“Yeowch…” Nagai groaned.
One of the other guys glared at me. “Hey! What do you think you’re doin’?!” he demanded.
This finally snapped me back to my senses, and a wave of immense guilt washed over me as I realized what I’d just done. My heart dropped, and my mind went blank as I began to panic, unsure how I could possibly salvage the situation I’d just caused. All my neurons could focus on right now was the lingering sensation of raw human touch on my hands, on my shoulder. After one of the other boys reached a hand down and helped Nagai back up to his feet, he turned to offer me an apologetic smile.
“Sorry,” he said. “Guess I got a little too buddy-buddy there, huh? My bad—people are always telling me I’m weird when it comes to boundaries… I’ll try to be more careful from now on.”
“Wha…? No, I… I just—”
There were so many things I wanted to say. I owed him an apology and an explanation and a reassurance that it was nothing personal against him. But I couldn’t give him any of those things. My words just kept getting caught in my throat—and before I could find my voice, Nagai turned to his friends and suggested they cross the street. The one boy was still glaring at me, but he finally turned around in a huff and walked off while muttering an old classic: “What the hell is that guy’s problem?” It was a barbed sentiment I’d heard countless times over the years, whose thorns only pricked deeper with age, as it was a question I still didn’t know the answer to myself.
The walk signal began to blink. I shut my worthless mouth and followed the other boys across the street, resuming my rightful spot two meters behind the rest of the group.
Since as far back as I could remember, I’d lived my life at arm’s length.
I couldn’t handle being touched. By other people, specifically.
There was no reason for it—it was just an instinctive, physiological response. It was viscerally unpleasant to me in the same way that nails on a chalkboard or two pieces of Styrofoam scraping together might be to someone else. Because of this, I had to be careful to avoid large crowds, and I couldn’t even go to a barbershop. I was seventeen years old, and I still could only handle getting haircuts from my mother. Just trying to live my life like a normal human being felt like an exercise in futility and shame.
I’d only agreed to come on this class trip after being persuaded by my homeroom teacher that if I let this opportunity pass me by, I’d definitely come to regret it someday. Clearly that was a mistake, as the trip had only just begun and I was already regretting it. This was one once-in-a-lifetime experience I could do without. They should have just called the whole thing off, in all honesty. Who needed a stupid class trip, anyway?
But deep down, I knew this had nothing to do with the trip itself.
It had everything to do with me. I should have just stayed home.
“…Sorry.”
This pathetic one-word apology was all I could muster as I trailed Nagai and the others at a safe distance behind. And I knew even this wouldn’t reach his ears, as I hadn’t said it loud enough for him to hear in the first place. It was nothing more than a selfish attempt to make myself feel a little bit better through the act of saying I was sorry—but of course I didn’t have the courage to apologize to him directly.
Nothing scared me more than interacting with other people.
All of a sudden, I felt a heat welling up in my eyes, so I pressed my thumb and forefinger into the bridge of my nose and turned my gaze up to the sky, where a lone airplane carved its way across the pale-blue expanse, leaving vapor trails in its wake. Maybe I should just fly back home, I caught myself thinking. Surely they’d let me go home early if I told the teacher I was feeling really unwell or something, right? But I knew this was wishful thinking, as they’d already booked our return flights. At most, they’d probably let me hole up in my hotel room for the duration of our stay—which was still preferable to being a fifth wheel, I supposed. All I was doing right now was dragging my group down and making it harder for them to relax and enjoy the trip. In which case, I should just come up with some illness I could believably fake and get the hell out of—
Ugh. There I go again, just trying to figure out my next escape plan.
I knew these avoidance tactics wouldn’t serve me well in the long run. It was just like my teacher had said—I couldn’t keep running away from my problems forever. Wasn’t that the whole point of pushing myself to go on this trip to begin with?
I shook my head to break free from my misgivings and looked up at the road ahead. I needed to stop thinking so much and just go with the flow—keep my emotions in check, do my best to stay invisible, and try to power through. This was still only the first stop on our itinerary, after all; I couldn’t get cold feet already. From here, we’d be making our way north to Noboribetsu, then Sapporo, and then finally over to Otaru. If I was going to make it through this whole trip, I’d just have to learn how to grin and bear it.
So that was that. I’d made up my mind and hardened my resolve.
But then all at once, and not a moment later…
A deafening silence rang out.
Immediately, I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Huh?” I said, then jerked back in fright.
I was startled by the sound of my own voice.
Why was I talking so loud all of a sudden?
But no—it wasn’t my voice that was loud.
It was everything else that was too quiet.
I looked all around me. And sure enough:
The whole world seemed frozen in place.
The whole world, that is, except for me.