Chapter X: An Elegy For My Insanity (III)

The universe has a peculiar sense of humor.

I received my sentence in fifth period, when Sawabe-sensei caught me staring out the window instead of solving the angular velocity of a rotating disc. He was one of those teachers who relished in finding faults in students. He'd probably been an outcast himself in his younger years.

"Kagami-kun," he began with a tone he reserved for students who wasted "potential" as he saw it. "Since you find the view so captivating, perhaps you'd like to stay after hours and clean the third-floor windows? The cleaning roster is short today."

Most of Class 2-A turned in unison to watch my public condemnation.

Akise looked like he wanted to say something but thought better of it. Our eyes met briefly, and his lips parted. Then he shook his head slightly and turned back to his notes. It was the most acknowledgment he'd given me since that day.

I responded by nodding mechanically. I would have been at school until evening anyway, waiting on the rooftop for a voice that never came.

As the final bell rang, students flooded toward freedom. I remained at my desk, watching them filter out in clusters of conversation and laughter. Inoue hesitated at the door, caught between social obligation and the magnetic pull of her waiting friends.

"Ah, Kagami-kun, do you want some help?" she asked, not quite meeting my eyes.

"I've got it," I said with the standard smile, the one that asked nothing and expected less. "Go ahead."

She left, visibly relieved. Even kindness had its limits.

The classroom emptied until only echoes remained. I gathered the cleaning supplies from the utility closet—blue cloth, spray bottle, and squeegee. As I worked my way down the corridor, methodically spraying and wiping each window, the school transformed around me. The afternoon light shifted from white to gold to amber, painting the empty hallways with the same melancholy filter that colored my thoughts.

There was something fundamentally unsettling about schools after hours. All the restless energy of hundreds of teenagers suddenly vanished, leaving behind a hollow shell that seems to remember every footstep, every whispered secret, every moment of joy and cruelty that ever transpired within its walls. Chairs sat at perfect right angles, blackboards wiped to pristine emptiness, waiting for tomorrow's equations and grammar rules. A building holding its breath.

By 6PM, I'd finished the windows and moved on to sweeping the corridor. My muscles ached with the repetitive motion, but the pain was almost welcome. At least it served as some physical distraction from the weight in my chest. The sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving the hallway in that strange half-light where shadows begin to take on lives of their own.

I really haven't slept properly in days.

The lack of rest made the edges of reality soften, the line between waking and dreaming increasingly blurred. More than once, I caught myself pausing mid-sweep, staring at nothing, losing minutes at a time to the static in my head.

I needed to get a grip.

I had to keep up appearances for a little while longer.

I had to keep my head down and make it through to graduation.

Then, finally, it would be over.

This purgatory that lasted for over five years would finally be done and finished with.

Yet, even I as attempted to reassure myself with these thoughts, the earbud in my pocket had become unbearably heavy.

Why?

Why was it so heavy?

Why does my heart always race so much whenever I see her strands of scarlet?

Why does my chest tighten when I feel her eyes, azure like the sea, focus upon me even when I'm not looking?

And why...

Just why does my intuition always want to make the connection I've been trying to avoid.

That maybe, just possibly...

The voice that I've been searching for was right in front of me?

I...

No, that can't be the case.

I'm not worthy of her.

I'm nobody.

I'm nothing.

She's not like me. She can't lower herself to like me.

She can't.

She can't.

She can't be...

The sudden silence pulled me from my spiral of self-loathing. I realized I'd been standing motionless, broom suspended mid-sweep, for who knows how long. The floor beneath my feet was half-cleaned, a visible line separating the swept portion from the untouched. Like everything else in my life—incomplete, interrupted, and utterly unfinished.

The windows reflected a version of myself I barely recognized.

Hollow-eyed.

Pale.

A ghost wearing a school uniform.

Had I always looked this way? Or was it just the purgatory of the last... who knows how long days that had hollowed me out so completely?

I forced myself to resume sweeping. The rhythmic scratch of broom bristles against linoleum kept time with the ticking of the wall clock. 6:37 PM. The night guards would begin their rounds soon. I needed to finish and leave, and go home.

And then—

A sound.

So faint it might have been imagination. A whisper of melody floating through the stale school air, nearly imperceivable beneath the drone of the air conditioning.

I froze, broom clutched in my white-knuckled hands. Not real. Couldn't be real. My mind was simply playing cruel tricks after days of sleep deprivation and obsession.

But it came again, clearer this time. A thread of sound, delicate as spun glass, rising from somewhere above me.

A voice singing words I couldn't understand but emotions I felt in my marrow.

Nel silenzio dei sogni smarriti,

Risuoni in me come un tempo lontano,

Come stelle che cadono mute,

Nel mare del tuo cuore, ormai straniero.

I was already moving, feet carrying me toward the stairwell while my heart thundered against my ribs. Three flights up, taking the stairs two at a time, lungs burning, legs protesting. But the voice—the voice was getting stronger, pulling me upward like gravity in reverse.

My body refused to comply with my heart as I slipped on the last few steps and hit the floor. It was painful, and the red-hot sting of grazes on my palms and knees began to pulse.

But none of that mattered.

Because that voice was getting clearer, and I couldn't contain my excitement.

It was coming from the rooftop.

I burst onto the sixth floor, nearly colliding with the closed door at the end of the corridor. My fingers scrabbled at the doorknob, twisting, pulling, until finally it yielded and I stumbled onto the rooftop, gulping lungfuls of cold evening air that tasted like regret and longing and a thousand things left unsaid.

And there she was.

Silhouetted against the orange horizon, her back to me, scarlet hair whipping in the evening wind like living flame... was that flame.

She existed absent from any sort of physical acknowledgement. Her eyes were closed and her hands were wrapped behind her back, yet her face was tilted upwards as she sang the same song I'd heard that night. Her uniform blazer had been discarded, leaving her lone white blouse and black skirt to flutter along the breeze and her slender frame.

She sang to the horizon, to the distant sea, to something far beyond the confines of Amane Private Academy.

Conservo il ricordo di un tocco mancato,

Di parole che tremavano sulle labbra,

Come pioggia sospesa nel cielo,

Sul giardino del tuo amore mai nato.

This was the voice that had pulled me back from oblivion. This was the sound that had given me one more day, and then another, and another. This was salvation wrapped in scarlet hair and ice-blue eyes that never seemed to notice me.

Until now.

As if sensing my presence, she faltered. The song cut off mid-phrase, leaving the air vibrating with its absence. For a moment, she remained motionless, still facing away, silhouette rigid against the deepening night.

Then, slowly, deliberately, she turned.

The wind caught her hair, sending it billowing around her face like a living halo. Her eyes, when they found mine, were neither surprised nor angry.

They knew.

Patient.

As if she had been waiting for this moment.

As if she had expected me all along.

"Kagami… Shouma…"