From The Depths Of Dreams

A heap of broken memories lay silently in the center of the small living room as they slowly remade themselves into a person.

Afterimages flickered into clarity.

Comfort hung in the moments between blinks.

She was still here.

She was still here.

She was still here.

Tokyo reformed into truth as it stood expansively close and distant beneath the brownish blue clouds.

Exhaustion caused the hours to pass in a breath while seconds lasted lifetimes. Sayane’s entire body felt like it had been pulled through a paper shredder. But she was still alive. Still here.

Rain covered the land in forgetful precipitation, washing away every remembrance of what had just occurred. There was a familiar kindness in the incessant pitter patter that was tapping along her windowpane.

Cool, familiar vinyl greeted her cheek as her head rested on the living room floor.

She inhaled.

Scents filled her nostrils with callbacks to things she once and still knew. Gracious, welcoming notes of normalized sterility sat in her nose and told her that the world was back to its correct structure.

She exhaled.

Voices of unrefined thunder rolled across her skin as the storm raged on with lulling, calming power.

His home was silent next door.

There was no fretful footfall. No somber jazz. No scent of coffee.

“Maaasaruuuu…” Sayane croaked from her half-dead haze.

Muscles regained function and her stomach spasmed as her fingers flicked. Life returned.

“Masaaaarrrruuuu…” she repeated.

Blood pumped through frayed veins and sensation returned to extremities. Air filled her lungs.

Warmth drifted across her body and settled over her soul like a blanket just pulled from the dryer.

But she could not feel him anymore.

Whatever had occurred earlier, when she’d become aware of him in ways beyond touch or other senses, it was now gone. Nothing but stillness filled the open spaces where Masaru should have been.

“Masaru!!” Sayane groaned as she forced herself up.

Peace stayed in her spirit, but it became bedmates with fear as concern soaked Sayane. The darkness was gone from her home, and from her being, but there was a sneaking dread that Masaru had played a part in that. If he had, she feared what it had meant for him.

Hands patted along the floor, searching for her cane. Pulses of life surged through her body as her heart reminded its companions to function. Soon, she found her white cane and stood with a grunt.

Muscles cried in stiffened strain, but she had to go. She had to find him. Something felt wrong.

“Masaru, please still be here. Please, let me be able to touch you,” she said aloud in prayer, hoping it would reach him wherever he was.

Without a second’s pause, she found her door and sighed at its return. Out she went, unbothered to lock it behind her.

The Kamakura hotel’s card stayed on her floor.

Sheets of rain were pouring, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was finding Masaru. As much as she didn’t want to return to the spot, Sayane had an idea of where he might be. It would take her a long time to navigate there on her own, but it didn’t matter. She unlocked her phone and opened the voice to text option in her navigation app.

“Take me to Warm Embraces Hotel.”

-

But Warm Embraces Hotel was no longer standing. Firefighters had fought for hours to stop its blaze, and eventually the rain had aided them in extinguishing it. Only smoldering ruins of steel and concrete remained, but even those were mangled into bent, useless mass.

Walking close to the disaster caused one to feel their chest constricting. Even as the embers of the collapsed structure flickered with lingering life, the air felt colder in its proximity. Thus, none approached. Once the fire crews had completed their tasks and filed their forms, emergency crews concluded that no one was present.

Barriers were raised and scaffolding put in place. Insurance adjusters and demolition experts would arrive in the coming days. But for now, the hotel was gone and nothing remained in its place.

Except for the haunting glitch that some whispered they thought they saw on occasion. Raindrops would stop before striking the ground. Rivulets of water would hang in the air, suspend along invisible contours, then stream downward as though tracing a shape.

Shivers of fear would tremble the onlookers’ shoulders when they saw the spectral moment, and without acknowledging it, everyone decided it was best to look away from that accursed corner.

Only when every eye had shunned the area did he feel himself remain.

Within the realm he now found himself, nothing was solid or accurate.

Vision failed to contain honest perception. Everything was grey and streaking like oil slicks on water. Auditory sense clipped at its ends, with reverberating static gnawing it the edges of unrefined words and sound. Touch failed to register as his hands formed, dissolved, remade themselves, then faded again. Rain struck him but he did not know its greeting. Ash filled his mouth, leaving nothing for taste. Not even the horrendous stench of the water could pierce his nose.

Everything was gone, except for the trauma of what he had endured. Though he could not feel the outside world, inside, he continued to feel the agony of the flames scorching his skin. Suffering carved itself into his soul and he did not dare to move. Instead, he stood atop the piled ruins of the hotel as the scaffoldings and barriers of caution were raised around him.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. That was too much to ask.

All he could do was twitch in pain as wrath blocked out any other potential thought or feeling.

Chunks of him fell away, and still he did not move.

Sunlight stayed hidden behind stormclouds as nothing more than a pearlescent edge, but he watched its veiled figure move across the heavens and rotate lower. Fear of death was a shadow at three in the afternoon. Fear of living on was a chain-link fence with a contractor’s branded tarp tied to its edges.

He prayed she was okay.

She.

Her.

Had she made it out?

“What if I was too little? Too late?” he whispered to himself as echoes of collapse tore across his memories.

Yellow flickered before him, and The Eyes slowly appeared.

They seemed as exhausted as he was.

“What more could you p-possibly w-w-want?” he choked.

They faded in silence and he sneered to himself.

He wasn’t sure if it was because of the agony, or the shock, but he couldn’t feel her anymore. Earlier, he had. He was sure of that. Somehow, there in the chaos, he’d been absolutely aware of her. But now, all he felt was seething hurt.

“Saaaya-” he stopped as the words failed to form.

He knew her.

He knew that he knew her.

Images of her face were unclear as they bled across his thoughts.

Her voice was nothing but a glass breaking as it fell to the floor in another room.

The plums had rotted.

“Saaaayyyyaan-” he begged.

But the name wouldn’t form.

Neither would the tears that stabbed at the place where his tear ducts had been.

“SAAAAY-” he tried to shout.

Nothing rose. His tongue abandoned him and rage dug in.

“No. No. No. No.” he repeated as he closed his eyes and ground his teeth while his scorched limbs fought to stay rigid.

“MOVE! MOVE GOD DAMMIT!” he commanded.

Knees bent and more flecks of misremembered body fell away. But he didn’t care.

Crunching skin bent against itself, sending new explosions of agony across his body. He screamed out as he forced one foot in front of the other.

“Saaaayaaaa-”

Step.

Step.

“Saaaaa-”

Step.

Step.

Step.

Step.

“SAAAAYAAAAAANNNNN-”

He made it to the nearly closed fence and slid through the remaining opening. All around him, the neighborhood was nervously still, but mostly back to its normal state. No one was there beyond the workers.

Had it been a few hours or a few days? He didn’t know.

Time was a dead language written in a lost book.

Everything hurt.

Please still be alive.

Please have made it out.

Please be alive.

Please be alive.

She was so small and pale.

Please be alive.

Not even for him.

Just please be alive.

She’d seemed so weak and depleted and… gone. For lack of a better word, she’d seemed so very gone.

Please be alive.

He should have tried harder.

He should have spoken to her so long ago.

He should have been kinder.

He should have done so many things differently.

Not just for her, but for himself as well.

This place. This city. This mentality that infected so many. It had made him think that this was all he was ever meant for. The train jumper probably went through the same thing. All those wasted sunrises and sunsets.

Please be alive.

Please be alive.

Masaru could only think those three words again and again as he flailed and lumbered down the street, hoping he could reach Sayane’s home in time.