I Could Almost Feel You

Colors felt muted. What little could be made out in Masaru’s limited sight was reduced to a streaking, grayed-out form that lacked true refinement. Bodies and voices moved around him with the clarity of one being underwater with their eyes open. Every flick and fire of muscle activation within his eye socket now registered with excruciating awareness as more nerve endings began to sear.

It was all falling apart.

Sayane hadn’t fared any better. Masaru wasn’t sure she’d slept a single minute that night. When he occasionally awoke, he would feel her beside him, sniffling softly to herself as tired hands pulled her arms close to her chest.

As she sat beside him on the train back to Tokyo, her face and fingertips remained stained with black. Gaunt had seized her cheeks even more, pulling her harsher features to the surface and leaving her skin all but barren of life.

They’d both forgotten or couldn’t be bothered to eat before they left that morning. As they’d left the front desk, Masaru watched Sayane take a single business card from the hotel desk. She’d sensed him observing her and felt it necessary to clarify.

“I… I wasn’t getting this for work,” she muttered.

“I didn’t think that,” Masaru said.

Sayane tucked the card into her waist pouch and then slowly tapped forward. Masaru offered his sleeve, but she passed him without pause.

A heavy, tragic pull knotted Masaru’s insides as he watched her slowly move through the door.

“Sayane…” he called.

She stopped and waited, leaving her back to him.

“Run away. Please. Run far away. Take everything I have. Please,” Masaru begged.

Her hair fell across her brow and cheekbones as she tilted her head ever so slightly to say something, but then she stopped herself. Lips parted as she gathered her words.

“Thank you. That was the best day I’ve had in over a decade. I’ll hold on to this card for the rest of my days, so I can remember what that felt like,” she whispered.

Desperation overwhelmed Masaru, and he reached out to stop her. This time, she didn’t even feel his hand passing through her arm. He stood there, imploding in rage and defeat, as the hotel door closed between them.

With that, their vacation had ended.

Yokohama moved by on the other side of the glass, and Masaru was forced to accept that the girl beside him was almost certainly returning to Tokyo to face her own oncoming doom. Strange as it was, he felt more sorrow for her than he did for himself.

Alerts pinged, and the train doors opened. Stressed, suited bodies funnelled into the metal chamber to stand in formation as the rails carried them closer to their daily toiling. Footsteps jostled for space, never coming near Masaru, but frequently encroaching on Sayane. After a few more stops, the train was mostly full. Sayane remained seated as Masaru faded into a corner near the back of the car.

When enough bodies had filled the space, Masaru could not even see her anymore. Painful pulses pumped through his veins as he stood on his toes to try to lay eyes on her, but it was to no avail. What he couldn’t see was the consistent bumping and shoving of the crowd that, like always, invaded her realm without her knowing it was coming. In the darkness, unannounced, the limbs and briefcases and purses and elbows would press into her cane and shoulders. She could never anticipate it since she could not see the sways approaching, so she could only ever sit there perpetually tense.

As she endured bump after bump in silence, fresh, burning tears ran down her cheeks. If she could spontaneously combust, moments like this would have been when she elected to do so.

An hour later, their stop finally arrived, and both of them exited the cars from their opposite ends. Brick scraped plastic as she moved in silence. The edge of a suitcase clipped through Masaru’s leg without issue. It was raining again.

Life’s fascinating hostility allowed Masaru a new moment of surreal wonder as he watched the raindrops fall through him and down onto the ground. He did not even feel wet. She was already moving up the steps, out from the awning, and into the sprinkling shower.

They walked the short distance to the apartment complex in silence. Fabric and hair clung to her small frame, only further drawing attention to the frail disposition of her entire essence. But she didn’t seem to care. Masaru, to his great disappointment, could no longer think of anything to say. For so long in life, he’d wanted someone to be there for him. To offer him comfort, encouragement, or escape. That had never come for him. Yet now, in that moment, he was trying to be that for Sayane, and it wasn’t reaching her.

No matter what he did or said, it seemed as though it was too late.

Steps ascended to the inevitable conclusion of it all.

Words of hope were washed away in the rain, and they reached her doorway with nothing left to say.

Sayane frowned in acceptance and nodded to herself.

“I don’t think I’ll be coming back the next time I leave…” she said with a weighted finality.

The words struck Masaru with the force of a punch, and his liver cried in pain.

“No. Please, no. Sayane…” he whispered.

“I think I would have loved you,” she cried to herself.

“In whatever way I understand it, I would have. I’m sorry we didn’t talk to one another sooner,” she sobbed.

Pick.

It was a cruelty of ‘what if’s’ that Masaru had been avoiding thinking about. All those evenings beside one another, sharing hollowed out exhales from their crowded balconies, yet never speaking to one another. For so long, it had been a formality. Politeness and social decorum had told him not to say anything to her. Only now, here at the end, when it was too late for them both, Masaru wondered if a single kind word several months ago, or a year ago, might have made all the difference for both of them.

Sayane had been haunted by the same question.

“I would have loved you, too,” Masaru replied.

Sayane inhaled through shaking gasps and nodded.

“If we cross paths in another life, let’s make sure to be more talkative,” she lamented as she slid her key into the door lock.

pick

It was becoming harder to see.

Some souls are lucky enough to have clarity when a person of importance enters their life. Eyes behold them, ears receive them, and the heart sighs in pleasant relief, as though saying, ‘Oh, it’s you.’

p i c k  a t

That didn’t happen for Sayane and Masaru.

Pain intensified across the entirety of his face.

P I C K A T T H E

Instead, oblivion festered in the lingering moments of silence that had moved between them in the ages when they’d thought they’d have more time.

His eye was on fire.

THEREISNOTHINGLEFTTOPICKAT

Teeth pushed lockpins aside, and Sayane’s door opened as Masaru’s heart sank into his legs.

“Goodbye, Masaru-kun.”

Everything began to blur as the film of reality dodged along its edges. Bile burned in his throat.

The last ligaments tore, and Masaru’s eye drooped fully useless within its containment. Agony ignited within the socket and he almost screamed out.

“S-S-Sayane… SAYANE!!” he screamed.

But she didn’t stop. It was as though she could no longer feel or hear him. Everything burned white, and the world began to fall away as he heard her door close.

Masaru’s back seized as a guttural, horrified retching howl tore itself from his throat.

“SAYANE!!!!!” Masaru cried out once more as he forced himself to open his functioning eye.

When he pulled his head to the side to face her door, it was gone.

“MMMMWhat?” Masaru grimaced in terror as his hand reached forward.

Instead of a simple wooden frame and door being there, the cement wall merely continued uninterrupted down to Masaru’s entrance.

“No. No, no, no, no, no nononononononNOOOOO!!!” Masaru cried out as his panicked hands patted and drug along the roughened exterior.

“Sayane? Sayane?!!” he shouted once more.

But there was no answer.