“How long must I wait until tomorrow?”
Waiting for tomorrow, sleepless, only resulted in an endless today. Even if he managed to glimpse the tail end of tomorrow, he could never grasp hold of it. If he reached out, he might be able to touch it momentarily; but when he grabbed hold, he would find it was merely an extension of today. Waiting sleeplessly, time dragged on.
So he would wait in his sleep until tomorrow arrived. Asleep, he suffered nightmares, choked by emptiness, regret, self-loathing, masochism and oblivion.
His memories lied to him. The lie of the truth.
And so he dreamt. He had a nightmare, a dream from which he could not wake.
Like always, the morning came, and today arrived.
He woke up in bad shape and felt even worse.
It was because of the dream. Maybe he was actually still asleep. Or, just maybe, he had been awake all this time. He dreamed of a wound that never healed, a hurt that could not be erased.
“Did I hide the scar?” he wondered. “Have I buried the scar?”
He decided to get out of bed. Opening his eyes brought an end to the dream.
And finally, today arrived.
“Now, wake up.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“…Wake up.”
From far away, he could hear a voice.
“Wake up, now.”
The voice was definitely nearby and was getting stronger.
“Come on already. I said, wake up!”
This time, it was accompanied by shaking. His body felt like it was being shaken vigorously. He wasn’t fully conscious yet. He felt awful. His head and body felt heavy. He knew the reason. He had low blood pressure, and he had dreamed that dream again.
“I said… wake up! You’ll be late!”
The voice was even louder now, and his body was shaken even more violently. He knew. But his body wouldn’t obey. A terrible sluggishness assailed him.
“Hey! Don’t sleep! You’re not supposed to go back to sleep again!”
It was impossible. He just couldn’t wake up.
The voice was being a pest now. “Hey, get up, you idiot! If that’s the way you want to play it, then…!”
For an instant, he felt as if his body was floating on air.
Then… thud!
“Oof…”
Croaking like a smashed frog, he crumpled to the floor. The impact woke him up a tiny bit, causing him to barely open his eyes. He could see a shadow in his hazy field of vision.
“How about that? You awake now?” the shadow asked.
“…Bro… ngh…” he answered.
“Don’t fall back asleep on me!”
Wakefulness did not come easy.
He had very discriminating taste. But the aroma smelled good.
“Here, drink this; it’ll wake you up.”
Hayama Makoto stared at the black liquid in the cup that was handed to him. It was warm, with wisps of steam rising from it. Just looking at it made sweat ooze down his neck.
It was the season when they had already changed school uniforms, and summer was about to arrive. The climate was fast becoming humid, and he wondered why he had to drink a hot beverage like this.
He shrugged the thought off and decided to drink the coffee anyway. “Sugar and milk…” he mumbled, peering through heavy eyelids, and turning his narrow field of vision from the black coffee to the person pouring it.
“You idiot. It’s supposed to wake you up. Black is better, ain’t it?” snapped Takaki, Makoto’s older brother.
The two brothers lived in an apartment together. They split household duties between them, but Takaki did most of the cooking because that was his hobby.
Wearing an apron over his work clothes—a clean white shirt and brown pants—Takaki sat down at the table across from Makoto. Makoto sat with his head drooping, his back hunched over.
Partly because of bed head and partly because he was haphazardly growing his hair out, he looked a bit eccentric.
“…I can’t drink it black…” he protested.
“What are you, a little kid?”
He wasn’t. He was already fifteen and attending his first year of high school.
“If you get sugar in the morning,” Makoto explained, “you get your wits back quicker… That’s what Sato-sensei said…”
Who’s this Sato-sensei? Takaki thought. Oh, I get it! Sato-sensei. Sato[1] …meaning sugar.
Takaki thought it was a lame joke and stifled a laugh.
Makoto’s head was still fuzzy and so he answered his brother in a strangely straightforward manner. “It’s not a joke,” he explained. “Sato-sensei teaches gym class and he’s the coach of the girl’s basketball team… He wears glasses and has a thick moustache…”
“All right, spare me the details!” Takaki exclaimed in exasperation. “Just hurry up and drink your coffee! It’ll get cold!”
Takaki placed sugar and milk in front of Makoto. The younger brother poured it into his coffee absent-mindedly until he ended up with a mountain of sugar and milk. Makoto had a sweet tooth. He didn’t consider black coffee a drink. Sugar always came in three overflowing spoonfuls.
He didn’t exactly know if what Sato-sensei had said was true or not, but after finishing his coffee, his brain finally kicked into operational mode. This was 40 minutes after the alarm clock first went off.
Makoto was the absolute worst at waking up. So in anticipation, he would always set his alarm an hour ahead of the actual time he was supposed to get up.
He would even prepare several alarm clocks, each of them set to go off at staggered times. Despite all this effort, he still never woke up on time. So in the end, he would be roused out of bed by Takaki.
Aside from the coffee, Makoto forced himself to eat some toast, fried eggs and ham Takaki prepared. He almost never had an appetite in the morning. Perhaps it was because he was always woken up by force.
“What are you doing? You’re gonna be late.” Takaki prodded Makoto, who remained seated at the table even after finishing his breakfast.
“I know.” Makoto reached for a paper envelope slightly larger than his palm that had been lying next to his plate. Inside was a row of pills arranged on an aluminum-backed sheet.
Pushing the contoured area with his finger, he popped out two pills. He washed them down with water. The pills were a kind of sedative. Makoto had been taking these ever since he was a child.
Lately, perhaps because of the nightmares, he was taking more of them.
Takaki used to take these pills himself, but it was only for a short period of time. It was not for as long as Makoto had been on them.
Taking these pills was part of Makoto’s normal routine; he had been relying on prescription drugs for a long time now. And Takaki felt uneasy about it.
It wasn’t that Makoto was suffering from dependency or side effects, but Takaki believed it wasn’t right to form a habit of taking pills.
And so time passed by, and the brothers wondered how long they had to continue hiding the scars that would not disappear. At this rate, that evasive thing called the future would never arrive.