The Photograph

Alarm clock. Fright. Heart, pounding on my chest. My own heart. Air, flowing into my lungs.
Alarm turned off successfully.

Thus, unceremoniously, another day began and, with it, began another tale.

Morning. Sun. Sounds. Mockingbirds singing songs of mockery, maybe mocking me. Hummingbirds humming songs of mystery and thrill. The Sun hand't yet established its presence, since my bedroom’s curtains perfectly sealed any semblance of sunlight. Still, I was quite sure that the giant ball of fire still had its rightful spot in the sky.

My bedroom was some ten degrees Fahrenheit colder than the rest of the world. That was all the more reason for me to want to remain asleep, surrounded and covered by an endless sea of blankets and cushions.

Yet, the Spring season required action, and I, reluctantly, sprung into action. Spring itself had come early, almost a month too early and, like so, I couldn’t remain still for too long. It was the last day of my spring break, after all.

Clothes. Toothbrush. Sink. Run the water briefly, then stop, so as not to waste any of it. My parents don’t appreciate senseless waste. More clothes, because I couldn’t dress up fully at first. I’m one of those people that requires gradually getting used to a certain amount of clothing covering the body before putting on more.

Deodorant, cologne, and the sink again, to wash my face. Towel. Rub-a-dub-dub. Hairbrush. Hair, brushed. Hands, to slightly mess with the hairdo. Too much order takes the space away from creativity.

Staircase, as my room was on the second floor and the kitchen was on the first floor. I took in a sniff, and recognized it as breakfast being served. Mother, father, younger sister. The elder brother doesn’t live with us anymore.

My seat at the table, regrettably, was being struck by too much sunlight from an open window. It was not the warmth that bothered me, but the simple idea of being flashbanged by a star first thing in the morning. Reluctant to seat myself, I leaned back on the marble kitchen counter.

Coffee. Scent. Taste. My cup had been waiting for me. How kind of them. 

“Morning to you too, mister”, my sister greeted me, in between sips of her coffee and mindlessly scrolling through her phone.

Sister. Yukina, 15 years old. Two years younger than myself. The city's junior kyudo champion. With my trusty slingshot, I was the one who taught her to aim, many years ago. She’s an ungrateful little pest, but fun to keep around. The white shirt she had on — mine, by the way — looked more like a dress than a shirt.

Intending to reciprocate her warm morning greetings, I nabbed a nearby napkin piece, crumpled it and, with a flick of my index finger, shot it right on the middle of her forehead.
100 points, a perfect shot.

“Morning”, I replied. The impact of the crumpled ball of paper wasn’t enough to knock her back, but the jumpscare was. Another 100 points, she almost fell backwards with her chair.

Her gaze turned to me, like that of an animal studying their prey before attacking. Yukina Itabashi, however, had been limited in her capacity of counterattacking, due to the presence of our parents in the same room.

With my two extra years of expertise, I was capable of acting silently and striking first, without attracting their attention. If she reacted too harshly, however, that would bring about chaos and fury within this household, which would be bad for both of us.
So, sister, what’s your play?

She remained silent, but I could almost hear the gears in her mind concocting a long-term revenge plan. That’s fine. After all, until then, I was free to have my breakfast and dramatically improve my own mood.

Our parents left us alone in the kitchen, dragging themselves to work. It was a Sunday, yet they insisted on working full hours. Thus, I present you: the average attorney. They’re getting old already, and should take a break to enjoy their days a little more. After all, we do live in a seaside city.

“Heading out, sis”, I informed her shortly thereafter.

“See ya, Aki”, she replied, nonchalant as always.

My name, Akito Itabashi. Written with the kanji for bright and person, it couldn’t be further from what I ended up becoming.

Intending to ambitiously enjoy my splendorous weekend, I headed straight to the nearest mall. The weekend had no choice but to be splendorous, or it would otherwise be a terrible start for an even worse school semester. I could’t let myself get beaten by the last year of school. No dropouts allowed in the Itabashi family, after all. 

Thus, I headed west, where both the coastline and the shopping mall, coincidentally, were. As it was the first day of the month, my bank account should have been filled to the brim with funds from my allowance.

Sidewalk. Street. Sidewalk. Dog, pet. Sidewalk. Street. Car, then bike. Pedestrian. Pedestrians. Family. Restaurant serving breakfast to those who could afford it.

"It’s really hot out here… I wouldn’t have dressed up like this if I knew the Sun would be out in full force". At this rate, this chapter should have been titled “The Sun Tale”.

The streets, by the way, never stopped coming. Despite having lived here all my life, I had yet to encounter a single familiar face. Either they were all still asleep, or at some event I wasn’t invited to. Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Along my path, there was the stunning west coast, accompanied by tall buildings pieercing the sky, and open fields surrounding the urban center. Bridges all about, and historical buildings in unexpected places. I didn’t see all of them as I was passing through, but I saw enough to remind myself that’s how the city looked from above.

More cars. Main street. Long, straight line beside the river. Many steps forward. A few more, now. Only a few more… Finally, some shade. A couple more steps in the shade of a building. Refreshing.

The corner formed by the main avenue and the street where the mall was at, finally I had arrived.

I could see the mall from there. As I approached the self-opening door, I immediately felt the difference in temperature. Air conditioning proved itself to truly be one of our species’ greatest inventions.

Upon traversing the door, the artificial breeze embraced me like a body pillow, and it didn’t let go. Finally, my choice of garments had been justified.

Black jacket, covered in zippers and pockets. Very useful to keep change, gum, cellphone, wallet, documents and other small trinkets, each contained in their own little pocket. I considered myself pragmatic, having my own system for keeping stuff organized in my clothes' insides.

Beige khakis, as I were no vampire to go out dressed fully in black. A striped shirt, for comfort. It added an air of complexity, without looking too old-fashioned. I looked like any other young adult, or like a child dressed up for halloween. There’s no in-between.

Bookstore. Where could it be? As far as I knew, that one hadn’t closed up yet. After all, how could it? I’ve always been its number-one customer. Some could even argue that I keep it standing with my own two hands.

Thankfully, my reading habits weren’t perceived as problematic by my family. Lucky me no one had actually put any effort into finding out what my taste in literature really was. 

Upon identifying my beloved bookstore, I headed straight there. I was quite sure this would be the day they’d have the newest volume of my favorite sci-fi manga.

As always, I stood correct. After getting the volume I wanted from my favorite store clerk, I contemplated whether or not he got any commission on the books he'd sold me over time. If so, then it wouldn’t be too much to say I'd given him a couple weekends of peace over the years.

“Thank you! Come back soon!”, the checkout lady said. Most likely, she’s aware I’d make her wish come true. I doubt she asked every customer to come back soon, but she could be sure I would.

“Akito?”, I heard somebody call for me. For a second, I thought it might have been the lady from the store. 

“Hm?”, I replied, only through humming sounds.

“Akito! It really is you!”, a feminine voice, seemingly excited, approached.

Turning back, and also a little bit downwards, I saw her: a woman, 1,65m, approximately 52kg. Curly, dark brown hair, wolf cut, fair skin, and her eyes were dark brown as well. Blue sweatshirt, black skirt.

I gazed forward, meeting her glasses. Round, thin and with a dark frame. Her eyes looked back at me, with a smile right below.

“It’s been so long! How’s your spring break been?”, she said, having already approached me completely. Anyone looking from the outside would know we’re interacting with each other. Two strangers couldn’t possibly be this close while looking straight at each other.

Her name… Name. Name. Name, name, name, name, no, me, name, name… Name. Name, name, name, name, name, name, name, narne, name, name, name, name, mane, name, name, name, name.

Rio Igarashi, the greatest know-it-all ever conceived in the existence of this tiny blue dot named Earth. A year older than me, and a first-year in Mathematics of the local university, whose campus had recently been moved to a building within the parking lot of this very mall.

“Rio! It’s been a while”, I replied, warmly recalling the times in which I could look at her answer sheet during the all-school exams. I would sit behind her, and lean towards the wall, while she would lean in the opposite direction, offering me a clear view of her test.

However, our relationship, for all things good and bad, never went beyond that: a shirker and his caretaker. A genius, letting me abuse her kindness to get ahead of the study calendar.

Her choice of degree in college, however, didn't reflect the full extent of her capabilities. If I asked her, right there and then, and no cheating allowed, what the head of a tapeworm was called —

“scolex”, she murmured.

“What?!”, for a moment, I was under the impression she had just read my mind.

“Oh, nothing! Nothing, really. I was just thinking about our school days… Well, my school days, right? You’re still there…”, she said, avoiding the subject. “Have any big changes happened since I left?".

For a brief instant, I thought about it before replying. “The new freshmen are… Well…”, I was going to say something, but I noticed her eyes drifting away.

“Your sister got in this year, right?”, she asked, her chin resting on her left hand. It took a bit for me to notice, but she held a bag from the same bookstore I’d just gone to.

“Yeah… She got in, indeed. It’s a shame you two didn’t get to meet. I’m sure you’d have fun together, she’s a lot like you… By the way, did you get something good from the bookstore there?”, I said, pointing to her bag.

“Oh, this? He-he, it’s nothing much. You?”, she replied, gracefully ashamed at my query. That only left me even more intrigued on the subject of miss know-it-all’s reading preferences. In fact, I was morbidly curious.

“Me? Well, it’s just the latest issue on a sci-fi manga I like”, I replied, clearly hiding the fact that it just so happened that the protagonist of said manga bore a striking resemblance to the girl right in front of me.

“Sci-fi? And here I was, thinking you’d become a lost cause after I left the school”, she laughed.

“You flatter me, Birdie”, I replied, calling her by her old nickname from when we were both at school.

To my surprise, she was inexpressive upon the mention of the old nickname. Derived from the saying “a little bird told me…”, considering Rio was our main fact-checker back then, I always thought it was a cute name. Still, I couldn’t figure out if her inexpressiveness meant indifference or disgust, so I thought it better to avoid it. Now, whether I would avoid it or not, that was a different story.

“I —”, she was about to say something, but I got to speaking first. 

“Hey, shall we get some ice cream?”, I asked her out, during a brief lapse of unforeseen bravery which, at other times, could have been seen as a complete violation of my personal philosophy.

The Universal Reason, that swears by every single human’s capacity of reaching out to the truth. Simultaneously, Amor Fati: to love all which happens, enjoying the view as you go. Every string the Fates sew, I existed to appreciate.

However, on occasion, for a multitude of reasons, something compelled me to put my mortal hands on forgotten batches of the Fates’ cloth, hoping to pull on a loose string for myself. Right then, that was one of the moments in which I acted rashly: irrational and selfish.

“Sure, the ice cream stand isn’t far from here”, she replied, masterfully aware of the stand’s location, as she most likely visited it often during study breaks. “Still, isn’t it a little early for sweets?”, she commented.

“Just exercising my free will”, I brushed it off, nonchalantly, but still smiling at her answer.

In terms of physicality, I’ve always been taller than short, and stronger than weak, and fitter than fat. That, of course, didn’t mean I was some kind of supermodel or ideal athlete, it only meant I didn’t particularly stand out, which was good company for my personality. One of those anime side-characters that served the purpose of pushing the protagonist further in their mission, only to never be mentioned again in the story — that was me.

It’s worth mentioning that, if we're going to compare, Rio was the protagonist, and I was the side-character. However, it would have been quite the honor for me to be a side-character in her story, so it's selfish of me to even suggest that as a possibility.

Thus, I existed as less than a side-character. Maybe one of those one-off joke characters that existed simply to mess with the story’s pacing, much like this very monologue. Always disregarded by the protagonist, as a victim and the perpetrator of the audience’s annoyance, the joke character faded away after their bit.

Given my lack of importance as the one-off joke character, I didn’t think it would be much of a problem to have some ice cream in-between breakfast and lunchtime.

“Hey, you seem a little down. Are you sure you’ve been on vacation all this time?”, she observed me, and then inquired.

In case it was yet to be noticed — and only in that case — the first time she'd asked me, I avoided the subject of my spring break. The reason behind that was, in fact, quite simple: I’ve done nothing.

When I referred to nothingness, I didn’t mean it as a synonym of "nothing worth noting" — I meant it as Nothing, true and proper.

Starting in the morning, I had felt like I didn’t even exist beforehand. I was only an idea — a concept — in a certain somebody’s mind. That morning, however, when I got up with the wrong foot, I could feel a foretold tragedy was incoming right as I grew conscious.

“Well… I’ve done nothing, y’know?”, I replied, finally admitting to it. Rio went silent for a bit, and after showing me some incomprehensible facial expressions, she inhaled deeply before answering me.

“To do nothing… It’s such a grotesque expression, isn’t it?”, she said.

Shock. Eyes wide open. Shortness of breath. Heart fluctuating between silent and pounding. Grotesque was one of those adjectives that you don’t think much of when it’s written, but as soon as it’s spoken it starts to elevate the very magnitude of disgust we’re talking about.

Thus, I understood that, for Rio, the act of doing nothing was all but a grave sin.

“You know… I can’t even begin to comprehend the very essence of the idea behind doing nothing. That is, unless you’re dead. Or unborn. Let’s take you, for example: you’re breathing, buying a new manga, and you chose to get out of bed and walk here with your own two legs. You even got me to have ice cream with you. I’ll be offended if you say that, to you, ‘having ice cream with Rio’ and ‘nothing’ are synonyms.”, she explained.

“Well, I…”, the cat got my tongue. Catgirl, in that case. Not literally. For an instant, I felt that the distance between me and her grew as large as the diameter of the world.

“Now, if having ice cream with me is the pinnacle of your vacation days, I’ll be both honored and sorry for you”, she joked.

That’s right. The pinnacle of my life. Of my very existence. Maybe even the pinnacle of the existence of any human being ever born on this planet.

“Yeah… It’s the latter, Dee”, I confessed, shortening her nickname even more. Would that make it a nicknick?

“Dee?”, she asked.

“Yeah, Dee”, I replied. Shorthand for Birdie, and pronounced like the word “Bee”, but with a “D”.

“Dee… I like it”, she admitted.

Before I came to, we were already talking and walking. That whole conversation had happened while heading to the ice cream stand and, somehow, I failed to realize that. It surprised me that she didn’t run out of breath while monologuing about her thoughts on doing nothing.

“Vanilla, please!”, she ordered.

“And one swirl-soft, please”, I ordered mine, and paid for both before she could complain.

“Thanks, Aki”, she smiled politely, as I’d have expected from someone like her.

“You’re very welcome”, I happily replied.

“What now?”

…

“Well…”

“I know!”, she exclaimed. “Since you’re so salty about doing nothing, let’s walk along the shoreline together”, she offered.

"Wouldn't the sea make me even saltier?", I joked.

In response, she laughed sincerely. 

Meanwhile, I was still unable to understand why someone — anyone — would do so much to keep me company.

“You’re… Free, then?”, I asked shyly.

“I got nothing”, she replied, alluding to the earlier conversation about doing nothing. “I’m not some sort of game protagonist, always on some kind of side-quest. Especially on weekends, you know”, she explained.

“Then, yeah, Let’s go!”, I excitedly accepted her offer. 

"Yup!", she stood beside me, and this we began our march. 

We walked a bit towards the shoreline, not too far from the mall we were in. The silence in that meantime was, at the same time, tense and comforting. Nothing needed to be said, or heard, for me to become capable of boasting about the fact I walked along the shoreline with a pretty girl that day.

It suddenly came to me that, despite our past, it was a little weird for Rio to be talking so openly and friendly with me. We weren’t exactly friends, but certainly not strangers either. Former colleagues, who only ever sat together during all-school exams during which they mixed up different classes.

I, however, wasn’t about to complain about these events, which, sincerely, seemed much like divine intervention in my life. Instead, I listened to the waves producing their fascinating onomatopoeias, too childish to write home about. Yet, they were some of nature’s finest rhythmic sounds, and these in particular were even better, given the good company I had.

That alone was enough for me to wish that day never came to an end, despite it having just started. My subjective perception of that morning had changed completely since I got out of bed.

“So, Dee…”, I desperately scrambled for a subject. “I never asked you this, but… Why Mathematics?”, I asked.

“Well… No one’s really asked me that before”, she replied, almost as if feigning ignorance. “It might just be because I like puzzles”.

At that moment, I used all my remaining brain power to attempt forming a connection between the Mathematics grad course and puzzles. I failed.

“You know… I like numbers, they’re everywhere. Angles, values, quantities, places… And the world is like a really big puzzle”, the more she explained, the less I understood. “I plan specializing in cryptography”, she added.

“Who are you, exactly!? Alan Turing, perchance!?”, I asked, almost wrathfully. Someone, so filled to the brim with endless potential, had decided on a course that would, most certainly, alter the course of her life, on a whim. That was hard for me to fully comprehend.

However, upon closer inspection, I realized this girl might have been better than me at following my own personal philosophy, regardless of how much thought she put into it.

The Sun shone bright — and I avoided looking at Rio to hide my indignant self. I'd rather go blind for staring at the Sun. I then asked myself — as soon as I could gather my thoughts — when exactly I had started projecting my need of greatness on Rio’s potential futures. Surely, that was a big subject in her household after graduating high school — and there I was, putting even more pressure on top of her decision. She could have been doing anything, but there she was: hanging out with me, having ice cream and walking along the shoreline.

She stepped on the sand, and I remained on the sidewalk. It’s not like I didn’t want to walk on the sand, but it didn’t make much sense for me to do so while wearing shoes. It was already too warm outside for someone with my jacket and khakis combination, and Rio probably thought the same thing in regards to her sweatshirt.

So, there we were, sacrificing our thermal comfort in exchange for experiencing the world together.

At the beach, nothing was far from what I had expected. Seashells, sand, parasols, people, faces, slippers, balls, toys, and finally, the sea. There was also the Sun, and the reflexes that made the sea look shiny, and also things I couldn’t see, like the rocks, corals, and fish in the water.

And… A camera?

“Hm?”, I made a noise, and stopped walking, waiting for Rio to notice.

“Akito?”, she called for me. “What is it?”, then asked, turning her sight to where I was looking at.

“Look. An instant camera”, I pointed. “Seems abandoned. It’s old, rusty, and there’s nothing else nearby. It’s been at least a couple days since someone left it here. Maybe it’s broken, who knows?”, I verbalized my uncertainty.

“Oh. Fascinating”, she said, heading straight to it. As for me, since the camera was too far away for me to reach without stepping on the sand, I gave myself the difficult job of standing there, pointing and watching.

“Say cheese!”, she immediately exclaimed after grabbing the camera with both hands, putting her eyes on the visor. “Hey! It actually works, I see you! He-he, I’m going to take a picture, so get ready!”, she exclaimed, laughing about it.

“Fine, fine”, I nonchalantly posed for the photograph, like a sailor, to peroperly fit the seaside scenario. Just then, I hoped that there would still be photographic paper inside of that little treasure we'd just found, and that the instant printing mechanisms still worked properly.

“3, 2, 1, and…”, she counted down, and clicked the button.

The flash hit my eyes and, as soon as could be, everything went dark. Of course, part of getting flashbanged is going blind for maybe half a second until your eyes adapt to the world again.

…

But this half a second was sure to take a while. A long while. Too long. No, no, I was quite sure it had been longer than that by then. Yet, everything was still pitch-black.

I also stopped hearing the sea, the cars, the people… And Rio.

“Where am I?”.