19 – Linger

I learned I was born in a bathroom instead of a hospital when I heard my dad talking about it in the living room the night before my parents told me they were getting a divorce. He was saying things like, "You're the one who had her, you take care of her." At the time, I wondered why being born in a bathroom was a big deal, but I gradually found out that wasn't normal.

I couldn't become a normal person because I wasn't born like one, I guess. Maybe if I'd been born in a hospital, I would have been able to come out with the right shape and spread my wings.

That said, Mom had raised me well. There was food even though she was never home, and I knew I got a lot more pocket money than the other kids. I was aware I was pampered. Mom was kind. I never wanted for anything.

"I'll call the contractor once you're discharged and they'll come to the house to install your rehab equipment. I listened to what your rehab instructor had to say and wrote everything you can do yourself in this notebook. Read it if you don't understand anything."

I was lying in a hospital bed. The hospital was blanketed in white and every breath I took smelled of ammonia. It didn't feel much like home. If this was what a hospital was like, maybe I was better off being born in a bathroom.

"I need to go back already, so is there anything else you need to ask about?"

"Nah. Thanks Mom."

She seemed out of place in the hospital room. Her red dress and the scent of roses was like a singularity poking through.

It had been three days since I fell from the window and was hospitalized. I was already hooked up to an IV drip by the time I woke up. According to my attending doctor, my injuries would heal in two weeks. I had been bleeding from my head, and although nothing particularly stood out on the MRI scan, I apparently needed to be kept under observation for a month.

They said I might have some loss of feeling in my arms and legs because my neck took a hard blow when I landed. That explanation proved correct. My right leg felt numb. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't walk, but sometimes I randomly couldn't lift my leg which usually made me fall over. The sensation might be gone for the rest of my life, but rehab would help me be able to walk around like before. Still, I needed to give it daily workouts because it was easy to lose muscle mass compared to my left leg, which still had feeling.

Mom had collected all the details about the rehab exercises in a notebook for me. She was the face of seriousness itself while she listened to the instructor, and asked questions over and over to make sure she hadn't missed anything.

After a week in the hospital, my homeroom teacher and classmates came to visit. They were all dressed casually since summer vacation had already started.

"I'm sorry I worried all of you. I got careless…"

"You were being way too careless! I thought my heart would stop when you fell, Asami-san!"

The nurses tolerated the voices filling the quiet hospital room. Once my classmates realized nothing serious had happened to me, they left a bouquet and went home breathing sighs of relief.

"I'm glad you came too, Ruri-chan."

She was the only one of my classmates who hadn't said a word during the visit. Her eyes frosted over when she saw me laying in the hospital bed, though. She started to say something, but her lips snapped shut again when someone called out to her from the hallway.

When I left the hospital, summer vacation was already over, and the cicada calls had started to quiet. Mom was supposed to come pick me up, but I ended up going home by myself because she was busy with work. Although I'd kept to my rehab schedule in the hospital, there were times where I felt like I was going to fall over because my right leg, particularly the thigh, still didn't have much feeling.

As I tottered home, I happened to catch a glimpse of the highway.

I figured something out when I fell from the window. Not just any pain intense enough to send my consciousness flying away would work. The sensation that gravity delivered felt like it completely burned my nerves away, and while it was intense, it wasn't enough to delight whatever slept inside me.

Maybe I needed a person's hand to deliver the pain. Without my resistance being broken, the irrationality of pleading for mercy I wouldn't be given, being handled so carelessly that I got hurt, and surrendering as I spit up bloody vomit with my head pinned in place, I couldn't fill the cracks that had been opened in me.

I waited for the light to turn green, then jumped into the road. Gravity didn't involve human hands, but what about a car? There's a person who turns the wheel and pushes on the accelerator. It fit the profile of what I needed.

The flashing lights in the long evening sunlight were enough to disorient me.

"Hey, that's dangerous! What are you doing?!"

The car wouldn't run me over. It came to a stop and a worried-looking lone woman got out of the car in front of me and started fussing. I wondered why she couldn't just step on the gas pedal for me. This world is too nice. That kindness could never breathe new life into my world.

Ah, maybe that was exactly it. People control their pain with things like kindness. Most people definitely view avoiding pain as a kindness. That's why I was attracted to Ruri-chan's sadism. There was not even a speck of kindness there. She wasn’t going to make me happy anymore.

"Tateha!"

The voice blew past my ear like a gust of wind as car horns blared from the road. Someone grabbed my hand just as I turned my head to look. Bewildered, the woman from the stopped car watched as I was yanked back onto the sidewalk, then got back in her car and left.

Ruri-chan's shoulders heaved with each heavy breath, which were loud enough I could hear. I was about to ask why she was there when we locked eyes. She gradually lost the strength in her legs until she sat down with a thud.

"Don't do that!" Her quiet voice spilled out, mixing with the gravel scattered on the roadside. "Didn't we say we'd change?"

Even though I wanted to go home already, Ruri-chan wouldn't let go of my hand. I tried to shake it off, but she kept clutching it.

"Why…?!"

I didn't understand why she was crying. As far as she was concerned, her biggest problem had been everyone in class finding out about her past behavior. But she'd overcome it by letting that happen. That was why our negotiations had broken down. She wouldn't bully me anymore. That should have been the end of our relationship.

She was useless to me. Her voice and appearance, which were able to break through the noise of this street—the chatter of the classroom—were fading away. I had no need for someone like that to keep clinging to me, now that she was blending back into the faceless masses.

"Say something, Tateha!"

It was already dusk, and our shadows stretched longer under the angry red skies.

"It's dangerous to climb through the window…!"

We were at a roadside garbage collection point, and glass had piled up. I couldn't tell if something was rotten kitchen garbage or something that had died, but either way, it wasn't alive.

"You'll get hit by a car if you stand in the road like that…!"

There were creatures that craved things that were never alive, and creatures that craved things that had died. No one could see the difference clearly enough to say one was better than the other.

"Just stop already…!" Ruri-chan pressed her forehead against the back of my palm, as if she was praying. Her flowing black hair kept brushing against my arm as it swayed in the breeze.

I'm pretty sure Ruri-chan was born in a hospital. That's why she was this obsessed over having the right human form, even though she'd smashed a person's right eye—even though she could crush a person. She should have been the same kind of human I was.

I wondered why she wanted to change so desperately. She couldn't change, I already told her that. Our emergence had failed. We couldn't change our shapes any more than a butterfly that hadn't been able to spread its wings and spent its life crawling on the ground to survive could. We couldn't change how we lived. Why hadn't she noticed?

"Ruri-chan."

I could rationalize it all I wanted. Even if I hadn't been taught, I knew how to act like a human being. But I was looking for something different, and that was the only thing I was looking for. I could keep my cool and blend in while only ingesting things my digestive system couldn't handle. I could blend in indefinitely camouflaged like that.

The thought that all things rot eventually was sapping away my willpower. I wasn't sure of the point in delaying the inevitable.

"We can't change!" I was always consciously raised the pitch of my voice, but I forgot to do that here. What came out was a low and monotonous. "At least, I can't."

I yanked my hand away from Ruri-chan, who was listless. I had forgotten to look at her, and when I looked at the curb, Ruri had gotten up and was already crossing the road while wiping her eyes. She trudged off forlornly, her back slouched.

Why did she care about someone like me, even though she had already completed her atonement?

The earnestness with which she'd clung to me faintly lingered like the warmth of her hand. I tried to erase the feeling by holding my hand up to the sky, but the evening breeze in September was still too warm for that.