"Next stop, Hoshigamine station. Please mind the gap on the right"
The monotonous metallic clatter of the train, broken up only by an occasional, barely comprehensible announcement of a station provided a soothing background for Souta's thoughts.
Hoshigamine huh… then Yamabiko, after that.. Kurosawa.. and then.. whatever.
Souta slumped further into his chair and let out a long sleepy yawn. The seats were not very comfortable, old dusty fabric covering the wood underneath. Only after fiddling around for a bit, he found a comfy enough position, laying his head against the window.
Soon he was back in his thoughts.
How long has it been since I last visited my parents, I wonder. Must have been a few months now at least, considering it's summer now. School really flew by huh.
Mindless thoughts still wandering in his head, he brushed back his hair a bit with his hand and peeked outside. He could see the endless rice fields go by, with an occasional small forest or a mountain in the distance to break up the scenery. Huge clouds towered over everything amidst the cerulean skies, in many shapes and forms. A calming sight.
Or so it should have been. But it was not the case. Not for Souta.
The lush forests, clear blue skies and snow white clouds. The green fields, clear rivers and the occasional flash of colour in the form of a sunflower field. It was all a grey mass, almost indistinguishable from each other. The fields and forests blended together into a dark matter, the rivers rushed with murky water, even the clouds hanging above were gloomy and threatening. The world had simply lost its colors.
Deep in his mind he knew that it had not always been like this. Skies and forests were surely once filled with the color, lively and bustling with all kinds of lifeforms. The sunsets had to have once been golden, and the twilight of morning deep blue instead of grey. The river that split the village he was raised in was once clear, and the waterdrops splashing into the air from the water hitting the rocks shone in all the colors of the rainbow.
But however hard he tried, he could not recall the world being that way.
Nor could he remember how this came to be.
He did not wake up one morning to a world without color. That he was certain of. It must have been gradual, shadows and dullness seeping into his view day by day. There was no fighting back against it, every morning for years a bit more colorless than yesterday.
As time went by, he got used to the dullness, even taking it for granted. It became a part of him, not so different from anything else in his life. Regrettably the greyness of the world was not the worst part of these strange happenings - no, the worst were the people.
Reluctantly Souta averted his gaze from the scenery outside to the people inside the train carriage. Hiding behind his hair, he quickly glanced at the other passengers.
Opposite him sat an older looking gentleman in a long coat, hat next to him laying on the bench. In his hand he was holding a book, perhaps about poetry, and on the other side lay his cane for walking. Souta slowly and reluctantly lifted his gaze, for he knew what awaited him once he looked up.
It was a face.
Well, kind of. Where there should have been eyes, there were two black, soulless holes, staring at the book. The nose was nowhere to be seen, only bare skin beneath the eyes and although the mouth was there, something was off. The smile was a bit too wide, stretching the skin around the cheeks, and the man seemed to possess no teeth.
Could have been worse", Souta thought to himself while praying that the man would not lift his gaze from the book. "At least he had a mouth. And…eyes..kind of.
Having lost the will to look at the other passengers, he sighed to himself and laid against the window once more.
I wonder if I will ever get used to that. Thankfully this one was almost human-like. But some..
He shuddered a bit, recalling some of the worse ones. Some missing all of their facial features, others with distorted proportions, eyes way too large, mouths taking up half of the face, with razor sharp teeth inside or a tongue like that of a snake. Ears hanging low, loose skin barely hanging on the skull.
He shuddered again, trying to push the images out of his mind.
Looking at the passing scenery, he tried for the hundredth time to recall in his mind how this all happened. To find some explanation, some logic to cling on to.
The contortions started around the same time as the greyness spread. At first, it was just small things that I didn't even pay attention to. Someone had an eye a bit larger than the other, a mouth a bit larger than yesterday. I ignored it all for a while. Convinced myself that I was just freaking out over nothing. Eventually I had to however face the truth. People were changing, unnaturally twisting into horrid shapes. After some time I simply could not look at them anymore.
"Next stop, Yamabiko station"
The announcement made Souta snap back too reality. Not wasting his time on wondering about the mysteries he had tried to solve for years, he put on his earbuds, turned the volume up to match the clattering train and slowly drifted into uneasy sleep, closing out the ugly world around him.