Chapter 37:

Memories

A Place between There and Now


That was the last time we spoke to each other. Two hours later he removed me from his friend list on DC and that was the last time I heard from him. As expected, I went to a different high school than he did, and I was able to put this horrible chapter of my life behind me. I only had one old classmate in my new class, but I got rid of him before he could do any harm. It is amazing how quickly teachers make judgements without knowing more about the situation. I was a bit more careful about my behaviour this time, I had to prevent people from other classes from noticing me and at the same time, I didn't want to stop. It's not really like an addiction, I wasn't addicted to manipulating people but I didn't want to give it up either. I had learned so much since the last time, it shouldn't be for nothing, and so it went on. Three years flew by and instead of going to university, I accepted a job offer from SNF. Apparently, me and Tetsuo had made a good impression with our deal, but they never sold it. I started working as a chief operative for realising concepts within the SN-Engine. A short time later, after a request, I was promoted to work as a level designer, but was quickly transferred to the marketing sector for some unknown reason. And what happened after that, who knows. It was a day like any other, on the way to work. I got into a taxi and then there was this scream. That was the last thing I remember, then I woke up here.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, it was Yui.

“Shouldn't we be moving on?”

I opened my eyes and looked up at the sky, the sun was already quite high, it would soon be noon. She was right, we should have left a while ago. But fortunately this meant that our journey would be shorter and so a three-day journey became two and a half days. I just hoped that he hadn't taken that into account. But as you know by now, he did, or you did, or I did, depending on how you want to put it.

I stretched and stood up.

“You're right about that.”

I began to walk across the slope which I now realised was at a strange angle to the valley. this in turn explained how I had walked up the previous day and broken through the mist, even though I wanted to walk sideways to the river.

“Say, is there anything interesting over there? We wanted to come up here to get a view of the valley, but I never really saw you looking down and the direction we're walking in now doesn't match at all.”

I stopped and turned around. She quickly ran to me, and I raised my arm and pointed to the mountain that the shadow had shown me last night. What had been a black triangle yesterday now had a snow-covered peak glistening in the sun.

“There's something up on the mountain and that's where we have to go.”

She looked at me puzzled.

“And you know this how? What exactly did you see up there?”

I told her about the thing with my shadow and that it told me that I had to go up there, but she didn't seem to give a shit.

"Look, if you want to go up there then go ahead, I won't stop you, what could happen to you? But as you may have noticed, we don't have anything to carry water and that may not matter to you but I'm not going to have a, how long did you say the hike was?”

“Two more days.”

“I’m not going to have a two-day long hike without any water or food with me. You remember what I looked like after just a few hours, I'm certainly not going to do that to myself, unlike you I seem to be quite attached to my life!”

That seemed to be the end of our time together. And so, once again, a danger that was only temporary left me, even if I sometimes wanted to forget it. An amazing amount had happened in the seven days since we had met, even though I had spent a considerable amount of time without her. It wasn't that I missed her, it wasn't that I wanted her to stay, it wasn't that I couldn't understand her leaving, but despite all that, our journey came to an earlier end than expected. I didn't say goodbye to her but the same was true for her. I had only just begun to understand her. Understand her?

What am I talking about. I learned years ago to understand people, to interpret their feelings and to exploit this for my own purposes. She was a mystery to me, I didn't understand her, she was like a normal girl but she behaved so strangely from time to time. She was like a history book and knew things that she just said she had no idea about. She was definitely not a normal person. I thought about whether maybe it was built-in chips or something like that that gave her all the information, but I couldn't even guess what she was at that point. She was perfect! How could he do this to her, I will kill him for what he did to her, kill him I promise you, even if you don't understand now, later you will understand and you will thank me for this promise, just like I once did.