Dissociation

Ukiyo walked down the pavement, staring at his scuffed boots striking the ground. Heel toe. Heel toe. The wind blew against his skinny frame, threatening to tip him over. Ukiyo grabbed the straps of his backpack and walked more purposefully.

“Ukiyo!” someone called to him, running up behind him. He turned around, causing the girl to barrel past him and stumble awkwardly. He grabbed her arm to keep her from tripping and she wheeled around, blushing.

“Hey, Maho,” Ukiyo greeted as she smoothed down her cream colored jacket and adjusted her headband on her unruly brown hair.

“Ukiyo, I did it!” she yelled delightedly.

Ukiyo stood with brows furrowed, trying to remember what it was she did. He felt embarrassed because he had no clue.

Maho shoved her hands in her pockets and stuck her face close to his. “Idiot, you forgot!”

“S-sorry,” Ukiyo rubbed the back of his neck.

“Last week I handed in a paper on how human thoughts could be converted into information stored in gigabytes and then I sent it out to the neuroscience institute. Today they got back to me saying they wanted to meet me and possibly offer me a position there. I’m going at 6 pm!” she twirled around, her purple scarf flowing behind her. It was tied unevenly around her neck, with one short end and one that imitated a tail.

That was Maho alright. Although they were still in high school, Maho was already diving headfirst into the stark real world. Ukiyo had no idea what he wanted to do yet, but whenever he thought about it he felt a cold knot of dread forming in his stomach. High school had gone by in the blink of an eye and now it was his last year before college. It felt like just yesterday that he had been playing childish games like hide and seek and tag. That was not something he did anymore.

The trees on either side of the road were bare, the last residue of Autumn long since gone, leaves all scraped away. Maho was talking, but the whistling of the wind blotted out the noise and forced Ukiyo to squint his eyes.

Reality rushed back to him as Maho placed a hand on his arm. She was standing on tiptoes and staring intently at his face. “Ukiyo?”

His eyes met hers and then he drew back, brushing a hand through his black hair and tugging at the part hanging over his forehead. Maho’s eyes were storm cloud gray, and with a bit of imagination one could see a mini twister whirling around inside them.

“W-wuh? M-s-sorry, I kind of zoned out!” he exclaimed.

“E-eh?!” Maho shrieked as she realized how close they had just stood. “Hey, it’s not like that!”

“Like what?” Ukiyo didn’t know if he was teasing her or not.

“I know you’re thinking it! Sto-op! I was worried, that’s all!” Maho grabbed Ukiyo’s wrist and pulled him after her. “Let’s go!” Her strength was surprising compared to her height of under five feet.

“Ow, let go! I can walk on my own!”

“Oh yeah? M-maybe this will teach your brain to think like a normal person!” she admonished, trying to hide the heart thudding inside her chest.

Parts of the sidewalk were glazed over with ice and several children were trying to skate on it. More than one landed on their backsides. Soon someone would throw salt all over it and the ice would all melt. Then there would be no safety hazard, but the game would end too.

Maho walked silently in front of Ukiyo, leading the way. He and Maho both lived in the same street, so over the years they had gotten into the habit of walking to and from school together. Today though, Maho had said she wanted to show him something.

“When are you going to tell me where we’re going?” he asked, trudging through a pile of snow.

“Be patient, will you?” she asked, “Look, we just gotta go up that hill.”

The streets gave away to a field of white. As they reached the top and stood under a bare tree with a gigantic hole inside it, his mind flashed back to a few years earlier.

He, Maho, and the rest of his friends from middle school had sat there on a checkered picnic blanket, nibbling on triangle sandwiches and squirting each other with water guns among the bright yellow dandelions.

“What’s wrong?” Maho asked, and it was only then that Ukiyo realized that he had stopped walking and was staring at the empty spot underneath the tree.

He shook his head, tears threatening to fill his eyes. “I’m all good,” he smiled.

“You don’t look it,” said Maho harshly, “Is it because-” she started, then noticed Ukiyo’s pained expression and bit her lip.

Ukiyo took a tentative step forward and ran a hand along the bark of the tree.

His vision flickered, and he felt like he had stood here before and witnessed something major. He had always come here during the summer, but this time he felt like he had been here in the winter with Maho, just like now. Deja vu.

“So about what I wanted to show you…” said Maho, breaking the silence and reaching a gloved hand into her pocket. She asked him to hold out his hand and placed her closed fist over it. “Ready?” she asked.

“What is it?” Ukiyo asked as she opened her fist and removed her hand.

A glass sphere lay on his palm, and in the middle of it something shone yellow.

“It’s a marble, silly!” Maho laughed, then her tone turned serious. “Inside it is a dandelion. This way you’ll always remember the summers we spent here, even if we go to different universities.”

Ukiyo felt sick for some reason, like he was about to throw up. A cold sweat rolled over him, and his stomach clenched. His ears buzzed and he could barely register Maho’s face in front of his own. Why did this scene feel so familiar? He glanced down at the marble in his palm, his hand trembling. Suddenly, it slipped from his grip and fell into the snow. He stared emptily at the hole it left behind.

“Hey! You dropped it! We’ve gotta find it before it’s lost in the snow!” Maho said frantically, scrambling to her knees and digging through the thick white sheet on the ground.

Ukiyo clutched his head, which felt like it was about to split apart.

“M-maho,” he whispered hoarsely, but she didn’t seem to hear. He could hear himself talking but he noticed with alarm that his lips were only mouthing the words. For a split second his thoughts felt like they were not a part of his mind and instead flowed around him in countless wispy tendrils, engulfing him in an invisible vortex.

“Ukiyo?” a blurry Maho angled her head upwards to look at him.

He could see two images of her at the same time. One Maho had concern swirling around inside her eyes, and the other Maho’s eyes were milky and looked past him somehow. Either way she looked really, really sad. And he sensed that it was because of him. He felt like he needed to apologize but his mouth was glued shut and there was no feeling in his limbs. Then Ukiyo’s vision went black.

“Ukiyo, I found it! It was buried really, really deep, but I found it!”