Chapter 26:

Gold

The Palette on My Canvas

“What are you doing?” the voice asks inside my head, “don’t tell me you’re letting this liar get to you again.”

I looked over to Emuru who was now sitting on the side of the railing, her gaze long and distant as she stared at the sunset.

A liar? Right, she’s a liar, but… right now she doesn’t feel like one.

Right now, everything she told me felt like the truth.

“That’s just what she wants you to believe.”

No, that’s just what I want to believe.

The voice inside seemed to pause for a moment.

“So you want to continue living in your little fantasies again? You’re just going to believe that everything’s going to be alright after all you’ve done?!”

I stared back at the horizon.

Yes… that’s what I’ll believe… because even if Emuru is lying to me, I know that the sky isn’t. Unless of course, you mean to tell me that these colors that I’m seeing aren’t real as well?

Blob-me remains silent.

The sunlight hits my face as I look at the streaks of yellow and orange underneath all the heavy shades of purples and blues.

Happiness… I thought, I will be happy again one day.

“...You don’t deserve it.”

What?

“...Even if you do find happiness one day, you won’t deserve it! You don’t deserve it you hear me?! You’re a murderer! You let Itsumi die a horrible death!”

I froze, the ringing starting up in my ears again.

I don’t deserve it? Yeah that’s right… I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve the happiness at the end of the horizon.

“Exactly! Did you forget what you came here to do?! You came to atone for your crimes of killing Itsumi! Your crimes of wasting your loving grandpa’s money on you! You’re a despicable person! A murderer! And there’s only one way to atone for that!”

I covered my ears, trying to get the noises in my head to stop.

“Oh yeah, that’s right! You also came here because you wanted me to shut up! You wanted these voices in your head to stop! The constant ringing in your ears to end! Well let me tell you something Mashiro; I will never shut up! The ringing will never stop! Not until you’ve killed yourself! It’s the only way to truly make everything disappear!”

Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!

“Then jump. The railing is right over there. It’ll only take five seconds if you make a run for it.”

I looked at the railing, the glow of the sunlight making it look ever so enticing, but just as I was about to stand up, I felt a pair of arms wrap around me.

“Geez, that voice inside you must be very annoying huh?” Emuru asks.

“What?”

“Y’know, I had a little voice like that inside of me too,” she continued, “not anymore though. Do you want to know why?”

I didn’t answer.

“It’s because I told it that if it wanted us to die so badly, then it could go kill itself first. I’ll totally follow it right after.”

“You little—”

I laughed—a notion that seemed to catch everyone off guard, including myself.

It was something I hadn’t done in a long time.

The last time I laughed was so long ago that even with all my memories restored, I still couldn’t recall it properly. But here I was, laughing—laughing because of Emuru.

“I want to tell that to her as well,” I finally said.

We both silently stared back at the horizon, her arms still firm around me in case I tried anything else, but for now I was content.

“You know, there was one more thing I forgot to mention to you,” Emuru said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The place I was going to earlier today.”

I looked at her.

“Where did you go?”

“...I went to visit Ueda.”

I froze.

Did she know?

“Why?” I asked.

“Because… because I wanted to know more about you,” she said, “we had been together for so long, but there’s still so many more things I didn’t know. You already heard about my past, so I wanted to know more about yours. So… using your name, I looked up information about you online, and I found a particular news article about a tragic incident that happened back in Ueda.”

“...And…?”

“And… I didn’t want to believe it, but I also didn’t want to ask you about it either in case it brought back bad memories. Instead, I decided to go there myself to see if it was true, and… and I came to find out that none of it was actually your fault…! I went by the factory to visit Mr. Ichikawa, the man in the article, and he told me that he never once meant to pin the blame on you, but rather, he blamed himself for his poor oversight in maintaining the factory… He said that he said some really mean things to you before you left, and blamed himself every day when he noticed that you hadn’t returned back in three months.”

She rummages for something in her pocket before pulling out a sealed letter.

“He also wanted me to give you this.”

I stared at the letter, my breath shaky as I tried to reach out for it, but the pain searing from underneath my arms caused me to flinch back.

“Oh, right, let me open it for you.”

She pries it open and holds the letter away from her and in front of me to read privately.

“Dear, Mashiro Fujimori,” it read, “Your friend Emuru stopped by to visit the factory today, and for the first time in a long time, my eyes lit up. The fact that she was here implied that you were alive and well, and seeing as she’s from Tokyo, I assumed you’ve headed there to pursue your dreams. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. The family here is sorry too. We said some horrible things to you that day, because we were hurt, but never realized that we were directing our pain towards the one person who was hurt the most out of all of us. When we finally came to our senses, we tried finding you to apologize, but after searching the whole town, we had assumed the worst happened, especially after you didn’t return in 3 months. We were so relieved when your friend stopped by, and even started planning a surprise party in case you ever wanted to return. It’s okay if you don’t though. We perfectly understand why, but we just wanted to let you know that you always have a place in Ueda to return to if you feel like it. If you ever want a formal apology from any specific person here, feel free to barge in and rightfully demand it. We’ll be eager to give you one. Until then, I hope you enjoy your stay in Tokyo and that you’ve gotten into the art school that you’ve always wanted to go to. Sincerely, Daiji Ichikawa.”

“No. No, no, no, no! This letter isn’t real! There’s no way they’ve forgiven us. It’s our fault! It’s all our fault! We killed her! This letter wasn’t written by Mr. Ichikawa! It’s another trick created by Emuru to get us to stay! Don’t listen to it!”

However, as I looked to the bottom of the letter, next to Mr. Ichikawa’s signature were the signatures of every coworker I had—each of them stylized in their own unique way—a way that Emuru couldn’t have replicated alone.

My eyes watered up upon seeing each of their names scrawled onto it.

It seems the only person who hasn’t forgiven us is you, I silently told blob-me, wiping the tears from my eyes, Emuru was never the kind of liar that you made her out to be.

For a moment, blob-me doesn’t say anything, but eventually, it asks, “then… can I talk to her? …Please? If you let me, then I’ll finally shut up.”

I doubted her at first, but was eager at any opportunity to get her to stop talking.

Go for it.

“Emuru, can I ask you something?” I said.

She pulls the letter away, glancing back and forth between it and me.

“What? Did the letter say something bad about me? What did they say?”

“No, no, it’s not that.”

“...Then what is it?”

“When you said that you loved me yesterday, did you really mean it?”

She paused.

“Of course I did, you idiot.”

“But… how can I be sure? How do I know that you’re not lying to me?”