I glanced at my watch. It was 8:36 p.m. It must have been a really frantic job if he had to work this late. When I was in elementary school, I never noticed how exhausted or stressed my teachers were. I was so busy learning one new thing after another that the time just flew by. Kengo had ventured back into the eye of that hectic storm, only this time, he was an adult.
The motorcycle continued on its way to the school, passing by a towering wall of concrete on its right. It took a loose turn, winding its way up around a reinforced mountain. I shifted my weight as it tilted. Kengo was right when he told me that it was easy as long as you kept a proper eye on the direction the bike was heading in.
I didn’t know how long I’d be waiting after we arrived at the school, but the later it got, the less crowded the ramen place should be. Or would it get more crowded?
I dunno… Eh, I guess I could always just make dinner. If Kengo’s got ingredients, that is… If not, we’ll have to go to the supermarket…
I tried to visualize what would happen if I ended up having to cook. It’d have to look good, because I wanted to impress him. I also wanted it to be filling and have plenty of veg. And it should be something I hadn’t made before.
What should I fix for us?
Just then, the headlights of an approaching car in the opposite lane started flickering. And then swaying from side to side. The vehicle swerved and then vanished from view. I was trying to figure out what had happened when something sent us flying from behind. My neck snapped forward as my whole body was shoved into Kengo’s back. My chest and stomach were forcibly crushed between him and the bike. I didn’t know what had happened. I thought I heard brakes. Then there was this huge sound, and Kengo and I were pushed forward together before bouncing back from the recoil. The front tire was dodging this way and that. The car’s headlights came at us at an angle and crashed into us, flinging us off to one side.
I let go.
All sound stopped. Even my scream was absorbed by something. As Kengo was thrown into the air, I saw his body twist so he could look at me. Reach out for me. Everything was happening in this creepy slow motion. Kengo’s hand was too far away to even touch me, and we ended up separated. His body still bent, he drew an angled arc through the air as he vanished.
I fell along with the bike, hitting my head several times, the impacts making my vision splinter. Kengo was still airborne. His limbs were making sweeping movements like he was trying to swim. I’d fallen sideways onto the road and was sliding along it with the bike still between my legs. There were these big black lumps raining down on me from the sky. But I couldn’t hear anything, and soon I couldn’t see anything either. I couldn’t even tell if my eyes were open or not.
I couldn’t feel anything. I didn’t know how much time was passing.
“No…”
I was pretty sure I’d said that.
“No… No, no! There’s no way this is happening!”
I could hear my own voice with my deaf ears. I could see what I was looking at with my blind eyes. I could feel a trembling fear with my numbed heart.
Kengo had collapsed on his back, but no one had noticed he was there yet because of the black stuff on him: the dirt, the mud, and the night’s darkness. There wasn’t a single sound coming from underneath his full-face helmet. He was silent and peaceful. The chest buried under all the sediment wasn’t moving.
“No! Please…someone!” I was crying out with everything I had, but I didn’t even know if anyone would hear me.
There were tons of cars stopped on the road, all facing random directions. Some of them were crushed after having collided with each other or the guardrail. Horns were blaring and making the evening air vibrate. There were so many people illuminated by dazzling lights. Lumps of concrete and debris that had peeled away from the sloping mountainside were strewn across the road, along with the stones and rocks that had rained down on us from above. Trees that had been knocked down. Kengo was underneath it all, unmoving.
“Please, someone! Save him! He’s right there! Someone, anyone, find him! He’s gonna die otherwise! There’s no way he’s not hurt! Someone help him, please! Hurry!” My tearful cries echoed through the night sky. “Someone save him! ’Cause I can’t!”
I couldn’t do anything anymore. It was all over the second something sent us flying from behind. A rock fell from the crumbling slope and crushed me, shattering my helmet and cutting into the back half of my skull.
Kengo.
“Please! Someone! No…you can’t die! Hang in there!”
The earth was scraped away, allowing the light to reach Kengo’s body. A bunch of people ran over to him and hooked him up to a machine. They brought a stretcher right up to him and loaded him onto it. His chest still wasn’t moving.
“Breathe!”
I was still crying out in a voice that no one could hear as my destroyed body was put into a bag. The zipper was pulled up. This wasn’t a dream. My thread was at its end. The image of that single moment of stillness remained. The fallen bike, the split helmet, and my crushed, bloody body beside them. My eyes were open.
My vision of the future exploded into life.