“Where are you…?”

Floating about in a void, or, rather, am I among the stars? A feeling of utter transparency floods through me now, as I cannot feel my arms or legs. My chest feels light, as if it had never been there. Light? I was sure it would hurt more than that. The sensation of relief, I guess this is what people call catharsis? There is no pain, no happiness. Then, what is there left of me? I look around and see only darkness, but, where my heart should be, I see a small box. It looks at me and blinks, and I understand that it is my inner self, staring up at me with tears. I cradle it with my missing arms, and try to warm it with my intentions, even though there are no arms, even though there is no me any more. Understanding at least this much, I whisper to the little me that everything will be fine. 

“Liar…” It responds, pulling away from me and floating before the space where once I had eyes. It drifts effortlessly on the winds of the void, making an expression of hatred as it descends from me and stops again. I smile and gesture for her to return to my arms. 

“Fool.” She says to me, though with no lips to utter the phrase I must hear it with the sparkling glitter of that eye whose glossy sphere is wet with still perspirant tears. 

“Why?” I ask, and the word comes through the space between us, and she understands. 

“I will show you.” 

A yellow light fills the spaces of infinity and brings us back down into the realm of material and suffering. I am not blinded from this light, nor does it bring back my body. Instead I feel strange, as if I am in all things which I see, and yet apart from them. The feeling of transparency is especially strong, and while I become accustomed to my surroundings I struggle to maintain my sense of a self that would feel such things. Yet I grapple with the feeling of transparency, and my intentions of comfort for the me that had looked at me with such hate, and begin to see with clarity what she wished to show. 

The girl who I used to be, Takehaya Suyuki, sat at her desk talking with a girl named Reiga. As a child I was sickly, but Reiga came to me in my hospice and, either out of pity or the truest form of altruism, healed my lonely soul. As of that day we had been friends for ten years, and I thought I knew her better than even myself. I could predict what she would do, and where her eyes wandered. Yet, as I watch us now, I see that Suyuki cannot decipher her friend, and though the words fail to reach me I can already recall that fateful conversation. We agreed to go to the summer festival in Toyono. 

“I’m going to confess to Keiji during the festival.” She leaned in to whisper, taking shy glances back at the figure of Hanasayama Keiji.

“Hanasayama?” Suyuki asked, blushing in bewilderment. Then, and now, I know what feelings began to stir within myself. What fascinations with ideas of betrayal and recompense that had formed in my mind. Still too young to see the tenebrous rage that I had brought against my one and only best friend. 

Only a moment passes and the light fades, leaving me again drifting about the darkness of the void and stars. Space is a dark place, when so far from all kinds of light one knows or understands. Reminded of the warmth of the light, I am afraid now of what will become of me. The stars, so distant and beaming, only serve to further terrify me. I try to pursue them, far off in their eonic expanse, yet cannot move feet that do not exist. Cannot flail arms that have no form, so I quake in horror and cry as the infinity around me closes in. 

“Words unspoken led to this suffering.” The me without myself said as she floated about in imperturbable space.

“Said what? There was nothing to say, she was my friend and I was happy for her. ”

“Are you happy?” She asks, and I cannot answer. 

Understanding is not important to a friend, only the feeling that, if pain is felt, the two will share in that pain. That if happiness is felt they shall share in that happiness. As such, in that moment when she finally confessed to me her intentions, full of teenage love, I was not a friend to her. Instead something was born in me that had no right to life. 

“I will show you that birth.” She says. 

A light of blue fills the scene, and I can hear someone else crying far off. I look, and see that Suyuki has taken shelter in the bathroom stalls. In that stall Suyuki recalls memories, interactions with her Keiji, which had been the same and yet different from the Keiji that Reiga had seen. Gestures of comfort, the same visits to the same sickbed which Reiga had been to. The handsome face of a boy who was a better brother to her than any blood she could have had. 

A typhoon ensues, violent and wet, as she sobs in tones of revulsion, anger, and contempt. For herself, for Keiji, for Reiga, for the whole sordid ordeal. Even when she leaves the stall the feelings linger, poison in the veins of a lonely girl. She leaves for a neighbor's house, and I remember now another joy from my youth. A way of escape. 

“Ms. Takehaya, just in time. Here’s the key and there’s dinner in the fridge. See you later!” A woman, mother of the Fukuhara family, left for the evening. It was my duty, the part time fun and job of Suyuki, to babysit their young son Nishiki. My eyes fill again as I remember his cute face looking up at me that night, which feels as though it were a century ago. So innocent and full, so ready to see the world and all it had to bear. 

“Do you have any crushes?” He asks. A childish line of questioning that comes at random when romance is talked about. Suyuki shakes her head and denies the accusation with a blush, playing off his little joke. Yet he looks at her in the eyes with a serious frown. 

“Liar.” 

I am no longer breathing heavily, nor can I feel the weight of space. I merely look on as my full stupidity is put on display. My shame piles up into stacks which I can never hope to bear with shoulders that do not exist, with a spine that, even before this strange inarticulation, I never had. As the light fades again I feel myself as though kneeling before some great will that wishes to reveal to me the truest form of my own evil. My own putrid humanity on display. 

Yet my own rationalization shows me another memory.

I remember laying in bed as a child, hot and cold all at once. Feeling then almost as I feel now, weightless and without the will to move myself. At times so wrought with illness that conscious thought seemed impossible. Days and weeks became years to me then, and time itself moved not as a single thread, but a passing wave. Thrashing, kicking me about on strides of dark dreams and wishes of release. Some prayers, but mostly pleas, to what or whom I did not care, until eventually I gave up on wanting to be freed. Accepting that such was my fate until the day I would expire, living off thin rubber tubes and mechanical air. 

Then they came. Two students from my school, to whom I had never spoken, came simply to deliver a parcel of paper. A card from my class, quaint well-wishes I was used to. Yet the girl of the two knelt beside my bed and held my hand. Opening my window to show their young faces beaming with the brilliance of angels. It was the first time I had felt a warmth that did not burn me, flesh that was not cold. The boy of the two smiled, and ever since that day the three of us were lifelong friends. 

“Liar.” The Me Apart whispers. 

“No, we were friends…” though why do I bother, knowing now what next image that little box that erupted from the space within my heart would show me? 

A light of red overcomes me with flames and the heat of hundreds of paper lanterns set upon food stalls and festival games. The summer festival is in full swing tonight. Suyuki is before me again, dressed in a kimono of yellow with an obi depicting the branches of aster, pink and radiant. Reiga, wearing a kimono of green and white, and Keiji stand by her, uneasy and unable to look each other in the eye. Suyuki, pathetically wasting time and trying to wrench normalcy back into her life, led them to various games. Catching goldfish, shooting BB guns, and all the same yearly activities the three had done at festivals those ten years. Yet as I look at them now I cannot feel any sense for the nostalgia of those happy days. 

Crying can be heard, the wails of a lost child, and Suyuki spots little Nishiki amidst the crowd. She takes him, and in the crowds is separated from her friends. Distracted by the child she loses sight of her most important feelings, the anchors which kept her body to the earth. Wandering aimlessly looking for the Fukuhara mother, who was, no doubt, also in pleading search for her only son. Time passes, and Suyuki begins to feel the flame growing closer to burning out. She puts on a strong face for the boy, shielding him from any show of fear, be it for his safety or the fate of her friends. She puts on a strong face and teases him, takes him to many of the same games she had already passed, and plays hide and seek in the forest beside the shrine. 

Then, as she was hiding behind a takoyaki stall, she saw two figures disappear into the bushes. A flash of green passes over her eyes, and she follows them to find what she had feared, what Reiga had promised. Hiding behind a tree she sees it all. Keiji looked around as he heard the words leave Reiga’s lips, shuffling about dumbly. He stumbled his response, mumbled some syllables, and Reiga fell to her knees with a strange smile, wiping away tears while laughing. 

Contemptible feelings came to the hidden girl dressed in yellow and aster, and she fled deeper into the woods. Unaware of a pair of feet that followed. The tentacled regrets and angers welled up and overcame her eyes with tears. All over she was cold from the wet mud and hot from the rage and shame. Eventually her sandals break, sending her to the ground at the foot of an oak tree in total darkness. 

“I’m just the worst.” She laughs, resting her back against the tree and pulling her soggy legs up, burying her head in them as she simply cried.

I am the worst, daring then to feel resentment towards a pure and innocent creature of love, feeling hatred for her, even blaming her for destroying the daily contentment which they had given me. Finally, in seeing the outcome, feeling not anger at such a thing, but relief, a comforting and warm release. He had rejected her, his true feelings were for me. Somehow, along the way, a tumor became implanted upon the story of those two bright souls. A vacuous wretch, unable to live for herself, leeching the joy from their lives.

As I saw Reiga fall to her knees I knew she was not feeling the same turmoil then that I had for her. In those heavenly eyes, and that beautiful smile, she was happy. The reason she fell had not been because she felt the great shame overcome her, or that her sorrow eroded all balance. A great weight of pain and terror had been released, and she was finally allowed to rest after what must have been the worst of tortures. Feelings one cannot control that bubble up until finally bursting, leaving behind sparkles of soapy emotion that disappear and meld back into the atmosphere of life. 

For me the postule of vengeance and hate burst only to leave behind the scar, a toxic imprint on my mind reminding me of what I truly was. I had no right to him, and no right to burden her with regret over her own saintly feelings. All that time I had merely been a sickly parasite clinging to them for life, it was only natural that I would hurt those who had brought me back from the brink. 

A faint sound of footsteps, and the shape of a child appears beside Suyuki. It is Nishiki, worried looks and questions of health. All she can do is put on the fake smile and assure him that she is not hurt, at least not in body. The other wounds…well he did not need to know about such things. Perhaps he would learn in time, but it was good to spare him such torments. As they spoke a light appeared and a man, holding a lamp, crept from between the bushes. He was much older than the two, and he smiled in an unnerving way. A knife was pulled from the darkness as he set the lamp on the ground and approached the two of them. 

Suyuki thrusts herself between the man and Nishiki, ready to resist with all her might. I plead with the me who was apart to spare me this last scene, and she merely watches on with a look of vague disinterest. Perhaps if she was more hateful she could even feign a yawn. Suyuki kicks the man in the groin, and he bends over in pain before lunging forward with the knife. Suyuki manages to evade it, but in doing so Nishiki is cut on the shoulder, which leaves him crying on the ground by the tree. Enraged, the man lifts the blade above the boy and thrusts down with a demonic strength. 

There is no feeling, not really any thought either. Just base instinct. When I open my eyes I am on the ground, and Nishiki is crying beside me. I can hear a crowd of people, and in the dim light of the left behind lamp I can make out strange shapes adjacent to those of humans. In the crowd I see some faces who I know, two of which struggle past and fall at my side. The boy of the two lifts me by the shoulders and cradles me in his arms, yet I cannot feel his warmth or the coldness of his tears. The girl is grabbing my hand tightly to her head as she shakes back and forth in utter sorrow. All around I know of sounds, yet I cannot hear a word. As the lips of my two old friends move I cannot understand them. Though, I realize, I never understood before. Being unable to understand their thoughts, being unable to share in their happiness, in their sorrow, even at that moment, all was as it had been. 

Nothing changes with my death. 

“You saved the boy.” The me apart says.

If not for me, he would not have been in danger. 

“That does not matter.” She argues. 

I lay staring up into the leaves and branches of the oak, losing myself in the stars of the sky, when at last a sound comes to me. It is close, just as close as those two others, yet it is different. It sounds like the cry of regret, of pitiful self-hypocrisy. Despite the pleading of my friends, I move my head. I look towards the sound of waterfalls and see that beautiful little boy on his knees. Outwardly he is not crying, and though his mother is holding him tightly in her arms his gaze is fixed on me. A look of utter stone, and yet I can hear the wails within him. In his eyes I see myself. Hateful, angry, sad, lonely, and without a light of their own. 

I try to go to him, yet I can no longer move my legs. I try to reach for him, yet I can no longer lift my arms. All over I am floating in a sea of darkness. The coldness, the warmth, even the pain of life, all flooding out of me through the red stain upon my chest. As my life leaves my embrace, pooling along with the wet mud beneath me, I manage to move my lips into the vague image of a smile. A fake smile built with the stones of a castle that had finally been sieged beyond any repair. Reused for this one final purpose, this final act. 

“Where are you…Nishiki?” Each letter a phantom of waves crashing, tossing me about the unknown time of dreams and reality. So nostalgic, the feeling of the boundary. 

“Are you okay little man?” He nods, pulling his shirt down slightly to show a torn piece of cloth that serves as a bandage. It is a shallow wound, and I am relieved. 

Relieved? Then, does that also mean?

“You are glad that he is safe.” The Me Apart says. “This feeling is not something you should forget, not something you should ignore. This is Creation.” 

Creation? In all of my foolishness I had managed to lie to myself that I was suffering, that my pain was different, that it was impure. In my own awful thoughts I pretended to hate because I was afraid of being happy. I never thought that I had the right to feel happy, and so instead devoted myself entirely to the happiness of others. That was my form of compensation to them for saving my life, for keeping me from the final barrier that ends in hopelessness. That girl on the bed, coughing and burning, ended up unable to breath, frozen in the sodden earth. Due to no other scorn than her own foolishness. She had rejected them, who gave her joy, who gave her light. They had not done it out of desire for payment, they had just wished for her to create her own light, her own star. 

“I want to get better for them.” The sick girl prayed. 

“I want to understand them.” The jealous girl pleaded. 

“I want to remain normal for them.” The fake girl wished. 

“I want to love them.” I told the girl who was once within my heart. She smiles and, with a depressed sigh, tells me that it is too late. 

“I want to be there for Nishiki.” I want to tell him it will be alright, that he is a good boy. I can see now that my dark thoughts, the trauma of my suffering, have gone to him, and if I do not do something he will not be able to live without me. How can I save him from myself? 

“To save or to create?” A voice comes from the sky. 

It ends amid the branches and leaves of the oak. A figure appears, an orange head with a furry snout. It looks down at me motionless, as a predator watches prey. All light fails me, and as darkness envelops the space around that orange beacon I search for Nishiki again. As I do the orange snout points to him, still the awestruck boy I had left. 

“To save him, and allow the creation of happiness, or to create it for him?” The snout does not move, letting its intentions come to me in light. Will he create his own light? Will he do it differently than I had? Will he be able to not make the same mistake? The snout, not kind nor able to pity, refuses to answer. In death I am left with the credits, having chosen to forgo sight of that final resolution to his story. A story that may be the answer to my own woes, my own terrible actions.

My eyes transfixed on Nishiki, I can feel the poison leave along the stream of scarlet life that fled from within me. What it leaves in this fragile shell, so prone to hot flashes, so terribly susceptible to the cold, is a deafening numbness. Nishiki and I are all that exist in this world, and he floats in the darkness, a statue that will grow and flourish in the world of the future. He shall forget me, who sacrificed herself, in order to thrive in such a place. He needs to forget me. 

“Nishiki…” and at last he comes to my side in utter bewilderment at the sight which has been forced upon him.

I smile.

“I’ll see you later, okay? All this…it’s not…” 

I feel the words cross my lips, though in the end I do not know if I said them. Either way, the dams of his eyes are sundered, and he cries without recourse. Throwing himself over my cold, unmoving, body as his cheek is tainted by that life which once was within my chest. The forgetting will come later. The memory of Takehaya Suyuki flowing amidst the salted tears of a young boy. Perhaps Keiji and Reiga will be allowed their lives without the burden of a foolish little girl like me.

Life will change with my death. Many whom I love will mourn, and many will look to Nishiki in expectation of proof. Validation for the martyrdom. In that struggle I cannot help him, but what I leave behind with him, and what he shall choose to use of my life, are now in his little hands. I can only hope that I have saved him, and that he shall create his own happiness. In that hope lies the sum of my own life. 

The light has faded again, and I am amidst the stars. The box has peacefully settled within me, and I embrace it. Nearby I hear the quick patter of footsteps, and I look to see that a fox has appeared from the darkness of this purgatory that has me in its grasp. Her orange fur reminds me of that day, when she watched my final moments, and I find respite in knowing that her gaze was not one of pity. She asks me to come with her, as it is her duty to guide me to my final peace. I do not look back as I follow this little fox amidst the stars. I do not wish to recall the pain of my death any longer. 

This feeling is not catharsis, nor is it regret. My soul was healed by Reiga and Keiji, who I now leave behind in the world of the living. My heart was healed by Nishiki, who I leave with my fruitless wishes and incorrigible failures. The only thing I hold now, when even my body no longer remains, is the lighted star of happiness that rests within my chest. 

A star which I have created.