Black

“Damn it!”

I slammed my trembling fist against the elevator mirror.

“I’ve been out all day, and I still have nothing…”

The next morning, while Katy was still asleep, I went to the outskirt districts, asking around about Touji, trying to see if anyone knew anything about him. I interviewed people in more than ten districts, but there was nothing.

“What floor is my apartment on?” I checked the scribbles on my arm, retraced in a different color after a shower.

My legs shook, barely supporting my erratic, worn-out body after hours of wandering.

“Here it is…” I pressed the button for my floor, and with its familiar chime, the elevator doors closed.

Frustrated and worn out, I felt like a hostage to my own paranoia.

“What if I’ve already forgotten important details?” I compressed the frustration into my hands. “I should go over all my notes and recordings every single day. It’d eat up a few hours, but at least I’d know I hadn’t missed anything… That’s assuming I even know where everything is. What if I lost Yamaguchi-sensei’s notebook and couldn’t remember where I left it?”

Fuck…

Sweat trickled down as I quivered, the elevator’s ascent felt endless. My unfocused eyes locked on the corner of my reflection in the mirror.

The doors slid open, and I staggered toward my apartment.

As I opened the door, I was hit by a strange smell of burning and decay.

I’d never smelled anything like that…

I wondered if Katy, trying to cook something strange for lunch, had burned it, or if something had rotted in the fridge.

It was a nauseating mix of sweat and dampness.

Nothing could have prepared me for the scene awaiting me.

Flies buzzed in the window’s light, swirling between the motes of dust. My knees buckled, making me collapse onto the floorboards.

Katy’s lifeless body laid on the bed, two of her limbs on the floor.

It felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. The sharp pain in my knees vanished, overtaken by the pounding in my chest. I tried to form words, but my jaw refused to move.

Traumatized, I crawled toward her lifeless body, brushing away the flies as I inched closer. My hands moved clumsily—no less imperfectly than my heart or lungs, which faltered with each agonized beat.

“N-no… This can’t be… This can’t be happening…”

My mind outright refused to accept what my eyes were seeing.

I struggled to cry, but the depth of my sorrow rendered even that impossible.

“N-no… Please, no…” I begged God—or anyone—hoping for an impossible miracle.

Carefully, I tried to raise her body on the mattress. I couldn’t bear to look at her face, but the distant coldness of her skin and the stiffness of her arms were enough to horrify me.

“Katy…” I shook her gently, ignoring the smell and the flies. “Katy, Katy, Katy!”

Tears finally burst forth as I saw her lifeless neck slump forward when I tried to prop her up.

Helpless, all I could do was hold her in my arms, desperate to etch into my memory her weight, her shape, the softness of her hair.

Utterly consumed by panic, I flung myself at the furniture in my room, thrashing against the desk in a futile attempt to mask the unbearable agony in my chest with physical pain.

Papers scattered, screams erupted, and I gave into everything—impulses, destruction, chaos. And yet, no matter how recklessly I tore through my surroundings, her smile stayed etched in my mind.

Those perfect golden eyes—once so vibrant—whose absence from the universe drained every last shred of my will to live.

Yes, I truly wanted to die. I wanted to erase the unbearable weight of that sorrow from my soul. I wanted to obliterate the pathetic loser now staring back at me from the shattered shards of the mirror.

An infinite frustration churned within me—a bitter realization that my life was nothing but failure. That I had let everything I held dear slip through my fingers, powerless to fight back.

That I had failed my father, my boss, my mentor… and the person I loved.

That I was nothing but a stupid, wretched, vile excuse for a human being who deserved nothing less than to be beaten to death. Not even this destructive tantrum I now enacted could lessen the crushing weight of my failure.

Just like that Chopin Ballade No. I once loved, all I could do now was dance to the rhythm of chaos and despair as the whirlpool of misery swallowed me whole.