There are things that we, as humans, cannot accomplish by our wills alone. The greatest, most irresistible force in the world is death. There are many different reasons why we cannot escape the inevitability of our own deaths.
What else could there be besides death, then? Illness, perhaps. Maybe, since we cannot escape it, we say illness is born of the mind. What of old age, then? It is perhaps because it is unavoidable that we fear it so direly.
There are other things as well…such as accidents born of human stupidity.
It was early morning. I was shaken awake by a loud noise.
I couldn’t react immediately upon waking. I leapt up, looking around the dark room, but the moment the obvious notion of turning on a light occurred to me, I felt something sharp in the soles of my feet.
“Ow.”
I flinched at the stabbing sensation. Finally, I realized that the sound I’d heard was glass breaking. I sat up in bed, pulling out the fragments that had lodged themselves in my feet. I set my pillows down on the floor as stepping stones to protect myself from further damage and managed to make it across the room to the light switch.
As I expected, when I turned on the light, I was greeted by a room covered in glass. I cursed the fact that I rarely slept with my curtains closed. The floor was now littered with not only glass but also some of my CDs. Near the glass there was some sort of metal plate. I didn’t have anything like that in my room, so it must have been what came in through the window. Just as I was wondering what the hell it was, someone knocked on my door.
“Kaya, everything all right?”
Hearing my brother, I vacantly opened the door.
“Something just came in through my window.”
I showed him the palm-sized metal plate, which he looked at curiously. Neither of us had any clue what it was, so we set about cleaning the place up. My brother went around with a broom and dustpan, then helped me tape some cardboard up over the shattered window.
As I picked up my CDs, I found that two of their cases had broken like they’d fallen in some awkward way. They were ones I’d listened to at some point and just randomly put down. It was fine, though.
The collar I’d bought for Allumi was still in its place on the shelf.
I tried my best not to think about it, but that was similarly impossible for a human to do, so a single worry floated into my mind: How will this affect Chika?
Of course, my worry for her safety was first and foremost. But even if she herself was safe, she and I held our rooms in a very different regard. I was gripped by her hypothesis that pain could affect the other reality.
That said, even if it did have some effect on her room, as long as it was nothing more consequential than what had happened in mine—like some old CDs getting broken or something—that was fine. I didn’t care if my room got a little messed up. As long as there were no life-threatening injuries, things would be okay.
Still, I didn’t want to see her sad. I truly felt that for her, this girl who was nothing more than eyes and nails.
I was worried, but for the moment I could do nothing but pray for the safety of her and her room. I straightened up the books and CDs I had left in careless stacks, thinking it might even have some positive effect on her surroundings.
I slept a little longer in the now well-ventilated room and then told my parents about the window in the morning. When I showed my father the metal plate, he said, almost half-doubting himself, “Is that a piece of an airplane?”
Whether or not that was true, it was not an unreasonable thought. No matter how peaceful our daily lives were, we were still in a country that was racked by war. It wouldn’t be too surprising if some random airplane had been less than properly maintained.
When I arrived at school, my neighbor, Tanaka, was already in her seat and talking to some other students. She spared me not so much as a glance. I half suspected she might actually throw something at me, but that didn’t happen. I had already prepared myself to try and accept anything that came my way, but there was nothing.
First and second periods passed as though nothing had happened to anyone.
I had a single hypothesis.
Perhaps Tanaka had decided that I had never been anything more than a random face in the crowd, someone unworthy of recognition, just one of the many you pass on the street. In doing so, the person who killed Allumi no longer existed. Perhaps that was a way of managing her hatred. In fact, when it came time to pass a stack of handouts my way, Tanaka did so without hesitation.
If my hypothesis was correct, then it had finally happened, I realized. The girl who sat beside me had finally ceased to acknowledge me as an individual. Finally, we were equals.
Even if it was meaningless, it was for the best. This way, we could both just live our own separate lives.
I went home, went running as I always did, and when night fell, I headed for the bus stop. Chika was not there.
I was worried about Chika’s room, but the timing of our meetings wasn’t something I could control. Or even if I could somehow, we still didn’t understand the rules.
All I could do was wait patiently, as always. I was prepared for that. But three days passed, and then five, then a week, two weeks, and by the time my window had been fully repaired and school moved into summer vacation, my patience was more than running out.
What if she had gotten hurt?
What if she had lost something important to her?
No, what if, completely unrelated to the room incident, Chika had merely given up on me?
Had I said something I should not have last time? No, my words couldn’t have been unwanted when she didn’t even understand them.
The flames of anxiety took a million fiery forms in my heart. I couldn’t let myself even imagine that we might never meet again. I think I was successful, to some extent.
I knew it would do nothing but wear me down, but every night as I opened the door, I prayed with every fiber of my being and my whole heart that I would see her there. Thus, when I finally saw the lights of her eyes one night, I practically collapsed onto the bench, slamming my hands when I sat down with unnatural force.
“Oh, sorry,” I quickly apologized, not wanting her to worry for my physical health. If anything, I was filled with relief right now. I was sure there was a bit of joy somewhere in my tone.
“It’s fine,” Chika said, but nothing more. I wish I’d had the subtlety to sense something from her tone, and perhaps I normally would have, but that day I was overwhelmed with a sense of relief and joy.
“I’ve been worried about you,” I said. “Glad you’re safe though. Something came in through the window of my room, so I was worried that you’d been hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t facing me. I thought nothing of it.
“I’m super glad.”
She ignored my words. There are limits to a person’s stupidity, but it wasn’t until I noticed how little she was speaking today and leaned forward, peeking at her invisible face, that I was finally stricken with a sense of unease. I could not immediately place where that unease came from, but when Chika noticed what I was doing and turned toward me, I finally knew.
“Chika, what’s wrong with your eyes…?”
“Huh?”
“The lights in your eyes are dim.”
It was as I said. Looking closely, the light of her eyes appeared fainter than usual. It was the sort of color shift you’d expect from someone quickly wiping up some fluorescent paint.
She reacted oddly to this, turning away from me almost immediately. Then, as though she realized there was no point in hiding what I had already noticed, Chika looked back at me. I could sense her emotions just from the movement of her eyes.
“It’s fine. They’ll be back to normal soon.”
“Wait, so did you get hurt?”
Though somewhere deep down I was hesitant to ask, when I thought of how she had averted her eyes, worry won out.
“Hurt…? Well…”
Her words came slowly, a second between each of them, and I suddenly deeply regretted that I had asked at all. At a certain point, I almost said, “Never mind, it’s fine,” but I was beaten to the chase.
“Kaya, when people cry in your world, do their eyes swell up?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“That’s…that’s what this is.”
She had been crying. However, tears weren’t always caused by grief. As I listened to her, before I could feel sympathy or worry, I imagined the sight of tears rolling down her cheeks, reflecting the light from her eyes. It was beautiful. But I soon regretted those thoughts when I realized that these might be tears of deep sadness.
“Was anything broken in your room?” I asked.
She did not immediately reply. The amount of time between a question and an answer was a good indicator of the answerer’s intentions. I could only wait. The unusually fragile lights of her eyes seemed to quiver silently.
“Your room…” she said.