Chapter 15: Unlearning the Silence

The walls came back slowly. they were not the angle and impossible stairs of old days. Rather they resembled memories that were attempting to wear their human bodies. First was the floor, linoleum with a slight yellow smile mark. Then there was a window--drawn and roughly broken--pilling a gray square of light upon the floor. It was a classroom.

Haruto blinked. No, this was his classroom, though in another era. It was middle school. The wallpaper was peeled. On the bulletin board the dimmed out.

“You can do it!” sign was still on, since Ms. Asano had sprained her ankle and the replacement had forgotten to take it away. The room was empty.

Then footsteps. Not his. Small, quick. Haruto turned. And there she was.

The girl. She was victimized, shy, ghost thin. She came up as though she were challenging someone to hit her. She administered a survey of the seats, inspecting them against pitfalls, traps, half-snatched bags, and so forth.

She sat at her desk in that fourth row, last seat, and said no more.

The room didn't notice her. Haruto did.

Yet he was not in the room.

The actual Haruto was standing outside, in the shadow of the doorway.

Or, a recollection of him.

He was middle school Haruto, crouched beneath his hoodie, with half concealed eyes in his hair.

He watched.

He didn’t go in.

Not till after three boys were rushing by laughing too much.

One threw a ball that brushed her bag pack.

Another muttered something.

She flinched, head lowered.

The younger Haruto scorned.

He did nothing. He said nothing.

The girl didn’t cry. She just stayed still.

"Do you remember this?" Hina asked quietly. Haruto turned. She was standing beside him flickering at the edges--as her memory could not remain where it was not hers.

Her voice was clear, grounded. Here is one of these echoes, she began to think.

"Not hers. Not yours. It’s shared. Passed between them trauma.”

Haruto nodded. His throat tightened. "I hated this moment," he said. I said to myself, “if I kept out of it she would see no more. It was better not to help make it any worse.”

"But it did make it worse." He nodded again.

The scene repeated.

Same entrance.

Same flinch.

Same silence.

Haruto took a step this time and the entire room came to a halt.

The instant was shattered into crystal fragments suspended in the air. Walls spread outward. The ground became a circle of chairs. Haruto was in the center. The empty desk of the girl lay in front.

In the back, the younger Haruto was sitting silently.

Again.

“You saw it already,” said Haruto. He stared. "This isn’t your echo anymore.”

I remarked that we had stopped this.

The boy didn’t look up. "You apologized," Haruto said.

"You gave me the bell."

The lights above flickered. “The boy said she never got an apology. You reconciled with yourself, but what about with her?” The scene pulsed.

Suddenly — the girl appeared again.

But not the same.

She was glitching, faintly. Like she was dimming.

“She's fading,” Hina said with her eyes opening wide. "Why is she—?" The boy replied, “No she was not anchored.”

"But she was," Haruto said. "I anchored her. I did everything right."

I took the one that suited your guilt, said the boy. "Not the real one."

He recalled: he had anchored her there, in an abstracted manner, in raising. But the girl who is really the echo, the original memory, had never heard his apology. Had never received the echo.

The boy said, “You think it did wound you to remember her. But silence must sometimes be repaired with a fearful noise.”

And the girl flickered more.

"No," Haruto breathed. He ran toward her. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even seem to see him.

“Hina—help me,” he said.

Hina blinked. “What?”

“This is an unanchored memory. It’s fraying. If we lose it now, she’s gone. Not just forgotten. Unmade.”

“Can never--you can never”, Hina tossed her head. “I do not know what to do anymore…”

“Use my memory,” Haruto said. “Stabilize it through me.”

Hina looked at him as if he had gone mad.

“You said you were forgetting things—”

“I’ll give it up if I have to.”

He faced her—eyes clear.

“I will kill more of myself to get her remembered right.”

Hina even attempted to cry.

Instead, she stepped forward. She touched his head with one scared hand, and the other resting over the heart of the girl.

Then she shut her eyes.

The entire world narrowed like a drawstring--like a piece of cloth prior to being cut.

Haruto intervened between the girl and himself. She looked up this time, just barely. But she saw him.

“I was afraid,” he said, voice shaking.“Not of the bullies. Of what helping would make me become.”

She didn’t answer.

I reasoned as an outsider that it could not be my fault.

Nothing happened.

Then he kneeling looked right in her face.

But you cannot desire better--he thought to himself. You had to have something to lean on.

He reached out.

Slowly.

She didn’t pull away.

“I remember you now,” he said. “And I’m sorry. For all of it.”

The world shook.

The girl blinked—once, twice.

Then she nodded.

And smiled.

The glitching stopped.

Rays of light were flowing through her figure--dark, yet pleasing.

She retired--not with force, but sheepishly--into phosphoric.

Hina gasped, then collapsed.

She landed on the ground just in time to get scooped by Haruto.

“Hina!”

She stirred, barely. Her voice was raspy.

“Did we…?”

He nodded.

“You anchored her.”

“No,” Haruto whispered. “We did.”

Her temple was stretched out by her hand.

“I… forgot your birthday.”

Haruto laughed. It came out broken and wet.

“I never told you that.”

“Oh,” she said, blinking. “Okay then.”

“Oh,” she said, blinking. “Okay then.”

He lifted her gently, cradling her against his side.

His watch pulsed.

07:53:00.

Hina looked at it, unfocused.

“I think there is something connected to you with the countdown,” she said. “Not the echoes.”

Haruto nodded slowly.

“Maybe it always was.”

There in the derelict room were two individuals composed of sewed-up rags. It was Haruto who did not attempt to reconcile with the silence in the initial attempt, however.

He just held her.

And remembered.