2021/10/29

Gold and green leaves overlapped in layers, circling the trees at the school gate like a cluster of fluttering butterflies. A color like ink mixed with clear water spread across the clouds, which slid horizontally across the sky at an imperceptible pace. The pale blue above was so faint and so tranquil it felt almost excessive. Through the gaps in the branches on the other side a faint yellow showed through; at the far edge of the sky, a scorched pink-orange surfaced, the way fire lights a horizon — it made me think of an afternoon four years ago when I was just beginning to feel something for someone, and of a longing that haunted me last year, though both have been swallowed now by the density of the leaves. Above my head, the shattered white and blue stretched out over the treetops, fading into a gradual waxy yellow and a composed gray.

I climbed into the car in a fog of evening fatigue, letting the thousand thoughts deep inside me scatter freely. They strained against my chest; I felt a wave of suffocation, almost nauseated.

2021/11/01

The straight road surface had cracked into jagged rubble stacked layer upon layer; a pile driver hammered away as if directly into my eardrums, the noise cutting through Apple’s vaunted active noise cancellation without mercy. Dust floated up from the stone chips, and the swirling haze reminded me of the ominous, uncanny mist that descends on Yasumizu Village during the Watanagashi Festival — my throat tightened involuntarily, and I held my breath.

My eyes had been withering since afternoon. I shakily dripped several rounds of Rohto eyedrops and watched them dissolve in an instant, leaving no change. It felt as if a thousand dry splinters were stirring and prodding inside my eyes; I squeezed them shut hard, but not a single tear could be wrung from the parched surface. The sharp pain made me clench my jaw without thinking, and my heart turned restless and irritable; the pen I’d been spinning in my hand dropped to the floor.

The sun was stamped dead center in the sky like a seal, and all the clouds and haze around it took on a solemn cast. Beneath its fierce, earnest radiance, even dead stone caught a faint blue-green halo. I thought of the constant flow of people and cars passing through this spot on every ride home last semester; of myself always crossing that torrent of traffic and crowds alone; of the time I was so full of fight for someone impossibly out of reach, making efforts that now seem a little pointless — breaking down countless times and then pulling myself back together again, only to bring it all to an end in a state of detachment I could never have imagined.

Today a classmate and I mentioned some past dreamlike things, and we both just laughed. Once the laughter passed, those things seemed to disappear without a trace.

Slowly, everything in view began to blur and sway. Cars and people dissolved into a pool of murky water, mixed with heavy, leaden splashes of color, soda cans, stained soil, and pebbles — and from within all that color, countless fine threads floated and frayed, as if about to snap. Only the circle in the sky refused to dissolve. It stood there as if asleep, shifting gently with the water’s motion, but its outline was impossibly clear and bright, its bearing impossibly pure and still.

I lay slumped on my bed, clothes draped carelessly around me. My room, stared at for over a decade, had long since fallen silent and dim, all color drained from it. The razor-cold air did nothing to lift my foggy body; the manic energy spilling from the elementary school kids outside my window never reached my room, replaced instead by their irritating shouts and noise. The sky, pale without a trace of impurity, visibly darkened by degrees, and my consciousness quietly blurred along with it.

I so badly want to just sleep — sleep through to tomorrow, sleep through to the end of midterms, sleep through to the next cycle of life. If I have a next life, I’d try my hardest to be a girl, I think?

Maybe not.

The sun regards me with cool composure, and I walk toward it.

From the transparent mesh, I walk into the nine thoroughfares dappled in every color.

From the nine thoroughfares dappled in every color, I walk toward the mysterious, flawless sapphire glass high above.

From the mysterious, flawless sapphire glass high above, I walk into the curling, rolling tendrils of mist and violet cloud.

From the curling, rolling tendrils of mist and violet cloud, I walk slowly toward the sun — warm and generous and still, standing there asleep.

My body begins to dissolve, dripping. The sun draws closer and closer; the glow of the sunset falls on me like rain, then wraps and dances around me like a sacred dragon. Five silhouettes are printed onto the surface of the sun, and they seem to be reaching out toward me — toward me, lonely and desolate, gradually dying. Behind them blazes the sun in all its terrifying radiance, its infinite light unfurling freely, wrapping us in the mottled rosy hues of dawn. With the light at their backs, I cannot make out their faces at first; I inch forward, trembling.

Then suddenly the crimson blossoms, light pouring in every direction from behind the five figures, and their faces appear, half-visible through the dazzling golden petals.

My pupils contract, and in an instant their jade-like faces come into sharp focus.