone was really listening, though I'd be surprised if they did. (Another world?)
He was Takizawa Yuzuru, the change.
[Wanting the voice of the wind]
It hurt because I wanted it.
Takizawa wasn't at all like me. When he acted on impulse he threw himself into it, as evidenced by the way he stopped dead in the middle of a story, ran out of the classroom, and brought back cups of pudding from the nearby convenience store, all because he felt like it. As weird as it was, I didn't complain. (The pudding wasn't that bad.) Along with that impulsive side of him, he was impossible to get mad, impossible to get away from, and impossible to get into a logical sense of thought. I soon learned to just let Takizawa go along his own pace in his own world, making himself happy.
I envied that ability of his. I envied a lot of things about Takizawa, mainly how content and cheerful he was with the world. He may not know what he could do with his future either, but whatever came he'd take without worries. And I worried all the time. I wasn't miserable, but then I wasn't happy either. There are a lot of things that would make me happy, but never just one of them. I envied Takizawa for being so easily contented.
It hurt because I wanted it, that ability to be happy. I wanted that feeling of happiness so much, I saw my own face inside my head, scrunching up with misery. Despite the fact that I was missing nothing—family, friends, ordinary life—I was, almost desperately, unhappy.
Nobody would believe me, but I didn't like how I was envying others and I tried to push it out of my head. I went, as I always did, into my books and my music player. As if he didn't notice, Takizawa went on talking and rolling through his stories. A few times I hinted that I wanted to be left alone, other times I was too adsorbed in a book or whatever I was doing to notice him back. I usually looked up when he laughed, to see what was so funny, briefly wondered if he'd been struck that way by his own story, what that might be, and then forgot all about it.
Takizawa was annoying sometimes. He kept prodding at me to respond in some way, say a word or look like I was paying full attention, ask the right question or answer his. For a while I felt like he was trying to play me like a puppet, but then I would breathe hard through my nose, once, and glare, to make it clear that I was irritated, and turn away. Funny. He looked disappointed when I did. Or maybe I'd imagined it. No sooner did I come close to looking again was he back at his old tricks.
It hurt because I wanted something that I couldn't really describe. It was one of those things that you don't know what it is until you've got it, or until it's about to leave you forever, no second chances. Things got to the point where, sometimes, I couldn't breathe right. Other times—and this might be weirdest of all—I was at peace with the world, because I yearned.
[Wondering at the light]
I'm always amazed when little things make me happy.
The first time I met Takizawa outside of cram school I was heading for it. I'd gotten out of class early because it had been a study period, and I thought that this was my chance to grab something to eat now instead of waiting until I got home later that evening. I could never find enough food to pig out on except at home.
“ Hey, Takizawa-kun! Let's go to karaokee!”
“ Hey! I told you guys that I have cram school!”
“ But didn't you say that your mom said you didn't have to go anymore?”
I envied—that stupid word and feeling again—those who were always being invited to go to places in groups. It showed how much they were wanted, how enjoyable their presences were to others. They made people happy. I tried to sigh, but there was a cold ham and cheese sandwich in it, and the taste of cheese was enough to make me try to sigh, in contentment rather than bitter acceptance. Nothing makes me happier than nacho chips and melted cheese, or just the cheese. That's why I can relate to mice whenever they go crazy over a block of the stuff.
“ Yumeka!”
He'd spotted me. Damn cheese. I'd been busy savoring the taste and staring off into space when I should've been making my getaway. Amazingly enough, I'd been walking the entire time and I hadn't bumped into anyone.
“ Yumeka!” He wasn't too far away when he said blankly, “ Cheese?” It was dangling from my mouth like a rubbery handkerchief. There had been no accident where I'd eaten the bread, ham, and lettuce first so that I could savor what was left.
Takizawa laughed.
“ You're always eating cheese,” he said. (Not always...) “ Do you like it that much?”
“ Yeah.”
“ Hey, Takizawa-kun! Who is this guy?”
“ Huh? Oh, this is Yumeka, from my cram school...”
A girl shrieked with laughter. “ He looks so stupid with that thing hanging from his mouth!”
I'm not immortal. The words stung, and I grew deaf to the noises around me, even to Takizawa as he snapped at the girl. Some seconds later I was surprised. It hadn't hurt as much because I was still eating that cheese.
[Listlessly waiting for the clouds to pass]
I can only answer the right question.
“ Hey, Yumeka,” said Takizawa. We were on break from classes, and I was fishing around my bag for an apple-flavored lollipop that I badly needed. “ Are you always in a world different from that of everybody else?”
“ Yeah.” Damn. All there was left was a green and white wrapper with tiny red print spelling out the candy's name and maker. Finally I remembered giving into temptation earlier during lunch at school. I sighed.
“ Why?”
“ I like it.” The trouble with me is that when I look forward to something I look forward to it. Whether it's a lollipop or acceptance into a university, I become ridiculously brokenhearted when I fail to get what I'd been expecting all day.
“ ...I wanna go there.”
“ Where?”
“ To your world.”
“ Why?”
“ You're in there all the time. And if you're in there all the time, it must mean that you like it. And if you like it then that means your world must be pretty nice.”
“ Don't you like your world?” I felt like I was suffering from candy withdrawal.
“ Mmm...I don't know. I just know for sure that I want to go into your world.”
“ Don't bother me.”
Takizawa was actually quiet for a while. Then he asked, “ Am I intruding?”
“ On what?”
“ Your world.”
“ No.”
“ Then why can't I go in it?”
Class was about to start again. I looked out the window and almost sighed again. How long could I go before I finally forgot about that lollipop?
“ Yumeka?”
“ Because it isn't mine.”
I never thought about my answers. I only knew that they were the right ones.
[Here with one other]
I'm here in this world.
“ Hey, Yumeka, don't I bother you?”
I was trying to read a book. It was some sort of suspense thriller than I'd found while going through my parents' little collection, put together from what they'd had during their college days. Takizawa was perched on the wall I was leaning against.
“ Mmm.”
“ Yumeka,” he persisted.
“ You annoy me,” I said.
“ Is that why you're ignoring me?”
“ That's impossible.”
“ To ignore me?”
“ Yeah.”
“ That the only reason?”
I closed my book. “ You don't bother me,” I said. “ You just annoy me.”
“ What's the difference?”
Laughing a little, I pushed off the wall and headed back for the cram school building. Takizawa hopped off the wall to run after me.
“ Hey, Yumeka, what happens in your world?”
“ Things, I guess.”
“ Like what?”
“ Change.”
Change brought on by a guy that insisted on interrupting my reading and drowning out my music player with his stories about going to another world and taking it over, or if he was in a good mood, drawing up a peace contract. I didn't know what the change was, exactly, but I didn't mind it. As irritating, annoying, and unpredictable as he was, I don't think that I really minded.
“ Hey, Yumeka! I'm gonna invade your world, okay? We'll rage a war of the worlds.”
“ As you like, but not now.”
“ Why not now?”
“ I'm hungry.”
I'm here in this world. Soon, someone will come.
Something stalks the night, and it sure as hell isn't the boogeyman.
My room is dark, all shades of gray and black, with box-like shapes barely discernable in the looming shadows cast by the curtains. They were cheap stuff, thin fabric made to ensure privacy more than an obstacle against the streetlights outside, but they did the job I wanted well enough. I'd trained myself to become less and less afraid of the dark, because everyone else was terrified of it and I used to be too. I was doing my best to do stuff like that because I had a purpose.
I was born Aso Ayame in September, 1988, sixteen years ago. I was born a homely, skinny ass of a girl with no courage, talent, self confidence and brains. No wonder people started picking on me from day one in elementary school, escalating things to full-blown bullying by high school. A guy tried to kiss me and bully me into becoming his girlfriend (though I had absolutely no idea why he wanted a plain, big-nosed thing like me), and when I refused that's when the bullying intensified. I was kicked around, punched around, even rolled around, treated as a slave, a scapegoat, and a general target for anyone who couldn't vent their anger and frustration anywhere else. I had my hair hacked to pieces, paint dumped on me, trash thrown at me, my desk was vandalized and thrown out of the classroom multiple times, and I've been stepped on everywhere; hands, fingers, legs, feet, stomach, ribs, etc. I've been forced to get fungus-infested bread, dirt, worms, and some colorless slush I don't even want to identify.
No one has ever helped me. No one has ever befriended me. And I hated myself for never having the guts to do anything, not open my mouth to protest or even move my body to run. I was too much of a spineless coward to even run away. Worse, I was always expecting someone to show up and help me, but how could I have done something like that when I couldn't even help myself? And there's no such thing as a kind person in this world, not anywhere except in dramas, movies, books, and daydreams.
For that reason, I will definitely use this reincarnated life of mine to get revenge.
It was perfect. I was born again in September, 1988, and it was a hell of a time trying to be a sixteen-year-old in a baby's body. For the first few months I had no idea what was happening, which was why my new parents took me to every doctor they could think of, from a brain surgeon to a child psychologist, to figure out why I kept crying and pushing away from them. It wasn't until I was eight months old, when I was supposed to be up and walking around on two tiny feet, that I realized what was going on: I had been reborn in the same year my first self had been born. Using this new persona of mine, I could get revenge on everyone that had tormented me in my past life.
So from that moment on I've been molding myself to be the perfect avenger. While pretending to be a normally developing child, I've worked on my looks, studied for my brains, and turned computers into my talent and skill. Things were troublesome for a while when I realized that if I was born in the same lifetime, was I really Aso Ayame, or was I some kind of freak spirit that somehow caught onto her memories?
Then I realized that it didn't matter.
My room was flooded with light as the door came open. Two cats yowled, fleeing my side for the dark safety of the area underneath my bed. My two pets, a pair of tawny Siamese cats named Tsuku and Bane, normally like to compete for a spot on my lap and have their ears rubbed, but like me they're accustomed to the darkness.
“ Aya-kun, it's dinnertime.”
“ I'm coming.”
My life now is as a boy named Arisato Ayame, written with the characters 'brilliant' and 'eyes', different from my original name of 'iris'. I have two parents, Arisato Saito and Arisato Maya, a house-wife and a moderately well-to-do businessman respectively.
“ So, are you nervous about tomorrow, Ayame?”
“ Sort of. It's weird to transfer in the middle of the fall term, isn't it?”
“ I suppose I'm to blame for that. I'm sorry.”
“ What are you saying, dear?”
“ That's right, Dad. There's nothing for you to worry about. I can take on anything.”
“ There he goes again, being so cocky.”
“ But isn't that what you boast about him to your friends at work?”
Saito and Maya—Dad and Mom, I suppose—laughed while I only smiled. These two were good people, really. Thanks to them I got to see what it was like to have a happy childhood with a normal father that didn't tease me about my looks, a mother that didn't find such joy in pointing out my flaws to everyone she met, and a older sister that didn't take every chance she could to provoke my temper just to see me get mad and then laugh at me for it. No one had any idea that I was so grateful to have no siblings in this new life, to actually have loving parents and to have a chance at revenge.
“ Well, all ulterior motives set aside, I hope you make some friends at your new school.”
“ Sure, Dad.”
There was no hiding that little spot of hope in Dad's voice. All my life I've never had any friends; I'd thought it unfair to people that either didn't deserve to be tainted by someone as dark-hearted as me or would make good practice fodder with which I could try out whatever manipulating talents I had. I didn't have much, to be honest, but then I didn't care a lot about the consequences that might come up so that didn't matter.
“ Stop chatting Aya-kun up, dear, and both of you eat your dinner.”
“ Mom's being scary again. She's so strict.”
“ True, true.”
“ Why you! I'll have both your hides if you don't stop saying such lies!”
It didn't take much to get Mom and Dad laughing. Just smiling again, I felt the familiar throb of regret. I could say that I didn't care much about the consequences of the actions I planned to carry out, but honestly I was worried about how they would reflect on the Arisato family. Jail, death, whatever, I didn't care what happened to me, the problem was what could happen to Mom and Dad. After all they did for me I didn't want to make them into pariahs as parents of a boy that turned out to be a evil psychopath. It was because of them that I was slowly deviating from the path where, after completing my revenge, I'd simply committed suicide once more. Surely they deserved better than that. I was their only child, after all.
But I couldn't forget. I wouldn't forget. And I wasn't going to stop what I had planned.
***
“ —is Arisato Ayame-kun. He'll be joining our class today, so make him feel welcome. Arisato?”
I smiled at the class with sincere cheer, happy to be once again seeing faces that didn't find me equally familiar. But I knew them. I knew those girls leaning across the aisles to whisper to each other while keeping their eyes fixed on me, from their wavy hair to the poofy lips so overdone with lip balm they might as well have been made of plastic. I knew those guys laughing at the back, not paying attention because, well, they didn't have enough brains to have their own wits, and instead followed whoever was playing leader regardless of whether what was being done was right or wrong. I knew that boy in the seat next to the window, third from the front, the one responsible for trying to kiss me in my past life and started the fall that ended with my death.
You'll all pay for what you did to me!
“ Nice to meet you. As Teacher said, I'm Arisato.” I spoke loudly enough to bring any ongoing conversations to a halt. Everyone turn to stare at me and the grin on my face. “ But call me anything you like. Please treat me well!”
They were all fools. It didn't take much to establish instant rapport with these people, particularly since I'd made sure that I was well versed in all the inane subjects that ruled their lives, from girls and videogames to hobbies and favorite idols. And oh, I knew their hobbies, their favorites. How many times, how many days, how many morning breaks, lunch breaks, and free class times did I spend all alone at my desk, having nothing else to do but listen to the conversations whirling around me? How many times did I dread hearing a lapse into silence that would inevitably lead to 'fun time' with me? I knew their little likes and dislikes. I knew how to keep up a cheery, carefree attitude that they all liked, especially if I added in some mischief.
“ C'mon, you're making me go red,” I said, laughing. By lunchtime I had some of the girls hanging off me, hands on my shoulder, chins resting on my desktop, and milling around with some of the guys that I had reeled in with talk of videogames and basketball. “ There's no way that I'm as good as that. You guys haven't even seen me play yet.”
“ But I bet Aya-kun is really great!”
“ Yeah, you look like the athletic type.”
“ What, you mean scrawny ol' me? I'm the guy that's always worrying about how I'm gonna get meat on my bones! Sorry to disappoint you girls, I may like basketball but I'm no good at it. Stupid me, I can't get that message through to my head. Even though I suck I always find myself playing.”
“ How about a game tomorrow, Arisato? We guys have one set up for lunchtime.”
“ And the girls will cheer us on!”
“ What! No way! Not for you.”
My head tilted to one side as I smiled up at the girl standing next to me. “ But you know,” I said, “ I think there's no greater motivation for a guy than to have a pretty girl cheering him on. Who knows, maybe I'll actually score for the cutest face I see.”
The girls squealed. “ Then we'll definitely cheer you on, Aya-kun!” they chorused. So damn easy. I almost felt ashamed of myself.
“ Aw, man. You're already hogging all the girls, Arisato.”
“ Sorry!” I said apologetically. Of course my apology wasn't sincere. “ But I love having cute girls around. I can't do anything right otherwise.”
“ No worries, man. We're all men here.”
Yeah right. Real men didn't taunt a girl with the necktie that had been stolen from her. Real men didn't stand by and do nothing but laugh when she was locked in a dark room or found live worms in her lunch box. Real men didn't make a joke out of a girl being shoved to the front of the class and being forced to write embarrassing secrets that weren't true at all! They weren't men, they were cursed little goblins that I was going to send to hell!
“ Heyyy, Aya-kun!”
The moment I saw that doll-like face with its ever-puckered lips I wanted to grab her head and smash it repeatedly into the floor until I held nothing but a dripping mass of brain and bone. Harada Yukiko! The Favor Girl, I called her, because the whole time she'd pretended to be my 'friend' she'd kept asking favors that put her closer to Tsunato Ryusei, the boy that had tried to kiss me and the boy that I planned to nail live to a cross. It had never mattered to her that I was really shy around people, or had been. It had never mattered to her that I was terrified going to karaoke with a bunch of guys, all guys, that I didn't know. It had never mattered to her that I hated the cutesy nicknames she gave me or how she pretended to put a stop to the teasing the others gave me by saying things like, “ Oh, don't say that, Ayame-chan is so slow, she doesn't understand anything and you're just confusing her”. Things that were supposedly kind and helpful when she was the one giving the class ammunition to humiliate me with.
Nevertheless I blinked and put a blank look on my face, saying, “ Whoa! Hot girl alert! Who're you and where have you been all my life?”
Bunching her hands into light fists at her chin, Harada giggled and swiveled a little at the waist. How I hated her!
“ I'm Harada,” she said, “ but you can call me Yuki-chan. I hope we can get along, Aya-kun. It is okay to call you Aya-kun, isn't it?”
“ Of course.” I really hope I can get along with you too, Harada, because I really want to tear you apart from the inside out. “ But why ask? I said right up front that anyone can call me what they want. I don't like formalities.”
Harada stuck out her lower lip. I wanted to grab it and rip it off her face.
“ Well, it's just that there used to be a girl named Aso Ayame in this class. It's freaky how you two have the same name! You're even sitting in her old seat!”
A rush of sadness and bitterness washed over me at hearing my former name. Suddenly it was hard to smile, and in spite of my effort my eyes dropped temporarily to the desk before me. “ A girl?” I murmured. I remembered to grin. “ Was she cute?”
“ No way! She was plain and dorky, and her fat nose had this huge pimply right on the tip of it! She was the classic picture of a girl that no one would like!”
“ Hey now,” I said, forcing a laugh. “ Come on. It's my belief that no matter what, every girl has something that makes her beautiful.”
Harada laughed shrilly, batting my shoulder with a long-nailed hand. I wanted to take that hand and stab each and every finger with a screwdriver, breaking through the polished nails with their glittery butterfly and heart stickers. “ Not this girl!” she chimed. “ She was always so weird and clumsy, a total nerd, and she was always so easily embarrassed. There was nothing good about her at all. No wonder she killed herself last week, she was a sorry addition to humanity!”
I'll kill you—!
A small crash and clatter cut off the impulse that nearly shot me out of my chair to lunge at Harada's throat. We all turned to look at a boy that strode right out of the classroom, but not before everyone got a look at his handsome face. At the moment it looked as if it had been carved out of stone, both his eyes and the expression he had were so hard. I already knew who he was, but I said anyway, “ Who's that?”
With a prolonged sigh Harada answered, “ Tsunato Ryusei. I don't know what's wrong with him, he's the one that turned Ayame-chan into the class pet.”
Yes. Pet. A poor, helpless pet that they tortured in the same way a textbook psychopath would slaughter little dogs and cats, only they took apart my soul instead of my body. They'd even had the gall to put a dog collar on my desk on Christmas day.
“ What do you mean, wrong with him?” I said. “ He didn't do anything weird, as far as I could see...did he?”
“ You don't get it, Aya-kun,” Harada scolded. “ Every time Ayame-chan comes up he acts up, glaring at us as if we did something wrong.” You did! You DID! “ Once he even called us a bunch of 'shameless idiots' that had no 'respect for the dead'. Well, why should we respect Ayame-chan? It's not as if she was of any use to us.”
No use? I brought you your damn lunches, your damn books, I bought your damn candies and also paid for all those convenient, too-often times you forgot your wallets, I brought you your pencils, your shoes, you damn frickin' bags! I carried them for you, made them for you, I did everything for you damn people as your pathetic little slave! You could at least call me useful, you damn bitch! You could do that much!
On the outside I grinned and made jokes, but on the inside I fumed and straightened out my plans. Harada Yukiko and Tsunato Ryusei were at the top of my list, the ones that'd get a full brunt of a childish but effective (on persons of any age) strategy of a ghost Ayame. It was surprising how a teenager would as easily believe that the ghost of a classmate was haunting them, any sixteen-year-old could be as gullible as a little kid with a bit of convincing. The ghost of Aso Ayame would make a great start, and that was why I started by slipping in paper notes in Harada and Tsunato's desks. All I'd written was the date, place, and reason I had died, along with my old name, of course. It was up to them whether or not they recognized the words and numbers. All I cared about was making sure that no one saw me committing the acts.
...All my strategies, in the end, were just childish pranks and bullying, no better than what they had done to me, maybe worse. I hated just thinking about that, but at this point I had no pride left, not for anything or anyone, not even myself. What did pride matter anymore? I'd been worthless even before I'd been born the second time around. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't redeem myself by making Mom and Dad proud in spite of their saying that I did. They had no idea how impossible that was, for me and for them.
After school I went up to the roof of the main building. That was where I had died, corned by Tsunato Ryusei who had been blabbering something about how I was making a mistake. A mistake in what, I wonder. I remember my last moments exactly, from how it started to how it began. There was no way I'd forget the first shove and the pain of landing hard on the floor, crouching into a near fetal position as people kicked and even stepped their way past me, making a mess of my uniform and the hair I hadn't yet fixed from the incident with the scissors. Everyone's words, all insults and reproachful phrases, had turned into a blur of sound that turned my vision black, and when I could see again I saw everyone's heels as they walked away.
Laughing at me.
Making jokes about me.
Ignoring me.
Smirking at me.
Leaving me.
Leaving me...
I remember wondering at the time why I was praying so hard for them all to come back. Had I been that lonely? So pathetic. How could I have been so lonely as to wish that the people who made me cry hard every night—no, every second I was alone in a place where no one could see me or hear me gasp and cry. No wonder my face had always been a mess, or rather, more of a mess than it already had been. How lucky I had been to be blessed with good looks in this life; it made it so much easier to pull in those idiots in class.
A few steps closer to the edge and I peered over to look down at the yard below; just a week since my death and there wasn't so much as a cup of flowers to signify the moment. It felt strange standing in the same place where I'd climbed over and jumped...and died. Of course. I'd wanted the feeling of a falling body. Back then I'd felt that if I jumped, if I felt myself falling, somehow I'd be set free from Harada and those other bastards. I'd be free of my insecurities and flaws, my lack of a future and friends, all my fears, my worries, my memories of being humiliated and bullied over and over again. For some odd reason I'd thought that I'd be free of knowing that I was a ugly, selfish, and weak person that wasn't even worth pitying, and there was no way I'd change.
From my bag I took out some iris flowers, the very same flower for which I'd been named back when I was a girl. Crushing it in my hand, I dropped the wrinkled, torn petals and stalks on the very spot where I had last stood as Aso Ayame. Then I put my hands together in prayer.
How sad. I was the only one that would ever pray for my own soul, which was beyond redemption thanks to the path I planned to take. I don't recall anything that might have happened between the moment I died and the moment I was reborn, but sometimes I was scared of going to hell. Hell was what I deserved for not successfully standing up for myself then, and it was what I deserved for what I'd do now. No matter what, bullying was unforgivable. The only reason I could get away with it was because I knew and accepted the consequences.
Because there was no one to forgive me. How could someone who hadn't so much as been worth pitying deserve forgiveness? I was alone either way.
...That's right. I'm alone, so completely alone. Why else would I be the only one to pray for my own soul? It struck me as so funny that I laughed, and couldn't stop chuckling to myself for a good five minutes. My shoulders kept shaking and I couldn't snap my mouth out of a smile. By the time I finally got a hold on myself I was breathless.
“ Well,” I said, “ may I have a better life this time, even though it's pretty unlikely.”
If anyone knew the real me, they would never accept me.
So I will never try.
