Higura didn’t sleep well the previous night. Nor the night before, nor any other recent night. Every time spring came and the days got hotter, it would become an actual challenge for Higura to get himself into bed. He would always fail to notice the first bold ray of sunshine sneaking into the room through closed curtains, reminding him that his sleep hours had gone to waste again.
It made him feel powerless. The pulsing headache caused by fatigue mixed with the birds’ singing outside his window. Only noise-cancelling headphones and music on full volume could drown out the sound, but it just made the headache worse in the end. So Higura would reluctantly stand up from his desk and put a random vinyl record from his collection on the record player. As soon as the needle touched the vinyl, starting to read the melody like a skilled stenographer, the background would grow distant. It didn’t help him sleep, though.
Higura didn’t even know why he’d go outside these days. No urgent matters were waiting, and all of the people he could need would rather appear at his doorstep than invite him out. Still, Higura felt the need to leave his house. Even though he’d feel like he was nothing but naked wires inside, he just had to touch something real and unpredictable.
Just like yesterday, with the police and that Kouta guy who thought he was about to jump in front of a car. Higura hummed and rubbed the metal band of the restrainer bracelet locked around his wrist. To his mind, that step into the traffic was a spontaneous impulse bound to fail. He had enough attempts in the past to know that no one would let him go that easily in front of all the eyes.
This state was not new to him. But Higura kept guessing what had provoked it this time. The flashing memories of the day before felt real in comparison, full of life and volition of every passerby. And if yesterday he forced himself not to think about the people around so that the thoughts wouldn’t overflow, today, unnaturally disfigured faces made him want to close his eyes tight and walk ahead blindly.
Higura knew that the illusion would shatter at the first direct contact or call. It would be over as soon as he’d confirm the reality of a hand on his shoulder or a word addressed to him. Even so, with each spell of derealization, he never stopped fearing that it wouldn’t work this time; that the deeply vibrating mass with skin hastily pulled over it wouldn’t become a human being again.
Faceless avatars, John-and-Jane-Does flooding the streets, silently carried him somewhere in their swarm. And Higura, knowing full well how helpless he was, chose to move along with them.
The humming human cascade flowed underground to flood the subway trains. There, it broke apart like a stream against the rocks, and Higura parted ways with the others. He lingered at the map for some time, recalling the name of the subway station where he had met his troublesome acquaintance.
He had no way to contact Aisuke Kouta. Nor did he need to. All Higura looked for right now was a glimpse of yesterday’s quiet and some certainty that the world around him was real. And, like a criminal manically attracted to their crime scene, Higura was obsessed with the idea of reviving it in his mind – the wide highway and the jagged rows of high-rise buildings.
After entering the subway, Higura hopped onto a train and found the least crowded nook. There was enough space around him to grab a handrail. Near him, other passengers started to regain sufficiently human traits, and Higura caught himself glaring greedily at some couple sitting nearby. Could turn into a problem, right? He looked away through the nearest window, found a crumpled face mask in his pocket, and pulled it over his nose.
The habit of wearing face masks in public had saved Higura from unpleasant incidents many times. He wasn’t worried about catching a cold or trying to merge with the crowd by doing it. It was much simpler than that: sometimes, losing his sense of reality, he also lost control over the emotions showing on his face. He’d rather have it covered from sight if it relieved him of the duty to explain his unintended smile or hostile expression.
Displays of frustration, pain, or sorrow never bothered the train inhabitants. Higura could still vividly remember taking the subway several years ago, when he was still at school. The judging glares he caught when he’d raise his voice slightly when talking to classmates on the way home. The way men and women would look away busily that one time when he burst into uncontrollable tears.
Yes, maybe he had needed a mask too, back then. Such a simple thing worked like a charm when he needed to hide any inconvenient outbursts.
The dull noise of the train rushing away on its rails sounded like an alerting growl. Some passenger emitted a suffocating odor of perfume. Someone dropped a folded umbrella from their bag, and it clattered against the floor, resounding in Higura’s ears much louder than it was supposed to. Every half-whisper, every click of a zipper, every creaking sole of a polished boot reverberated against his hearing with an unusual irritation. As though some part of his skull had been sawed off and picked off his head, leaving his brain exposed. Fighting the nausea, Higura made a few steps back, leaning against the wall.
The line on the digital display indicated his station was three stops away. It would be nice to relieve the discomfort with some breathing exercises or a comforting thought. But none of those methods worked on him, so Higura spent the rest of his trip convincing himself he wasn’t there. Every painful feeling is easier to survive if you make-believe it’s not actually yours.
The point of destination called for him. It stuck to his memory so strongly that he could see it behind his eyelids. To visualize the place of their meeting, Higura didn’t even have to close his eyes: he saw it clearer than anything. Rushing up the stairs surprisingly swiftly for his exhausted body, he barely looked at the people around him. The thing that had been bothering and balancing him off since he left his home faded completely into the monolith of indistinguishable office buildings.
The people exiting the subway along with Higura now parted ways. Instead of staying with the flow, he became a rock picked up on the shore and tossed into the water. But, come to think of it, it wasn’t such an unpleasant metamorphosis.
Soon, the crossroad he searched for was within his sight. This time Higura had to wait for the stoplight to turn green. He had no expectations of what his impulse was leading to. Would he meet someone on the other side? Probably not, but the inviting flash was pulling him to the spot with incredible force. He could barely suppress fluttering childish excitement – like a present waiting to be opened, a present you’d been waiting for the whole year.
If only he didn’t forget how easily his expectations could shatter.
A screeching female voice made Higura shudder and freeze in place. The stoplight signal flew over the suddenly quiet street, giving permission to walk, but no one in the crowd swarming before the crossroad even thought of moving forward. The car noise from the other part of the crosswalk was drowned out all of a sudden. Because now, nothing but this scene mattered.
Nobody got to realize what happened. Higura didn’t witness the fall himself either, but he could clearly see a fringed crimson splatter blossoming on the sidewalk right across. Unable to turn away from the broken, deformed body, its skull shattered from the impact and showing from the tangled mass of hair, Higura covered his mouth.
Someone behind him grabbed their phone in panic, dialing an ambulance number. Still unable to avert his eyes from the motionless figure in a pool of blood, Higura noted with detachment that there was no one to save there by now. The odor of death flooding the air and forcing the open space around to shrink was driving him crazy. The sky, the concrete, and the white trace of the crosswalk were engulfed with this red light.
His bracelet, which was called a restrainer for a good reason, worked as perfectly as the technical design allowed. When Higura used to engage in unsafe things, the wristband burned marks into his arm to stop him from causing irreversible damage. Now, when Higura stayed upright by mere force of will, his restrainer stayed indifferently cold.
Because there is nothing in this world that can keep you in it if you are actually determined to go.
As far as he stood, Higura still could swear drops of blood stained the hem of his coat, greedily burning into the fabric. He swayed and lowered to the ground, paying no attention to the crowd starting to move again. The mirage persisted, no matter how hard he clenched his fists, digging nails into his palm.
Because Higura had seen this before.
And he wouldn’t hesitate to give half of his life just to never face the horror of another’s demise again.
✧✧✧
Higura managed to get home somehow. Almost about to faint several times, he had to yank himself back up; he accepted help from a tender-hearted lady passing by, who led him away from the crowded part. Smiling to her with fake gratitude, as he was trying to discern if only a single detail in her face that remained blurry even up close was unbearable. The lady probably insisted on waiting for the taxi with him. Higura hardly remembered anything else.
In the car, he messaged one of the people who could keep him company in the empty apartment, but there was no response. With a wince, Higura tossed his phone on the seat and leaned the back of his head against the passenger window. Naturally, he was graced with her time and attention only when she found it convenient.
He was shivering from the cold, but his forehead and cheeks were on fire as if he had a fever. Higura would sleep all through the ride if each attempt to close his eyes wouldn’t project a vivid image of the event right into his brain.
“Excuse me, can we change the address?”
To doom himself for isolation in his hollow home would be just reckless. Higura knew it wouldn’t do him any good. Nobody was waiting for him, so he had no place to go. But the driver already turned to him impatiently, stopping his car at the curb.
Excluding all unavailable options from his mind, Higura checked the address with the maps on his phone and showed it to the driver. The man squinted, probably assessing the distance between two points.
“That will cost extra.”
“No problem at all,” Higura smiled with relief, leaned back on the seat, and glanced through the window at the sky, already turning darker.
As the owner of the place he chose once said, all that one needed to stay there with no trouble was being peaceful and paying.
✧✧✧
Higura paid the driver and got out of the car right when the bar opened. The official name of this place was Daikokuten – an outdated name only used by the loyal visitors and the owner himself. To get into the bar, one had to enter a small building from the street side and go down the stairs into a basement.
The hall that opened before him seemed spacious due to dim lighting and scarce furniture. If it weren’t for the LED lights outlining the walls and counter, Higura would surely trip over something.
Every weekend, Daikokuten held theme parties and other events one could only find out about through rumors in certain closed circles. The bar had no social networks. Sometimes Higura even doubted whether this place was in any papers at all. Despite all that, he loved this place with his whole heart.
On weekdays, like today, the bar was almost empty. Higura was fine with it – he sought comfortable solitude he couldn’t achieve being actually alone. The owner of this bar, who was also a bartender, was always eager to chat, but this time Higura politely withdrew right after picking up his whisky from the counter. Settling for the darkest corner, he placed himself on a wooden chair and emptied the strong drink in a couple of long pulls.
Re-checking the chat ending in a still unread message, Higura opened the recent calls tab out of habit. Among the added contacts, he found the untitled number with one outbound call. Kouta said the girl’s name was Erika and that she was his employer or something of sort.
Out of sheer curiosity, Higura quickly added the number to his contacts to check it through the available messenger apps. She had to have something like LINE, right? And indeed, Erika’s account appeared in the search results quickly, showing Higura a somewhat unexpected fact.
Observing the only picture in her profile, he drew the screen closer to his eyes with genuine surprise. An unfamiliar girl Kouta addressed so formally had a screenshot from some anime set as her avatar. For no apparent reason, Higura opened the private chat and fixed his eyes on the keyboard before moving his finger over it.
It could actually work. It also could fail – he had no idea what kind of person this Erika would be. Higura risked being blocked right after the first message, but even then, he wouldn’t lose anything. So, swallowing down the rest of his drink, he decided to test his fate that had been so unfavorable lately.
“Hello, Erika-san. Want to meet for a talk?”
✧✧✧
They’d been talking for about a week. Erika turned out to be a friendly, if slightly withdrawn, girl with harmless interests and earnest longing for human connection. Although she was obviously tense at the beginning, Later Higura managed to attract her one way or another.
Leading conversations with her in a way that kept her involved and got on her right side was easy. Her guess was that Higura had come across her profile on a dating app and had wanted to know her better. It was a plausible version, so Higura didn’t deny it.
After several days of animated talking, they planned to meet the next weekend. It felt like drawing a winning ticket – obviously, Higura didn’t expect this would turn out so nicely. But it also made him stall, because he had no clear plan of action. He couldn’t explain to himself what he wanted from this casual match.
He was riddled with anxious thoughts up to the meeting day, torn between the urge to stand the girl up, never contacting her again, and the certainty that this acquaintance would lead him to the thing he looked for – even if he couldn’t yet state what exactly it was.
As usual, he didn’t sleep too well, so he managed to close his eyes only by sunrise. He woke up to the sixth alarm in a row, and couldn’t afford to take his time after that. With an exhausted groan, Higura climbed out of his bed and needed no notification on the lock screen to know he would be late. Luckily, Erika gave the impression of a person who would forgive him for ten or fifteen minutes of tardiness.
Instead of taking the subway, he jumped into a taxi again. He wanted to look impressive but ended up dressing the same as usual because there was too little time. Higura still wanted to show Erika some places where he didn’t need to take his coat off. Already on the way to his date, he sent her an apology text with a cute sticker.
Higura often scheduled meetings with people he had never met, so he recognized his new friend immediately from the only selfie she sent in the chat. Allowing himself the whim of watching Erika a little from afar, he leaned his back against the wall near the subway exit, keeping his curious eyes on her. Erika wandered back and forth, waiting impatiently, and Higura was just about to approach her when a girl in flashy clothes decided to bother her first.
Did they know each other?.. Tilting his head, Higura studied the scene happening before his eyes just to doubt his suspicion. Judging from the snippets of phrases he caught, the girl intended to badger Erika, who was clearly dumbfounded, to give her something. Seeing how awkward the whole ordeal was getting made Higura chuckle with sympathy.
Talking a beggar out of begging was a hopeless pursuit. Higura knew from experience that it was best to just walk away quickly without a word, acting like you had somewhere to be. But Erika, already stuck in the situation, clearly needed audience assistance. Higura approached her from behind and softly, without touching her hand, led her away from the begging schoolgirl’s range.
As he thought, Erika didn’t resist. She immediately recognized Higura, too, and confusion mixed with fear on her face dispersed with a flustered yelp.
“Kyougo-san!”
He ignored the way she addressed him for the first time, but asked her to call him by his first name next. In person, Erika’s sincerity inspired such affection in Higura that he was almost charmed in a way. Their friendly date, which he initiated with no enthusiasm, was now about to go the way they both would remember fondly.
“I’ve never been there before, but shall we try it out?” Higura pointed at a café across the road – the one he’d actually spend a lot of time during his workdays. He internally marked an hour or so for himself to know more about his date over a cup of coffee.
✧✧✧
During the first hours of their date, Erika seemed to leave her unnecessary restraint behind, not trying to straighten herself mid-word anymore. Higura found it amusing how excited she was when she found out about his profession, which recently brought him nothing but disappointment. He reluctantly shared a couple of his works she might have liked. Maybe it was a reward for not taking his little joke close to heart.
For her age, Erika carried much more weight on her shoulders than even a more mature and experienced adult could endure. The idea that Erika had been a little childish left him as soon as he heard the details of her everyday life, immediately replaced with respect. He took a liking to the way she answered his questions eagerly, stopping only to cover her mouth with her hand and apologize for rambling too much. Higura would assure her he was alright with it; he found the sound of her voice soothing and inexplicably nostalgic.
What they had in common was a habit of taking long walks, and Higura was relieved of the duty to plan their route from then on. He was familiar enough with the city center, unlike the other areas, so their trip was a success, and Erika didn’t end up tired.
Higura had never heard of the café Erika and Kouta worked at. When Erika gave away the name, she panicked at first, but then admitted that she would love to see Higura among the customers. He was invited then; this new knowledge seemed like the purpose of their entire date.
Twilight came, and the windows of apartment buildings and shop signs lit up in multiple colors, reminding Higura about the reason he enjoyed these late hours in good company. The cold metropolis, where a lost soul got dissolved easily, seemed a little warmer beside a person as pure-hearted as Erika.
They should have probably never met at all.
“Will we see each other again?” Erika called out with hope, tugging restlessly at the hem of her skirt.
Sooner than you think. Higura didn’t say it out loud, just vaguely shrugging his shoulders, but the answer didn’t seem to leave Erika content. With an offended frown, the girl pushed him slightly with her elbow and reached out a hand.
“Promise? Just say no if you can’t.”
Surprised by a whimsical change in Erika’s attitude, Higura stared at her open palm for a moment. Such a trusting gesture didn’t fail to convince him to submit and let their hands finally touch – the thing he was intentionally avoiding the whole date.
“I think it is a promise.”
The word was so alien and unnatural to his tongue that Higura couldn’t utter another word. It was probably due to the fact that he placed a ban on it way back when he broke it for the first time.
Grinning happily, Erika squeezed his hand in hers to seal the little vow between them. She seemed reluctant to leave, even though she herself admitted that she wasn’t used to coming home this late. Letting go of Higura’s hand, she glanced at him with sincere warmth, not like any looks he usually caught.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but you’re my first friend in a long time.”
Higura felt a strange pinch in his chest. He tried to force a smile in response, but his facial muscles refused to obey him again, and he instinctively raised his hand to his face.
“A friend…”
He couldn’t explain why the phrase turned so cold in his mouth. Somewhere far away from the place where they parted ways, after years of excruciating wait, a circle was closed.
Erika always had a hard time communicating with people.
An invisible barrier between her and her peers was already set on the playground level. Her father, neck deep in gambling debt, had little to teach her – in his daughter’s eyes, he was quite afraid of others, too. Her family constantly moved from one place to another to make the debt collectors lose track of them, but they never left their district, so Erika would always meet familiar faces here and there.
She inherited her mother’s ginger hair and European features. Nothing but those – no phone number, no home address. Father said they had a marriage of mutual convenience, and Erika was just an accidental side effect, which made her mother and father break up on bad terms. He had pleaded with her to keep the child. When Erika was reminded of that detail of her birth, she would sometimes wish she hadn’t been born at all.
Her unusual looks frankly hindered connections with other people: hāfu kids were still out of the ordinary. Another problem was what happened in her head before every conversation with a stranger. Her thoughts would become a tangled mess, words slipping out of her mind, lips glued shut from the terrifying pressure outside. Looking someone in the eye seemed impossible – just from lifting her eyes to take a glance at the person, Erika always felt like she was about to cry.
Nobody had the patience to wait for a timid, always teary-eyed girl to gather some confidence. So Erika was just left behind in favor of other potential friends. It hurt and upset her, and she’d want to run after cliques of her peers shouting, “Hey, wait for me!”. But could she ever manage to utter more than an inarticulate whimper? In the end, a useless, unwanted child would always be left alone, as she should be.
“Erika!..”
The day when a loving hand reached out to her was lost in the past long ago. Erika could never forget the elusive warmth of another’s hand in her own; it was like it happened yesterday. Her first friend, first promise, and the most soul-crushing memory bringing old sweat at nights – just like it did this time.
Exhaling a scream, Erika grabbed at the bedsheets. Her eyes were wide open in terror, eyelids fluttering. Her sight was blurry because of the tears running hastily down her cheeks. She regained breath only when she could clearly see the familiar shapes of her room.
It was six o’clock in the morning. Anxiety always made Erika wake up before the alarm. Worst days, like this one, she’d wake up exactly like this: panicked, short of breath, heart aching inside her chest.
Putting her bare feet on the floor, Erika sat for some more time with her eyes squeezed shut, taking breaths at the count of three. She was more than grateful to be able to feel oxygen in her lungs again.
She usually believed that a morning starting like this was a promise of bad luck or a reason to be cranky for the whole day ahead. But today had to be the most important day in the past few years, even if Erika, not quite awake from a nightmare, wasn’t aware of it yet.
Today, in spite of the fear that was destroying her life, Erika decided to leave her social bubble and take a step she couldn’t even imagine before.
A date with a stranger, and with no arrangements too… Gosh, was it embarrassing.
The dumb idea to try a dating app led her to one of the most impulsive decisions in all twenty years of her life. Falling for a couple of flattering profile photos, Erika answered an incoming message almost without a thought. But her curiosity was kept alive by the way the conversation went on.
A guy she had never met in person just felt… safe.
Of course, Erika had some online chats with anonymous users before. Considering how much time she was spending on Twitter, completely avoiding communication would be an impossible task. But she would always exist under a nickname and a faceless profile pic, and she never made actual friends there. She was mostly talking about her favorite media and musicians or sharing links to posts she and the other person would both be interested in.
Whenever a user showed interest in her actual personality, Erika would ban them on the spot. Why would anyone want to know what city she lived in? Why would she look at someone’s photos or share her own? The last part would usually turn up weird: the difference between the real appearance and the profile pic was too striking. It would not be repulsion – just irrational shame and an urge to run away.
It was scary. Scary to understand that her Internet acquaintance could have their thoughts and expectations. Scary to know that, behind a conversation rigidly framed by a certain topic, there was a swarm of innumerable emotions, opinions, and reactions.
Yet another issue was that this time, Erika was about to meet a guy who found her on a dating app. And she was just now starting to realize how many things could go wrong. Closing the bathroom door behind her, she stumbled upon a whole bunch of unsettling assumptions.
Well, the guy certainly wasn’t a jerk. It would have become clear during the talk, which by now ended at the fourth page of their chat. She wasn’t insane enough not to find out more about him, was she?
On the contrary, he was polite and eloquent in expressing his thoughts, sending her funny stickers once in a while to ease the tension. A jerk wouldn’t try this hard. It was easier to believe that he was seeking attention and making an impression on her by acting so chivalrous.
Was he always like that? Did it mean he was trying to get something out of it? Erika stood at the mirror and looked at her freshly washed and still sleepy face.
Erika’s father often called her beautiful, comparing her to her mother. She didn’t take his words seriously, though, snapping back at the excessive praises. People stopped her in the street a couple of times to ask for a photo, thinking she was a foreigner. One of those unlucky days, an annoying man nagged her into adding a contact of some model agency she would never apply to anyway: she just wanted to leave as soon as she could.
One thing Erika knew for sure: beauty was a subjective thing. She could name a dozen flaws in her appearance off the top of her head, but she didn’t deny she could be likable too. Maybe even to her new acquaintance…
Gosh! Where did these silly hopes even come from? Slapping her own cheeks from frustration until her skin flushed, Erika glared accusingly at the phone waiting atop the washing machine.
Naturally, no new messages. Who else would get up so early in the morning but her? But the bit of disapproval Erika aimed at the guy was quite real. He kind of had to take the lead, no? Then again, excessively forward guys scared the daylights out of her, so Erika hoped for Higura to be not like them. Fully determined to ditch him immediately if something felt off, Erika threw off her pajamas and entered the shower cabin.
✧✧✧
The street across the subway station was full of people hastily passing by. Schoolkids, college students, and others hurrying to enjoy their day free from work or study were sticking out of the stream. In contrast to the more formal wear usual for the workdays, the crowd was motley.
A group of teenagers passed near Erika, dressed in black clothes speckled with heavy silver accessories. Near the subway exit, there was a swarm of young girls dressed in jirai-kei. Erika turned away awkwardly when the noise they were making as they tried to make a group photo started to attract attention from the people around.
Unlike those girls, Erika felt out of place here. Today, for no apparent reason, she decided on a dress she had never even put on: the pink and frilly one. Before leaving her house, she believed it looked pretty, reminding her of an ongoing cherry blossom season; now her hands constantly returned to fixing every non-existent crease on it.
Studying her reflection in each shop window she passed, Erika sincerely wished she could conjure a full-length mirror right then and there. All she could do was pray to every god she knew that she didn’t look stupid.
To make things worse, her date seemed to have lost track of time completely. They had agreed to meet at noon, but just as she was reaching the spot, Erika heard an incoming message.
[Higura]: Sorry, running late!
Without stating how late he would be and why, the guy followed his apology with a sad kitty sticker. With a scoff, Erika put a heart reaction on a message and hid the phone in her pocket.
Thoughtlessly, she started to wander along the sidewalk, choosing the part with fewer people around. Erika made a few steps ahead, then back before stopping in her tracks, worried about the way she must have looked to others. She immediately felt the urge to do something with her hands, but staring at her phone could make her miss the person she was waiting for. And she intended to see him from afar, just to assess the risks.
There were no more texts. Keeping the phone in her pocket, Erika puffed her cheeks impatiently, waiting for a notification. The guy was ten minutes late already. She had heard somewhere that no date was worth waiting for more than half an hour.
Instead of the notification she expected, someone coughed nearby to attract her attention. A finger tapped on her shoulder busily. Erika turned short and almost bumped against someone looking like a high school girl, giving her a pleading look from below.
“Hey sis! Have some spare change?” The girl’s high-pitched voice proved the suggestion true.
Those people weren’t rare in the streets recently. Not being in need, they still couldn’t miss a chance to get some free money from the gullible and defenseless. The fashionable clothes and piercings in several parts of the girl’s face showed she was more than well-off.
“Sorry, I don’t have any...”
Erika’s quiet mutter got lost in the noise of the crowd. The girl put her hand to her ear and went on to bend the line.
“Oh come on! You look so kind, won’t help me out?” Keeping the same tone, she held out a hand and made a close-and-open gesture.
How pushy… Beggars like her were common in the district near Limelight. Instead of pleading pathetically, they’d use a strategy where they pretended to be your buddy that you owed money to. Back in her territory, Erika could cut off any attempt like this, but now she naturally hesitated.
“I’m waiting for someone here…”
“Huh? Ma-an, why’d you change the subject like this? Not even just five hundred yen?”
Erika glanced from side to side, shortly meeting the eyes of people passing by. Some of them saw through the situation but didn’t have enough time to intervene. Others just saw a commonplace story everyone had at least once.
Growing anxiety mixed with irritation made Erika bite her lip. With fewer prying eyes around, she would even snap at the girl. But the others’ overwhelming presence turned the ground under her feet into a stage that she had no way of escaping.
“So? No chance?” The girl blew at her nails with a bored look, already thinking of moving on to bother someone else.
Before Erika could answer, a shadow grew behind her back.
In the district boiling with life, this specific person stood out by his total absence, as if he would love to be anywhere else but here. Running a directionless eye over both girls, a guy in an unbuttoned coat reached out his hand without a word.
“Huh?!...”
This time it was Erika who made the sound. The guy’s fingers that were about to wrap around her wrist changed in the last moment to grab her sleeve instead, and he carefully but intentionally pulled her backward. Getting dragged away from the beggar girl’s range, Erika allowed him to pull her aside some more steps.
The motion was so swift she couldn’t even call it forceful. The guy who freed her from the trap was the one she was about to meet – Erika recognized him instantly by the way he looked exactly like his profile picture.
“Kyougo-san!”
The scene was so much like a romantic cliché that Erika buried her cheeks in her palms, hiding how flustered she was all of a sudden. The guy let go of her dress sleeve and frowned sympathetically, bowing his head as if to apologize.
“Oh… Sorry for being rude,” he said with an awkward smile, quite contrasting to the aura he was surrounded by just moments ago. “I didn’t want to grab your hand, so this was the next best thing.”
It was the first time Erika heard her date’s voice in person. The tenderness in his calm voice was so out of place in a talk with an almost stranger that it sounded like it came from a vinyl record.
She finally understood the way her father felt while showering her with praise. Because now she had a strong itch to point out the guy’s voice, the way he looked just like her favorite celebrity, the softly assured aura that had no danger to it.
If Erika couldn’t help herself and blurted out something like that, she’d go through the floor with shame. She had to shake her head side to side, getting the nonsense out of it.
“It’s alright! So you are actually Kyougo-san… I, um…”
Erika’s flushed face made it even harder to put her thoughts together. Relieving them both of the pressing pause, the guy gave her a courteous bow and gestured to come forward.
“It’s Higura. No need to call me by my surname. Did you have to wait for long, Erika-san?”
“What? No!...” Waving her hands frantically, Erika accepted the invitation and moved to her date’s other side, letting him shield her from the crowded part of the street. “Not at all, it was just this kid that tried to borrow money from me.”
Higura listened to Erika, then nodded and checked the time on his phone screen.
“But I was actually a bit late. How about I get you a coffee as an apology? Then we’ll decide where to go next.”
Any other coffee shop worker, Kouta, for instance, would reject an offer like this. But Erika still considered coffee her favorite drink, so she nodded eagerly.
“Yes, please!”
The guilt on Higura’s face softened quickly. He put his right hand into the coat pocket and pointed with his left to a small café with a flower-strewn signboard.
“I’ve never been there before, but shall we try it out?”
✧✧✧
All tables inside were taken, so a polite shop worker led them to the spring terrace. When Erika was running out of her apartment, she had forgotten to cover her shoulders with some overcoat, but the temperature didn’t require it. In her light dress with long sleeves, she wasn’t cold at all.
Higura though, he didn’t take off his coat inside or outside the place. While he was sipping his iced coffee through a straw, propping his head on his hand, Erika was musing about how he didn’t overheat.
Before the drinks were served, they had been talking about some abstract news like a new Korean thriller that was viral on the Internet recently or a cheap bookstore that had just opened nearby. Talking to Higura in real life was easier and nicer than Erika imagined a talk with a stranger would be. Back when they were texting, he already seemed like a person that could keep the conversation on anything, but in person, his speech made her sigh with relief and let go of the tension on her shoulders.
His emotional response to every word Erika uttered made her affection grow – and it felt kind of mutual. Her fear of saying something dumb vanished into thin air, and she stopped keeping her every movement in check.
It was almost like a normal date. They even swapped their drinks, and Erika barely kept from coughing from the flavor, too strong and too sweet at the same time, of the coffee Higura had waited for at the counter for over ten minutes, adding toppings over toppings. He saw her reaction and responded with a sincere laugh, and Erika didn’t notice how she laughed along.
“If you ordered something like this at our coffee shop, our barista would kick you out.”
Dropping this detail without thinking, Erika expected Higura to just let it pass. Instead, his eyes lit up as he put the straw out of his mouth and glanced into hers attentively.
“So you have a part-time at a coffee shop? That’s admirable.”
Oh, right. He must have thought she was just a student with a part-time job, reasonably nervous before a date with some stranger. Active social life, plans, all that. She wanted nothing less than to disappoint him with the fact that none of it was there.
“Huh? Yeah, I do…” Erika covered her mouth, trying to conceal regret showing through her smile. “It would be nice if you stopped by in your free time…”
Swallowing a bitter thought that this date could possibly be their first and last, Erika distracted herself by handing her empty glass to a waiter that was coming up to their table.
“These last months, I’ve always been free, so I’ll pay you a visit. As soon as you tell me how to find the place.”
The answer Erika wanted came too quickly, so she stirred and grabbed at the hem of her skirt. If only she had something to stare at… Intentionally looking into the distance, at a vacant table at the far end of the terrace, she took a deep breath to say something next.
“How come do you have all this free time?” she frowned doubtfully, giving in to her habit of questioning everything happening to her.
“Let’s just say the work has been slow recently.”
Higura dodged the answer smoothly, yet his voice sounded somehow exhausted. Left with no proper explanation, Erika huffed with disappointment, in spite of her promise to keep her emotions in check. Her incessant curiosity sparkled anew, faced with a new mystery. Putting her chin on her open palms, she kept glowering at her date.
Her memory immediately offered every darkest plot from the books and shady manga she had read before. Scared of the suggestions that flooded her mind, Erika opened her eyes in shock, expressing how deeply astonished she was.
“Is it something you’re not supposed to disclose?”
With an offended squint, Higura waved off every guess she hadn’t voiced and anxiously pulled the mask to his chin.
“Don’t know what ideas you got; I only write music under my customers’ names,” Higura admitted unwillingly, rubbing the fabric of the mask between his thumb and index finger. “And I’m just out of inspiration these days, that’s all.”
Oh, right! Frustrated by the improper fruit of her wild imagination, Erika lightly slapped her cheeks. And yet the new information only kindled her curiosity even more, and awkwardness turned to admiration.
He was a composer! Higura being just like her Internet idols impressed Erika so much that an excited gasp caused a pinch between her ribs just as she was about to bombard Higura with questions.
“Music?! What genre? Is it just melodies or actual songs?” She put a palm against her chest, eyes glowing madly. “Maybe lyrics, too?”
Higura nodded to all of her questions at once.
“It’s anything depending on the request. It’s as much of a routine job as any,” he finished the phrase with a condescending smile, impressed by her attention. “And I’m not that much of an expert yet; I still have a lot to learn.”
Erika curbed her enthusiasm and sat back in the chair she had unintentionally sprung from. She’d have another chance to hear a more detailed story about her friend’s job, but she just had to ask something immediately.
“Can I listen to something? Anything.”
If he actually worked in any genre there was, he could just pick whatever he’d like. Erika was assured that even the most commercially driven art held an echo of its creator’s soul. It was what piqued her interest the most.
Higura put his finger to his chin, as if carefully considering this decision.
“Right here?”
“Yes! Wait a minute, I had my earbuds somewhere…”
Pleased with the positive answer, Erika started to dig through her pockets. The earbud case was nowhere to be found for half a minute of pointless searching. As she finally realized it probably stayed in the depths of her coat that she left at home, Erika put her hands together in a hopeless gesture.
“… can I borrow yours?”
This meeting could still be their last. She knew she’d be sorry that she pushed too far, but would there be a better moment to let her persistence win over her insecurity?
“As you wish.”
Higura was clearly flattered by her enthusiasm. He stood up and brushed off his coat, reaching into its dimensionless blackness for an oval case. When the earbuds were in his palm, he paused before handing them over to Erika, who was waiting anxiously.
Just like the moment they’d met, Erika felt a shadow towering over her. The movement of Higura’s hand was soundless and invisible, as though there was no real touch at all – just a wind sweeping over her skin. Higura brushed off a strand of hair covering her ear and held the earbud near the earlobe, waiting for Erika to put the device in place.
Their palms touched for just a split second, but Erika pointed out in the back of her mind how cold Higura’s hand was. Swallowing a lump in her throat, she fixed the earbud and nodded, looking him in the eyes. He touched the screen with the tip of his finger, opening an untitled audio file.
Beep.
Instead of a song intro, Erika heard a familiar low-charge signal from the earbud. When she raised her eyes at Higura in disappointment, the meaning of the whole scene dawned upon her as he saw his satisfied grin.
“That’s not fair!” Erika pulled the now-useless earbud out and played with it in her fingers, searching for a reset button or just anything to reanimate the device.
The anticipation of getting to know something so profound and personal was mercilessly extinguished, and it would be quickly replaced with frustration if not for a row of notifications from her own phone. Four, then five. Five untitled audio files popped up in their dialog feed on the locked screen.
Erika pushed down the urge to put the phone receiver against her ear and listen to at least one track. Sinking back in the chair across the table, Higura winked at her and hid the earbud case in his sleeve.
“What did you expect? No insecure artist can handle someone being introduced to their art right before their eyes.”
Erika didn’t want to admit it, but she could see his point. Feeling a twinge of guilt from being too insistent with him, she went back to twisting the fabric of her dress in her fingers.
“That joke was still very dumb,” she muttered, avoiding eye contact. “But thanks.”
“Well, I still have all evening to make it up to you.”
If, after a short while that she spent with her first date partner, someone asked Erika to describe him, she would never have enough words or eloquence. If she could, she’d write a few pages about her impression – never to show it to anybody after.
But when she was following Higura to the exit to spend the rest of her day with him, Erika had no doubt that she’d never forget him anymore.
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?
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.
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