OUTCAST ── .✦ satosugu

04 WHISPERS BETWEEN WORLDS

SATORU'S POV:

I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone's life when their character is fixed forever. For me, it was that first fall I spent at Jujutsu High. So many things remain with me from that term even now; those preferences in clothes and games and even food. 

It's easy for me, even now, to remember their daily routines, which subsequently became my own. It feels like it's been a lifetime, but stupidly enough, it's barely been a year.

The first weeks after Suguru left I found myself locked in a numb hole. During this time, it seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if waiting for trains that never came.

And, like one of those ghosts who are said to linger around depots late at night, asking passersby for the timetable of the Midnight Express that derailed twenty years before, I wandered from light to light until that dreaded hour when all the doors closed and, stepping from the world of warmth and people and conversation over-heard, I felt the old familiar cold twist through my bones again and then it was all forgotten, the warmth, the lights; I had never been warm in my life, ever.

I vastly remember the last look on his face, once luminous which now casted shadow and blended with the others through the crowd, although I've started to forget. 

Grieving is silly. I couldn't cry for days after he left, but now I hid in the kitchen having a sudden urge to sob because Shoko made tonkatsu, but it will never ever taste better than his version.

How come I couldn't realize? I knew - from the constant, hummingbird-flutter of his eyelids and the way his hand was curled into a fist so tight that I could see the ocean-green threads of his veins jumping under the back of his hand - that he was in pain. An animalic, slow-burning mental deteriorating pain.

I knew from how rigid Suguru was holding his legs, which were resting atop a box of books, that the pain was severe, and knew too that there was nothing I could do for him. If I said, "Suguru, let me get you some aspirin," he would say, "I'm fine, Satoru, don't need anything," and if I said "Suguru, why don't you lie down," he would say, "Satoru. I'm fine, Stop worrying."

So finally, I did what we had all learned over the weeks to do when Suguru's mind was hurting him, which was to make some excuse, get up, and leave the room.

He told me not to worry so that's what I did, trusting he found in me a good enough friend, or even an alibi, to tell me the truth. 

I couldn't reach him; state of mind which made me realize the hardest thing to do was grieve over someone who was still alive.

On the 48th day since he'd left I woke up for a pale sun ray had just hit the windows of my bedroom and outside was covered in a thin layer of pearly snow. My vision was blurry and the image before my eyes stirred like a coffee.

I noticed a withered envelope at the edge of my windowsill; yellow, anonymous. A corner of the letter inside crumbled in my hand. The ink was smudged and cheap, but the writing felt familiar.

...............................................................................

28.01.2007

Dearest OBEDF7 

I am currently staying in a horrible place, and as I am writing I feel the walls ready to fall over me, but, I write to you in hope for a little break and to see how you are doing. How are you? What do you do these days? How is Shoko feeling? And Nanami? I really wish I could see you. But as soon as I finish this letter I am off to my new place of work, that I fear you would not like to hear about from what I know you, very well in fact.