Faded

13. Your heart | あなたの心

Izumi:

The light was scarce. I had forgotten what the sunset and sunrise looked like, how the colors of the sky on the horizon would paint themselves, and the noise of the city and life only echoed in my thoughts. Green trees, twilight, dampness, chill, dead silence. I was afraid to get used to it. It was the opposite for you. You felt better in the forest than in the city. You didn't feel the horror that engulfed me every night. You didn't perceive this forest as a place where thousands of people die each year. For you, it was like a harbor, an oasis amidst a noisy and bustling world, while for me, it felt like I was living in the depths of a huge cemetery.

I didn't talk to you, didn't exchange a word. Back then, I didn't realize that I was only making things worse for myself. I suffered from nightmares, and the situation worsened when, while conscious, it began to seem to me that I was seeing the ghosts of suicides, I flinched even at the slightest breeze and the slightest noise. I was slowly going insane. I couldn't distinguish dreams from reality anymore. I felt lonely in all worlds.

I still remember that night when I woke up from another nightmare, and you were sitting next to me, looking at me. - What did you dream about? - This question sounded so simple, as if I had just stayed overnight at your apartment. I don't know why, but I was glad to hear your voice, to feel your attention on me. I constantly felt like I was completely alone here. - These dead people, they haunt me every night, - I replied.

- I think you need to think about it less. There is no one here. Neither the dead nor the living. No one but you and me. I had nothing to say to you in response. I just sat and watched the flame of the candle standing on the floor. - Everything here seems dead, lifeless. I'm getting worse and worse, - I spoke again. - Here is life, on the contrary, in its purest form. And dead is only in your mind.

I didn't want to argue with you. I was too exhausted, tired, so I just lay back down and turned to the wall, consumed by anger that you couldn't hear me and understand, that I could no longer see those horrific dreams, that I couldn't be alone with my hallucinations. After all, I just wanted to be free.

But a moment later, you lay down next to me and embraced me, took my hand and placed it on your heart. For the first time in a long time of this isolation, I felt warmth and life. Like before, when we fell asleep together in that apartment in the center of Tokyo. It seemed to me that I wasn't far from the city, but in my own room. What can I say, at that moment it seemed to me that the maniac who locked me in this place had disappeared, that you, Hideo, whom I met in the park during the rain, had returned to me. I missed you so much.

Strangely, but after that night, I stopped having dreams altogether.