Chapter Text
As if a fire could be dreamed, Minato was dreaming a fire. The car was on its side, hood pointed at the front, a great fish gasping its last breath. Minato is in pain. Minato is shivering. Minato thinks, this is a dream, a terrible dream and tries to wake up but the dream is too strong. The air is hot metal in his nose.
It reeked of old plastic— like the smell of his mother’s purse sometimes. The heat and the light and the sound was on all sides.
Minato was aware of the way his knees and elbows moved on the hot pavement, how the pain from the cuts seemed dim, and the smell of burning rubber and gasoline. He moved away. His eyes burned and he looked up and saw a very bright moon bathing everything with a fierce green light.
Minato was aware of many things that had nothing to do with the heat:
The moon, which was very bright.
The smell of horrible things.
The sound of a fight a few steps away.
The sight of a humanoid female robot who was fighting a stitched together thing with a cloak just a few feet from where he had crawled.
The stitched together thing was winning. He saw it land a blow and thought: I should help her. The robot’s face did not speak, he didn't know if she was in pain, but Minato, realizing for the first time someone might die if he did nothing, wanted to help her and his heart pounded.
Minato saw her face without expression, her eyes glowing a dim but sharp blue, and he ran towards her without a second thought.
He tripped.
His elbows hit the pavement and he felt an exquisite burning sensation. His fingers touched the hot road and felt the jagged glassy pieces of metal embedded in it.
The noise had caught the attention of the robot — she stared directly at him. Her eyes were bright and blue and he saw himself in those eyes: he was an awful sight. His hands and knees were covered with blood. His lips were drawn and purple. His eyes were big black circles that glowed in the light falling from the burning car behind him.
There was no sound in the universe except the sound of life being ripped from the robot’s metal skin.
And then— a white brightness started to come out of the robot. She seemed to have made some sort of a decision and was pulling it out of her body. It looked as if a flashlight had suddenly switched on.
The light tore into him and ripped away something black and rotten. His soul was white and beautiful. Minato felt strange, like the skin of his face had been torn off. The sun was burning on every inch of him.
Then, there was noise. He was in a room dimly lit in which a woman stood quietly next to his bed. The light was a faint golden sound. There was no pain and no movement. There was only the woman who stood by his bed. He could sense the smallest sounds of a city coming to life outside the walls of the hospital building.
He looked at the woman who was standing next to the bed and realized that it was his aunt Sachiko. She was holding his hand and there were tear stains on her sleeve and her face. He did not feel the pain he had felt before. He knew that his aunt had driven many hours to come and see him.
"How are you, sweetie?" Aunt Sachiko asked.
He could not speak to her.
She said, "Can you hear me?" and he nodded and he could see her wipe her eyes. She said, "I was scared," and he wanted to say, "I was scared too," but no words came. He understood that she was still afraid.
She held his hand. She was still wiping the tears from her face. "I’m so sorry," she said. "Your mother and your father— they died in the crash." She turned her head and wiped her eyes again, and then turned her gaze on him. "Are you in pain?"
How could she ask if he was in pain when she had just told him that his mother and father were dead? He felt as if he were looking at himself from very far away. Like a stranger to this person who was himself. In that moment, he felt himself to be very lonely.
Aunt Sachiko said, "Not being able to talk about it is normal. You don’t have to say anything. There are some things that are just beyond words." She bent over and kissed his forehead.
He was trying to think of what had happened on the bridge. He could not remember. All he could remember was a burning feeling. But that memory was faint— like the impression of a shadow.
His aunt must have seen his expression change, because she shushed him quietly, purring, "Just rest."
After that, Aunt Sachiko took him to the city where she lived. The city was hot and bright in the way that cities were always hot and bright.
He had his own room at his aunt’s house. It was large, with a bed with bright white sheets. There were no curtains at the window. There was an empty vase. On a table next to the bed was a small white cup of water that must have been left by his aunt weeks ago.
The next night, she invited all of his immediate family over. They all traveled very far to be there. The boy looked around the dinner table at the aunts, uncles, cousins, and the guests who were not known. He moved his gaze between their collarbones— he did not like to look them in the eye. The sounds he heard were muffled. He was watching a party inside a jar. Sometimes the jar shook.
They came up to him with their sentences already planned out, as if he had died with his parents too, and they were visiting his grave. Then they would smile a bright smile at him. But he could not say anything.
"A lot of kids need time after something like this." Aunt Sachiko nodded. "I’m sure he’ll speak when he’s ready."
That night, he dreamed of the blankness before he had been born. There was no sound or light or warmth— but there was something— not nothing. Something that he could not hold, not in his hands, not in his head. Something he reached and reached for.
At breakfast he watched eggs being poured onto someone else’s plate, but for some reason, that plate was his own. He did not care. He watched his legs move across the room. He did not care. His aunt’s face came and went in his peripheral vision. Sometimes she would look at him and he would look away.
His aunt was trying. "Your mother and I had a lot in common. We loved watching movies." He was seated in his chair at the table. He heard her. She was washing the dishes. "However, your mother liked romance more than anything else. She was such a sap, you know?"
"Would you ever like to watch some old horror movies with me? Your mother hated them, but I think you might not mind." He nodded. She smiled.
Aunt Sachiko put the movie on and he sat down on the couch to watch it, she watched it too, sometimes she laughed or shivered but he did not move the entire time. She offered him popcorn. It didn’t taste like anything.
She looked at him when it was over. "Did you like it?" He said nothing. When she looked at him, he looked away. He did not understand what she wanted from him. She turned the television off.
The days came to a close and there was no difference between days and nights. He ate his food and drank his water and felt nothing. When he went to bed there was the same blankness and sleep came in like a cold black tide.
One morning, Aunt Sachiko said, "I think you’d like it more living with your cousin Konomi. She is a little closer to your age. Don’t you think so?" He shrugged. She seemed to be waiting for something. What did she want? She waited. He did not meet her gaze. Eventually, she stopped waiting.
The things he had cared about—his mother and father, the smell of the furniture in their house and his little toys with their faces—all had no substance to them anymore. Even in his memories, those people— his parents, they felt so far away. They might not have been alive in the first place. Maybe he was born a few days ago, and he had been an orphan from the start.
He shrugged again. Nothing, that’s what she got from him.
The moving day came, Aunt Sachiko had packed his stuff. He tried to help, but she insisted. He didn’t argue. It was a warm summer morning. He stood on the porch and as she gave him a hug goodbye, she whispered, "You’ll be okay."
She told him something about how she hoped that change of location would help him. He couldn’t tell if she was sincere. He could not even really comprehend the journey to the place where the cousin lived. There was nothing there except the understanding he was traveling a great distance.
His cousin Konomi was tall and thin with red hair and her teeth didn’t quite meet properly. She was spunky and energetic— he thinks when he was younger, he liked her a bit, but it was hard to put himself into the shoes of the stranger that was his past self. He didn’t say much and didn’t laugh. She had a lot of friends who would come and visit and he would listen to their chatter and not say a word.
One time, Konomi’s friends gathered around him in the kitchen where he was sitting on the bar stool. They did not like him. His presence made them uncomfortable, disturbed. He slept in the living room, so there was nowhere he could go to escape them besides the bathroom. "Say something," they kept teasing. "Say something! Say something! You’re like a mute. Say something." But he just could not say anything.
"Just let him be," Konomi said, angrily, "Can’t you see he don’t want to talk? You people act like you never saw anything before." She turned and looked back at him. He could see in her eyes she was thinking, why don’t you want to talk? Why don’t you say something? Her eyes were curious.
"Look at his eyes," the cousin’s friend said, "He looks like a dead guy." The others laughed.
His cousin deepened her face into a scowl, unusual for her, "You all shut up."
The others laughed harder and looked at him and said, "Is he sleeping sitting up like that? Is he asleep? Hey, dead guy wake up."
Konomi said, "Cut it out," but they kept teasing.
Konomi’s face turned as red as her hair, "Out. Get outta here, you sorry idiots! What’s wrong with you, bullying a little kid?!" They looked at her and saw the edge in her voice. "I mean it!" But they had already gone too far to care. They filed out laughing, waving at her as they stepped onto the porch as if she was saying goodbye.
Konomi’s hand touched his shoulder but he didn’t look at her. He was used to apologies, everyone was always saying they were sorry to him.
"I’m really sorry about that, Minato. I don’t know what their issue is— that’s not their usual way, I swear. Not that that’s an excuse." She said. He said nothing. But he felt something in her eyes— a questioning, a searching for a key that wasn’t there. A feeling that he didn’t know how to describe rose up in him. Something like warmth.
"It’s okay," he said. Her mouth hung open, skinny jaw unhinged. She was watching him like his words were a miracle. And they were. He had not spoken for weeks. And suddenly he opened his mouth and he spoke and they were ordinary words, but she was overwhelmed.
Konomi hugged him. No one had hugged him in a long time. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it was his mother, but it didn’t work. His cousin was too spindly. But it was nice to imagine it could be. She squeezed, and tears were running down her cheeks. He did not understand.
He sat where he had been placed, looking at the television screen through half-lowered lids. Everything he saw on screen seemed like something Konomi would talk about with that unanswerable energy of hers. How much time did this girl devote, he wondered, to thinking and talking about stuff as pointless as this? He felt himself the center of attention even though she wasn't looking at him.
"I'm sorry," Konomi said, one night, "I don’t have enough money to keep taking care of us both." His eyes lifted and he stared at her. "It's not your fault. My uncle’s gonna take care of you. You don’t know him, but he’s real kind."
He thought, You must have been bored with me anyway.
The day came where he had to go to Konomi’s uncle. He did not know his name. The man was not even related to him by blood. Konomi asked him if he wanted to say goodbye to his friends at school beforehand, but then drove him straight to the station anyway. She must have realized it was unlikely he had any friends.
A jovial man (her uncle?) was waiting at the door of the train station. His hand was like a paw around the boy's. "We're going to have a great time," he said, patting the boy's back, "a great time."
They both got into the car— it was dark green and round. "Do you know what I always say?" Konomi’s uncle said, both his hands tight on the steering wheel.
Silence in the car.
"I always say," Konomi’s uncle tried again "that a man without laughter is like a…"
A long pause as if the man had forgotten the thing for which there was no laughter.
Silence again.
The boy looked at him. It was hard to understand where one person ended and another began. And still he didn’t reply.
After a bit, when it seemed that Konomi’s uncle had given up on his joke, it occurred to the boy that the silence now was what the uncle was making his joke around and in a way the joke was happening, just not the way the man had meant. And he understood that the joke really was funny. He wanted to laugh, but he didn’t know how.
Konomi’s uncle said, after the silence had gone on a bit, "We’ll be home in a half hour," but still the boy didn’t reply.
He thought of the way Konomi’s uncle had told a joke that didn’t end. And the way the jokes were funny because the jokes were not just jokes. They were funny because they also were not funny. It would be strange to laugh now; the car ride was so long before and now it had brought them here.
Sitting in the back seat of Konomi’s uncle’s car the boy turned the thought of the car ride over in his mind, as if, in that turn, he could find some other outcome. And he saw another ending: the car pulling up to a new station, in a new place, and the boy getting out, holding a cardboard box. It was his new home. Then, Konomi’s uncle saying, "Here you are," and the boy trying to remember how to say goodbye.
Only three months later, Konomi’s uncle was taking him back to the station to live with his second cousin. He had gotten sick of the boy even quicker than Konomi had.
The ride back to the station was longer this time. It had to be. He didn’t know how to laugh, and Konomi’s uncle had become more and more silent as the time passed. No matter what he said, the boy had nothing to say back. The silence grew thick, like dust on furniture. Konomi’s uncle made jokes, but there was no one to laugh. Silence had fallen over everything.
Konomi’s uncle had given up. They were both glad to not have to try to laugh. But it seemed to the boy that the silence was not the way it had been in the past. It was not as if the boy was just thinking about other things; his mind felt vacant but crowded somehow and there was no way to explain how he felt to Konomi’s uncle, who must have just seen him as a gloomy burden.
A dark, round, closed place. This is the world as he sees it through his eyelids. A kind of darkness with layers of gray that look more or less the same. Sounds come in: creaking and rustling of the body in its narrow bed, footsteps in the kitchen. Sometimes he hears a voice or a laugh. But he remains shut under his covers no matter how hard he tries. A great weight is on him and it feels like it is on top of his heart.
His second cousin, Kiyoshi, is a strict man. He tells the boy, grief is no reason to fall behind in school. He does not allow the boy to sit down or relax. Everything is to be taken as a personal offense. In this way everything is managed, even sorrow.
Kiyoshi has a face without expression except for cold anger. The boy has had a lot of practice at looking away. There is something so precise and orderly about his face, his hands, the way he moves— that his strictness is something he is. He would look more at ease in a uniform than in his plain clothes.
Kiyoshi stands at the edge of the room, watching while the boy sits silent at his desk working his way laboriously through a textbook. Finally, he takes a step closer and touches the boy's shoulder. "Is this hard?" he asks, "do you understand?"
The boy feels the pressure of Kiyoshi's hand on his shoulder like a weight that wants to press him into the table. He is trying to remember the words. After a struggle of mumbled chokes, he says, "I understand this page." He has spoken more with Kiyoshi than he has in months, because if he didn’t, he would be punished. Not speaking back was insubordination, after all.
Kiyoshi takes his hand off the shoulder. "In that case, you should understand the next page. It is not that difficult."
The boy feels an urgent frustration rising in him. He looks down at his textbook for a long time then slowly turns the page.
School is a building he does not particularly pay attention to. It’s just the place he goes to to prove to Kiyoshi he’s worth keeping around him.
In a classroom of desks arranged neatly in rows, the boy sat on his own trying to remember which numbers were prime numbers. A girl came up to him and asked, "Let me bother you for a second." She sounded kind, but he couldn’t look at her.
The girl hesitated. "I know you’re good at this, and I need help." He heard her and didn’t hear her. He decided to glance upwards. She had big blue eyes. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t remember what. Distantly, his hand burned.
She stood there, wanting something, and he realized with confusion that she needed a response from him. "Let me bother you for a second," she had said. He tried to look at her, but a kind of dullness came down over him.
"I can help." The boy told her.
"Thank you," The girl said and smiled and they moved close together looking down at a problem. He noticed her small hands with messy pink nails as she pointed at things. He followed her pointing.
He felt nothing particular about the problem he was helping her with; it was just another problem. His thoughts were slow. But he knew the answer. She didn't have to struggle or ask the same question twice. He answered it simply. She gave him her grateful smile.
"Thanks again for helping me," she said.
"It’s okay."
"Will you walk me home?"
"Okay."
They walked along the sidewalk. The sun cast their shadows on the road. Everything was very slow. Nothing much was said the rest of the way. She thanked him again when they reached her driveway.
"You really are good at this. You should help me again sometime." She smiled, her pink nails tugging at her black hair. "I should ask you to help me with all my homework."
"Did you not understand it?" He asked.
"No," she said, her smile widening, "I guess I didn’t."
He didn’t understand it himself— if she hadn’t understood his explanation, she should have told him that when they were in the classroom. His thoughts were as vague as the thoughts of a half awake person. He made no attempt to clarify them. The soles of his feet also ached. Maybe he had walked a long distance without realizing it. The shadows of trees and houses fell on the path ahead as he walked back to Kiyoshi’s house.
Kiyoshi stood waiting in the hall as he came in the door. He saw that his face was cold with anger. "Where have you been?" he said, "I told you to be home by three."
"I was walking a girl home from school," he said.
Kiyoshi was silent. He looked at him carefully. At last he said, "She asked you to walk her home?"
"Yes," he said. Kiyoshi looked at him for a long moment.
"You should have declined her invitation."
"Why?" And as soon as he said it he knew it had been the wrong thing to say.
Kiyoshi looked at him with that same expression of wrongness— the boy’s own failure. "If she asks you again, tell her that you have better things to do. That was foolish of you. You are not here to walk girls home from school."
He wondered why Kiyoshi made such a fuss over it, he hadn’t really enjoyed walking her home in the first place. He tried to remember that her nails were a bright pink, spilling onto the skin around them. But the thought didn’t seem as vivid as he thought it should be. He wanted to remember it with more intensity, to remember the exact shade and the fine dust of cuticles stained. But it remained dull behind his eyes. There didn’t seem to be much point to contesting, so he just nodded.
"You should go study," Kiyoshi said. And that was that. It was pointless. He was expected to be ready to answer his questions at dinner.
The next day the girl approached him, but he avoided her. Instead of saying hello, he looked away. And he did not answer her question about the lesson. She kept trying to ask again, but he avoided her.
It was difficult for him to focus on the lesson himself. Something kept distracting him, a kind of dull ache inside. The feeling became worse, like some kind of thick blanket that covered the whole day. And as the days went by, it became harder to see through the gray into the colors of life.
When Kiyoshi asked him about how his schoolwork was coming, everything felt thick. The world seemed to sway and shift. "I am trying," he said.
Kiyoshi looked at him sharply. "I told you that you must not fall behind. You must keep up. Schoolwork is important."
The boy had become listless, even more so than before. His cousin was becoming sick of him because it was getting harder and harder to care for him. He could tell Kiyoshi was also beginning to blame himself, which was a feeling the man clearly loathed. It was the boy’s fault he was making him feel that way, if only he could just do what he was supposed to, if only he could care.
Everything was changing.
He was told once again that he wasn’t wanted after a year of living there.
Kiyoshi didn’t drive him to the station. He put him in a taxi and leaned in, "Focus on mathematics," He told the boy. When the boy reached the station, he followed the gate on his ticket, and boarded when told. The movement of the train was soothing. His thoughts were a kaleidoscope of memory in which the images of his parents would flicker and turn then turn again.
His grandparents' house was out in the country— he wondered if they would get mad at him for not doing well in school too. He couldn’t really recall his grandparents’ views on work. His father had not really had a strong connection to them, and the long distance didn’t help, so he didn’t see them much as a child.
His grandfather was a retired farmer with no sense of joy. He was a serious man who did not waste time on anything he saw as foolish. His grandmother was a small neat woman who spoke in whispers and baked pies. She was kind to the boy but did not smile very often. He realized, hardly anyone in the house ever did.
The boy slipped into the monotony of rural life quickly. There was little to do besides school and chores. The air was cold and the sky was wide and blue and empty. Sometimes he thought about the past and sometimes he thought about the future. He thought about his aunt, his cousin, his cousin’s uncle and his second cousin who had grown so tired of him that they had sent him away. He thought about his grandparents being kind in their own way but not understanding him.
The boy wondered if anyone would ever understand him. He wondered to himself if he was really worth understanding. The boy sometimes thought there was nothing to understand, that he was just a kind of hollow with eyes looking out. The boy often thought he was just a piece of wood with a face painted on that people thought was a person. Although, as his track record showed, they all realized the truth pretty quickly after having him around for enough time.
He lay in bed at night and his mind drifted around and around. He thought of Kiyoshi and how he could see the man’s slow descent into disappointment for the boy’s actions. The boy had become a burden. He thought about all the things he could have done differently that might have changed things.
If only he could be normal. If only he could have cared about school work. Or just done it, like he had in the beginning. But even writing felt like labor, now. He didn’t know why. Nothing was wrong with him. He always had food in his stomach, a roof over his head. What did he have to be upset about? He didn’t know. Everything just felt so far away.
It felt to the boy that he was not made for living in the world, at least, not this world. It was too much for him. The world seemed to him like a giant puzzle that everyone could solve but him. He lay in bed most of the time. He had stopped putting in any effort at school almost completely.
He did not know what he had to be upset about. He felt like he was supposed to just exist and be happy. He did not understand why he could not do that.
One morning his grandmother tapped on his bedroom door and asked the boy why he was not doing his school work. The boy was lying in bed looking at the ceiling. He did not feel like explaining anything to her. He just wanted to be left alone. He did not want to explain that every word he put down on paper seemed like a stone that was being added to a wall that would eventually suffocate him. He did not want to explain that he wanted the wall to fall away and leave him free.
"I’ll do it later," he said.
His grandmother paused. She understood that he would not. She did not push him. "Fine," she said and left the room. She did not close the door and the boy could see her walk away down the hall in her little slippers. When he noticed that the door was still open, he got out of bed and shut it. He lay down again on his bed. It was going to be another long day.
His grandmother often asked him what he did in his free time. The boy was always unsure how to respond. He usually did not have anything to do in his free time and he certainly did not want to tell his grandmother that. The boy thought she would be angry if he did not have anything to do. So he would just tell her he liked reading. His grandmother was always pleased with this answer and would nod and say something like, "Good. Mind needs to be fed like any other part of the body."
The boy tried to enjoy reading but he often felt like his mind would not hold a single thought. It seemed like other people could get their minds to do anything they wanted. His classmates could concentrate on their school work and do things like walk girls home every day. It felt like his mind was a large pond covered in duckweed. Nothing could pierce through the duckweed and everything he tried to do just got tangled in the weeds and disappeared down into the murky water.
He was not doing what he was supposed to do so he was getting punished by his own mind and body. He would try to do better; he would try to do anything, but it was like living in an airless tomb. Nothing would move.
His grandfather became sick one day and no one was surprised. He was very old and had been feeling poorly for a while. The boy did not know what sickness his grandfather had, but his grandmother told him that it was serious and that he should spend as much time with his grandfather as possible.
The boy began accompanying his grandfather during the evenings. They sat in chairs by the back window looking out at the fields. Their conversations were mostly one-sided with the grandfather speaking and the boy listening.
"The fields look good this time of year," his grandfather would say. He never said much else. Sometimes his grandfather would ask him how school was going. The boy would give his usual answer that it was fine. Then his grandfather would lean back in his chair. His grandfather had very worn eyes. They were like the eyes of a grandfather in a picture.
When his grandfather died, the boy’s grandmother did not want to cook for two. She sat around all day in the chair outside that had been his grandfather’s. She did not talk to the boy except to ask him if he needed something. She no longer baked pies and the air in the house was heavy with sadness. The boy began helping himself to dry food from the kitchen.
It came as no surprise to him when he boarded a train yet again to go to another relative. He had spent the longest with his grandparents— a whole year and a half. He wondered if his grandfather hadn’t died, if he would have spent longer, or if they would have gotten sick of him like the others.
It had all become predictable. Though, there was no way to make things less bleak. The boy found something comforting in the rhythm of the train as the landscape flashed by the windows. He was used to leaving. His whole life had been one departure after another. There was a bitter familiarity in it.
The boy had been told that his next stay was a woman who housed foster kids— a friend of a friend of his mother. It sounded cold to him. It sounded like he was a burden that people had to take care of because there was no one else. The woman was very upfront that his stay was temporary. She told the boy she could not promise him anything. The boy did not ask her to promise him anything.
The boy was surprised to find out that he would have to share a room with five other children. The room was barely big enough for four beds. He slept on a rolled-out mat on the floor in the corner. The boy was used to sleeping on the floor without a mattress— it had taken a while for Kiyoshi to get him one, but he was used to a lot of things that were not good for him. The house was cold and damp and there was a smell of mildew that made the boy's stomach churn.
One of the boys staying there was a perky young boy named Haruto. Haruto was always smiling. He seemed very excited to have the boy join them. He was interested in knowing everything about the boy. Haruto was interested in everything— even the mildew on the walls.
"It’s squishy like algae!" He told the boy one afternoon— they both had to stay home due to the snow. The boy was not used to this much energy in the room they shared. He had learned to sit still and not take up a lot of space. Haruto could barely stay still long enough to keep his breath from fogging the window.
"Can you imagine if a whole field was coated with the stuff?" Haruto said, pointing at the mildew. "It would be so soft! You could run across it without getting hurt!"
Haruto was always full of questions and the boy was used to answering them. This time Haruto asked the boy what his favorite plant was. The boy’s answer was simple. "I don’t have a favorite plant."
Haruto paused. It was an answer that surprised him. "There’s so many kinds of plants," Haruto said, "how can you not have a favorite?"
"I like all plants." The boy shrugged. He thought that he liked plants of all kinds but when he came down to it, the thing was he could not feel attached to anything. He liked when the sun came out in the morning and made leaves move on the trees but he felt no particular affection for either the sun or the leaves.
Haruto did not really understand the feeling of detachment that the boy lived. For Haruto everything was something to get excited about: things to eat, things that smelled good and things that felt strange to the touch. Haruto was always reaching for something to stimulate his senses. He touched the fuzzy mold on the walls and liked the fuzzy feeling.
The boy found something comforting in Haruto’s presence because he was so uncomplicated. It made the boy feel uncomplicated too. The boy could sit quietly with Haruto and not feel the pressure to have to always be talking or doing something. Haruto filled the room with his presence in the way a laugh would fill a room just by being there. The boy did not try to fill the room in the same way Haruto did. He was content to let Haruto fill the room for both of them.
The foster mother clearly disliked how quiet and withdrawn the boy was. She found him unsettling, to some degree. He was not normal like her other foster children. He did not run and scream like the younger kids. He did not jump around and talk constantly like Haruto and the other boys. The foster mother sometimes called the boy "That one." It was not a good thing for a child to be called.
"He’s like a doll, just sits and stares," she said to a friend over the phone. The boy’s grief had spread through his body and bones like a poison, and now his foster mother was impatiently waiting for it to leave. He would never comment on it, but he felt it— her contempt with his existence.
The boy was very aware of his foster mother’s feelings toward him. He heard what she said on the phone and he could feel her impatience every time she told him not to "wallow" in his grief or "brood". He told her he was not wallowing in anything, but she did not believe him. She thought he was just making excuses. For her, being sad was an act of rebellion. She made sure to let him know how much she resented him for it.
Haruto left the house one day with their foster mother, a small suitcase in hand. The boy had gotten used to Haruto being there. Haruto was always there, excited about everything. The boy knew that he would never have his own excitement, but he was grateful to Haruto for filling the room with his own. Without Haruto, it felt like the house was empty, though there were plenty of other children there.
The boy tried to live quietly, keep to himself. He liked to be alone anyway, but the older ones teased him. They were like dogs. They could smell weakness. Maybe they wanted a taste. They would follow him around the house, not letting him sit down for long, one or the other, or both together, if their foster mother wasn't paying attention.
One of them, Ruri, came after him every chance she got. She had dark blue hair that had been sprayed and straightened into a kind of helmet. She looked like someone who had studied how to smile from books. She always took him at a disadvantage.
The boy sat at the dinner table, and she stood behind him. He did not have to see her. He knew she was there, with a look of pure hatred chipped into her thin face. She knew where to find him, of course she did. She had come looking for him. He tried to breathe in and think of something else but the house had a bad smell in it, and the smell had a way of following him. She stood over him, watching, her lips moving like someone chewing something invisible. He closed his eyes. He opened his eyes. Ruri was still standing there.
"So you think you’re all that?" She asked him.
He did not answer because he did not know what she meant.
She said, "You think you’re better than everyone else?" And when he still did not answer she said, "I bet you do."
"Better than who?" He finally said.
"Me. You think you’re better than me." She kicked the legs of his chair, sent it toppling over, "Everyone knows you’re no good."
Her face screwed up like she had eaten rotten food, "You’re dumb. Just dumb. You don’t even know it."
He got up, deciding to walk back to the room, or the bathroom, maybe, and she said after him, "Run away. You’re good at running. You’re always running away."
Ruri grabbed him by the hair, hard, so that it felt like his blood was being pulled out. She pulled back, lifting his head, forcing him to look into her face.
Then she was on him like an animal, he thought he could hear her teeth in her mouth, she was biting and clawing. He struggled to get her off him, the sounds she was making were so loud and close to his ear that it hurt there, too.
He gave up. He couldn't fight anymore. He stopped moving. He could feel her breath on his face— so close it was almost his own breath. Her eyes were inches from him. The pain spread through him. He felt he would die and it hurt so bad he could not move even to save his life, save whatever it is he had been doing these past years.
"Fight back!" Ruri screamed in his face. "Fight! Fight! Fight back!" Her eyes were wide and she was screaming so loud. He could not move.
He felt Ruri let go and realized somebody else was pulling her off of him. He didn’t know who it was, but it must have been one of the other kids. He was glad it wasn’t their foster mother. He lay on the ground in a heap trying to get air, his head hurt from how she pulled his hair, he could feel blood running down his neck. He was shaking. He could hear her screaming at the other kid.
"Let go of me, let go of me!" The screaming continued. Maybe it was a good idea to let her scream. At least she was not scratching and biting him anymore. He lay there with his mouth open trying to breathe right. His hand was on the back of his neck, he felt blood there and he could not stop shaking.
Ruri stopped wrestling with the other person, pulling away harshly. The boy couldn’t focus enough to tell which of the other foster kids it was. When Ruri noticed him on the floor, her face split into a wide grin. "See? I got him to be scared."
His whole body felt like a bruise. The taste of blood was heavy and metallic in his mouth. He wiped his hand against his cheek and looked at the red stain. The blood was his punishment for letting her do what she wanted to him.
"You’re a pussy," Ruri spat out, "I bet your parents left cause they were so sick of you."
"Shut up!" The other kid said, he thinks it’s Kanon, a girl with a mole under her left eye, "You’re a huge meanie for no reason, Ruri. You shut your mouth, you don’t know anything about him."
Ruri didn’t look like she was going to shut up, "Oh, I bet you know all about him, don’t you?" Ruri pointed at him but he was too tired to answer, he just stayed on the ground trying to keep breathing.
Kanon scowled, "Don’t point at him, you idiot."
Their foster mother finally came into the room. She had brown powder on her apron from making dinner. She looked displeased. "What are you doing?" Her voice was low and angry. She was looking at Ruri.
"We’re just playing a game," Ruri said.
The foster mother looked at the boy. He was on the ground, not moving, his eyes were shut tight. She walked over and crouched down next to him. "Are you okay?"
She put her hand against his face. He couldn’t open his eyes fully, he felt the blood soaking his neck and felt like his hair was still being pulled out of his head by Ruri's hands.
He heard his foster mother ask again, "Are you okay?"
And he heard Ruri yelling again, "He’s faking it, he’s such a baby."
"He’s not!" Kanon said, "I had to pull her off of him! She was hurting him really bad, mommy!"
"Don’t lie! He’s being a baby," Ruri yelled back, "Look at him. He’s just a baby! We were just play-fighting!"
Their foster mother looked at him, at his hair, at the blood on his neck, and he was shaking all over. "What did you do to him?" she asked.
"We were just playing. He’s such a baby," Ruri said.
The mother held his face and looked into his eyes. "Look at me," she said sternly, "Why didn’t you fight back? Why did you just sit there?" Her eyes were wide and intense. He felt shame congeal in his stomach. Her jaw was set, and for a moment he felt a rush of terror like he had felt with Ruri.
He mumbled, "I don't know… I didn't know… I was scared."
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she looked at him. "What did you expect?"
Ruri smirked her usual cruel smirk and said, "That’s right. You can’t expect people to have sympathy for you if you don’t have the guts to fight back."
Kanon scowled, "That’s a mean thing to say. You beat him up."
Ruri’s tone was light, "I was playing."
Their foster mother said, "Playing, hm? It looks like you were attacking him." She held out a paper towel for the boy to wipe the blood from his neck.
The boy couldn’t bear the touch of the towel and the feeling of it rubbing across his skin. The blood was sticky and warm. It would have been a relief to let the blood harden and become a part of his body but he knew he had to wipe it off. He tried.
But his foster mother’s eyes narrowed as she watched him. She made an annoyed sound. She took the towel from him and scrubbed at him with it. She rubbed so hard it hurt his neck and he had to hold back the tears. She was angry at him and he didn’t know why. She was saying, "Let me do it. I’ll do it right." He was letting her, his head tipped down so the blood flowed off his neck, into his hair, and didn’t get on the floor.
She was done wiping away the worst of the blood. She sighed and shook her head looking at his neck which was all scratched up now.
"What she did to you is wrong," she said, "but you really should be able to stand up for yourself."
The boy couldn’t help thinking that if Ruri was to attack him again right now, he wouldn’t fight back this time either. For the boy, the thought of fighting Ruri was so frightening he felt he would rather let her beat him, scratch him, or anything she wanted than fight back, if he even knew how.
He deserved the pain because he had let it happen. He deserved the blood on his neck and he deserved the pain because he was worthless and pathetic. Ruri's words were true, the weakness in him was the truth of him.
If he had been worthwhile, he wouldn’t be trying not to cry over the scratches on his neck. He would be with his parents. Or Aunt Sachiko. Or Konami. Or Konami’s uncle. Or Kiyoshi. Or his grandparents.
He was not a person. He didn't even know how to speak for himself.
He became used to the feeling of bruises. The first couple months the bruises were easy to hide, but over time, they became darker and more visible. He had to take time in the bathroom in the morning to rub the bruises with his towels so the blood flow would slow.
Ruri scratched less because she had started to get her nails done somewhere and didn’t want any blood under them. She said once that it made them look dirty. Instead she would kick him or hit him and that was easy to cover because he could wear a sweater even in the summer.
Kanon tried to stand up for him a couple times, but Ruri would just hit her too, so she stopped trying. The boy knew she didn’t want to get hurt either. She was okay with being called a coward by Ruri if it meant that she wasn’t beaten up. He thought it was better this way. He didn’t like watching her fight back for him. It didn’t involve her at all.
Kanon was a real person, who had friends and liked to go out after school. All he did was rot in their room. She had a life and things going on— he was useless. A placeholder of a person to fill the world up. The thought made him feel sick, but he knew it was right. So he sat there and watched the days pass and the bruising get darker.
He felt a sick mixture of relief and shame whenever Ruri hurt him. It was a strange kind of comfort. It was like it was proof that he existed. He thought if he disappeared it would be easy, because nobody would care. But every time she hurt him, it was like she was saying you are here and you deserve to be punished until you disappear. He thought the pain proved he was not really disappearing yet.
As Ruri got older she continued to beat on the boy but not as much as she used to. It was like she couldn’t be bothered with him anymore, but she still looked at him sometimes with a look of satisfaction, as if she knew she had gotten him where she wanted.
She didn’t talk to him much except to say true things about how he was wasting his life or how she would bet it was going to lead nowhere. Then she would walk away and say to one of the other kids, "See? Useless just like I said."
He had gotten so used to this routine, that he had forgotten that even a place where he was beaten up wasn’t something that was permanent. He has been told to pack whatever things he had (there were none besides a few trinkets).
His foster mother spoke to him in the kitchen in a calm voice. "From the beginning, I told you that this was temporary. I don’t know why you expected anything different. You’re almost a teenager now. There’s only so much I can do."
She said it like it was supposed to be okay, but he knew the truth of the statement— "You’re not my problem anymore."
She had done a lot for him. She let him stay here. That’s all he could ask for, so he quietly said, "Thank you."
The news had spread rather quickly. The only foster kids he had known since he had first come were Ruri and Kanon. Kanon had become more withdrawn since he first met her. She knew now to stick to herself. She told him she would miss him. He knew that was a lie.
At least Ruri was truthful about her reaction. She was jumping up and down laughing. "He really got kicked out! Oh God! Can you believe it? What’s he going to do now? Do you think he’ll wind up on the street? Or live on a park bench or something?"
He thought maybe that would be good. If he lived outside, maybe he would just die in his sleep.
But no, he couldn’t count on himself to be so lucky. He was sent to live with the distant relative that his family hardly had any contact with. It wasn’t a good situation. The relative also believed the boy didn’t know how to do anything right. The relative treated him like a little child and didn’t let him do anything on his own— he couldn’t even fix his own meals or go outside by himself.
The relative said, "You’d better start doing something with this life of yours instead of sitting around wasting your time."
It was the same thing that Kiyoshi and his foster mother had always said. He felt like he was going crazy. A slow, deep insanity. Nobody could teach him how to live the way he was supposed to and he was going to keep making mistakes because he didn’t have anyone to teach him correctly.
It turned out that the distant relative liked him the least of all the people he had lived with. After just one month, they sent him to a different relative. He was passed around until it was as if all the family had tried him like a toy, just to discard him.
Every new place it was the same feeling, like he was just another useless little impermanent thing not worth paying attention to. He thought that he hated Ruri, but now he thought he missed her. The way she beat him was a way of saying "See— you exist!", and now he didn’t know how to get that feeling anywhere else.
He was so lonely. There was no way to explain or to ask for it, but in some ways, he wanted the beating. When she beat him, he mattered. She believed he was real.
He had never really been given birthday presents before but in his current home, there were at least birthday cards on the table and the neighbors’ kid had given him a neck strap MP3 player he didn’t want anymore. It was silver and it played all kinds of different music. He liked it. He could listen to it while he lay in his bed at night and he liked how he could plug it into the family computer and download songs.
He listened mostly at night or when he was alone. The world disappeared when he put the headphones against his ears. He thought it felt like the music was wrapping all around him and taking him to other places. He felt tethered to the music. It was a safety zone where he couldn’t get lost because it would always come back to him no matter how far away he felt.
He sits hunched over in his chair, headphones wrapped like a collar around his neck. The music beats like heat at his temples. He tries to feel the life around him by looking at the leaves outside the window. But the leaves are like words in a book— a distant abstract idea, no more real than the music in his head. It is true that the leaves are green. It is true that the music is loud. But the boy’s mind cannot bring the two realities together in him.
The teachers watch him. All of them watch him. They have some idea, he can tell. They see that he has had trouble moving so much. They can see that he doesn't know where he belongs. But he's not sure that the place where he has ended up is even on the same plane as the others. They are watching him like doctors. He doesn't like that at all.
In his head he saw a room of white faces with wide staring eyes, demanding that he open up his inner life and hand it to them.
Each teacher acts as if they will solve him—it’s irritating. Their questions and suggestions. Their prodding at his life. They speak to him as if they had been present at his conception.
"Your parents died in a car accident? Well, perhaps you should talk to the guidance counselor."
He did not want to talk to the guidance counselor.
He was sent there anyway.
The guidance counselor’s office was full of light— it reminded him of something, but he couldn’t recall what. The counselor was a large woman with bright red cheeks like an illustration in a storybook, a rosy apple on a Christmas tree. "Are you comfortable?" she asked. The boy nodded.
The counselor kept looking at the boy with concern, though he tried not to look like there was anything wrong. "I heard your parents died a few years ago," she said. "I’m so sorry. Are you feeling alright? Do you have friends? Any hobbies?"
Her voice made his thoughts feel like they were dripping out of his head. He wondered if she would ask about his grades. He didn’t care about his grades. Nothing was interesting besides music, and that was far away at times, too. It wasn’t that he was sad, it was just nothing.
"I like listening to music," he said. The music beat at his temples. He tried to look through the counselor’s rosy cheeks and her body, which blocked out the sunlight on one side of the room.
"Really? What kind of music do you like?" The counselor asked.
"I don’t know."
"Come on, don’t be shy. I won’t judge you."
"…I guess stuff that makes your head hurt." But it’s like my head is already hurting all the time, anyway, he thought.
The counselor nodded at this.
"Well, you have a right to be sad, you know." She said.
"I’m not sad."
She kept looking at him with her face which seemed to be made of bright red rubber. "Are you sure?"
He tried to look out the window at the trees that were so distant. Just like pieces of paper pasted onto a blue sky. He thought of a bright, blinding, piercing blue— a blue so hot it burned you from the inside out.
"Really," he said, "I feel— fine," he said. The counselor smiled at him in a way that made him want to get out of the chair and walk away. But he knew that you can’t stand up and walk away from adults, or you are doing something wrong.
"That’s good," the counselor said. "Sometimes just talking makes all the sadness go away, don’t you think?"
"I guess," the boy said.
"Ah, well. I think I should tell you why we asked you to pop in here. A teacher was worried about you—"
"Why?" he asked.
"…They said that you seemed to not be enjoying life on the same level as your peers," She said. Whatever that meant, "We take this very seriously. But you seem to be a regular disinterested teenager to me. Haha." She laughed, and he did not. She coughed, "I know it’s prying, but can you show me your wrists? Then, you can be on your way."
He rolled back his sleeves to show her his unscarred arms. He wanted to say something snarky, but no words came out. She stared at him for a moment, as if she could see into all corners of him where there was nothing hiding.
Then she nodded. "Okay. Well— I’m glad," she said.
"There are a lot of other kids your age going through difficult times. Kids with divorced parents, or kids with special needs…" The counselor continued talking but the boy had stopped listening. She was trying to make him seem like he was just a normal kid who just needed a little help. He was passed from person to person because he was unbearable in the first place. If he wasn’t so unwanted, he wouldn’t even be talking to her. He would be miles and miles away, at a different school.
He remembers coming into the house where he was staying this time, how cold the rooms felt at night even with the heaters running at top heat. At first the other relative felt better than the previous one, but there was no difference to the room at night where he lay awake under the covers sweating. He thought about that when he was lying there feeling cold inside. A cold like he could die of it.
No one is going to come and rescue him.
Maybe when he thought about that, he understood kids who self-harmed.
He wondered why people thought they needed to ask him how he was just because his parents were dead. It was always such a big piece of information on his forms. What was he supposed to say? "Oh, fine. I’m super happy to stay in a house where I don’t belong. You smell weird and every room feels like a tomb."
He thought that and sometimes said that inside, but when a relative asked, he just sighed and looked away, because they were trying to be nice and he felt guilty and bad. He could only stay in so many places because so many people offered in the first place.
The other thing he hated were the comments and questions from the adults about his parents. Sometimes they were mean. The boy once sat on the couch next to a man who worked with his father, who was drinking whiskey out of the bottle. "Probably got what they deserved," the man said.
"What?" the boy asked, but his voice was so quiet no one heard him anyway.
The man shrugged. "Fucked me right up on that— uh, shit, that promo— promortion— promotion, y’know. Sucks to have the blood of such a dickhead in your blood, huh, kid?" Everyone laughed. The boy sat there feeling all the hot blood pumping in his body, but he had no way to get it out. So he just sat there and said nothing, and eventually the adults had all moved on to another topic, like they hadn’t all laughed in the first place.
He shaved in the shower. The water was cold— this house, it belonged to his cousin’s brother-in-law, didn’t have a lot of hot water. He didn’t really mind. After shaving, he picked at the razor from the plastic, pulling it in between his fingers. The shower water made it slippery. He held it up against the sink and watched the reflection of his face bend around the razor. He thought of how his life was like a bent mirror, distorted in a thousand different ways, a thousand different points of view.
He didn’t think his life was particularly sad. It was just very, very strange.
He imagined the blood coming out of his body and streaming down onto the floor, making a red puddle underneath him. Someone would notice, he thought. It would be noticed.
Flesh is pale, red, thin. The flesh is not even, it is full of holes like a sponge, pores the color of mud, each one a little circle that opens and closes, a little hole that draws the eye deep inside the flesh. The flesh is alive and it breathes in that hole. It takes in air and air is in there and then it lets the air go out.
That dark pink line is the boundary into where there is no air and something else is living, it is a boundary between two worlds, flesh and no air, not bleeding, just a thin line that marks off everything on one side and all the things not there on the other side— there is no air.
It becomes a habit.
Every night he gets out of bed. The floor creaks with the movement of his feet. The razor lies under his pillow in a tiny plastic bag. He takes it out and holds it, breathing in the smells of the soap and his body and the warm air of the room.
He wants the cuts to be clean and neat and small and precise. The air of the room is almost as hot as a bridge on fire, or a car burning, or something similar.
He’s taking longer showers now. It pours down his legs like a thousand pins and needles. The water rushes at him and pours over his eyes, his cheeks, his thighs. The stings hurt so much that he can barely bear it.
It is a way of being in the world because usually, he feels that there is nothing in the world but him, and him inside a shell of skin and bone. A long, skinny, crab. The hot shower is a way of proving that there is water and air and concrete and metal, and that the world is a real place.
It didn’t come as a surprise when he was told yet again he was to move. But it did surprise him that he would be moving into a dorm in his hometown. The boy had never expected to move back to there. After all, he felt like it was his purpose to just drift more and more. The only places he’d lived since then had been miles away, and the older he got, the further away he moved. He hadn’t been the same person since his parents died. Now it was as if he was going back to a place where he didn’t exist, where there was no place for the teenager he was now, but only for the boy he had been then.
He walked through the dark streets of the town. The streets were bathed in a strange green light, as if there was nothing beneath it but air. The teenager didn’t care. What good would a change of place make? But it was familiar. This place had been more of a dream than a real place after that day. Now it was solid once more.
The teenager walked through the dark streets of the town which had once been so safe and small to him. The streets were bathed in an eerie glow which made his feet cast shadows beneath him. As he went he saw pools of red on the sidewalks— pools of blood which seemed to come from nowhere. There were upright coffins, as if rising from graves on the street itself.
The teenager just followed the directions to the dorm, not sure what he was really doing here. Everything seemed unfamiliar even though he knew exactly where to go. There was no one around him, not even to help show the way. It was as if the whole town was empty.
As the teenager went into the dorm, a non-imposing looking building, he was surprised to find a small boy in striped pajamas waiting for him, right behind the counter. The boy in pajamas was only about as tall as the teenager’s ribs. He had a tiny face and huge blue eyes. He wondered if this boy was someone’s younger brother.
"Welcome," the boy told him. "You're late. I've been waiting a long time."
But there was no feeling to the words, they were spoken as if they were from a script. The strange boy looked at the wall, then handed the teenager a contract from his outstretched hand. When he spoke again there was a sound in his voice that was too clear and hard, like a metal wire. It was the sound of someone who was very much present and real. "If you want to proceed, then please sign here. It's a contract. There's no need to be scared. It only binds you to accepting full responsibility for your actions."
The teenager looked back at the strange boy and then at the paper in his outstretched hand. The teenager could have sworn that there had not been a sheet of paper there a few minutes before. But he didn't doubt that he had been invited to sign this piece of paper; he did not doubt that this piece of paper was very important. Minato signed his name at the bottom of the page without even looking at the text.
The boy smiles, thin and unnatural on his pale face. "...Very well. Time is something no one can escape. It delivers us all to the same end. Wishing won't make it go away. And so it begins..." And then he dissipated, as if melting into the darkness of the dorm.
"...Who's there!?" A girl was shouting, and when she stepped further out, he could see she had a short bob of brown hair. She was wearing an oversized pink sweater that was at least one size too large for her. She had sharp brown eyes that were piercing through him like the hot pink tip of an angry nail. "How can you be... But it's...! Don't tell me…" She reached at her thigh. The white holster of the gun was clear as she fumbled at her side for a second, unsure of whether or not to take it out.
"Stop!" Minato heard another voice coming from somewhere further down the hall. It was a tall girl with red hair. The girl's voice was low and commanding, as if she had spent her whole life yelling at people. The red hair cascaded down her shoulders in carefully constructed curls and her figure suggested an athletic build.
The lights flickered back on. They suddenly illuminated the hall in a pale white glow, revealing its plain, almost boring, appearance. The walls were made of rough plaster and the floor was green.
Pink sweater girl flinched and rubbed her eyes and muttered something under her breath, but Minato could not hear it.
"I didn't think you'd arrive so late. My name is Mitsuru Kirijo. I'm one of the students who live in this dorm." There was not even the suggestion of a smile on Kirijo’s mouth.
They exchanged a few words, with Kirijo saying that this dorm assignment was only temporary and that he would move soon to a normal dorm. He hadn’t expected anything different. He was constantly being juggled— nothing was permanent. Despite being perturbed by the late arrival, she also seemed eager to talk. She carried herself like a person who wasn't easily impressed by anything. Her voice was very direct and there was nothing lighthearted about her way of talking.
After some introductions, the pink sweater girl said her name was Takeba. The conversation went on for a while but eventually, Minato went to his dorm to sleep.
There was a certain flatness to the next day— a familiarity of a lack of depth. Each class was a room, a space made flat by the arrangement of desk, teacher, books— a black board at one end. There was no feeling of air between those spaces, of light and darkness outside the square of light at the front of the room, no sounds outside the echo of a teacher repeating a word to be read in chorus by the class. Even the voices were flat, as voices often are to him, each speaking in the echo chamber of their own skull.
He couldn’t remember anything that was different, not ever. It seemed like his whole life was going to be like this— the same things over and over again. No surprise, maybe boredom.
A few of the kids talked to him, they were a bit pushy, as if he was somehow holding back a flood of friendliness. But he couldn’t match the enthusiasm, didn’t want to get too involved. It was a strange position to be in, being the new kid. He could feel people looking at him and he knew he must look sad.
There wasn’t much to do in his life. In his room he sat on his bed, listening to music and feeling the day’s residue draining out of his mind like the colors from a wash bucket. It was peaceful, just listening and closing his eyes. It felt easy to sleep, and so he did.
Minato had a great capacity for sleep. Awake and asleep were for him, in a sense, similar states. Shapes of people hung in place. Interaction with them, when it occurred, was limited. His lack of motivation to form speech did not express a dislike of it. This is merely how he naturally was, as natural as the air or the water when he showered. It was the sound of something loud and brash, yet not sharp, which woke him from a light sleep.
He rose, in a bored trance, not with any sort of intent, but solely because the universe seemed to have its rules and laws and there was nothing he could do about it. Though he had no particular reason to expect catastrophe, Minato nonetheless walked slowly towards his door, prepared to exit the premises should the occasion arise. This time the sound at the door was quite different indeed. It was someone pounding—hard, hammering. It was someone who was mad.
On the other side of the door, he heard a shrill voice, a girl's, a familiar one, and the heavy thud of someone knocking. As the door gave way, he saw Takeba, with her brown hair, enter the room. She was sweating and breathing heavily, looking completely terrified. "I don't have time to explain. We have to get out of here, now!"
Minato made a brief observation the damage to the wall would probably require repairs due to the door banging against it…. There was so much noise around him and he could do nothing about it.
Takeba spoke with hurried breath, hurried words. "Hurry! Downstairs! We'll leave through the back door!" She said, "Wait! …Take this, just in case." She handed him a sword, long and thin— almost like a finger. It flared something in his gut that felt like pain but wasn’t exactly pain, more like he had swallowed something round that was starting to unwind itself. He saw the glint of it and it was very sharp. Takeba said something else, but he didn’t register anything but the last part— "Follow me!". He did.
The walls of the dorm were washed in that familiar green light. The color was something he couldn’t quite name— like a taste he had tried once or a smell he felt he remembered. Change was a part of his existence. The atmosphere did not affect his world much. Takeba was relieved, he could see it in her, watery with it. "We should be safe now," she said. The stairwell waited.
Static and an echoing voice—it was a transmission of some sort—came from near Takeba. Minato recognized Kirijo’s voice, "Takeba, do you read me?!"
Takeba, who must have been listening at maximum volume, stood up and straightened her clothes. Her nervousness made a straight line from her legs pulling her towards the ceiling. Her heels dug into the deep pile carpet. "Y-Yes! I hear you!"
"Be careful! There's more than one enemy! The one we're fighting isn't the one Akihiko saw!"
This shook Takeba, fear in her eyes like a fish caught on a hook, words tumbled out, "What?!", as if she had been told she was going to die. He saw the deep dread sink into her. Minato tried to imagine what she was feeling but he could not. He wondered what he would be frightened of if he were in that situation. That he didn’t understand, troubled him. He was tired. He wished he could go back to sleep.
A tremendous bang!—whatever it was was big and dangerous. Maybe an earthquake, he couldn’t tell. Takeba, though, clearly did. Her terror, down to the base of her bones, seemed to radiate from her. "L-Let’s pull back!" she shrieked and began running down the stairs. He followed after her.
The stairs led upward—like a mountain—and Takeba, running hard, almost tripped. It would not do any good to grab her arm and tell her to slow down. And he didn’t have the energy to force the words. Another horrible sound, getting nearer, came from below.
She looked at him with pure fear. "It's getting closer! K-Keep moving! Hurry!" Her voice cracked and trembled. They climbed and climbed. The stairs went on and on. He counted. An endless spiral, going up forever. Maybe this was their new existence. They would climb the stairs forever. The last phase of his life was being kicked from others lives, he was the burden they could no longer carry. He felt as if no one could bear his weight anymore, not even the stairs below. Takeba pushed open the door at the top with all her strength.
When they reached the roof, there was light in all directions. That’s what Minato noticed first, the way the air seems to press into his eyes until it created a physical pressure. Nothing else hurts, nothing else matters. Takeba locked the door behind them with fumbling fingers. The sudden relief made a smile flicker upon her face. "The door's locked. I think we’re safe for now..."
Under the green light it is difficult to see anything clearly, though a black creature composed mostly of arms seems to be climbing the school wall. He guesses the blue mask it carries is a face and thinks it looks sad. Takeba shrieks beside him, the sound of her voice almost too painful to hear.
"You gotta be kidding me...! It climbed up the wall...!?" She screamed, her body shaking. The sight of the creature filled Minato with a terrible familiarity. He wanted to walk up to it and speak to it, as if it were a lost cousin or something equally distant yet close.
Takeba turned to Minato with a shaky face, trying to squeeze out breaths. "That's the thing that attacked this place," she said, her voice unsteady. "We call them Shadows. O-Oh yeah, I have to fight." She fumbled at her side for her gun, put neatly in its holster, and looked down at the barrel with pure fear. "I... I can summon mine. No problem."
Minato looked at Takeba. Saw the fear of certain death on her face. Her gun to the temple. Hands shaking. Her body tense like metal. A coil. Her eyes wide. She was going to shoot herself to escape the monster that was coming. Did she understand it could turn around?
The world, Minato thought, was suddenly filled with strange coils and coils of coils of coils and they were all about to spring open with violence.
Oh, he hoped she had more than one bullet in there so he could follow.
The black thing comprised of hands smacked into Takeba and sent her flying onto the pavement. The gun slid across the floor in front of Minato and right into his hands without thinking about it. It was time. All the dullness was going to end. The gray shapes, the lack of color, the strange dreams, all were going to be over. There was a solution to this.
His soul had something to say but he didn’t know what it was. A string of sounds (no words, maybe a sentence) came out of him. Then it was going to be over. The sun was burning inside him, his heart unwound itself at the tendons and wrapped around his ribs like a burning sun. He pulled the trigger and felt like he was inside a furnace.
The world was a vivid, disgusting color.