My life was always a straight line — a line with no beginning or end. None of the things happening to me seemed important enough to stay within my coordinate frame. So, after finding a reference point, I finally understood how much I had to gain and to lose. It’s you who was my point zero.
My life was always a straight line — a line with no beginning or end. None of the things happening to me seemed important enough to stay within my coordinate frame. So, after finding a reference point, I finally understood how much I had to gain and to lose. It’s you who was my point zero.
A nondescript shop selling markdown vinyl didn’t have that many visitors. Most of them were curious school students walking between rows of high shelves, looking for some indie group albums. They usually didn’t buy anything.
On rare occasions, people would stop by for a chat. Those were usually ex-musicians, avid collectors, or young dreamers with the spark still in their eyes. The man behind the counter didn’t appreciate long conversations with customers, even if they came through the door planning to spend quite a sum.
He rarely made exceptions for anyone. Among the loyal customers, he had just one favorite person, who decided to show up that same day.
“Hello, Higura-kun!”
Approaching the cash desk, a young man in a black coat pulled the mask down to his chin with a friendly smile. The weather was already a bit too hot for his outfit, but after all his visits, the coat had become his special feature.
“Hello!” the visitor answered and disappeared behind the nearest shelf.
Noticing the unusually vivid tone in his voice, the shop owner sighed helplessly. He didn’t stand a chance against the odd magnetism of his welcome guest. Just from looking at him, the man noticed all heavy thoughts dissipate in his head.
He was an interesting fellow. On some occasions, he would spend long periods of time tracing his finger along the alphabetically sorted shelves and frowning pensively. Other times, like this one, he’d grab a couple of random records from the row and hurried to check out.
“Paying by card?”
“Yes, please.”
What was his hurry? With a chuckle, the shop owner put the purchase into a paper bag and handed it to his favorite customer. He suddenly wanted to keep this casual conversation going, if only for a short while.
“I’m only telling this to you, but we’re expecting an amazing arrival tomorrow, — he whispered, following the impulse. — You really should stop by! Maybe you’ll get something for half the price.”
The young man took his purchase from the other’s hands and froze for a moment, his eyes fixed on the table. The corner of his mouth twitched a little before returning to a confident smile.
“Is that so? Well, see you tomorrow then,” he nodded politely and raised his palm for a familiar wave goodbye.
The doorbell echoed shortly through the shop. The owner wiped his hands, crumpled a piece of receipt tape, and tossed it in the trash. Whoever would visit him today till the end of his shift, his mood was not about to get ruined.
“…Oh.”
The man turned around and stared in surprise at the same paper bag he had given to the customer a couple of minutes ago. The bag stood neatly at the payment machine, where one couldn’t possibly just forget it. On the other hand, kids these days…
“Isn’t he eccentric,” the owner smiled indulgently at the forgetful young man and put the bag with his records away to give them back tomorrow.
***
With his shoes still on, Higura entered the room and dropped the coat off his shoulders. The radio host pronounced the weather forecast: March fourteenth, air temperature — 19 °C.
It was probably already too warm for his coat; there was no other explanation for that many glances he attracted in the street. Choosing clothes, any clothes at all, was exhausting. He didn’t care about cold or hot weather. Come to think of it, why had he gone outside at all?
From the answers crossing his mind, Higura caught one by the tail — the only correct one: to buy a couple of records from the markdown vinyl shop. He believed it was the initial purpose.
His bookcases had so many records that the shelves were cracking, even though he hadn’t unpacked half of his purchases. There were new ones, used ones, and faulty ones. Some of them were damaged so badly that they didn’t play back and were only gathering dust away from the record player. Some of them were good, but Higura didn’t listen to them more than once; he just lost interest.
If he could sell all these records at once, he would easily pay for education at one of the decent universities in the city. But he no longer needed it. Sinking into his desk chair, Higura threw his head back. In his skull, a familiar hum was slowly building up, interfered with by radio noises.
The highlighted icon with a quarter note in the corner of the screen was moved to the left side. His table was always cluttered with so much paper covered in scribbles that Higura couldn’t even take out the trash on time, even though he left his temporary house regularly.
Once again: buy a record. Listen to it. Take down the moments you like. Sketch a melody based on the reference. Make some more drafts without getting carried away. Send to folder. Repeat.
Repeat.
The hum slowly changed into an annoying, high-pitched whine. At some point, even clicking on the sequencer button started to feel like too much. Everything he had created in the previous six months sounded like pathetic attempts from a person with no ear for music whatsoever.
The empty sheet drove him to despair. The metronome ticking that started upon launching the program sounded distorted, pushing him to smash his monitor to pieces just to make it stop.
The sound disappeared completely. There was only this cold, painful howling in his ears, as though he had a cold.
Today, when he heard the record shop owner’s words, Higura returned to the thought he had tried to avoid. One way or another, he had to break the cycle. He needed to finally move the mouse cursor away from the sequencer icon. His meaningless trips for cheap vinyl had to come to an end.
He had to finally stop looking for the sound and do something else instead. But the very realization that he’d have to give up on his work of love flared up sharp pain in his chest, the kind of pain he couldn’t drown in anything else.
Higura’s hands reached out, convulsively, against his own will, to the bottom drawer of his table. Upon finding a crumpled pack with a worn-out label, he pushed two pills from the blister pack and swallowed both without washing them down. The hard shell scraped against his throat.
Higura suppressed the urge to cram a whole handful of pills into his mouth. The cold restrainer wristband reminded him of the futility of this idea. Stomach pumping was stuck in his memory as one of the worst medical procedures he’d ever endured.
The fettering drowsiness he longed for never happened within half an hour; only his fingertips grew numb. The blister pack slipped out of his hand and made a muffled scratch against the floor. Higura pushed himself away from the table with his sole and rolled in his chair to the center of the room.
He already had the desirable image in his head. To make it come true, just one mishap would be enough — but even that, unfortunately, was extremely unlikely and got written down as an excusable system imperfection by every media source. Higura of all people knew that.
Even so, why not take another chance? At that particular moment, it felt like there was nothing to lose at all.
***
“It’s March fourteenth, the air temperature is 19℃. The weather is sunny, no precipitation. We don’t recommend taking your overcoats off yet; expect a temperature drop in the evening…”
The voice from the speaker mixed with the noise of the crowd. Nobody cared to listen.
A couple of schoolgirls ran past Higura, their coats off their shoulders and around their waists. A group of university students, all of them around his age, held plastic cups of cold tea. A man in a business suit, looking at the stoplight from time to time, unbuttoned two top buttons on his jacket.
The still cold air was so fresh that one couldn’t get enough of it. Higura kept breathing in frantically until he felt like he was about to inflate and burst like a balloon. Spring was inevitable. Whatever the daily life looked like, nothing could stop the change of seasons.
Higura always liked observing people. Developing no feelings for strangers, he would still dive deep into their lives — deeper than he did into his own. Shifting his inquisitive gaze from figure to figure, from face to face, Higura mused on where those people could be going and what plans they could have for the evening.
What football team is this man a fan of? What does he think about the current political regime? Who is waiting for him at home — and is there anyone at all? Those were counterproductive, totally useless thoughts; like one would enjoy relishing cheap candy, Higura enjoyed his little escape from a first-person view of reality. It was like he pressed pause on his life, in a way.
The corners of his lips turned upwards, and he cracked a forced, anxious smile at a group of college students. Some of them even cast a glance at him — an ageless person with no features to hint at his occupation in life. He had no bag or suitcase because all of his life could fit in his pocket: a phone and an ID card.
He soon lost interest in the group nearby. Across the road, a green light appeared, calling the pedestrians’ attention with an urging beep. Numbers ran under the green stickman on the stoplight, and people ran over the concrete. Higura’s brain rolled ahead on its invisible track with a rhythmical rattle, picking up the pace. But Higura himself stayed where he was. His breath hitched, and his heart started pounding faster than usual.
There it was, the gentle, fleeting moment when he felt himself more than a bystander. When he could, as trivial as it was, become a part of the flow aimed at a certain destination.
The many-faced swarm of people flowed forward. The beep grew louder, gaining frequency and tension. The world spun, and the green stickman turned into an apple about to blow like a time bomb. People brushed Higura with their shoulders here and there, trying to make it before the counter stopped.
Why couldn’t he just follow them? Hurry, hurry. Everyone was in such a hurry as if their life was on the line — and there he was, incapable of moving an inch forward, helplessly staring at the time slipping away right before his eyes.
The sound stopped. The last passerby jumped on the sidewalk right before the green light was gone.
Mere seconds before the road traffic started flowing again, Higura finally regained control of his body. The crossroad stripes lined in a row before him like synthesizer keys. A red light, calming and warm, flooded over them from above.
The rich red glow of the stoplight attracted Higura much more than the green one. He suddenly decided to take a step towards that glow to take a better look at it. Following the impulse, he already raised his shoe over the curb, ready to cross the border between the sidewalk and the trackway. To also become one with something.
After all, a madman jumping into the road right before a car was much more likely to catch someone’s eye than a bleak silhouette in the crowd.
“Hey.”
Higura heard a voice, then felt someone’s fingers clasp around his wrist. He barely kept himself from falling — not from the strength of this gesture, but from how forcefully sudden it was. It was what one could call a control system error.
“Got a death wish?”
Metal wristbands on their arms touched with a low ding, and the sound promptly brought him back to earth.
He had to admit he hadn’t heard such a threatening tone in a long time. But only an idiot would consider himself in danger in one of the main streets of their sterile metropolis. So there wasn’t any fear.
Higura turned around to see who came up with such a delinquent act. It must have been a person from another dimension — or not even a person at all.
Well, of course. If it wasn’t a person, or if it was a person from some other, totally incomprehensible reality, why would he have this thing?
The two schoolgirls from before, the group of students, the man in a business suit — all of them had those.
How reckless of him. Higura pulled his hand back, fully understanding it was too late. This situation wasn’t new to him. The stranger though, his eyes open wide, seemingly had just understood what he got himself into.
Red capital letters flared up and hysterically circled their wristbands. Hearing the hum rising from them, the people around, one by one, started to lift their eyes from their screens.
It was not common enough to ignore.
The officials in uniform appeared behind Higura and his fellow in misfortune and were already reaching for their ID cards to provide during arrest.
If it were not for this accident, they might have never crossed each other’s paths.
Each time Higura inevitably came back to the thought, he couldn’t answer even himself which outcome he’d prefer.
There's no more sound, Suzuha. As much as I tried to find it again, it was all futile. Maybe there was no sound in me at all. Maybe I simply reflected it like a mirror while being close to you. Nothing more than just stealing your light.
Our broken promise haunts me to this day. I have to follow you soon, because there's still no place for me here. But why... why can't I stop my hands? Is it because of fear? Or do you think I should keep it going?
