The Silence Between the Notes

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I rang the bell.

These visits were becoming a bad habit of mine.

Sure, I would have preferred to lay in bed all afternoon, but I found myself increasingly drawn to Sachiko Minase.

I wanted to believe it was all a waste of time. Just an excuse to visit her more, or to procrastinate from my schoolwork. But deep down, I was curious. I wanted to know if what I saw last time had actually been real. That I wasn’t just going crazy. Plus, I had a feeling Minase wouldn’t let me leave until we did whatever it was we were supposed to do with that mirror.

“You came,” she said.

“Good.”

We headed for the stairs. This time, we both knew where to go.

Minase’s room, just as I remembered it last.

The tarot cards, the incense burner shaped like a frog, the dusty magazines, and of course, the full-length mirror in the corner.

And just like last time, she rolled it over and positioned it in front of me.

“This time, don’t overthink it,” she said.

“Just let it happen.”

I nodded. There was an edge this time. My heart felt more anxious.

Whether or not something did appear, I was eager to get it over with. Eager to know the truth.

I sat down, legs crossed, in front of the mirror. She sat beside me.

“Alright. I’m starting now.”

I took a deep breath and began to focus intensely on my reflection.

There I was. My messy-haired self, shirt slightly wrinkled from how I’d slouched all morning, and those glorious bags under my sleep-deprived eyes.

I continued to focus, to let my mind go.

The room was still. Quiet, but not completely silent.

I could hear the creaking of the floor under my weight.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. It could’ve been a minute. It could’ve been ten.

And then… something began to happen again.

The edges of the glass softened. The room began to dissipate.

My reflection didn’t disappear, but it wasn’t mirroring me anymore. I moved my head slightly to the left. My reflection didn’t follow.

That’s when the air around me began to squeeze. It squeezed tighter and tighter until nothing was left of me but my own heartbeat.

I blinked.

And suddenly, I wasn’t standing anymore.

⊹ ▬ ▬ ⊹ ⊹ ▬ ▬ ▬ ⊹

I didn’t feel myself falling. I didn’t feel anything, actually.

It was like the space around me had unraveled. And I was part of that unraveling.

It wasn’t a tunnel or a vortex or anything so dramatic. Just a slow and seamless transference.
Like the way your eyes adjust to a brighter space.

I wasn’t standing in the room anymore, or staring into a mirror.

I wasn’t even me.

Who was I?

And slowly, it hit me.

I was seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.

But I didn’t actually see them. Because I was no longer in my own body anymore.

I didn’t know who it was, or that they were real.

But it felt real.

I was a spectator. And their eyes were my window into their world.

I was walking. My feet moved without my command. My hands, smaller than they should’ve been, curled unconsciously at my sides. My heartbeat wasn’t where I remembered it being in my chest. And everything I saw felt… taller. Or maybe I was shorter.

There was a fog that cast itself onto the corners of the space.
It didn’t feel like a dream, but it didn’t feel like being awake either.
Just borrowed. Like I’d accidentally slipped into someone else’s shoes.

I was in a living room, not much unlike my own.

I could see a window. It was snowing outside.
Thick, white snowflakes trickled down towards the ground that I could not see.

I turned my head, but it didn’t feel like my neck to turn it with.

And there, in the reflection of a tall wooden cabinet.
I caught a glimpse of a girl.

A young girl.
Perhaps no older than six or seven.

But it was brief, and I caught no more than that.

I didn’t know her, but still, something in my gut stirred like I should’ve.

A child’s voice called from another room.
Wait, no, this one.

Mine? No, not mine.
Her voice.

I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. But I didn’t feel scared. Not really.
I was inside someone else’s memory.

And somehow… that memory had let me in.

Then another voice.

Hers was older. It had a gentle touch to it. Warmer, fuller.

“Time to wash up,”  it said.
Bare feet padded softly across a polished wooden floor.
A hallway opened into a kitchen, or rather it just appeared.

As if it had manifested into existence within this space.

A woman approached.

Even though I didn’t recognize her, I could feel it.
That strange certainty memories come with.

The girl's mother.

She had her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail and flour dusted on her apron.
She glanced down at me with a warm smile.

“You’ve been painting again,”  she said. “It’s all over your hands.”

I looked down at my hands.
Blue and red streaks of paint smeared across small fingers.

The woman let out a gentle chuckle. “I think the cat's purple now.”

She reached out to ruffle my hair. Her laugh was so soft, but it filled the room like music.

It felt like I was trespassing on something sacred, something no one was meant to see.

I didn’t know this girl. I didn’t know this woman. But I felt everything she did.

Every breath she took.
Every flicker of joy.
Every thread of warmth that held her life together in this single, impossibly perfect moment.

But… it didn’t last.

With another blink, the space around me changed once more.

Same apartment, only one less light bulb.
Same table, only two plates.

This time, I could sense that the girl had gotten older. Perhaps a year or two.

She sat quietly, legs kneeling on the ground.

The other seat was empty.

There was an overwhelming stillness that bled into everything around her.

A man.

Her father, I think.
He sat across from her.
He was hunched over a cold meal.

Neither spoke.
Neither looked up.

There was a single framed photo at the end of the table.

It was the woman.

Her face was still smiling. But now she who had brought so much happiness to the young girl was only visible in memory.

My vision fogged.

It was then I realized.

The girl’s eyes were clouded with tears.

And just like that, time sped up again.

Boxes.
Markers.
Cardboard piled high.
Moving trucks with their backs open like mouths waiting to swallow everything she ever knew.

Schools came and went.

One after another.

Chalkboards,
uniforms,
class introductions,
class resignations,
new friends,
old friends.

They reset like a clock on a timer.
Always starting over. Always behind.

Each scene passed faster than the last, and everything seemed to change along with it.

The only thing that didn’t change was her.
Quiet. Observing. Drifting through it all without a single objection.

Perhaps she couldn’t. Perhaps she didn’t want to. It wasn’t clear.
Not to me, nor to her.

Then the snow came again.

Thick, soft, and constant.
They collected on the ground, forming glittering mounds everywhere.

The train pulled into a station with a faded green sign.
On it, it read:

Sapporo

The apartment was smaller this time. The boxes stayed unpacked for longer.
Her father left early and came back late.
A dinner tray covered in plastic wrap waited in the fridge every night.

But the girl managed. She learned to do it alone.

And then...

A cramped secondhand music store.
Taped up flyers in the windows.
Her breath fogged the glass as she stared in.

She could have left.
She could have gone home.
She could have simply walked past without noticing it. 
But she didn’t.

Instead, she stepped inside.

“Tinnng!”

The bell chimed as she did.

Her fingers ran along the strings of a secondhand acoustic. It looked too big for her.

The man at the counter didn’t talk much. Just nodded and said, “You like it? Try it out.”

When she strummed that first chord.
That choppy, awkward, too-much-pressure chord, I felt it too.
My fingers danced with hers.
It resonated through her ribs like a heartbeat.

I felt the joy it brought her.

She smiled.
And I smiled too.

Then…

There it was again.

The room.
That same one I had seen before.

Walls plastered with hand-drawn idols.
A few clippings from music magazines.

She practiced that guitar every night.
Over and over again.
Until her fingertips were red and raw and callused.

She didn’t complain. Not once.

High school came.

A sign-up sheet posted on the hallway bulletin.
Names scribbled in messy handwriting.

Every time she passed it, she considered writing down her name too.
One day, she did just that.
She hesitated for a moment.
Then added her own.

What was the name?
I didn’t quite catch it.
Amane—something…

But it didn’t matter, because time moved on again.

The first time she entered that room, chaos greeted her.
A girl with short, messy hair thumped a bass like it owed her money.
Another girl tested a mic by screaming into it.
Yet another was playing a sweet melody on a keyboard.

She stood there, clutching her guitar case.
She was scared.

But they noticed her.
Welcomed her.
One even threw an arm around her like they’d known each other for years.

She didn’t say much that first day.
But she stayed.

Again.
And again.
And again.

One day, the messy-haired girl pulled her out into the hall.

“We’re starting our own band!”  she said, with a grin across her face.

The girl wasn’t given a choice.
But she seemed happy.

She practiced and practiced.
Every moment that she could.

But it wasn’t a chore for her.
It was passion.

Yet the girl still felt uncertain. Uncertain of everything. Uncertain of where she belonged.

That feeling, it never went away.

Then their first performance came.

A school festival.
Bad lighting.
One amp short.
Someone tripped over a cable two minutes before they went on.

But when she stepped onto that stage…

The world melted beneath her feet.

Her breath charged.
Her chest tightened.
Her heart burst open.

Her voice trembled on that first verse, but by the chorus, she was shouting into the mic with something she didn’t even know she had in her.

In that moment.
For five, short minutes…
She felt alive.

Then…

Silence.

She was alone again.

Soft flicker of candles.
A gray sky.
A headstone.
Many.

A photo stood on a small altar at its base.
There was love in that picture, but it was frozen in time.
A single flower lay before it, its stem bent like it had been placed down in a rush.

The girl knelt before the altar, her hands pressed together, her head bowed low. She was silent. Afraid that the slightest movement might disturb the sacred space around her.

A tear slid down her cheek.

I felt it.

Her lips trembled.

The voice that came out was barely above a whisper, soaked in tears:

"Mama... I’m trying. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.”

The words were swallowed by the silence.

She knelt there for a moment longer.
Then, slowly, stood up.

And then…

There I sensed something move inside her.
Inside me.

No longer was I an observer.
No longer a stowaway hiding behind her eyes.

But me.

Though, not quite.

I could feel her heartbeat.
My breath moved through her lungs.
My hands flexed at my sides.
Her reddish hair dangled above my vision.

But I was in control now.

I took a step forward.

Then another.

Then another…

I wasn’t sure where we were going.

Until I saw her.

An old woman.

She stood on a gravel path a few yards away.

Her stature was small, yet a thousand years of knowledge seemed to emanate from her being. Her kimono was pale and worn in some places.
Her hair was silver, in a tight bun behind her head.

Then she said something.

To the girl? No.
This time, it was meant for me.

“You’ve stepped too far,” she said, her voice aged and worn like the robes she wore.
“But perhaps… that’s the only path left.”

I stared at her.

The words left my mouth before I could stop them.

“Who is she?” I asked.
“What am I seeing?”

The old woman only closed her eyes and smiled.

“Because you are the one she chose.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“That is a question I am unable to answer.”
Her voice became firmer, but not unkind.
“A question only you know.”

“I—I don’t understand…” I replied.

I took a step closer.

The candle on the altar flickered again.

The old woman turned around and began walking away.
The gravel made sounds beneath her feet.

“She’s not a ghost,”  she continued.
“But if you hesitate too long… she may become one.”

Then suddenly, I couldn’t move anymore.
I just stood there, unable to take another step.
I wasn’t in control anymore.

The old woman grew more and more distant.
More and more out of my reach.

I tried to call out, but nothing came.

My breath caught in my throat.

The headstones began to evaporate, one by one. 

The candlelight by the altar flickered one last time.

And then I was back in the messy room again.
Staring into a cheap department store mirror.
My own reflection, staring back at me.

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