Chapter Five:
No Tomorrow for Us
“I’M TELLING YOU, that boy needs to get over whatever this thing is as soon as possible. He’ll never make any real friends at school like this.”
“There’s no need to rush him, dear. We just have to be understanding and let Kayato deal with this at whatever pace is comfortable for him.”
As I stirred through short and shallow bouts of slumber, a memory suddenly flashed into my mind—of my parents having an argument back when I was in junior high, if I remembered right. I could hear them shouting at each other in the living room all the way from my bedroom.
“He can’t even ride a train, for heaven’s sake! What’s he going to do when he has to go out into the real world and get a job?”
“We really don’t have to think that far ahead right now, do we? Plus, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of places that’ll let you work from home nowadays!”
“Please! That’s only for part-time entrepreneurial work, or a very, very small subset of privileged positions. Let’s try to be a bit more realistic here, can we?”
“I think you need to be more considerate of Kayato! He’s doing his best, dear.”
What a horrible memory to recollect. There was nothing that depressed me more than hearing my parents fight—especially when it was about me. They were arguing over me and my future prospects. Yes, “future”—a word that had always left a sour taste on my tongue whenever it left my lips. At times, I even felt like I might be crushed beneath the weight of all the implications encompassed by that one loathsome word. I’d never liked thinking about the future. Not one bit. I was under way too much pressure already, just trying to keep my head above water and go on living here in the present.
“Pressure? No. You’re simply afraid, my boy. Not of your parents, nor your school, but of something much greater.”
I recalled Uncle Kurehiko’s words.
Afraid? Yes, I remembered now—exactly what it was my uncle had been about to tell me in my dream back then. Even back when I was a young boy, his answer surprisingly struck a chord deep within me. And my thoughts hadn’t changed since—I knew what it was I truly feared. It was the same thing that scared Uncle Kurehiko into living the life of a recluse, and probably what Akira was feeling so afraid of as well.
The future.
I was afraid of the passage of time. Of what tomorrow might bring.
Of losing loved ones. Of illnesses worsening. Of going to college. Of finding a job. Of natural disasters, and accidents, and farewells, and growing old, and the inevitability of death, and losing all the happiness I fought for in life—everything I once held dear.
Everything that anyone and everyone had to be afraid of lay lurking up ahead, perhaps even lying in wait, right on tomorrow’s doorstep. And yet, people always spoke of the future with such starry eyes, in such fond and whimsical tones. Probably because it was the only way they knew how to go on living. The future had to be bright and beautiful—filled to the brim with everything they’d ever dared to hope for. Only by truly believing in this could anyone ever find the happiness they dreamed of, or so it was said. Yet in actuality, the future’s true form was opaque and uncertain—something no one could truly know, except that it was sure to leave misfortunes untold in its wake.
But so long as time remained stopped, we were free from that uncertainty. We could go on without ever having to think of what I’d do for the rest of my life or Akira being held accountable for her actions by the law. In which case, maybe this timefreeze was what we needed all along. Maybe this could be our salvation.
“You wanna just…leave it frozen?” said Akira as she furrowed her brow. I was relieved that at least she hadn’t immediately blown up on me for simply suggesting it or rejected the idea outright. “I mean, it’s not like we have a choice in the matter when we don’t even know how to make the world start moving again, do we?”
“Actually, I think I might have a pretty good guess on that front,” I said.
“What?! Then why the hell didn’t you say so until now, dumbass?!” Akira yelled as she came over and got all up in my face. Well, shoot. It seemed this was the part I should have worried she might blow up about.
“L-Look, I’m sorry, okay?! But I swear it’s something I only realized a few hours ago, and you were asleep, so yeah…”
I took a few steps back as I offered this excuse. Akira, who’d been glaring at me from point-blank range, backed off as well, though she kept her eyes decidedly narrowed.
“Well, let’s hear it, then,” she said.
I let out a sigh of relief, then began to explain.
“Okay, so we know I’ve been through at least three timefreezes, right? One when I was in third or fourth grade, one when I was in eighth, and now this one where I’m in eleventh. I tried as best I could to really think hard about what happened right before every one of these situations to see if I could find any correlation between the three, and I eventually realized that they all did have one thing in common. And it’s something I’d wager your circumstances had in common with them as well.”
Akira held her chin between her thumb and forefinger to contemplate all this—and then her face lit up as though she’d had a eureka moment.
“Feeling like you’re at the end of your rope?” she said.
“Exactly,” I replied. “All three times, I was right on the verge of despair.”
The first time, it had been my parents fighting.
The second, it was my classmates bullying me.