Apples, Tea, and Cake

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Class 2-E, elementary school, roughly a decade ago.

I was getting my lunch out of my backpack from the classroom cubbies. No one else but the usual girl with pigtails was in class, since they were outside. Returning to my seat, I heard music playing. I turned to the girl and noticed that she was using the school-issued learning tablet to listen to music while she read a book, but the headphones weren't plugged in.

I wanted to eat peacefully, so I walked up to her and bluntly told her to plug in her headphones correctly. She became as red as an apple, and apologized for the inconvenience. Looking at her desk, I saw her bento box with a piece of dessert inside it. I caught a whiff. I asked her what it was and she said,
"Pan…roasted…apple…cake. I…made it…myself."

I told her it smelled good and left towards my desk, but then she called out to me, granted ever so quietly. I turned around and she, while kneading her hands together and not daring to make eye contact, asked if I wanted to try some. There was no reason for me to deny her offer, and I pulled up a chair and shared some of my lunch too.

"I'm Vieira Chamaru, pleasure to meet you."

She attempted to repeat my name, but failed at the foreign family name. I lightly giggled and asked for her name.

"I am… My name is…Ringomori Yoru," she said.

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Another day in that class, she introduced me to the song I caught her listening to. It was from an idol band named RONDselia, and she played the music on speaker. We listened to it as I drew random characters and she read her stories. We also shared lunches and she also introduced me to her homemade matcha tea.

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The two of us were walking home from school for the first time. We arrived at her home and I took notice of the ripening yellow apples growing on a tree in her front lawn. Walking together on this road became our daily routine.

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Our teacher asked us to stand in front of the class. To our surprise, we were both being serenaded with a Happy Birthday song. That was when we realized we shared a birthday. How did we celebrate it afterwards? She took me to a pie shop near her home called CLARIS.

Memories of times I ate that apple cake and drank that matcha swarmed me. My old memories involving the pigtail girl replayed with her face fully revealed, and after a certain period, I heard the vinyl echoing in my head. Each and every time without fail, there was a plate of apple cake or a cup of matcha nearby. The sight of it, the feel on the tongue, the crunch of the apple and sipping of the tea, the smell of nostalgia, all of it, I relived those feelings like it was the first time.

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I fell out of the hotel desk chair onto the floor.

"Vieira-kun! Are you okay?"

I don't know if she had gotten up or stayed seated, and I couldn't give her a direct answer and could only afford to groan as my head felt like it was imploding and burning.

I-I knew her all my life? How–– AH!

New memories of her manifested.

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She'd cry next to her ill dad's bed in her home. There were no words I could say to her to uplift her mood, so I decided to draw a picture of the apple currently resting on the windowsill of her kitchen.

That was me.

I was the light in her life. I was the thing in the analogy she didn't like to use, she was talking about me. So why didn't she say so?

She was there to watch me play soccer in the youth league.
I tried to teach her to draw.
She tried to teach me to bake.
I was there for her during her dad's unfortunate passing.
We celebrated birthdays together.

Birthdays.

I found myself and her inside her home yet again, that time with our mothers in front of us and a birthday cake on the table; her mother had the camera she'd later inherit. The cake had a "10" on it, and that revealed to me what memory I was seeing.

No, stop. I don't want to see it again.
I don't want to relieve it again.

After the celebrations, Ringomori handed me a CLARIS box that had a slice of her apple cake. Freshly baked, the aroma could be smelled throughout the span of time. I said goodbye to her and her mom at the door and ran to the sidewalk to see my dad turn into the street.

I ran forward to show off the cake I was gifted as he pulled up in front of the house. My mom came to fetch me and we entered the car. I rolled down the window and looked beyond the yard's garden to see Ringomori on the other side of the windowsill. She was happily waving goodbye for the day.

I had a thought at the time, I like her. I want to tell her I like her.

I forced the memory to end before the crash, but there was one more place where the aroma of the cake and tea lingered still.

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In my hospital bed on the day I woke up from my coma, I remembered calling out a yellow apple and tea to the nurses and orderlies, but I wasn't finished there. I was fading out of consciousness and the nurses panicked to check my health.

"A-Apple… T-Tea…" and what I wanted to say, "C-Cake."

Ringomori showed up a few times while I was hospitalized, but then she stopped after I asked who she was. I had completely forgotten all about her.

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"Vieira-kun! Are you okay?!"
She was panicked too, trying to pick me up off the hotel carpet.

I couldn't hack it, I couldn't cope with it. My body was moving to its own commands and I crawled backwards away from her. Shock ripened from all the things invading – or actually reawakening – in my mind.

"What was that question about, Vi-Vieira-kun?"
She was standing, looking down at me.

I gathered the breath in my lungs and forced them to turn into words. There wasn't much firmness in them.
"I-I remember. Th-The smell of that cake and tea, I-I remember it. I remember y-you. I remember all that I can about m-my life before the…before the accident."

Her response?
"Really? That's…That's great!"
Bless her. She was ecstatic and blissful, more excited than I was.

That should be how I should feel, so why wasn't I feeling happy about it at that moment? Because my question was unanswered.

I asked again, "Why didn't you tell me…y-you were a part of my previous life?"

My memories were still playing on one side of my head. I slightly raised my voice because they were becoming louder and I couldn't hear myself.
"Why? Why did you lie to me?"

Her smile was disappearing, I made the wrong move, but I didn't stop.

"Th-This whole year of me knowin' you, you knew about my old life but didn't tell me? The apples and matcha tea? RONDselia? The vinyl? Soccer? Your home? You told me about none of that? I-I had to figure that out myself! I-If I didn't stumble on you recordin' to yourself on Mt. Maruyama, would you have ever told me?"

I forced myself to stop. My nails dug into my palms.

She formulated an answer.
"I…I was…nervous, Vieira-kun. I was…scared. Scared of the possibility that…if I did tell you…and you didn't remember."

I wasn't being withholding anymore.
"Ringomori-san, I'm scared right now. B-Because now I feel like the life I've had since the accident has been pointless and wrong! It's like two different me's are fightin' for control, a-and I-I'm confused on what kind of person I actually am! Which direction am I supposed to head? I'm not prepared for this, I wasn't warned about this."

The veins in my head throbbed in pace with my accelerating heartbeat. I gripped my hair and pulled it over my face. Through the minuscule gaps made by the strands, I saw her disheartened look.

"Has the blame…fallen onto me…?"

Her speech became more distant, and quiet. Then I became quiet too, removing my hair to stare up at her with impassive eyes. The slapping of the rain against the window spoke accurately for us.

The situation before my memories' return was that of a dream. A dream most boys with childhood friends would have. But it wasn't a dream, it was reality; a nightmare.

"It…It is my fault, is it not?" she choked.
She then became a broken record.
"I…I am so sorry…I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry…"

Her legs gave out, and she fell to her knees with a reverberating thud on the floor. She buried her head in her hands. That was when I saw it.

I was seeing with my eyes, but that wasn't enough to see the truth.
Touch: The atmosphere was cold, perhaps colder than the storm.
Sound: Her hiccups and constant restraint, she was hurting but still considerate enough to not cause a commotion.
Taste and Touch: The cause of all of this. What those two senses showed me weren't of pain or loss, they were supposed to be of healing and remembrance.

Once I readjusted my sense of sight, my confusion – my supposed anger – withered away like a rotten apple core. It left as quickly as it came, as if it mattered anymore. When I stood up, she recoiled further along the bed. She was frightened.

I took a step back and apologized, then looked at the door. Next thing I knew, the door was open with my hand on the knob.

She called out to me. No, not my family name that she perfected over time, but my other name.
"Chamaru…kun?"

I stepped into the hotel hallway and closed the door. I fled, like the coward I was.