HAVING ANGUISHED AND LANGUISHED till I could anguish no more, I grew fed up with the notion that overanalyzing my anxieties would do me any good and turned my head toward the sky as if to mark a clean break from this pessimistic spiral. To my surprise, the azure expanse of air above was every bit as clear and tranquil as the serenity of mind I craved. A lone black kite painted figure-eight shapes against the firmament, its doleful whinnying call ringing out from on high as it scanned the earth for its next meal. Beside it hung the receding moon, still and placid in the morning sky like a single drop of spilled milk.
I sucked in a nourishing breath of crisp, coastal air to provide my weary brain with a fresh supply of oxygen. Nostrils now lubricated from the sting of brine on the breeze, I picked up the slightest hint of plum blossoms amidst the usual scent of sea salt.
It was the spring before my final year of high school. I was seventeen.
I brought my gaze back down to the road ahead and resumed my homeward saunter along the coast while waves crashed against the seawall beside me. It was by no means the most direct way home, but that suited me just fine—I needed the extra time to think.
I thought back to last night—that fateful occurrence that had been the catalyst for all of this but also an ending of sorts for me in particular. The reality of it all still had yet to fully set in. I could only play back the events of the night before over and over in my head, asking myself ad infinitum whether this was truly the ending I wanted or if there was something more I could have done; a different choice I could have made, a better outcome. The more I thought on it, the more it began to feel like my mind was being swallowed up by quicksand, each attempt to break free only dragging me deeper into a mire of my own regret.
I nevertheless continued trying (and failing) to cram my disparate thoughts into a single cohesive shape that I could wrap my head around, until before I knew it, I was standing outside the door to my house. I strode through the entryway, kicked off my shoes, and headed straight for my room without even announcing my return. I couldn’t muster up the willpower to do much of anything, so I threw myself down on the bed and tried to expel the unending flood of distressing thoughts with every labored sigh that passed through my lips. It wasn’t long before the feelings of exhaustion began to set in. It made sense, given that I hadn’t slept a wink since the night before last.
No sooner had I closed my eyelids than did a stream of memories begin to flash against their undersides in quick succession, like a series of slides on an overhead projector—memories of Akari, and of the past few days we’d spent together. She’d be laughing in one, crying the next, blushing up a storm in yet another. As these images played out against the backs of my eyelids, like individual freeze frames in time and space, I realized just how blessed I’d been to share each of these precious, fleeting moments with her. Just having her in my vicinity—speaking, listening, existing—was enough to make me feel content with my sorry little life. That was exactly why, regardless of the choices I might have made, or the ones I’d make in the future, I swore to myself I’d do whatever it took to—
Before I could finish that thought, my mind finally succumbed to my body’s pressing demands for sleep, and I lost consciousness.
FOR THE FIRST TIME in nearly two years, I was sitting aboard a small but familiar passenger ferry, letting the slow undulations of the waves rock me gently from side to side. From my seat by the window, I could survey almost the entire indoor seating area. There were a hundred-and-some-odd seats on this vessel, if memory served, yet you could count the number of actual passengers on one hand. I glanced up at the old hanging wall clock and noticed that it was 3 p.m. on the dot, meaning it had already been well over six hours since I left Tokyo. With my elbow braced on the windowsill for support, I rested my head against my palm and let out a short, wistful sigh.
I’d run away from home, and for a pathetically clichéd reason, no less. Try as I might to purge the unpleasant thoughts from my mind, they came rushing back after every attempt. I was partially at fault, to be fair. It wasn’t okay for me to have skipped out on my spring break supplementary classes, and I only worsened things by trying to cover it up with a lame excuse when my dad caught me red-handed playing hooky at a local bookstore (I’d tried to play it off as though the pulpy sci-fi novel I was leafing through was, in fact, teacher-recommended studying material for its practical applications of physics concepts).
Those two initial blunders aside, I genuinely believed the vast majority of the fault landed on my father’s end of the table. As far as I was concerned, the way he lashed out at me as soon as we got home—calling me a waste of his money, a “high school dropout in the making,” a disappointment to the family, and just a plain-old hopeless case—was extremely uncalled for. A lot of it was straight-up verbal abuse.
I knew it was wrong to skip out on my classes. I fully admitted that. It was my father, though, who insisted I take supplementary courses in the first place. I certainly wasn’t enthused about the idea of having to spend my spring break in school, but he wouldn’t hear otherwise. Yes, he had indeed been footing the bill for my tuition and living expenses, but it was always his idea to invite me to live with him in Tokyo. Yet I simply stood there, eyes downcast, letting him verbally berate me for what felt like hours on end, all the while resisting the urge to call him out on just how unreasonable he was being. That last, almost casual quip he made—I doubted he thought before saying it, to be honest—was the final push over the edge: