Life is Cold on the Other Side

The summer heat was in full swing when people started throwing themselves off roofs. By midwinter, there were hundreds of cases in Tokyo alone. Not just jumping anymore. At that point, it was with whatever people could get their hands on.

When the first snows hit, I was alone in my office building, the population of my company having dwindled substantially in the preceding months. My job wasn’t special; every workplace was grappling with what corporate called “reduced staffing.” Like everyone else left behind, I had to shoulder more. I had to pick up the pieces they left behind. Naturally, resentment grew exponentially the more people left us.

A think tank made up of clinical psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists had dubbed it the “Thanatos Effect:” a desire to meet with the end, spurred on by some mass hysteria. As to the root cause of it, even they weren’t sure. Freud called it the death drive. The news spoke of it as a courtship. Probably referring to the notes some people left behind; they differed in their degrees of specificity, but in totality most expressed discontent and a hope that their companion had brought them. As to what those companions were, those left behind couldn’t be entirely certain. They spoke of nonexistent beings, of entities that previously had gone unmentioned entirely.

Because, after all, who doesn’t have ghosts?

And where else are you supposed to meet them?

It was nearing midnight when I noticed the snowfall. The past eight hours had been spent hunched over my desk, going through manuscripts that, unsurprisingly, dealt with the Thanatos Effect. The recent phenomenon had left mangakas with only one thing of interest to draw. I only had sixty to get through, a byproduct of the decreased submission rates, and yet virtually all of them dealt with what was happening. Its importance, its impact so to speak, couldn’t be understated and yet I felt exhausted whenever another one-shot about it found its way to my desk. There was something tantalizing about being the one to talk about these things first, about being the most profound about it, about infusing their own personal history with the current goings-on. I understood that, but every moment spent away from the office was spent looking in the face of the world death had left us. I yearned to turn my gaze elsewhere. Snow was a good start.

For a moment, I felt calm for the first time in months. Watching something steady, something with a modicum of stability, felt necessary. Like it readjusted my core.

Then I saw her in the reflection of the window.

Her hair was even styled like it had been that day.

My mental acuity that day had been frayed by that point, however, and for the first few moments I was fairly certain it was a hallucination.

“No, I guarantee you I’m not what you’re thinking,” she said. “As far as guarantees go from ghosts, anyway.”

It took me a while to comprehend what transpired; in the meantime, I stared at her stupidly, my mouth open and my eyes wide.

“You were always smarter than me, so I imagine you understand what this means.”

“I— I have ideas,” I said. So this was real. “Not sure if any of them have legs.”

“Shoot.”

“This is what people are seeing before they do it,” I said. “Someone they’ve lost. Someone they can’t get back.”

“Yes and no. I can’t speak for everyone, but some of us don’t technically exist.”

“Are they hallucinations?”

She put a finger to her lips, furrowed her brow.

“Conjured spirits, I guess. They’re real, but they only exist inside that person’s consciousness. Ideals made… well, not flesh. But they’re real.”

“People want them so badly, they create them out of thin air?”

“Let’s go with that.”

I allowed myself to slump into the nearest chair and hung an arm off the back.

“And what does it mean when people see these… spirits?”

“Usually, it means they’re at the end of the rope,” she told me, taking the chair at the desk opposite mine. “Can’t afford to keep living like they have been. Happens to everybody eventually.”

“And the reason we’re seeing them?”

“The collective unconscious has immense psychic energy,” she said. “So immense, in fact, that it was able to manifest in the physical world. Thoughts have power, after all. Just not like how we imagined they did.”

“I’m all right, though. There’s no reason I should be seeing you.”

“Oh?” she said softly. “And what do you dream about, Kenchan?”

“Nobody’s called me that since high school.”

“You’re dodging the question.” She flashed a grin. “Besides, that’s last time I saw you.”

“Is it in poor taste to joke about your own death?”

“Hey, I’m the one who has to put up with it.”

I offered an exasperated look. “You know that’s not true.”

“In a sense. Now answer the question.”

She’d always been like that. Never let a question go unanswered. No riddles left unsolved. There was always something to figure out. Never just let things be.

“You ought to know, right?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

Though I opened my mouth, I found myself unable to speak. Turning around in the chair, I folded my arms and laid them on the back. Resting my head on top, I watched the snowfall for a while. Is it what I was actually seeing? Was I somehow projecting Yuki onto it? Even her dress was white. None of this was coincidence.

“I wish it had been me,” I whispered. Part of me didn’t want her to hear it. Not that it mattered; her face appeared beside mine. A chill coated my face as she placed a hand on my cheek. “That’s what happens, in my dreams. It’s me instead.”

“I don’t know about instead, but it still can be you.”

When I turned to face her, she wore a serious expression; she never did that.

“You can see me again,” she said. “Whenever you want.”

“I would already be able to, if you can visit me like this,” I told her. “If I could’ve found a way, I would’ve.”

“Do you know why we’re visiting you all?” she asked. “The psychic energy that permeates the world, we finally have a way to get through from the hereafter.”

“But it’s a one-time thing,” I said.

She nodded.

“You can’t come back after this, can you?”

She shook her head.

“We want you to come with us. To see you all again.”

“Is the afterlife that terribly lonely?”

“If life is, why shouldn’t what comes after be, too?”

“Even when you take us with you, does it alleviate it?”

Her eyes flickered; she stared straight at the carpet.

“It’s the same as it always is. But you get lost in that great big void. You never find anyone again. Unless— unless you bring them with you.”

“And you finally found a way to do that.”

She cupped my cheeks with her frigid hands.

“We can be together, for all eternity. You and me. Like the old days.”

I held her by the wrists. “But it never goes away, does it? The sadness.”

She looked away again. “You feel like you did when you passed. Like you’re stuck. But if you come back and the other person agrees to come with you, you can change that.”

So that’s where the hope came from. That’s where the discontent dissipated in favor of optimism. Only—

“You don’t know if any of this true.”

She remained silent.

“Because the only other spirits you’ve seen are the ones that came here too, right?”

She remained silent.

“There’s no way to verify if this works unless you go back.”

She was quiet. And then:

A barely audible, “No.”

I took her hands and folded them together, returned them to her. She turned in toward herself. Turning my gaze back to the window, I sighed.

“I’ve always thought of you when it snows. I always will. And the dreams, they’re not going away any time soon. But I have to see this through. To the end. And that’s not now.” I looked at her again. “But I promise you, when it’s my turn, I’ll come find you.”

She lifted her head, crying.

“I’ll race through that endless night, and I’ll know when I find you when I see snow again.”

She sniffed. “You promise?”

I smiled. “When has Kenchan ever broken a promise to you?”

She returned my smile and stood up from her chair. “Not once.”

We watched the snows together for a while, and when I turned to ask her if she missed seeing it, I found myself alone again.

Yet, the coldness dissipated all the same. Yes, I was alone and yes, I had to go on without her. But it wouldn’t be forever. I would hold fast to that promise, and when I had raced through that night and found her, I’d ask then.