Every week, Fuyune Hisoki forgets. Who she is, those she interacts with. Like a never-ending cycle, she loses and loses and loses to the amnesia that's plagued her since childhood. Despite being an existence invisible to everyone, one winter morning...
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𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝟎𝟎: 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝
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𝐏𝐔𝐑𝐄, 𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐍𝐎𝐖 coating bare branches. Grey clouds encompassing monotonous skies. Skin, moist from the teardrops streaming down my cheeks.
When I open my swollen eyelids, I stand alone, a maroon, woollen scarf slung beyond my neck and shoulders, insulating me against the frigid weather.
My senses feed me the blunt information and, within my vacant mind, it's invaluable.
I suppose rousing this morning to the snarls of a brutish woman addressing herself as my mother, and a bedraggled diary denoting bare bone information about myself, amounted to little in filling the gaps in my memory. 'Gaps' may be inappropriate, as that assumes I had memories to build bridges off of in the first place.
Try as I might, I can't remember the past.
I don't want to either.
There's nothing I desire.
Nothing I loathe either.
Although the term 'empty' can describe the walking carcass I've become, the term isn't wholly correct.
I'm alive.
Aware of copious information.
Information, of course, that excludes me.
"Are you perhaps searching for something?"
I blink fluidly.
Least to my knowledge, I've arrived at Yubiwa Academy Middle School. A teenage boy—rather, I should say girl as, at first glance, anyone can make the mistake—enters my vicinity. Her glasses conceal lilac irises, currently glimmering like stars in a jet black sky. She wears her violet hair short, save for the right side which slopes with her head tilt. A dark green blazer, white dress shirt and tie, a pair of striped pants—the Yubiwa Academy male uniform suits her thin frame, her creamy skin tone, without a realm of doubt.
She's beautiful.
"You've been staring off into space for quite some time. . ." Her tender tone resounds, enveloping me like a sunbeam. She emits a piercing cry. "Ah! Are you crying?"
The sensation is lost to the numbing cold nipping my skin. My eyelashes brim with teardrops. "I. . . am?"
"How out of it do you have to be not to notice? Your face is soaking!"
"Oi, Mayumi." The gruff call originates from a boy with long red hair that covers his left eye. "If she wants to shed tears, let her. It isn't our place to butt in."
Another boy, one of short stature and curly cadmium coloured hair, bends forward. A cute face and shapely legs; modified shorts in the midst of this harsh season, and a pair of bright yellow boots with black soles and laces. His smile is mischievous to a degree. "Come on, you two," he drawls, dipping a brow. "Look again. Clearly, it's the melted snow."
"The snow, is it?" hums the tallest boy of soft grey eyes and winding silver hair tied in a ponytail. His impeccable posture, mellow voice, and primly worn uniform—not a wrinkle in sight—exude his upper-status. "That is an intriguing notion, but far from what I'd call sensible. You're likely belittling her troubles with those choice of words, Hyota."
Silently observing from the sidelines, is a boy whose cobalt blue eyes reflect the calm of his mind. His attire is peculiar. Instead of the typical blazer, he dons a lab coat of considerable length where the sleeves themselves conceal his hands. Then there's the star-patterned tie knotted in a bow around his neck.
"I was wondering why you looked familiar," the girl—Mayumi—says in eureka. "We're in the same class."
We are?
She bites a bitter laugh. "I suppose expecting you to remember me is quite presumptuous. Up until recently, I hardly paid attention to my classmates' names either. But, you are Fuyune Hisoki, aren't you?"
"I don't remember."
My soft-spoken declaration stuns the group. I admire the plummeting snowflakes.
"That name was written in my diary," I say, watching the snow melt upon my palm, dripping off the side of it and to the ground. "Everything written in there is genuine. If it says 'Fuyune Hisoki' is my name—that I'm a student at Yubiwa Academy Middle School Year 2, Class B—then I'll believe it. If it takes exactly six hundred and five steps to get to this building, that I sit in the desk furthest from the window, that my father is a dirty cop who receives bribes... I have no choice but to regard it as true."
"Oi, oi, oi. You can't be serious." The redhead extends a finger, slack-jawed. "It was a yes or no question. What do you mean you 'don't remember'? You recall things eerily well if you ask me."
'Hyota' links his arms behind his head, flashing his shining legs. "Is this related to what you're looking for?"
What I'm looking for?
"Then, myself."
The silver-haired boy lowers an eyebrow, deliberating the ambiguity of my statement. "You're searching for. . . yourself? Are you perhaps implying you can't recall who you are?"
"Amnesia?" the black-haired boy says, his faint voice tickling like a feather.
The term is rather adequate.
Because it's always abrupt, and without reason, that I lose all memories of myself. Repeatedly, and without wane, at the first sign of sunlight every Monday, I revert to being a blank slate.
Hollow as the bare snow below.
"Truly beautiful! Your beauty is dazzling, Fuyune Hisoki!" Sky blue hair that sticks out in all directions. Eyes that light the gloomy sky itself. Somehow, someway, a boy of slim height and build enters my vicinity, beaming astoundingly wide. "How would you like to leave your case up to several Pretty Boy Detectives?"
