This meant nothing to me at all

While the rest of my classmates happily wandered below me from food stand to food stand, playing games and talking while they enjoyed the last few days of their youth together, I made my way up to the roof, so I could watch everyone without getting too involved or being bothered.

“It’s weird…that should have been me. That was me until a few days ago. For the first time in my life, I felt like I’d really found something… then just like that…poof” I muttered as I threw the photo reel from our trip to Akihabara off the roof, watching as it got swept up in the wind and got whipped away.

The cherry blossoms had an early bloom this year… They rustled around in the window, dancing slowly back and forth in the warm spring air. I think the people we meet in our lives are a bit like cherry blossoms. They burst abruptly, filling our lives with joy and color. But it isn’t meant to last. It can’t, it isn’t their purpose. They have to eventually fall and wither, that’s just how it is. Year after year, day after day, things will come and go in our lives that we have no control over.

“I suppose… the only choice we truly have in this life… is whether to live it at all…” I stare down apprehensively over the railing into the crowd of happy people below. Is this really what I wanted, to have to carry the weight of that loss again and again for the rest of my life….? I don’t think so…

I climbed over the railing, standing on the thin strip of roof that remained on the other side, my toes dangling off the edge. I closed my eyes… I could still see particles of light from the sun shining through my eyelids. I could feel their warm embrace beckoning me… The faint cooing of a mourning dove somewhere out in the distance, the soothing rustle of the trees as the wind passed through them… Everything seemed to come together, telling me it was okay to give up. I held out my arms, and began to let myself fall forward…

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” I was jolted back into reality as I heard a voice shout, the sensation of a pair of hands grabbing my hood, and the sudden force of those hands hoisting me back over the railing and then throwing me to the ground.

“Do you have any idea how many times I called? How many times I’ve knocked on your door and your parents told me you didn’t want to see anyone? God-damn it, Ren! Do you know the only way I found out something was wrong was because I stopped by Aiko’s apartment and there were new people moving in!? What the hell happened?” Sen was furious, he was heaving for air and his face was writhing with anger. I didn’t deserve the way Aiko suddenly abandoned me, and I suppose Sentaro didn’t deserve the same treatment from me. I sighed, wishing he would have just let me fall.

“Her dad got sent to a station in Osaka. She told me while we were at sky tree. And that was it, the next day she was gone…”

“That…that can’t be it! We made a pact, Ren! All of us, we said no matter where we were, we’d keep each other going! Forget us fighting, forget Kagoshima! Forget the whole stupid list! I just don’t want to lose all of my friends….” Sen seemed to struggle to process the information the same way I had. I knew what he was feeling. Shock, anger, disbelief…. a stinging sickness deep in his stomach.

“She said it was all just a distraction… a mirage maybe…” I muttered, finally pushing myself up to my feet, eye to eye with Sentaro now.

“What!?”

“That’s what she said… she said it was all bullshit, and we all knew it from the start. Pact or not, nothing has changed… We’ll all slowly go back to exactly how it was before…” I stared at him blankly with my hands in my pockets, looking like the empty shell of an insect that could easily be blown away by the breeze.

“Now THAT is bullshit… Do you honestly think you believe that? Do you think Aiko believes that? Because I don’t, and I know neither of you do either…” Sen seemed to become slowly more irritated, balling his hands up into fists as his voice raised to nearly a yell. “I can’t believe after all this… everything… You would think you couldn’t talk to me… that you could just shut me out… that you could try to kill yourself, did it all mean that little to you?!”

“I just think it’s time, Sen. Let’s face it, once you move to Hamamatsu, I’m just going to revert to the same way I was before. We might visit each other once in a while…then it will just be calls a few times a week. Then a text a month, maybe…. Until we just forget entirely… Learning to ride the bike… the parade… the snowball fight and Akihabara…they’ll all just get fuzzy and lost to memory. The fact is Sen, whether you’ll admit it or not, none of it meant a thing.”

Sen stepped and lunged forward with his fist wound back behind me, decking me square in the face before I even had a moment to react. I went careening to the floor, Sen jumped on me and hit me again … and then once more before he went in for a final blow but stopped as he saw I had no intention of fighting back.

“I guess we know who won the rematch after all,” I said as he let go of me and stepped back, I wiped some blood from my lip with my coat sleeve and touched the tender skin under my eye that was already starting to bruise.

“So this is it? This is really where you’re going to end everything?” Sen said, not sounding angry, but instead completely deflated. “We can call Aiko, we can fix this… it doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Just go, Sen. it'll be easier if you leave now and don’t look back.” I was still groggy, laying on the ground as I propped myself up to look at him.

“Maybe you’re right. Perhaps some of us didn’t care as much as others. But it wasn’t me, and it sure as hell wasn’t Aiko. She needed you then, and I needed you now. But instead, you decided to let everyone walk away, I hope you’re happy.” He turned and left, leaving me alone on the roof.

I didn’t speak to Sentaro again after that.

…..

I took my time walking home after that. I stopped to see the parking lot where Sen had taught me how to ride. I sauntered down Dobuita street and gazed through the window at NaNa’s cafe where we’d all sat many times before. It was empty now.

Each memory seemed like a painful, pulsating flood jabbing at my temples. When I finally got home, I watched the Koi in the pond come rushing over to me. Aiko wasn’t there to stick her hands in or feed them strawberries. She wasn’t there to make my mom laugh like I hadn’t seen her laugh in years. I found myself slowly getting irritated, no, not irritated… livid.

“Ren, what the hell happened to your face!” I hadn’t even noticed my father pulling into the driveway, just getting off from another day of work.

“Oh, I got in a fight with Sentaro at the festival.” I didn’t have even an ounce of energy left, my voice was flat and mundane.

“You what?!” He hurriedly walked over to me and grabbed me by the arm, twisting me to face him, so he could get a good look at my bruised and bleeding face.

“Get off me!” I shoved him… hard. He stumbled back. It was the only time I’d seen the lifelessly calm expression leave my father’s face.

“I’ve had enough, Ren! You start missing school for days at a time, you nearly fail your final exams, and now? Now not only are you getting in fights at school with some delinquent, but you lay hands on me?!”

“Stop calling him that!” I shouted, breathing through my clenched teeth like an enraged animal, “He’s not a delinquent, he’s my friend! And he’s been there for me more in the past few years than you’ve been in my whole life… all you ever do is scold and berate me, you demean! You shout! You make me feel like a nobody!!” The shouting and commotion caused my mother to come outside, not understanding at all what was happening. She saw my bloody face and my father’s furious look, feeling helpless.

“Genji, Ren! Please… please wait, whatever it is we can~” before she could finish, my father spoke his piece.

“You’ve insulted me and the Natsukashi family name for the last time. Get out. Now. ” I turned, starting to walk off before looking back at him. I couldn’t walk away, for just one singular moment in my life, I wanted to tell him everything.

“You know what? That’s fine. If being a Natsukashi means I have to end up like you, I don’t want to be one.” my mother gasped, utterly distraught.

“Ren, please…” My mother pleaded, beginning to cry.

“No, no…this time you have to let me say it. He has to hear it.” I stomped over to him, nearly face to face.

“Do you want to know why you are the way you are? It's because you’re scared. You're scared that if you let your guard down for even a moment, if you even show a single shred of love or human decency, you won’t be ready when you lose everything. But what's the point?! What's the point of living like that…tell me….tell me!” I shouted as harshly as my voice would allow now, my father’s face twisted uncomfortably.

“How dare you…” He began.

“No, how dare you. How dare you chastise me for living my life, for caring, for being my own person… for doing something other than exactly what you say. I’m not you! I need to learn things and live for myself! And I don’t want to be cold, distant, and afraid anymore. I don’t want to be like you!” My eyes had begun to swell with tears, but I wouldn’t let them fall. I wouldn’t break here, I wouldn’t appear weak. I wasn’t ashamed of what I said, and I wanted him to know it.

“Get out…You’re no son of mine…”