I didn’t know how long I’d been like this. Perhaps from the start.
“Sacchan.”
My body flinched before I could even recognize the voice. The voice was so different, I should have known, but my senses picked up on a glimpse of his presence as my emotions reacted. Standing next to me was Kasumi-san.
“They told me to get you,” she said. Her eyes were rimmed in red, but she was still toughing it out. She lifted her head and traced the corners of my eyes with her fingertips. “I thought you were crying.”
“I’m sorry...”
“Why are you apologizing?”
Despite how conflicted Kasumi-san’s expression was, I saw his smile in hers.
The love he’d given me was more than I’d ever hoped for. I didn’t know how to come to terms with these feelings.
The next thing I knew, I had woken up. It took me a few seconds to realize I had been asleep in our apartment. My limbs felt like lead. The unheated living room was cold, but the sweaty, sticky fabric of my suit from the funeral clung to me. I wanted to take it off immediately, but I couldn’t.
If I did...
If I did, then he would really be gone.
It was a silly delusion. He was dead. That wouldn’t change whether I took off the suit. I just didn’t want to let go of these clothes, still smelling of the funeral home, in place of the ashes that had been brought to the Nishikawa residence.
I sat up and looked around the living room. He had left this space long ago, but traces of him lingered stronger than ever. The meal we ate facing each other at the dining table, the hot coffee he brought to the sofa, and the gentle sounds of the piano echoing throughout the room.
All of those scenes were possible because of him.
I got up from the sofa. Leaving only my jacket behind, I ran into my room. He didn’t visit my room very often, so his presence was still faint here.
I wanted to escape the reality that I should have known had always been coming. I had known since my realization on the beach that night that there was no outrunning this.
I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my head. The smell of incense filled the small space.
Before long, that scent would fade.
I should have known better, but I missed him, and I closed my eyes, clinging to what I had left.
“I will. If I can’t sleep, I’ll think of you.”
I wouldn’t get to hear the piano again. Covered in dust, it remained silent.
Tears began to well up in my closed eyes. Eventually, I could no longer contain them, and they spilled from between my closed lids, running down my cheeks toward my ears and into the pillow. My breathing was shallow, and I couldn’t inhale properly, as if my lungs had been halved. It didn’t hurt, but I felt like I was suffocating, so I clutched the front of my shirt aimlessly.
Grief piled on top of me like grains of sand in an hourglass.
Once upon a time, this feeling would have been none of my concern. A grief that lived on the next station over, a grief I couldn’t become one with no matter what.
It had been watching me from far away, but now it was slowly drawing closer.
The memories came back to me all at once.
Occasionally, memories of my mother appeared between my memories of him. Even a small handful of memories of my father found their way in.
The emotions crept into my heart.
Took you long enough. Now you want to grieve? I thought. It’s all over now.
But thoughts couldn’t overcome emotions. The lid I tried to put on them was blown open.
When my mother had died, I hadn’t been sad. I’d just felt empty inside—my emotions had been distant.
But now my dried-up heart absorbed my tears and came back to life. Grief synchronized with my body. I timidly embraced its late return.
All my grief had finally caught up with me. I had pretended it wasn’t there, had kept a lid on it, but in order to grieve his death, I needed to look inside.
I had to accept what I had been running away from. It was my duty to continue living.
When I opened my eyes, my vision blurred.
This pain was also something he had given me.
I didn’t know how long I had been asleep.
I slept, cried, woke up, cried, drank some water, ate something, cried, and slept again, still in my dress shirt and slacks. Sometimes it was bright behind the closed curtains, and other times it was dark. My phone had run out of battery at some point, and I’d thrown it across the room, too tired to find the charging cable.
The rude ringing of the intercom brought me back to reality, my consciousness barely attached to my body after the long sleep. I was ignoring the call, hoping they were trying to reach a neighbor, when someone knocked on the front door. A faint voice came from the other side of the mostly soundproof door. I opened it without even looking at the monitor.
“Wow, you’re a mess.”
The only thing I could hear was Fujieda opening this interaction with an insult. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The sun was shining directly into my face from the other side of the corridor. Shading my eyes with my hands, I finally managed to speak. My voice was hoarse and weak.
“What...?”
“Don’t ‘what?’ me. That’s what I’d like to ask. Don’t tell me you haven’t changed since the funeral?”
She pushed me out of the way and closed the front door behind her. She then proceeded to pull me by my arm to my room and push me through the doorway again.
“Get a change of clothing—anything will do. I’ll draw you a bath.”
With that, she headed off to the bathroom looking awfully annoyed. What the hell? Fujieda had always been a veritable storm of a person.
I got some sweats out of the closet and followed suit. Fujieda immediately left for the living room. I could hear the audio responses of the bath’s remote system as she readied the water for me.
As I dragged myself to the washbasin, I saw myself in the mirror and laughed. It was no wonder Fujieda had insulted me.
My eyes were drawn downward by heavy bags underneath them, my beard had grown in, and my skin was pale—not to mention my pallid expression.
The white shirt I’d been wearing felt like thick leather by the time I took it off, and I remembered how much I hated the thought of taking it off. As if keeping it on would change anything.
He would remain dead. He would not come back to life, nor would he die all over again.
I wondered how many days had passed since the funeral.
My first bath in several days violently overwhelmed my body. But in that comfort, I had let my guard down, and the grief, however reduced, bared its fangs again, bringing tears to my eyes before I could help it. I scooped the water into my hands and splashed it on my face, escaping it for now.
When I went to the living room after my bath, Fujieda was politely sitting on the sofa.
“What’s wrong with your phone?”
“I haven’t charged it in a while, my bad. Did something happen?”
“No, but you haven’t been coming to class, and no one could get in touch with you.”
“Sorry. I’ve been asleep ever since the funeral. Honestly, I don’t even know what day it is.”
“It’s been six days since then. We just had Kadzuki’s first memorial service today.”
“I’m... I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. But maybe stop apologizing just because you don’t have anything better to say.”