At first I was surprised, then I looked ahead, and there she was , sitting on the swing within earshot.
As surprised as I was, it wasn't relief or sorrow that washed over me. As I clenched my fist, I felt only one thing: Frustration.
"Why are you here?" I said, with a mixture of resentment and guilt, as I stopped leaning against the tree.
"I'm just having a little fun. You being here doesn't make any sense…" He replied as he swung on the swing.
She was wearing her winter high school uniform. It was a light blue jacket, a white button-down shirt, and a black skirt that reached her knees. Even though it was September, it was still cold enough to wear it in the mornings.
I slowly approached her, while my feeling of anger gradually calmed down, but did not perish.
" Stop it…"
"What's going on? I can't be here-" I didn't let her finish the sentence.
"Stop talking like that!" I yelled, grabbing a chain from the swing, causing it to stop swinging.
"Uh-uh, did I say something wrong?" She covered her mouth with her hand. The annoyance behind her voice was replaced by a tone of shock and confusion.
"I know you're not her! You can't be her… You're just an imposter!" I grabbed her wrist as she screamed once more. The atmosphere changed completely the moment I grabbed her.
"I don't understand what you mean! And why am I an imposter?!" She looked me in the eyes as she spoke, her expression hurt, in contrast to my angry one.
Then, she lowered her head and closed her eyes. She began to speak in a low, pained tone. "Can't I talk to you or what?" While her head was lowered, water began to fall from her eyes.
I thought it was raining, but I realized that her wrist was completely dry. Her uniform was too; it was as if it weren't raining at all for her. The only liquid touching her skin was her tears.
When I realized this, all the anger and rage I had vanished, and I let her go without a second thought.
" Can't I just be myself?!" She stared at me, her face streaming with tears. "Is this why you keep ignoring me?! You're only interested in me when you want to entertain yourself, right?!"
"N-no, I-"
"You're lying!!!… I already know what you're going to say. You've been saying it all day…" She turned around, her back completely to me.
"'I care about you, I always have,' you're going to say, excusing yourself by saying that even though you didn't do anything all day, you had the intention of doing it eventually. You promised yourself all along that you would one day, but that day never came, did it?" Her voice sounded broken, and with a resentful tone.
As she spoke, she was still crying, although much less, now that she has something to say.
"That's not true! It's not…" I couldn't finish that sentence. I decided to stay silent.
" See? You know I'm right. You've left me to my fate. You've only cared about the part of me that cares about you, but where is the part of you that cares about me?"
"It's here!" I brought my palm to my chest. "I'm here, and I always have been! Besides, you say you wanted that part to help you, but you've never asked for help—"
"I shouldn't have to ask for it to help me! And if you say it's there, why haven't you shown it to me?!" She abruptly stood up from the swing and stood in front of me, staring me in the face.
" I showed it to you! I tried to help you, I-"
"No, all you did was listen to me!"
"I also tried to get close!"
"You never really tried to get close! If you had tried, you would have confronted me directly instead of responding to what I was saying!" She shouted that phrase at the top of her lungs while her head was facing the floor, even though her eyes were closed.
I was speechless again. She had an expression of guilt and surprise at the same time. I knew I couldn't justify myself, I knew I wasn't going to win this, but why was I trying to defend myself?
"I always give, but I never receive, isn't that selfish?" I didn't answer.
"Why do I have to solve everything myself?" I didn't answer.
"Why does nobody care about me ?" I didn't answer.
There was a brief silence, if only in our conversation, as the rain took up most of the atmosphere, getting heavier and heavier.
"Doesn't that seem normal to you?" she asked, her voice colder. It hurt me just to hear her voice like that.
"What do you think I'm going to do if I'm left to my own devices? What do you think I'm going to do if I'm losing strength to continue?" Her cold tone began to break into a more agitated voice.
"Who do you think you are, intruding into my room and rummaging through it?" She started to sound annoyed…
"Who do you think you are to read all that?! Do you think you have the right, Riku?! Riku is the only one who has the right to read it, but you had to be the one to get into my head!"
I didn't feel guilty at the moment, but I was still trembling. I wasn't angry, but I still clenched my fists. I wasn't nervous, but my vision was still agitated. I was afraid, afraid of hearing ^[Ç+? like that.
" And what did you get out of all that?! All you do is humiliate me! I don't find it funny in the slightest that you're reading my life like it's a fairy tale! This isn't some fan fiction you should read like a pervert! If anyone else had read it…" She collapsed to the floor and started crying again. "You don't deserve anything written here…"
What does she mean by that? I didn't know what to do, whether to run away, confront her, or stay put...
In the end, I didn't end up choosing, and by not choosing, I chose to stay still, and do nothing.
"Again? You're not going to do anything? You're not going to answer me? You're not going to do anything? Are you going to run away again? You're always running away from everything that bothers you… Please accept it already…" Her voice sounded angry as she knelt down, and her tears flowed unceasingly.
I lowered my head and stopped focusing on her. I tried to focus only on the rain, not on her crying. I wanted to ignore it, forget about it. I was so scared and felt so bad that I couldn't stand it anymore.
" I know… do you think I have no idea?"
She raised her head to look at me, but I had turned away; I couldn't confront her. I couldn't because if I saw her face any longer, I wouldn't be able to stand it.
" I know I've ignored you, that I haven't supported you. I haven't done anything because I thought it would only make things worse. What I didn't realize is that by doing nothing, I was admitting that I didn't care enough about you. Doing something without giving a shit about it, and doing nothing while caring deeply about it, are the same thing. You're both doing something against your ideals. No matter how much I care about you, if I do nothing, it's like I don't care about you, I know that."
I kept my back to her. I wouldn't be able to say all of this in front of her; if she were here, I wouldn't be able to say anything to her.
If I were here.
She stopped being on her knees and stood up, she didn't say anything, but because her intention was to listen to me.
"I know I shouldn't have stuck my nose where it doesn't belong, that's clear to me. But if 'I don't care about you,' then I shouldn't care what you think of me after reading all that. It doesn't matter what I know about you, anyway, because the more I know you, the more you'll stop being that sister."
" I was afraid of seeing you differently, of seeing you worse than before, but when I finished I realized that nothing had changed, that I still saw you the same, but…"
The rain couldn't hide the footsteps coming from behind me, but…
"But now I can only live with that on my mind. I can't stop thinking about everything you've written, and even if I know it, it's already late. Too late. I shouldn't be thinking about this now because it's a waste of time. If I hadn't been lazy before, I could say it with pride now, but I can only laugh." He was smiling. It wasn't a full smile, but its incompleteness didn't justify its presence.
" What should I do now? What should I think about? What should I focus on? What should I pursue now? I have no more reasons. I have nothing to work for, nothing. No reason. No one is going to congratulate me for what I do because they have to do something equally, or more difficult than mine. You're not going to congratulate a child who has learned to swim because you've known how to do it for a long time; it's something basic."
I put my hands to my head, covering it completely, while I felt every drop of rain fall on them.
"But I asked for it. You reap what you sow, and if I stop watering the plant when it's time, of course it's going to wither. Nature isn't going to give it water on its own… And I can still muster the courage to laugh? Can I really? Shouldn't I dry up too?!" I collapsed to the ground, kneeling down so I wouldn't fall completely. I could feel my pants getting stained with dirt just from leaning on them for a moment. My head was still facing the ground.
"I'm never going to see her again, she's gone, she's dead, ^[Ç+? she's dead, and I haven't done anything… Having these hands… Having everything within my reach..."
I gripped my head tightly in my hands, holding my face as if I wanted to tear it off. "I'm not a murderer. I'm a monster, a wretch…" When I finished gripping my face in my hands, I let them fall. They hit the floor, where they rested.
" Sorry," that's what I wanted to say, but instead, I started laughing. I started laughing. At first, quietly, without even opening my mouth, but it got louder and louder, more exaggerated.
The rain was completely covering me, and now it was pouring down in torrents. I didn't know if I was crying, I didn't feel it at all, but I did know that I couldn't stop laughing.
I laughed, but my face showed the opposite. Over time, that laughter sounded muffled. More and more muffled, weaker, until it stopped altogether.
The rain, which felt more like a flood, muffled every sound; only the person making it would hear it. The cold didn't help you focus on that voice either, making you focus more on how you were shivering. And finally, the water, which had left my clothes behind, didn't help calm that feeling; it would have been better to go naked.
I brought my hands up to my eyes, covering them completely, as if I wanted no one to see me, even if I was alone. And I started to cry.
I don't know how long I was there, maybe a little while, or a long hour, but there was a moment when I stopped crying.
When I stopped, I decided to ignore everything that had happened, although, before that, I wanted to turn around.
"…"
I saw that no one was there. After checking that, I ran out of the park. I ran down the street in the rain, being careful not to slip.
I thought running would make me forget. I thought if I ran away from everything that mattered to me, I'd eventually forget it.
So all I could do was run, little by little, until I left everything behind.
At no point did I look back.
***
When I got home, my father was angry with me. He waited for me to come back. He was worried, especially since he had called me on the phone several times due to the time and weather, but it turned out I had left it at home.
I don't know how, but I didn't catch a cold that day. It's just that when I got back, I had to dry myself with a towel and warm myself up a bit in bed. Just because I didn't get sick doesn't mean I wasn't cold at all.
What bothered me about the cold wasn't the physical sensation, but the mental one. Even if I told my mind to stop shivering, I kept shivering; I couldn't control myself.
The cold also brought bad things with it, since, if everything good brings a warm feeling with it, wouldn't the cold be linked to the bad?
This reminds me of loneliness, of how harsh reality can be, and how cruel life can be. But if cold is the absence of warmth, then cold itself doesn't exist. If so, does evil also exist?
That doesn't make sense, since pure good doesn't exist. Evil exists because good exists to highlight it, and good exists because evil exists to highlight it. If evil doesn't exist, then good doesn't exist either? What is it, then?
Although, if there were no good or evil, human beings would be incapable of doing anything. We can't do anything if there's nothing to strive for.
If we are not able to act well, we cannot do anything.
I kept thinking about these things while I tried to sleep… It's normal that I couldn't sleep in the first place. Only when I let my mind rest did my body rest as well.
That night, I stopped dreaming in my sleep.