How We Met Again

Chapter 29: Return

My thoughts were a jumbled mess, a Gordian knot of anxieties and insecurities and questions.

I hadn't ended up rejoining the group -- as recurring images of the night's developments had swarmed through my brain, running roughshod over my rational mind, I'd genuinely been given over to exhaustion, and the lure of my bed had proven too great. I was unconscious long before any of the others had returned to the room; thankfully, they'd had the good sense to leave me be.

Even Second Place-san.

Driven to sleep abnormally early, I found myself waking up alongside the sun -- the dull bluish-grey of dawn filtering in via the window opposite the door, diffusing through the thin fabric that covered its surface. Rising, I quietly moved over to the light source, slipping the curtain gently aside to gaze up at the peaks far above.

In the early morning serenity, something inside me longed for the outdoors. Maybe clarity would come if I escaped the wooden walls that surrounded me.

Quietly getting dressed, I exited the bedroom, and within minutes was breathing in the cool mountain air outside the lodge. The sun wasn't yet visible over the rising spires of stone, but its hidden presence was evident, light reflecting around the rocky summits and flowing down into the still-shaded valley below. Within minutes, it would surely show its face. Birds were chirping in the distant treeline, and I thought I could see a few flitting from branch to branch, scarce visible in the dull glow of early dawn.

There was a chill in the air.

Shivering, I pulled my coat tighter and began to walk. I didn't quite have a destination in mind; I just wanted my feet to take me somewhere. Anywhere I could think was fine.

Evidently, my feet were craving nature, and I was soon in the woods, following a very particular trail which was at this point almost well-worn. Stepping over roots, leaves crunching underfoot, traversing the small wooden bridge over the creek -- these were things to which I'd very quickly adjusted, things which I'd catalogued and filed away as being quintessential parts of the mountain experience.

To my mild surprise, I realized that I would miss them once I returned to the city.

Following the trail, I eventually emerged at the playground which Yotsuba, Itsuki and I had located on the very first day -- our orienteering goal. With the sun having now fully risen, the sandbox and see-saw and all the other structures present therein felt... hollow. Empty. In the stark light of the barely-birthed dawn, there was something forlorn about them, absent any people or noise.

I wondered if the answers I was seeking could possibly be found in a place such as this.

Unconsciously, I was drawn to the swings.

Settling on the cool plastic, I gripped the chains with each hand, and stepped backwards. I rose, and rose, until I was standing on the tips of my toes. Taking a moment to pause, I took a breath, dropped my body weight onto the seat-- and swung, just as I had the morning of our departure days before.

Pumping my legs forward and back to build momentum, the landscape ahead of me was unchanging -- forest and greenery obstructed my sight of the wider view, and the mountains beyond. Even at the peak of my swing, the world did not open up. There were no lights, and there were no people moving in houses far below. There were no infrequent cars, and there were no sounds of a city just beginning to awaken. There was silence -- but the loneliness here wasn't the right loneliness.

It wasn't my loneliness.

The comfort I'd found in the ephemeral stillness of that park on the hill wasn't here.