You stand, bathed in dim light.
Behind you — the door through which you passed floats unnaturally. Aside from yourself and the door, everything is concealed in pitch-black darkness.
Like the middle of the night, immediately after a rainstorm.
Drenched in loneliness and silence.
It’s like the trek between such lively places as cram school, school, or work and the home where you can relax and be at peace. It’s that kind of nauseating scene that seems to be a manifestation of that mild anxiety that exists in the cracks between happiness, between peace.
You seem a bit perplexed.
The door seems to be your only reassurance as you wander around it like you’ve been tethered to it by a rope. As if there to remind you that you could go back at any time. Out of caution, or out of cowardice.
However, this place yields nothing of importance. The scenery is unchanging and boundless, and save for you, nothing here moves.
Whether it’s because you feel at ease or because you want some sort of change, you start walking.
With no other landmark to help establish a sense of direction in the depths of this darkness, you use the door as your only cardinal point and begin to walk away from it in a straight line.
Your braids sway back and forth.
There are occasional puddles beneath your feet. It really does seem like rain has just fallen. Your pale legs become sullied with splashes of the mud you’ve been carelessly walking through.
The puddles seem pregnant with meaning — as if they could tell your fortune.
Clear water could mean a great success or good fortune.
Dirty water could predict being involved in unforeseen trouble or fatigue.
Anyone breaching the surface of these puddles would feel uneasy. The water is muddied, full of mysterious bacteria, maggots, and exhaust...... The interiors of your shoes have also become soaked. Those are omens of hardship. At least if the water were clear, you might also feel like your heart could be cleansed.
The puddles, apparently unable to determine to your fate, sully and then clear, changing the water’s surface at a dizzying rate. In the surface disturbed by the tiny ripples, you see the same thick clouds that you saw from the veranda of that tiny room, along with the moon, once again shining through the clouds as if laughing at you.
Paying it no mind, you step through the puddle. Just as you pass, your entire form is reflected on the water’s surface. As your foot lands, it sends out a wave of ripples, twisting your reflection into something abnormal. Even after you’ve passed, the image remains, distorting even further.
Your image, reflected in the puddle, undergoes a metamorphosis, pliable like clay, into a well-dressed man and woman. Neither of them look at you as you pass, instead glaring at one another, wrapped up in their own heated argument.
The warped version of you — the man and woman who look a lot like you — scowl, spit, and yell at one another.
You don’t notice any of this.
You can’t see it. You don’t feel it. You aren’t aware of it.
Well, you might be unaware of it, but—
Somehow, they seem to have the closeness of a married couple, but it’s because of that closeness that the man and woman’s argument continues on, unrelenting. As each ripple expands outward, it distorts the two further. Their arms and legs stretch and twist unnaturally as their faces lose their shape, like monsters.
As if trying to ignore the sight, you move farther and farther away.
The water’s surface is like a mirror, reflecting back all things.
However, the other side of the mirror is another world altogether. You simply pass on by, without closing your eyes or plugging your ears, your face feigning ignorance.
When is it exactly that humans look into mirrors? When they’re attending to their hair, applying makeup, putting cream on a pimple on their cheek...... It is for when one wants an objective point of view, in order to straighten oneself up to more closely match how they perceive themselves to be. To face oneself as one is.
Sometimes it’s for reflecting, sometimes it’s for gaining courage, and sometimes it’s just for calming oneself down.
However, the chance to see oneself from the outside, to correct oneself — it’s something humans are afforded few opportunities to do.
You are not one to take that opportunity.
Pretending not to see yourself, you walk along swiftly, until your foot suddenly catches on something.
You start to stumble forward, but perplexed, you brush aside your bangs and gaze down at your feet.
A tiny umbrella is lying on the ground.
The vivid, crimson umbrella stands out amidst the unchanging scenery. Without a moment’s hesitation, you pick up the umbrella and open it all the way.
When is it that one would use an umbrella? Mainly when rain falls. As if cause and effect, before and after, switched places — like in Through the Looking-Glass — it suddenly begins to rain.
Raindrops pound the umbrella with a thunderous rhythm.
You pull the red umbrella close to yourself, taking care not to get wet.
The rain is like tears, but it is a symbol of blessing. Tears have a positive function — they are like a sponge that soaks up sadness before they are expelled from the body. They brighten the path before you.
The puddles are blurred by the massive downpour of rain, the water level rising and then overflowing, like clusters of anxiety, and within them, the arguing man and woman disappear without explanation.
As if your worries have been laid to rest, you begin walking along once again, with no set destination.
Perhaps it’s that you’re ignoring your troubles, or possibly that you’re letting the umbrella catch them instead.
Cheerfully.