The house, usually a familiar comfort, felt alien. Each room I drifted into seemed too large, its silence too profound, amplifying the frantic, discordant noise within my own head. Morning light, which on better days might have felt cheerful, today slanted through the windows in accusatory stripes, illuminating dust motes dancing in the still air – tiny, indifferent witnesses to my internal decay.
I'd made a pretense of tidying my room after Mom left for work, a feeble attempt to impose some semblance of order on the overwhelming chaos I felt. But my movements were listless, mechanical. Haru's blazer, folded neatly in my closet, felt like a hidden secret, a warm ember of someone else's inexplicable kindness that I was terrified of examining too closely, lest it, too, turn to ash.
Downstairs, the kitchen clock ticked with an agonizing slowness, each second a deliberate drop of water in an endless torture. I opened the refrigerator, stared blankly at its contents, then closed it again, the thought of food turning my stomach. My body felt heavy, leaden with an exhaustion that went far beyond lack of sleep. It was the weariness of a soul that had been battered and bruised too many times.
The events of yesterday replayed on a relentless loop, each iteration more vivid, more horrifying. Emi's eyes, narrowed with malice. The sickening thud of my bento hitting the grass. Rika's brutal shove, the shock of cold mud against my skin, the searing pain in my knee. The laughter. And then, the desperate, blind flight, culminating in that desolate park, the weeping willow, and Haru… always Haru, his quiet presence a steady point in the maelstrom. His name, his face, his calm blue eyes – they were inextricably tangled with the worst moment of my life.
And my words. "I want to die." The shame of them still burned, a physical heat in my cheeks. How could I have said that? To him? What must he think? That I was weak, pathetic, crazy? Probably all true.
My school bag lay discarded by the sofa in the living room, a mud-streaked reminder. With a surge of familiar anxiety, I knelt beside it, my fingers fumbling with the zipper. The few textbooks inside were, as I'd suspected, stiff and warped, their pages crinkled from the damp. Useless. But it wasn't the textbooks that made my breath catch in my throat. It was the absence of my notebooks.
The spiral-bound one from the festival group, filled with Aya's energetic sketches, Kenji's meticulous notes, and my own single, hesitant, arcing line – the line Haru had said felt 'active.' The line that had, for a fleeting moment, made me feel like I might, just might, have something to offer. Gone.
And the other one. My private journal. The repository of every secret fear, every silent tear, every whispered hope I'd never dared voice. The silly poems I wrote when the ache in my chest got too big. The sketch of Haru, looking out the window, a cherry blossom petal on the sill – a foolish, private little observation. The thought of Emi, or Rika, or any stranger, their eyes poring over those pages, their laughter echoing… it was a fresh violation, almost as bad as the physical assault.
Haru had signed SAFE. He'd pointed towards the school, gestured 'book,' then signed SAFE. What did it mean? Had he gone back for them? The thought was a confusing mix of immense gratitude and profound mortification. If he had them, he might read them. He would see the sketch. He would know… He would know how much I noticed him, how much his quiet presence had already imprinted itself on my lonely world. The idea was unbearable. Yet, the alternative – that Emi had them – was infinitely worse.
I tried to distract myself. I picked up a novel I'd been slowly making my way through, but the words on the page were just black marks, meaningless squiggles. My mind refused to engage. I tried sketching in a fresh pad, something innocuous, a flower from the garden, but my hand felt clumsy, lifeless. The flowing lines I'd managed for the festival group yesterday, the ones born from a flicker of desperate inspiration, felt a universe away. Emi's voice echoed in my memory: "Still playing with scribbles? Don't strain yourselves understanding that." The pencil fell from my nerveless fingers.
The silence of the house deepened as the day wore on. Outside, life continued. I heard the distant chime of an ice cream truck, the laughter of children playing in a nearby yard, the occasional passing car. Each sound was a reminder of a world I was no longer a part of, a world that had so brutally rejected me.
As I sat curled on the sofa, staring blankly at the television screen which I hadn't even turned on, a faint rattling sound came from the window latch in the dining room. I tensed, my heart jumping. There was no wind. Just a tiny, insistent metallic vibration that lasted a few seconds, then stopped. My gaze darted to the window, half-expecting to see a face peering in, but there was nothing. Just the quiet suburban street. My overactive imagination, I told myself. Stress. Lack of sleep. The house was old; it made noises. But a cold prickle ran down my spine nonetheless. Was I truly safe anywhere, even within these walls? Was the strangeness I sometimes felt in the world, the subtle shimmers and whispers, now following me home?
The afternoon light began to fade, the shadows in the living room lengthening, stretching like dark, grasping fingers. Soon, Mom would be home. I'd have to put on the mask again, pretend to be merely tired, slightly unwell. The thought of the effort involved was exhausting in itself.
This stolen day, this reprieve from the immediate horror of school, had offered no healing, no solace. It had simply been a long, silent scream into a vacuum, a deeper sinking into the quicksand of my own despair. Tomorrow loomed, an inevitable tide, and I had no strength left to swim against it. I was just… adrift. And the shore was nowhere in sight.