The League of Espionage Photojournalists

Six

Hey. Hi. Heeeey.

...I don't suppose you'll buy that I died last Friday and just deigned to start existing again this morning? Anyone? No?

My knees have pressed against my face so long I can feel the grooves forming in my cheeks. My room is dark, stale air pooling, dead, over the faded mats. My mind is sluggish, fragmented. Barely functioning.

The world is empty now. Most of its color is gone. I never noticed how suffocating it is here. The smell of mold, the creaking of the decrepit building, the wheezing, monotonous rattling of the air conditioning unit, guzzling gas, sputtering filthy, lukewarm air inside. I'd forgotten how the low beams above my head looked, the day I arrived here. When I curled up on the bare floor -- Auntie would not pay for a bed for me for three months -- and stared up. That crumbling wood looked like a prison.

What is left of my camera lies on the floor in front of me. A mangled, twisted heap of shattered glass and broken wiring, demolished beyond recognition. Auntie stomped on it, again and again, while I screamed and screamed, trying to throw my body between her and the camera, until I ran out of air, and it was no more than a flattened jumble of metal. I gathered every single piece off the floor, while Auntie laughed and drank, and carried each up here. There would be no repairing this. My barrel lens rests in my lap, my body curled around it. Its lifetime partner is dead. Gone. It's alone in the world now. Just like I was left alone when Mother died. No one to comfort me, nowhere to go.

Haruto, Sakura and the magazine club's smiling faces come back to me, and my heart twists. I shove them angrily away, trying to blot the image from my memory. How could I be so stupid? They might care about Yamada, but Yamada is just Auntie's family name. Mother's family name too, but only until she found the first excuse to change it to something of her own, the family name I always had. The family name that was taken from me, and Yamada forced on me instead, when she died. They might care about Yamada, but Yamada is just a broken, dead girl. They don't know me. They will never know me. Auntie is right. There was only one person who ever knew me well enough to love me, and she's dead.

The tears start to come again. I wipe them away sharply, but they keep coming, dripping down my face, spotting my uniform already stained with my blood. The cut still throbs painfully, but I barely notice it. I don't care. I almost let myself believe that I wasn't alone in the world. I won't make that mistake again.

My attention comes to the bedsheet spread on the ground, on which my camera lies. I don't want to do the next part. But Mother taught me too well. And now, of all times, I can't forget what she told me. It's time.

Carefully, lovingly, I grab the corners of the sheet. One by one, I fold them inward, over the parts. Then I fold the new corners formed by those folds, then the corners formed by those. My hands still move in the pattern drilled into me, the burial wrapping my Mother taught me when my first pet died -- a fish I named Bubbles. We wrapped it together. I thought Bubbles' death was the worst kind of loss I could imagine. I was wrong.
As I wrap, memories flood back to me. Mother and I in the park, when she first taught me to take pictures. Sprinting along, trying to keep up with her, while she explained to me how to do motion shots. Laughing with her on the playground, as she held up the same camera to photograph me at the top of a sports light pole. It was the first time I had climbed above twenty-five feet solo. I was five.
Even after she was gone, the camera was my companion. Photographing the trees alone, remembering her. Chasing cars, trains, anything that moved quickly, practicing my motion shots. Staring at the playground from afar, remembering. Then working with the magazine club. Taking photos of people. Getting assignments, exchanging them for praise. Always working with my camera, taking shot after shot after shot until it felt like a new limb, an extension of myself. This was how I kept Mother alive. Through the instrument she gave me, to keep me company through life. I remember exactly what she told me when she gave it to me. Where she was standing. The way she bent down to my level, and smiled that signature mysterious smile I love so much.