I limped on my side as I walked across the cafeteria. There were some girls talking at a table not very far away from where I stood. Two weeks being absent in the campus, people had tremendously dwindled from coming to the cafeteria. What happened?
I trudged to reach a table at the corner of the room very close to the glass window. My ribs hurt as I sat down. Broken ribs can heal on their own, alright and it had been two weeks. But, my body had been unfortunately frail ever since I was a boy. I stretched a bit to comfort my self and twitched in pain. Now, all I have to do is to wait. I thought I was late and I almost cursed myself for letting a girl wait for me. But, truth to be said, she was no where in sight.
I held the juice box carefully in one hand and placed it very slowly on the table in front of me. After all the ordeal of walking just now, I couldn’t raise my arms that high so it would be quite impossible for me to hold the box while drinking from it. But, nibbling the straw from a juice box on the table without really holding it was quite a sight. Really, Mr. Juice box, it is like a lose-lose situation here…
I sighed and my mind drifted.
Aki… I wondered where she was…
The moment I woke up in the hospital she wasn’t there. I thought that she was somewhere in the hospital, at the restroom taking a break, or in one of the patients’ room resting. But, she never did appear before me as if she was gone. Did she? What happened the night before I fell unconscious? The two street guys that night, did she…?
Something suddenly stung my head and I was forced to bend a little as I held it with my hand. Sweat started to fall down my temple and my breath was short. My vision too was frighteningly blurred as if the world itself was a fake.
Senpai, shinjitsu wan an darou…yume ya nan darou…
The numb in head started to fade away and the pain in my ribs slowly sank in. I twitched on my seat again and straightened myself.
“Aki…”
“Shiki-senpai!” I squinted to the voice and saw Ootori Asako standing in front of me.
“I have something to do after this, so I can’t talk long with you, Senpai,” she said as she sat down placing her bag carefully on the seat next to her.
“It’s okay. It is just a few questions after all.” I smiled. Looking at my face, something had dawned on her, I guessed, and I was very surprised of her next question.
“You are here to ask about my roommate, isn’t it, Senpai?”
“Well, did she tell you about me?” I asked, blinking not believing my ears.
“She’s quite secretive about her private life. But, everyone in the campus knows, Senpai,” she said as-a-matter-of-factly.
“Well, that is … quite… erm… yeah.” I smiled again covering my embarrassment. I hoped that my face had not tuned red. “You know that something happened to us that day.” With that her cheerful face disappeared.
“It was in the news.” She nervously reached for her bag and took out a juice box from it. It was the same flavour of my own, only that she drank it with both her hands holding it.
“And we know that right after the incident, she was gone,” I continued pretending not to notice the drastic change in her. “I was in the hospital the whole time, so I could not figure out what happened.” Did she get arrested? But, I had looked for her for days. She was nowhere to be found, even in the local prisons…
“She was not arrested, but she was indeed taken away.” She said as if reading my mind. I looked at her in surprised.
“Taken away?”
“Senpai, Shirazumi-san, she… she is sick… I didn’t know that either when we started to stay together, but… after some times…after some times…she started to show some signs…” I didn’t like what she was about to tell me. I didn’t know why, thee was something in her tone that alarmed me. Yet, the surging curiosity inside me forced me to listen, and I couldn’t abandon Aki just like that.
“You might not understand this, Senpai, but when I was first moved in the room, when we first met, her aunt was there too… She was such a lovely old lady and we talked a lot. I could still remember before she went, she gave me a card and told me to call her if Shirazumi-san is acting weird.
At that time, I didn’t understand this, yet, one night I was awakened by voices coming from her side, I thought she was talking in her sleep, yet the talking went on almost every night. I thought it was normal for her. I even caught her talking during the day. When I came back, she was all alone inside, and I could hear her talking from outside the door, conversing as if there were two persons.
I was a little scared, yet, I told myself that maybe she’s the kind of person who talks to herself.
One day, I accompany a friend of mine for his research work. He is studying psychiatry and we were looking at old records from numerous provinces when I caught a name which is quite familiar to me. The little girl was abused and because she had schizophrenia, she… Yet, I couldn’t confirm that yet, so I went back and asked Shirazumi-san some questions.
I asked her about her childhood life, where she had grown up and all. Really, I knew nothing about her. She didn’t name me the place and told me that remembering her childhood memories was the thing she hated to do. I boldly asked her why, and she did tell me one thing, with the usual flat voice of hers…
“Because my drunkard father abused me so many times that it isn’t worth remembering.””
*******
The monster shoved my small frail body away. It was a normal push, I guessed, yet it was enough to throw me against the hard solid wall. With the impact, my legs collapsed and I sank to the floor.
He, then, threw the empty bottle to the floor and it smashed with a ring of hideous sound that I cowered in fear. The splinters of the glass flew very near to where I lay and one had touched my cheeks with a dull pain. Sure enough, my cheek was bleeding.
He moved closer towards me, bending down on me, grabbing my neck harshly into a sitting position. My breath came in short gasps, I was hyperventilating.
“SMILE!” He clutched my small chin as he said that. “SMILE! AND DON’T YOU DARE TO CRY.” Even so, I was so scared that tears started to fall.
Aki… Aki… Aki… And, I sobbed.
Frustrated, father punched my side and a searing pain clutched my ribs. I guessed something had cracked.
Aki… Aki… Aki…
I wondered how I would I go to school tomorrow. Father cursed, spat and left me crying on the floor.
Aki… Aki… Aki…
I was smiling while I cried.
Aki… Aki… Aki…
“Onegai, tasukete…”
*******
“Please stop,” I whispered as the image left my mind. It felt so real that my heart began to break. My head hurt so much that even if I had said anything, Ootori Asako would not hear it. So, Aki had…
“I got really scared, Senpai and started to call the number her aunt gave me. But, no one had answered every time I called. I guessed the aunt had abandoned her too like what the records said. And she, she didn’t take any medication and I was staying with her, every one would feel scared as much as I do. That is why, I rarely came back to the apartment and stayed at my friend’s house.” As she told me the story, tears started to threateningly spill from her eyes. I sighed quietly to myself. She had every reason to get that scared.
“Ootori-san, I’m sorry. What is it that you find in the records that you haven’t told me?” I asked rather sadly. I saw her grasp the empty juice box tightly in one hand trying to collect herself.
“Senpai, according to the report that I read that day, Shirazumi, at the age of 13, had killed her father. Because she was later diagnosed with a mental illness, she was not arrested but taken to the psychiatric institution instead. I thought she became better and entered university. I guess I was wrong.” She let the cramped juice box alone on the table and it stood ironically, satirically in front of mine.
“Then, do you know which institution she’s in?” Asako only shook her head.
“The relatives who took care of her keep changing. I tried to find her too, but couldn’t...
Senpai, if I weren’t so scared of her and continued to stay with her, perhaps… things like this won’t happen again, don’t you think?” With that, I didn’t say anything and looking at her, I knew even she didn’t need any comments from me. My heart was thorn knowing the truth.
Asako sighed and made a gesture to leave.
“Wait, Ootori-san!” She stopped and turned at me. Her bag was already placed onto her shoulder.
“There is a closed friend of hers that she always talks about. Perhaps, if you could help me to meet the girl, I could ask her where she is.”
“What is her name?” she asked.
“A girl with the name Akari.” Hearing that, she looked at me with thousands of questions on her face.
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