4

My throat was sore from the screaming.

“Daisuke?! Hello! Daisuke?”

It would’ve been only two minutes of reading that damn journal. Two! And in the space between us having a thirty-second conversation, we lost Daisuke?

I was sprinting. Hallways led into corridors led into more hallways—endless, daunting, impossible.

"Young man, please…" Miss Kuroshi was somewhere behind me, her flashlight bobbing. "Just calm down. Save your voice."

We stood there for a moment, the sound of the floating plates clicking softly against each other somewhere behind us.

"Shit." I stopped. My hands went to my face. "This is all my fault."

"Don't think, don't panic. Just listen," Miss Kuroshi said simply.

I did.

“Dad?”

I tapped Miss Kuroshi's shoulder. “You hear that?”

“Young man, do you have any idea how much your hearing goes as you grow older?”

We remained silent still.

“I can see you.”

Miss Kuroshi swallowed. “I can hear that.”

“Let’s go.”

It was only a short walk away.

We turned the corner from where we thought the voices came from.

This room was like all the other rooms in this place, somewhat plain, somewhat featureless. This one, the one we found Daisuke in, had one exception.

Daisuke was sitting cross-legged on the ground and stared ahead—into what looked like a window. Except you couldn’t see much on the other side… except blackness.

On the window’s edges were motes and strands of gold. I heard a resonance that seemed to reverberate in my bones. But this unnatural thing wasn’t what freaked me out the most.

It was the tendrils made of gold that extended from its shape and latched onto his skin.

Naturally, a window was used to observe. But we weren’t sure if he was observing something, or if it was the other way around.

There was a figure of some kind. It had a silhouette. It was tall, its shoulders broad.

And it was talking.

“I see you, god, I see you,” it said. “But how?”

“Dad…”

“Daisuke?” I called out.

He didn’t respond. Instead, he turned his head to stare at me with his glowing, gold irises.

Just as quickly, he turned away to focus back on this… this creature.

“Where… where do I even start?” Daisuke asked himself. “How’s it like over there? You know, being dead and all.”

“It’s peaceful. Surprisingly. You feel lighter, happier; life is weightless here.”

“That’s… that’s great.”

Looking from behind, I couldn’t see his face. But I saw the way his back arched up and down. He was crying.

“I… I am sorry. You know, for what I said. I didn’t want those things to be the last things I said to you. You are not a deadbeat, you are not abusive, you just had a different way of expressing that you care. Every day, you cooked for me. Every day! I threw it all away. But now… now I’m here. I get to say it properly.”

“You don’t have to.”

Daisuke hitched. “...What do you mean?”

“Being here… has made things clearer for me. Clearer than ever. The expectations I had for you—they were never really about you. They were about me. What I feared I had failed to become when I was young. Here things are clearer. I can see that now."

"It's funny. Things aren't clear here at all." Daisuke's shoulders dropped. "I wake up, I go to work, I attend classes sometimes. I try to make new friends but they all feel hollow. I don’t mind staying in my room all day… and I can’t say I even have a routine. I try my best in university like you wanted, but I have no motivation to study. I’m flunking classes, but isn’t it weird I can’t seem to bring myself to care?"

"But that doesn't matter." The silhouette was still. "No matter how it all pans out—no mistaking it. I'm proud of you, Daisuke. I always was." 

It sighed.

"I just wish I could hold you one more time."

Daisuke's whole body went slack with it. "You could."

I widened my eyes. "What?"

"Alright," he said softly. "I'm ready. I'm coming, dad. I'm coming!"

“No!"

I rushed forward. But it was too much ground to cover. His hand… his hand submerged into the golden wall like gelatin.

I shook my head. I grabbed his arm and pulled hard.

“Daisuke! This isn’t… shit, this isn’t it! We all lose our parents one day, okay? This isn’t the answer!”

Why wasn’t he budging?!

“What are you doing here, Kenji?” My grip loosened a little. I looked up to see his golden irises. “Can’t you see how much happier I’d be?”

“Don’t you get it? You won’t get to walk away from this. You’ll DIE! You’re going to—” I grunted, pulling harder. "Come on! You’re being ridiculous!”

“And is that so bad? I know it's exhausting, being around me. Everybody would win if I left.” He turned his head just enough to look at me. “Wouldn’t you have done the same for Hana?”

I wasn’t ready for that kind of question.

My grip loosened for just a second.

And that was that.

The gold wall took him further and further. His body was already halfway through it.

“I was a dead man walking, anyway,” Daisuke said, smiling.

I felt numb seeing him being fully absorbed and floating in that abyss.

His eyes were closed, his face looked the most relaxed I’ve ever seen it.

Daisuke looked utterly serene.

Eventually, his body disappeared into the void.

I let out a long scream and walked out the room.

I realized I was crying. My head leaned on the wall as my back slid down it.

“We… we have to tell someone,” I said, loud enough so that Miss Kuroshi could hear it. “We are complicit. I-I can’t…”

“Honey?”

I felt my heart drop into a pit.

I ran straight back, only to see...

Featureless, bodiless. The same silhouette from earlier. And the same golden tendrils gripping onto Miss Kuroshi’s body.

My hands gripped into fists. I knew it now.

And I wasn't going to lose Miss Kuroshi too!

I ran at the wall, throwing out caution, common sense, logic, everything. This was stupid, I knew that. But the alternative would be doing nothing!

“Kenji.”

I stopped in my tracks, turning slowly toward Miss Kuroshi. She wore the same gold irises that Daisuke had.

"Of all the things you've seen today, this is what makes you snap?"

She almost smiled.

"I can see now how Daisuke got swept up in it," she said, almost to herself. "This feeling… it’s like feeling deep in your soul that whatever laid on the other side was real and it was beautiful." She looked at her hands, then at the gold wall. "But this isn't why I'm going. This place didn't convince me of anything. I convinced myself. A long time ago now."

She was quiet for a moment.

"I have thought about it for a long time. Death," she said gently. "Hard not to, with early onset."

"...Shit."

"Shit, alright." She drew a long breath. "I’ve accomplished great things. Visited so many places. Made people laugh. People like you! And I must say, staying here until I am sucking on a tube of slop sounds highly unappealing."

"So... So you're going to leave me holding the bag, is that it? What do I even tell your kids?!"

"They visit sometimes. They make an effort. But I could tell that I’m not a part of their world anymore."

"But you’re a part of mine!"

She looked at me for a long moment.

“What?” I asked incredulously.

Then she laughed.

She turned back to the wall.

"I keep a notebook to help with my... illness. Passwords, my home address, anything you could ever need." She smoothed the front of her jacket with both hands. "No one will ever find this place. No one will ever blame you for an old woman who walked into a forest and forgot her way home. Just say you found this notebook and bring it back to my family. Yeah. That's a good story."

Then she stepped through.

The room was very quiet after that.

I had no tears left. Everything around me had lost its color.

I hadn't even thought about what I'd tell the police.

But maybe I should be arrested. Maybe that was the right ending to this—bars, a key thrown away, penance for two people I barely knew and now would never get to know.

Maybe it was my turn.

Thought I knew what I was doing, letting the gold tendrils take hold of me.

Thought it was a penance.

I felt something in the air shift. I was in that room, but not.

I could feel sunlight where there was none. I could feel a slight autumn breeze. I smelled a lake, with swans and ducks drifting in clear water.

I smelled her.

Unlike the others, this figure was the clearest it had ever been. There could be no question about who I was looking at.

Hana was as beautiful as the day I lost her.