An Interesting Story

“Come on, come on, I think you’re getting a bit carried away…” I said, trying to shrug her hand off my shoulder, which only made her grip tighten.

“When did all this start…? How did I not notice it before…?” She wasn’t talking to me; they were questions to herself, spoken aloud between nervous chuckles.

“Don’t take it so seriously, I was just kidding, calm down, okay?” Completely futile, but I was still trying to defuse the situation.

“Kidding… huh?”She kept up that nervous laughter, her head tilted toward the ground as she clutched her chest. I knew that feeling just by watching her.

Remember when I said two soldiers step on a mine at the same time?
In this particular case, let’s say in the movie, both soldiers lift their feet at the same moment.

“Why don’t you just die? Right here, right now.”

“First, I need a job.”

“Cut the nonsense. When did things change? I shouldn’t have done this… meddled like this…”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing. Wasn’t your goal to keep me alive? I’d say you’re doing a pretty good job.” I replied, still trying to pry her hand off my shoulder, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t budge it an inch. It felt like her fingers were about to dig into me.

“Do you want to die?”

“Here we go again…”

“I’m only going to ask one more time. Do you want to die?” Her hand moved from my shoulder to the collar of my shirt, yanking me roughly toward her.

“I… I don’t… I don’t know, honestly…” I said, trying to focus my gaze on anything but her, anything to dodge this situation. “But that’s a good thing, right? If… if I stay alive, you get to quit, that was the deal from the start. You should at least cheer up a bit.”

“Yeah… sure, you’re right.” She let go of me as quickly as she’d grabbed me, stepping back a few paces and running a hand through her hair. Her breathing was heavy, her voice shifting in volume constantly. “I’ll cheer up, let’s keep playing like all this is normal. Fake normalcy, like you always say.” She said it like a jab.

“That’s not what I meant… I don’t know what I want…”

“Is it just about you?”

“No, listen, just calm down and—”

“Shut up,” she said, cutting off my words before they could even try to leave my mouth. “You don’t want to die, but you don’t want to live either. You just want to keep this going, whatever this is, and I let myself get dragged into it without even realizing.”

What could I say to that? Nothing.
She was right.
I got it.
It wasn’t something I’d planned; it just happened.

“You were supposed to live for yourself, that’s how it works…”

Yeah, the talks, the back-and-forth, her company—maybe that’s what made me set a deadline instead of ending it all.
Maybe my overthinking was my subconscious betraying me. Maybe I didn’t want to die anymore.Was that a bad thing?
No.
It’s just that I didn’t want to live either; I wanted to keep up that fake normalcy I had with her.

She turned her back to me and started taking small steps.
Normally, I’d think she just wasn’t in the mood to stick around today, but there was something else, something I couldn’t quite grasp.

“Are you trying to carry that guilt as long as you can?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know your name because you’re still alive, simple as that, right? I only have fragments. Everything comes together when the person dies.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t know your name, but hey, I know a pretty interesting story…”She stopped her steps right in front of the tree, but she didn’t turn to face me, barely glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.“A boy and a girl go out to play after school…”

“Cliché.”

“Cliché?” she asked, laughing. “Let me go on: a boy and a girl go out to play after school. It was really hot that day, so after swiping some ice cream from their grandma’s shop, they decide to go play by the river…”

“This is—”

“Oh! Surprise! The river was deeper than they thought… the girl was drowning… she’d come up every now and then, struggling to breathe… her lungs filled with water while the boy watched, terrified…”

I wanted her to shut up. It was instinctive. I took a step toward her but stopped myself. She was just pointing at me with her finger.

“Poor kid, what a gruesome scene… poor kid, poor coward… who chose to run instead of helping her…”

“…”

“Hey, I’ve got a question. What ice cream did you pick that day?”

Why now?
How did we end up here?
That tone, those words—it wasn’t her. Or maybe this was who she really was?

I wanted to argue, say something, but my mind was blank.No. I’m lying. My mind was trapped in that moment she was describing.
How much time had passed since that day?
I stammered instead of speaking.

“Oh? What’s wrong? No sharp comeback, no sarcastic joke? Cat got your tongue?”She walked back to my side, each step a mockery, maybe a challenge.

There’s probably a line for everything, and if there was one here, we’d definitely crossed it.
She didn’t even glance at me, just bumped my shoulder with hers and kept walking. I heard her footsteps fade and then stop.

“The other day, you said something pretty weird. You said you’d been alone.”

“Y-yeah… that’s… that’s what I said…” I mumbled, struggling to respond.

“I want to correct you. You weren’t alone. You are alone.”

I wanted to reply, searched for a thousand words in my head to keep those footsteps from walking away, but I couldn’t say anything.

She was right.
I turned to look.
Yes.
I was alone.

The twisted tree’s branches pointed toward the ground around it, and looking at it, I couldn’t help but feel that, though alive, I’d been buried for a long time.