“Blegh…”
This was the sound that escaped from Akira’s lips as she slipped off the leather couch and fell face-first onto the floor. I probably should have woken her up when I saw her tossing and turning in her sleep, but alas. I watched as she tried to sit up only to hit her head against the table. Sheesh. Talk about kicking herself while she’s down.
“Ouch, damn it…” she grumbled, clicking her tongue as she lifted herself up off the floor like an old woman with back problems. “Ugh… That stupid dream again…”
“You okay?” I asked, more than a little worried about her—and her shoulders jerked upward in shock. But then she calmed down and let out a long sigh.
“Oh, so you’re up too, huh…?”
“Yeah, couldn’t really get comfortable…”
“Same. Feel like maybe sleeping at a karaoke place was a bad call.”
Akira sat herself back up on the leather seat. She almost looked even more exhausted now than when we’d gone to bed.
“Another nightmare?” I asked.
“…Yeah, you could say that,” Akira replied as she pulled a bottle of mineral water from her backpack and started glugging it down. She let out a short, satiated breath as she pulled the mouth of the bottle away from her lips. “Been having the same one pretty much all the time lately, where it starts with me running out of the house, and then… Well, it never ends very pleasantly, let’s put it that way.”
Running out of the house. This seemed to align with the tense family situation she’d described to me previously—the one that went down the day before the timefreeze.
Akira folded her arms, practically hugging herself. Her hands trembled a bit as she looked over at me, pale-faced and nervous.
“Do you…mind if I talk about it?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m more than happy to listen.”
Akira lowered her gaze and stared down at the table between us. Then she started recounting her dream to me in vivid detail.
“And then literally the exact moment I was about to get run over by the car, I woke up,” Akira said. “It always ends differently every time. But yeah, everything other than that actually happened.”
“Damn… That’s, uh…pretty heavy…”
I felt bad for not knowing what else to say. It was jarring to know that she’d had a traumatizing experience like that the day before we met. Akira let out a long, almost performative sigh, then leaned back in her seat.
“If only it could all be just a dream, y’know?” she said.
I felt like I finally understood now why she’d been so eager to set out for Tokyo. It wasn’t a desire to find a way to end the timefreeze that was spurring her on—it was that she wanted to get away from Hakodate as soon as humanly possible. Hell, she probably would have done the exact same thing even if my uncle had lived in Nagoya or Osaka.
“So, uh… What happened to that guy, anyway?” I asked hesitantly.
“Dunno. Tried going back to scope out the scene after time stopped and I first met up with you, but the door was locked… Guessing they either took him to the emergency room or he somehow got up and left on his own.” Akira shook her head and scoffed. “Not that it makes much of a difference, I guess. Still committed a pretty major crime, whether he’s alive or dead.”
“H-hey, no you didn’t. You were only acting in self-defense. That’s one hundred percent justified.”
“Okay, well, even if I got cleared on those charges, hypothetically, I still tried to steal the guy’s wallet when I could have just left and none of that ever would have happened. Not really any way I can paper over that part.”
I really wished she would stop being so down on herself about the whole situation. I tried to reassure her in every way I could think of—telling her it wasn’t her fault, that the guy was to blame, that she’d been pushed up against the wall and just got a little desperate in the heat of the moment—but it felt like none of my words were getting through to her. Like she’d already sentenced herself in her own mind.
“I know you said before that you think it was all your fault that time stopped and everything,” said Akira. “But like I told you back then, I’m pretty sure at least part of the blame lies with me too.”
“How come…?”
“I mean, weren’t you listening? I was literally running around town thinking to myself that I hoped tomorrow never came. So even if it is you that the timefreeze always centers around, I don’t think you dragged me into it. I’m pretty sure I must’ve unconsciously thrown myself in.” Akira furrowed her brow apologetically. “Anyway, yeah. My bad. I should’ve told you all this stuff a lot sooner.”
“Nah, you’re fine. Though I’ve gotta say…I am feeling pretty concerned about how you’re holding up through all of this.”
“And why’s that, huh? I’m really not all that stressed about it anymore, just FYI. I mean, it happened, like, over a month ago now.”
I was pretty sure she was just putting on a brave face here. No way would she be tossing and turning and groaning in her sleep like that if she was really over the whole situation. It had to still be bothering her a little bit, at least.
“And besides!” said Akira, her voice rising in pitch and volume in what I could only assume was a forced attempt at sounding cheerful. “I actually got a LINE message from my mom right before time stopped, just to say that she was sorry and everything. So I’m pretty sure she feels bad about what she did to me, and she would take my side if I went home and things got awkward again. So don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“Gotcha… Well, okay then.”
If that was how she truly felt, then it really wasn’t my place to argue with her. I’d definitely grown to prefer the strong, grins-in-the-face-of-adversity version of Akira to the gloomy and despondent one (even if the former could get a bit intimidating at times). Still, her pained expression belied the optimism in her tone—and unfortunately, that was the image that stuck with me at the end of this conversation.
“Man, sorry. Didn’t mean to bring down the mood and get all heavy tonight. Think I’d better just go back to bed,” Akira said before lying flat on the leather couch again without even giving me a chance to respond.
I followed her example and did the same. Yet even after I closed my eyes, I couldn’t fall back asleep. My mind was racing—mainly with thoughts of Akira and ways I could potentially eliminate the anxieties that plagued her. I knew that realistically there wasn’t much I could do for her. I couldn’t erase the things she’d done, nor could I help her patch things up with her family. But maybe there was one thing I could do, at least.
After sleeping for another four or five hours, we got dressed and left the karaoke parlor. When Akira twisted her back and leaned from side to side, as if doing warm-up exercises for the long day of walking ahead of us, I could hear the joints in her spine pop.
“Ugh, I hate it when my back cracks,” she said. “Makes me feel like an old grandma.”
“Nah, c’mon,” I replied. “Just means you’re fit and healthy, I say.”
“Like hell it does.” She twisted her wrists and ankles in slow circles to finish up her stretches. “All right. Let’s hit the road.”
“Actually, wait a second,” I said, stopping her right as she took her first intrepid steps out onto the pavement.
She turned around. “What’s the holdup?”
“There’s an idea I wanted to float past you.”
I tried to say this in the most serious voice I could muster. Akira seemed to pick up on this, judging from the way her expression stiffened as if bracing for a tough conversation.
“Yeah? What is it?”
I swallowed nervously, knowing full well that it was a bit of a gamble for me to even suggest this. I wasn’t sure if she’d be relieved to hear it or completely offended. I figured this was probably pretty close to how it felt to ask someone out while having no clue whether they were going to reject you. But I steeled my conviction and said the words:
“So I was thinking… What if we just…let time stay frozen?”