Do You See The Crack?

The seat was too soft. I grabbed the sides to stop myself from sinking.

I looked up at Doctor Yamato, who sat across from me, his back straight against the chair. The small table between us had pencils lined up on the corner. Someone had arranged them. I wish I knew who, because the third pencil was too long to be third. It was ruining the arrangement. I wanted to move it to the end, but I resisted.

Ai-chan walked behind my chair and rested her chin on the back support. Her hair fell forward over my shoulder. I could feel the weight of it even though I knew there was none.

I wanna go back.

'Me too.'

I had been visiting this place way more than I visited Kaito or even school. It was always the same Doctor Yamato asking me things or watching me while we sat in silence. Today the crack in the wall was gone. I stared at the place where it used to run, tracing the space where it had been with my eyes.

"Sora." Doctor Yamato placed a blank sheet of paper and a pencil on the table. "Today I'd like to try something different." He folded his hands on his knee. "I'd like you to draw a picture of yourself."

Myself? Me?

I picked up the pencil and turned it between my fingers.

'What do I even look like right now?'
'In this chair?'
'In this room?' 

'In this place?' 

I drew a circle. I must have a face. Everyone has a face. The circle sat in the middle of the page. I looked at it. It didn't look like anything. I looked at my hands on the pencil. I have these too.

"Is there a problem?" Doctor Yamato leaned forward slightly. The page was still almost empty.

I shook my head and drew two hands. I kept staring at them. Wrong. I turned the pencil and erased everything. 

I drew a circle again. The lines weren't right. I erased again.

I drew a circle for the face. I didn't erase again. Then a block for the body with two arms on either side. The pencil moved to the stomach. I pressed the pencil and began shading the area. I wanted it to seem realistic. 

'He will be so impressed.'

Ai-chan stood next to the table. 

Yeah, make it darker.

"Sora. That's enough."

A quick few strokes before you hand him.

I dragged the pencil quickly. I wanted to complete it perfectly. The stomach continued darkening as I continued adding the shades.

*Crack*

The lead cracked, rolled against the page and fell on the floor. "Huh?"

"It's okay." Doctor Yamato grabbed the page from the top.

I looked at him and then grabbed the page from my side. "No—I—I can, I just—" I looked at the page. There was a hole where I was drawing the stomach.

I let go of the sheet and looked past him. At the wall. At the place where the crack used to be.

"You just?" Doctor Yamato's head tilted.

I opened my mouth. I wanted to tell him that I had never tried to draw myself before. That I hadn't looked at my face in weeks. That I didn't know where to start because I didn't know what was there to draw.

I closed my mouth. I set the pencil down.

"You can tell me," he said.

I looked at the wall. I knew what the crack had looked like. I just couldn't see it anymore. I kept looking anyway, following the line that existed only in my head.

Doctor Yamato didn't speak. His eyes stayed on me. I tried to ignore them the way one ignores a sound that is nothing more than a background noise, but it wasn't working.

"You did well on the previous one." He placed a second sheet in front of me. "Let's try something else. Draw a house, a tree, and a person. All on the same page."

Ai-chan slid into the chair beside me. She looked at the blank paper.

What a random request.

I picked up a new pencil. I scratched the tip against the page to test it. I wanted to draw the house first. I started with the roof. It came out slanted. One side was lower than the other. 

Silly Sora. You'll end up crying again. I will try now. I am quite artistic after all.

My hand drew a square beneath the triangle. I watched my hand do it.

The house is done.

The house was small. Ai-chan wanted to be creative. So she continued darkening it. My hand kept moving. The walls were nearly black now, heavy with pencil. No door. No windows. 

It looks great.

I drew the tree next. The trunk came out thick, with a dark hole in the middle for the creatures living in it. I kept extending the trunk; it lengthened off the page. 

What a creepy tree.

'Mhmm. We're drawing a haunted tree.'

I stopped. The tree had taken most of the page. I didn't even draw the branches. There was almost no room left. I looked at the corner, the only space remaining. So I drew a stick figure there.

"Done," I said.

"What's happening in this picture?"

I looked at it. The dark house. The holed, long tree. The figure in the corner, with no face, floated in the only space left for it.

"I don't know," I said. "I just drew what I could."

"That's interesting." Doctor Yamato held my drawings, looking at them. I waited for him to mark them, but instead he set the drawings aside and placed a card on the table.

I looked at the picture he placed before me. It was a boy with a violin in front of him. His hands in his lap. I blinked and looked at Doctor Yamato. 

"Tell me a story about what's happening here."

I pointed at the picture. "About this boy?"

"Yes, go on," he smiled.

"He doesn't want to play," I said. "But someone is making him."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"What happens if he refuses?"

Ai-chan stood beside me while the mark burned. I pressed my palm against it. "He doesn't refuse." 

Doctor Yamato looked at my hand for a moment. He didn't say anything. He just wrote something in his notebook and placed a second card down. 

There was a figure with closed eyes, slumped. Head dropped to the side. One arm trailing towards the floor. I decided it was a girl.

"She's dead," I said. "Or sleeping. I can't tell."

"What happened before this?"

I stared at her. At the marks on her arm. At the rope around her neck. She opened her eyes and looked at me with a smile. She moved up and wanted to come out of the picture. She wanted to go to the bridge.

"Sora?" With Doctor Yamato's voice, she settled back down and closed her eyes.

"I think she killed herself." I looked at him.

"The person in the picture." He picked up the picture. "What are they feeling?"

"Nothing because she is dead." The mark pulsed once more. I pressed harder. 

'Ai-chan?'
No response.

Then came another picture. A boy watching two people dissect a man. Something in my chest seized when the boy looked back at me. The beat was too loud. I wanted to cover my ears.

'No more.'

The room had gotten warmer. I hadn't noticed it happening, but it did. The card's edges were sharp and bright.

The man behind the boy kept rubbing the knife on the chest. When suddenly red popped out. The boy smirked as the red dripped out of the picture, pooling below Doctor Yamato's feet. I stayed still with my hand over my mouth, staring at the boy.

"What do you think is happening?" Doctor Yamato asked. The words came from very far away. 

"He killed him," I said. My voice was muffled by my hand. "No. He had them kill him."

"Why did it happen?" He shifted slightly in his seat.

Tears rolled out of the boy's eyes. The edges of the card blurred now. The red flowed towards me. "H-he didn't mean to... he didn't mean to kill him."

Ai-chan was standing directly behind Doctor Yamato now. She was watching me with her head slightly tilted.

Should I make the doctor stop?

"He didn't want it to be like this," I said.

My feet moved. I was suddenly standing. The chair hit the floor behind me; the sound came a second too late. I could tell it was delayed by Ai-chan.

"What happened after?" Doctor Yamato asked. His voice was the same as always. He hadn't moved. He was just watching, the card still on the table between us.

"He..." My breath came too fast. My heart was too loud. The room was pressing in from every direction. "He..."

You don't need to tell him.

"I don't want—" My legs gave out. My knees hit the carpet, and my hands moved over my face. 

I heard his footsteps cross the carpet toward me. I stayed silent. The light came through my fingers in thin strips. "Let's end the session for today."

My hand grabbed the corner of his coat. The fabric was stiff when I pressed it. He didn't try to remove my hand from it. He stayed there, looking at me. 

I moved my gaze to the wall; the crack was there again.