The final chapter in this story. Enjoy, critique, love, hate.
Thank you for the good times this time around.
10
I woke up a few hours later. It was dark in my room. I checked my watch. Eight-thirty in the evening. My brain felt groggy, but something in it willed me to get up and straighten myself out.
I brushed my teeth and my hair, put on my jacket, and walked out of the hotel. My legs took me for the ride. I did not purposely go. I was being taken almost against my will.
The sky was clear that night, so the stars and three quarters of the bright moon supplemented the few street lights that lined the sidewalks and let me see where I was going. I found myself going to the town's general store. I bought two bottles of mineral water and a flashlight and continued walking. I was soon outside of the town and heading towards a path that would take me up the mountain.
The plastic bag with the two bottles of water swung and hit my leg every now and then.
One of the bottles was for me. The other was for Aya. I was going to meet her.
My flashlight switched on, I started to ascend. It was a subtle slope. I went up and up and up. I did not think, I did not make any sudden changes in my pace or attitude, I did not stray. I remained focused on my goal.
An hour later I drifted away from the path and into a clearing with a steep, dangerous-looking cliff. I was fairly high up and I had gone far enough that I could no longer see the town. The path had twisted enough to make sure of that.
I sat down in the clearing and took out a bottle of water, placing it on the ground in front of me. I took out the second bottle and opened it up. I took a long sip of water while I sat staring at the empty space in front of me. A space that should have been filled with a smiling, drinking human being.
I sat there for a long time. The mountain scenery was mostly dark to me, only small parts of it lit up by my weak flashlight and the light from the stars.
I was finally on the mountain above which Aya had taken her last breaths, perhaps saying my name with one of them.
I was finally there on the mountain with a mind ready to witness something happen. I waited for that feeling of acceptance to fill me.
It would not come.
I had come with my offering - water, the purest thing a human could consume - for her because I could not have a proper funeral. We would drink together one last time to conclude... something. Conclude what? Our association? End it? To say that I had gotten over her?
A lie. I had not. I could not. I would never. A cruel lie that I could not utter.
I took another sip of water and then put my bottle down beside hers.
I looked at how far the mountains continued and I felt so small. It made me feel smaller than I had ever felt before. It was not its height, but the memories. I closed my eyes. My entire life flashed before me. My life before Aya, during Aya, and after Aya.
After all these years, that was still how I measured time.
I envisioned my heart as a flower. It had grown slowly and blossomed with vigour. It had been far too short-lived. It had shrivelled up one day, and it felt like it had been pickled, preserved in a constant state of grief.
After all these years, I still would not let my heart out of that glass jar.
I thought about the tears I cried far too frequently. Something would happen, some sort of flame would be lit, and it would ignite intense emotions in me that I could not bottle up lest they kill me from the inside.
After all these years, I still felt like I was being eaten alive from within.
I imagined her walking into my apartment unexpectedly one day. I would ask no questions. I would not care where she came from, how she had survived, and why she had not called for eight years. I would let her come in and we would pick up right where we left off as if that gap of painful years had never occurred.
After all these years, I still could not stop fantasising that she was still alive.
I wondered if that priest - Father Saitou, I supposed I should call him - dreamed of his sister Naomi coming back into his life.
I opened my eyes and a tear fell out, followed by another and another. They slid down my face quietly in a solemn procession.
The tears were not for her, for as I sat on that mountain, I saw the truth with startling clarity.
Aya had not been the only one to die that day.
I had thought that coming to the mountain would help me find the peace I was looking for. I had hoped to come to terms with the past and find a way to stride forward against all obstacles.
No luck. It only showed me the permanence of my situation. My state was eternal, my sadness an oppressive weight chained to me, my life a dismal, bleak light that was slowly fading as I grew older.
These thoughts assaulted me, weakened my legs. Luckily I was sitting down.
I looked up at the beast before me and saw it consuming me. It felt familiar. I was on that plane, I was crashing. I could see her face contorted in horror, her eyes shut tightly, not wanting to watch her own end. Yet I sat beside her, transfixed. My eyes wide open as I drank in everything. Everybody on that plane screaming, dying...
And then I was out of the plane and back at the base of the mountains, sitting there eight years later, my heart no longer beating, my senses dulled.
Suddenly it was all clear.
I had a thought.
It was a defining revelation. One sentence echoed in my mind, and it made sense. The past eight years made sense. The rest of my life from now on would make sense.
I held onto it and pulled myself up to my feet, leaving my half-empty water bottle beside the full, unopened one. I walked away. I walked back down the mountain, numb.
I had come searching for something else. Not the revelation I had just had. I had wanted resolution. All I got was confirmation of what I had been afraid of for so many years.
In a trance, I walked and walked until I reached my hotel room.
I looked at the time. It was late.
==
The next day I checked out of the hotel. I took a train straight to the airport in Milan. I had my ticket changed for the next available flight. It was highway robbery on the part of the airline company, but I just threw my money down like it was a few grains of salt. Money meant nothing to me.
During my four-hour wait, I made my second and final phone call of the trip.
Shibata's answering machine picked up.
"I'm coming home. My flight gets into Narita at five twenty-three in the evening. See you."
I hung up and then I sat and stared at a white wall until it was time to board my flight.
When I left Italian soil, I felt nothing. I looked out the window, but night was already falling and it was dark. I could only see faint outlines of land and mountains. I pulled the cover down over the window and fell asleep, cold and empty. I did not wake up until the landing.
When I reached Japanese soil, I still felt nothing. No excitement to be home. No relief.
I dragged myself through the disembarkation process, found my luggage, and walked out of the doors.
"Miki-chan!" I heard a name call out.
I looked up. There was Shibata in the waiting area beside the exit, walking towards me. She looked like she had run all the way to the airport.
"Welcome back," she said with a worried smile.
I did not return her smile. I just nodded and began to walk. She kept up.
"How was it? Are you all right?"
I shrugged.
"Fine."
I could not muster up any enthusiasm. I could not even put on a show of being all right.
We walked in silence until we reached the platform for the train that would take us into Tokyo.
"I came right after my seminar. I wasn't expecting you for another few days."
Maybe she wanted an apology. I did not say anything. She fell silent. We did not speak for ten minutes as we sat waiting for the train.
"Miki, say something to me," she said quietly.
I did not want to say anything. There was nothing to say. No point.
I heard her sniff. I looked at her face and noticed that she was crying. I had never seen her cry. Or perhaps I had once in the days when we used to play futsal together and we had won some sort of big event. But those were tears of joy. The ones now were not.
"Why'd I let you go there?" she wondered out loud, uttering such protective words that I did not know what to say in response.
I knew that she knew something had happened and she was feeling guilty for egging me on to go.
It was not her fault. I would have gone eventually anyway. She was not responsible. I was an adult and I had the capability to make decisions for myself.
"I'm okay. I found peace," I lied.
She had no more grounds to continue. She did not want to call me on my lie.
We did not talk for the rest of the ride into Tokyo. She came with me to the platform where I would catch my train for my final station of the evening. When it came, I thanked her for picking me up at the airport. She said she would see me later, and I had a feeling she would be calling, mailing, and coming over a lot in the next week in an attempt to cheer me up.
We said goodbye.
I got home. Everything looked exactly the same as I had left it.
I put my luggage in a corner of the living room, took a quick shower, and went straight to bed. I was not tired, so I just lay there, my body in my bed, but my mind back on the mountain the previous night.
I remembered that one thought I had had. That one defining thought when all had become clear.
No, Aya was not the only one who had died that day.
I died, too.
With her. Death did not tear us apart. It tore me apart as I followed her into the realm of shadows.
No light. Not for me.
Maybe I had sacrificed myself. Maybe I had taken all the darkness within me so that she could have all the light and would not be scared. That would be why I could never escape the sadness and the thought of her.
I was dead inside. I walked the world with a shroud of darkness around me. It got darker and darker each week.
I had gone to that site in the Alps where most of her had burned up and been scattered in the winds to have my own version of a funeral for Aya.
Instead, as I had walked down the mountain to go back to the hotel, and just like the tears that had trailed down my cheeks, I walked the path of my own funeral.
My own private funeral.
My own death mourned.
the end.
(sorry)
Topic: My Own Private Funeral (Read 26883 times)