I went home and did some resistance training and ate the dinner that my mother had prepared. I looked out my window as I returned to my room and saw that the rain had stopped. I knew that the chances were next to none, but just in case, I decided to head to the bus stop—not the one where I had kept Allumi, obviously.
Coming here was basically habit at this point, so it wasn’t like I had a particularly strong desire to see Chika today or anything like that. Naturally, I did want to know whether anything had happened in her world with Allumi’s passing, but by the time I opened the shelter door I had already half written today off, figuring we could talk about it whenever next time came. Given that, I’d expect to be shocked to see those shining eyes and fingernails there, but as it turned out, that wasn’t how I felt at all.
This was the first time we met two nights in a row.
“Hey, Chika.”
“Hey, um…” I figured that her response had been short to match my clipped greeting, but her next words told me that I was mistaken. “Has anyone around you died?”
There was worry in the voice that came to me from between those eyes. Trying my best to hide how shaken I was, I sat down. “No person has died,” I replied. “Why do you ask?”
Chika breathed out, perhaps more loudly than she needed to.
“Someone died near my home. I don’t know the details, but apparently a battle came to my neighborhood. Several people who fight for a living died, and we had to bury them. I came here because I was worried that might have had some effect on your world.” She paused there, blinking slowly. “You had a really sad expression just now.”
She didn’t say I looked sad—just “a sad expression.”
I wondered if that meant I’d only been slightly unsuccessful in hiding my expression, not enough that Chika could read it for certain—or if I looked so terribly sad that it was making her sad too. Either was unforgivable.
“Did…something happen?”
Do we really have to talk about this? I thought. Still, the conversation would be meaningful if it helped us learn more about our connection.
“A dog died.”
“A dawg. That’s an animal that lives with people, right?”
“Guess I did explain that before. Yeah. I killed it.”
“I see.” She showed neither sorrow nor reproach. Instead, she simply asked, “Did it do something to you?” Right. She probably assumed that I would never kill an animal unless it was too dangerous to let live.
“No, it was pretty nice,” I clarified. “We do have some stray dogs, but for the most part where I’m from, like you said, they live with people. They’re treated like friends or family. I killed a dog that lived with someone I know. It was innocent. It was never violent and was friendly to everyone. It was happy to even eat right out of my hand.”
“Then how could you do such a thing?”
“Well, I abducted it, and when I was away, it got into an accident.”
“No, sorry, what I was asking was—”
“I abducted it because I wanted to see what effect it had on our worlds, and it got away because I was careless.”
I explained the situation as best I could, not in a way that would make Chika think it was her fault, but I didn’t want to contradict anything I had told her so far.
“Right, so that’s what you were talking about yesterday.” She nodded once and then shook her head. “But anyway, what I was asking wasn’t what you did to that dawg or why.”
“Then…?”
What? I looked at Chika, silent and questioning. Her voice reached my senses without her eyes budging a millimeter.
“Why did you tell me this in a way that would make me feel sorry for this dawg?”
There was no sound. It was quiet, no weight or sensation. And yet it felt as though Chika’s silence in the wake of that question had grabbed me by the hair. I felt like my heart was being wrenched from my body. It wasn’t. That was a delusion. A creative one.
“I wasn’t looking for any sympathy. I was just stating the facts,” I said, looking her straight in the eye. I wasn’t lying. She gave one long blink and then looked down.
“That must have been hard for you.”
“…Huh?” No. “It wasn’t.”
“But you look like it was.”
“I’m telling you it wasn’t. It was hard for Allumi, not me. And for the ones who lost a family member. I was the one who took their dog away.”
Of course, Chika had no idea who “Allumi” was.
“I’m sure it was hard on them too.”
“They’re the only ones it was hard on.”
I wasn’t the one suffering.
“I can’t even begin to imagine that pain.” That was true. She knew nothing about this. “But I realized just now, while the weight of it isn’t the same as what that family or dawg went through, you’re in pain too.”
“You’re wrong. I’m not.”
“But you look like you are.”
“I’m telling you, I’m not!” That wasn’t true. “I’m the one who killed it!”
I was the one at fault. I had no right to feel pain. I had no right to suffer in the slightest, not when I could never know even a fraction of Allumi’s pain or the family’s sadness. Of course I couldn’t stomach hearing words that even suggested kindness toward me, any favor, not when I knew everything that I had done.
“You don’t know anything, Chika.”
Indeed. She didn’t know a single thing. Chika knew nothing about Allumi. I didn’t need empty consolations from someone like her.
“Stop it.”
My request was sincere.
“I feel like you’re going down a bad path, Kaya,” she said.
“You’re right, I suck, so—”
“I just don’t want you to take yourself somewhere even more tragic.”
“Stop it.”
I didn’t want to hear that from her.
She was wrong. What I wanted to hear, what she should have done, was to criticize me. I couldn’t bear for any other words to reach my heart. I could not possibly accept this kindness.
“You can just be here.”
“But I killed Allumi!”
I was a bad person—a dreadful person. I wasn’t the sort of person you should speak kind words to, who you should extend a helping hand to. I knew that better than anyone. So please, Chika, stop it.
“No matter how twisted of a thing you’ve become in your own world, when you’re here, you’re still you.”
“Why…?”
I was fully aware of my own sin and that I ought to be judged. And yet, I also knew that I was a disgustingly weak, basic person.
I couldn’t help myself. Weak people, even knowing with all their hearts that they ought to be punished, will still look to those who offer their hand in the hopes that it might make things just a little bit better. Pitiful.
So I begged her silently to stop this before I turned my weak, greedy eyes to the grace that was being offered to me and began yearning to cling to it, to those invisible hands that were reaching out from Chika’s heart.
I wanted to take her hand, but I knew that if I did, so many precious things would end. The alarm bells in my heart keened. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t take her hand.
I covered my ears and heard sirens ringing.
And yet. Even so. And still.
I…
I felt like I was suffocating.
I never hesitated to act when it came to the motions of daily life, detached from like, dislike, interest, dispassion, whether or not something benefitted me, and any similar concepts. Such was my guiding philosophy, whether eating, or sleeping, or running, or breathing.
I was weak—weak, weak, so incredibly weak.
I saw her hand.
“Allumi was…”
And suddenly, I took it.
I knew exactly how pitiful I was, but I could not stop myself from speaking.
“Allumi was a good dog!”
“Are you sad that it’s gone?”
I shook my head.
“Not as sad as its owner.”
“Still, if you’re sad, then you should admit those feelings.”
My words continued spilling from my mouth aimlessly.
“I am sad. Yeah, I’m really sad. Allumi let its guard down around me. It should have barked and called for help. But it didn’t, and that’s why I killed it.”
“You can’t forgive yourself, can you?”
“I can’t.”
“Well then, I forgive you.”
This girl made of only eyes and nails, two years my senior, offered those simple words to me. Chika was made only of eyes and nails, but somehow the words she had set down between us were soft and sweet.
“It might not mean anything to you, but I forgive you. Truly.”
“I don’t need to be forgiven. I don’t deserve that kindness.”
“Kaya.” She blinked long and slow, as she did whenever she apologized. “This isn’t kindness.” The two lights pierced through my soul. “I want to forgive you. I stood by and watched as the people who work to ensure our way of life were killed. The more seriously I consider it, the less I understand what I should think of the being I know as myself. And so, I want to do whatever I can. I want to forgive you.”