The Boy With The Blank Stare: Future

Chapter Nineteen: Lullaby

Ouma's POV:

When I was a child, I didn't really know what disabilities were. I remember a neighbor once didn't have an arm, but I didn't question it. I thought it was cool, like an anime character. My mother used to tell me how I wasn't allowed to stare, at anyone who might seem strange to me. Didn't stop me from messing with Kiibo though, but Aunt Mayumi was always quick to make me stop. They weren't present back then though, just a curious thing to the eyes of a six-year-old.

And then I met Chiasa.

While we were friends for a good two years before she went deaf, it's hard to admit I barely remember what her voice used to sound like anymore. I've forgotten more of those older memories, despite how hard I tried to hold them in, but I do remember what happened as her hearing continued to degrade. How sometimes she couldn't hear a joke I said, or how she couldn't answer questions in class because she couldn't even hear her name being called, how people stared at her, and some of the other classes used to play cruel jokes on her by taking advantage of how she couldn't hear them coming.

I didn't understand at first, why it was such a big deal to everyone if someone couldn't walk like everyone else, or if someone couldn't talk, or someone couldn't hear things. It just didn't matter to me, so when Chiasa went deaf, I just learned sign language with her. It wasn't something big until I missed some things. Her voice, or how some of my jokes were lost in translation. But it didn't change things as much as everyone built them up to be.

Chiasa was still Chi. She was still that positive person, my partner in crime, and mischievous soul with the worst cooking in history. Maybe I was naive to how things were in her eyes.

When I woke up, I realized how drastic it probably was for some. Chiasa got a warning, but for others, life didn't offer those warnings. When I thought about blindness as a child I imagined a sea of neverending darkness, a pitch-black curtain blocking the world from view.

But in reality...when I finally woke up...I didn't even know if I had opened my eyes.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing, I remember how strange it was those months where I could barely register the voices around me as people, where all my dreams were filled with screams and scarlet only to wake up to the blank void again.

But...slowly there was a way to navigate the void. Even in the void, where nothing could be seen, there were shadows and light, they became my new guide. It was a new way to see the world, down to the barest necessity.

By the second year, I just laughed bitterly every night at how painfully ironic it was. I must've begged God would answer those prayers that day to let me die faster, so I wouldn't have to see the world without DICE.

They granted my wish halfway.

Facial expressions, a way to tell if someone is genuine or not, became impossible for me. Now I needed to hear them speak, needed at least a single word to tell the difference between lies and truth. Soon I resorted to picking out the tiny ways of how their position changed with the shadows, it felt more like guessing work.  People say lying is down to the facial expressions and the eyes, but really even a confident voice...it can give way to the truth.

At least for me. 

Eventually, it became a new normal...the initial fear died.

I didn't long for the sight I didn't deserve...until...he came.

A face I would never see, hair I would never know the color of, a soft voice only to identify him at first. If I could see him just once..just once instead of my last sighted memory being of dead vows and promises, and instead his face...I would accept losing my hearing, my touch, my smell if I could just savor that one glimpse and hold it close.