That was absurd. There was no need for that. How could anyone possibly possess the right to stone me simply for my silence. Even Saitou…
“What’s wrong?”
“…Nothing.”
“Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find someone else soon.”
“I wonder.”
“Whoops, if us fellows stand around here gossiping, the folks who don’t smoke will have our heads,” he said, looking at his watch. Again, he laughed at his own joke, tossing his butt into the ashtray and leaving the smoking room.
Left alone, I took the last few drags of my cigarette. The tobacco flavor that was usually so weak to me was now nonexistent.
I was puzzled. I struggled to sort out whatever had suddenly bubbled up inside my mind. I was so distracted that I didn’t notice what my own body was doing, and after I discarded my cigarette I lit up another without thinking, even though I didn’t want it.
I thought back on the conversation and the train of thought I had just been going through. My colleague had brought up the subject of Saitou, and I had started thinking about her. When he mentioned that love couldn’t come solely from good intentions, it had confirmed for me that I didn’t fit what Saitou truly wanted.
This was a correct analysis.
I then wondered if I ought to atone for not telling her how I really felt, but I swiftly dismissed the notion. It was selfish to be angry at someone for simply not sharing all of their thoughts and actions with you, and attacking them for it was clearly not within anyone’s rights.
And yet, I had once overstepped in that same selfish way and had hurt the one I cared about most in the entire world.
There was something that Chika hadn’t told me, and that fact alone had been too much for me to bear.
I regretted that night with every fiber of my being. And yet, I believed that I had said those things simply because my feelings for Chika were real, because I wanted to know everything about her, and that that alone was proof of the strength of those feelings.
I should have been able to understand how she felt. Yet…I denied it.
It was utterly absurd that Saitou would hate me just for not sharing my true feelings. It was stupid to want to know everything about me.
In other words, I had been blind to my own feelings toward Chika.
If my feelings for Chika were right in front of me, I could have never ridiculed the feeling of wanting to know everything about someone you loved.
Or I shouldn’t have been able to.
And yet.
Wait.
Had I forgotten, just for a moment?
Fear coursed through my veins. Ash fell from the tip of the cigarette.
“No,” I abruptly muttered, trying to deny what I felt rising up within me. It couldn’t be true. There was no way I could possibly ever forget what I had felt for Chika. Feelings so powerful. Feelings so heavy. So easily…
And yet, a notion that rejected who I was back then crossed my mind.
“No way.”
Could I really have been that stupid?
The only thing that had kept me alive was embracing my feelings for Chika. I looked back at that part of my life every single day. I always remembered it. That was what kept me going.
How could I possibly ever forget?
That encounter at the bus stop, when there was still a chill in the air.
That time we spent coming to understand one another, little by little. All the words that I couldn’t understand. The scents that I couldn’t smell. The tastes that we couldn’t share. The days when there were wars in Chika’s world. How much Chika hated the wail of the siren. Allumi’s death. Tanaka, standing in the rain. Chika saving me. Breaking the radio and the school bell for Chika. How happy she had been that the siren was broken. Touching her body. The joy I felt at sharing that first kiss. Spending our honeymoon together. Smiling at one another.
My intellectual Chika.
My imaginative Chika.
The Chika who affirmed me.
That one-of-a-kind Chika.
My beloved Chika.
…Chika.
Why did she leave me?
How could I possibly forget?
The lit cigarette fell from my trembling fingers. Instead of doing the logical thing and picking it back up, for some reason I just took another from my pocket and started to light it—but my hand shook so badly I couldn’t manage to ignite the flame, and in the end, I just tossed both the cigarette and lighter in the trash. Smoke rose from the cigarette on the floor, which I had only just started to smoke.
I remembered.
I remembered her clearly.
But I had realized something. The only things that I could manage to dredge up from my mind were the facts. The strength, the weight, the force of those old feelings—I couldn’t picture that in the slightest. All I could remember was the fact that I had felt quite a lot for her. All I could hear were the words telling me that the feelings had been strong, had been heavy, had been forceful.
My heart didn’t leap. I wasn’t dancing. I didn’t even stiffen up.
In other words, I no longer felt those feelings the way I did back then. I was merely reenacting them.
That was why I was so fine with thinking something that denied the person I used to be.
This fact didn’t make my heart ache.
No, this was bad. I couldn’t let it happen.
It was all fading away.
Without these feelings, it would all be a lie. Chika would be a lie.
Desperately, ever so desperately, I tried to drag myself back to those days. Chika and I had shared songs with one another, hadn’t we? I had been so happy to get close to her, hadn’t I? But then I thought we couldn’t even hear each other’s singing and couldn’t understand what it sounded like.
No, that wasn’t right. We could hear each other, but we couldn’t comprehend the melodies.
I started to picture a rot spreading from the corners of my brain. Such fear was inevitable. I tried to figure out why this was happening to me. Why was this happening to me? Why had I realized this was happening right now?
I reached into my pocket for my phone. While taking it out, I dropped it once and had to pick it back up, then poked at the screen with my trembling fingers. I scrolled way back in my call logs for a name, which I immediately tapped, and put the phone to my ear. It didn’t even occur to me that she might be at work right now or that she might not pick up a call from me.
After a number of rings, she answered the phone with a curt, professional, “Hello?”
“What…did you do to me?”
I was fully aware that this question lacked context. Perhaps the part of my brain that knew how to form sentences had already rotted away.
Sunou Sanae gave no response, so I gathered up what was left of my head to explain.
“I can’t remember my feelings for Chika. I remember that I had them, but I can’t clearly summon up the emotions. I should be able to, but I can’t. I should…”
She remained silent.
“You did something to me that night, didn’t you?”
I didn’t stop to consider how ridiculous this must sound. Deep down, all I knew was that if she had done something to me, cast some curse or some spell or something upon me, it could swiftly be undone.
After some time, I heard her inhale softly. “Come to my place. Nine o’clock on the dot,” Sanae said, and then she abruptly hung up before I could agree or refuse.
I stood there frozen in the smoking room until my concerned colleague came to fetch me.