As we made our way down the residential streets, I found it gradually getting harder and harder to breathe. I wondered if the suffocating feeling I was having right now was anything like the literal suffocation that Ayane suffered, being buried under the dirt in that suitcase. Anytime I was trapped in a room or an enclosed space like this and forced to listen to my mother speaking at me, it was practically torture.
I wanted nothing more than to open the passenger side door and jump out onto the pavement and make a run for it. How freeing would that be? I might even have done it too, if it weren’t for my inner sense of reason telling me that would only make things worse in the long run. Thankfully, my thought processes hadn’t become that cyclical and blinkered, not yet.
I did still feel, however, that death would be a relief—even if I would be committing sacrilege in my father’s eyes. After all, his religion forbade suicide for any reason as it was essentially murder of the self. Only God was allowed to give or take life; it was a grave sin for a human to do the same. My life belonged to God, and I was forbidden from taking a life, even from myself. To commit suicide was to commit an act of betrayal against God, and the punishment after death would be the revocation of my eternal rest.
But I had no religion, so these taboos didn’t intimidate me one bit. I only felt bad about it because it would make me a disappointment to my father. Perhaps the gift of life had been given to me by some all-powerful god—but it belonged to me now. It was no one else’s but mine—both to live, and to take.
“I brought you into this world,” said my mother, “so it falls to me to make sure you find and stick to the right track through life.”
She was always trying to take the initiative in my life on my behalf. She was the one who always decided where I would go next, just like how she was the one who picked out all the “acceptable” colleges for me to choose from. By this point, I had completely lost the will to fight her on it—and perhaps that was why I was so dead set committing suicide. Maybe that would finally show her that my life hadn’t been hers to do with as she saw fit. Maybe then she’d see that the choice was really mine in the end.
“I wonder if maybe I’m just too weak to go on living like everyone else seems to do,” Aoi wrote, in a paragraph she posted to our group DM. “Like, I’m always stressing myself out over the tiniest things that I know other people wouldn’t even give a second thought. I’ll get excited and say something that’s maybe a little too excited in the heat of the moment. Later on, I regret it later and wish I was dead.”
She didn’t seem to be looking for a response to what she was saying, or like she wanted any sort of advice—this was just her own way of venting.
“At least death is quick. You just have to endure a few moments of pain and then you can sleep forever. I’m still not sure how I should do it, honestly—I did a little research into hydrogen sulfide the other day but I’m not sure if that’s realistic for me or not.”
“Wouldn’t if I were you. Apparently the lasting side effects are pretty brutal if you screw that one up and somehow survive.”
“Yeah. And wasn’t there that one story about the guy whose family tried to save him and ended up breathing in too much of it themselves? Bad idea, for sure.”
We talked about different suicide methods like this from time to time.
“Remind me again, Aoi—didn’t you say you were gonna decide when to kill yourself based on the weather that day?”
“Yeah. I wanna wake up that morning, open the curtains, and if I see a beautiful blue sky out the window? I’ll go, ‘Yeah, maybe today’s the day.’ So I’m thinking something quick and easy that I can set up on whim whenever the impulse strikes me would be good. Maybe just plain old hanging or something would be my best bet.”
“What about sleeping pills? Just gotta swallow ’em, and you’re good to go.”
“I dunno about that. You’ve gotta take a heck of a lot of those to actually overdose.”
“Plus, wouldn’t it be kinda weird to wake up the morning of, see that it’s a beautiful day, and then go right back to sleep?”
“Not if you ask me. It’d be just like going back to bed and sleeping in for a little while.”
“Yeah, or for an eternity.”
I messaged back and forth with them like this pretty frequently these days—on the train to and from cram school, and during breaks between study hours. Aoi apparently spent her entire summer vacation cooped up at home. As for Ryo, on days when he didn’t have to go to the hospital, he said he often went and sat in on his underclassmen’s basketball practices or spent quality time with his family.
“Come to think of it, I read that there’s a way to hang yourself while lying in bed. Seems kind of counterintuitive to me.”
“Nah. As long as there’s something to hang the rope from above your neck, you can totally do it. People hang themselves in their hospital beds all the time, apparently.”
“Is that something you’re considering, Ryo-kun?”
“If my health deteriorates to the point where I’m totally bedridden, maybe, yeah. But I’d much rather pick something else before it ever gets that bad. Rather not have to watch myself turn into a total invalid if I have the choice.”
I could understand that—especially for a once-promising athlete like Ryo.
“It’s not like I have much longer to live regardless, so yeah, I’d at least like to die before I lose my dignity. There’s no chance of me winning against this thing, so I’d rather just withdraw from the match. Find someplace high up with a nice view to jump off of while my legs still work and let gravity do the rest.”