One
mind
lost in the plum;
The body, chanting,
now utterly frozen
— unaware.

Mama, I don't understand, why don't you answer, why are you saying nothing, he is your son — have you loved him at all? Don't be silent, why are you silent; why haven't you locked the door so he wouldn't leave, why haven't you held him back, why have you let him go; mama, why… why couldn't you do at least something?..

When you hurriedly open up the window of a tiny flat on the fourth floor where you spend night by night, as your friend consented once, and peer into another person who has appeared so familiar somehow, and glare at his features with an anticipation of recognizing, but make a mistake every time — I do not know this person, his hair is shorter and height is much bigger than necessary, and he slouches, too: they do not even look alike, how could I confuse them? — then the uncountable mistakes turn into tears which must not be revealed but must be hidden after you bury your head in the pillow or cover your face behind the sleeve instead, and this is what you never are able to succeed in; when you tensely keep your eyes fixed on the lantern glow and the outlines of the stations which your evening train swiftly passes by and cannot find the person who might have, as if by magic, get to know that you are right here and look for you as desperately as you do look for him — but may it be simpler, without any magic: if only you could catch the very sight of him, at least from afar, under one of those lanterns, and understand clearly where should your steps be turned to — honestly, may it be any way, because the most important is to find and to retrieve, — then the images of the days bygone overshadow your eyes with the mist and force you to fall in an unrestrained and afflictive slumber; when you walk down the streets and feel that if you don't quicken your step, even a hundred years are not enough for these searches, and who needs the old and ugly you then, and the flows of unknown faces and backs do not ever dry up, and the grey high-rises occlude over your head, and you begin to walk faster and faster, and the walking is becoming the running, and you are running to the aim only you are aware of, and running in an unknown direction, and running in attempts to catch him up, because he's turned back, he's turned back and noticed me, why is he running away, I'm his sister, he leaves me again, too fast, I can't keep pace, then your strength is gone sooner or later, you hardly drag your thin legs and stumble and tear a sole, and fall down on the asphalt and skin your knee, and everybody looks back at your voice, absolutely everybody but the person you pursued so ineptly: he has already disappeared as if he has never showed up here; when you try to hear all the conversations around and to distinguish the voice of each person, because any voice may be the exact one you have been listening to the very childhood and the last words of which unceasingly respond with a scream in your ears, then it all turns out as you are doing something silly again, and therefore, in a minute or two, you refuse this idea in annoyance and anger: you have heard so much that your head is splitting — you have heard so much that have not heard anything at the same time; when you endlessly fly above the clouds, there is always one thing you suddenly recollect and the same second collapse on the ground; and when you look at the sun, it eventually burns out on your eyes as a mark of blindness.

Misa has been looking at the sun for as long as she could remember herself.

And the doors are slammed with a crash again, the house is crying something after her, the bag is hitting her back, a sole has scraped along the pavement, a turn, fingers are clenched into fists, she wants to screw up her eyes and shout, and it does not matter what will come after; she is so small, but the city is so big and has no bounds, is it the day, is it the night, I don't want to stay here anymore, I've been trying so hard but still can't find you, where are you?..

She was walking for a very long time, as if in a delirium, and did not notice herself walking anywhere: her hair had tousled and blouse had become crumpled, her legs were barely getting off the ground and almost stumbled against each other, she did not understand the road and did not understand that any other people except for her brother and herself still existed, because it did not matter and because she needed nobody of those other people, and all that time Misa dreamed that if she waited a little bit more, around one of the identical buildings' corner a dear silhouette would finally appear, and Misa would not be mistaken, that would be her brother who had hoped to find her as much as she had, and they would reunite merrily, as if no more than an hour had passed since the moment of parting, and would come back home, and everything would be fine, even better than ever before, they both would burst out laughing, and the things occurred would never be remembered. However, before the one remembers, the one truly forgets at first and does not lie to themselves, — but Misa is lying.

Misa is lying, stop it, why are you saying such things, this is not the lie but the gilding actually, and it is not that important how she is lying — cute girl, shining eyes, embarrassed smile, tilt of her head, a slight one, preferably to the left, so fragile and vulnerable, are you really cold-hearted, won't you help me just a little? — much more important is who all these words and thoughts and actions are meant for and what exactly do they conceal. Although Misa does not want to guess, she is indifferent about what is happening right now and if only she could stop thinking, she would shut her eyes tight, curl up and fall asleep noiselessly, but something is constantly holding her on this narrow border, something persistent and disturbing; the urge is to wave it away, and Misa would love to do so, but she is warned by the distant awareness: if she does not cling to this disturbing thought like to a saving thread, something terrible will happen, and she will not have to mourn for anybody after that — the one mourned for will be only her.

The truth might have become the deliverance, but dreams are always more precious than the truth, and the long-awaited figure appears for an instant once again and vanishes far in the alley, and Misa can see again, can feel there is nothing but a dead end any further, and brush aside the hesitation, and willfully, inch by inch, move forward.

After seven steps she falls on her hands, twitches in sharp pain, gasps in terror of the ragged wound and, numb in panic, looks out for brother among the doors, passages and signboards, but the light has faded out, eyes are veiled, so cold, she cannot move, cannot hear, cold pierces the bones, she is alone, wants to shed a tear and forgets to, she is horrified, she is being dragged into an abyss inexorably and there is nobody, there is nobody.

I'm calling for you, but you never answer; sometimes it even seems to me that you don't want to talk to me at all. You are silent a lot, you hide something, I don't understand why you have to keep any secrets from me, I'm your sister after all, we've always been together, when we were children we promised each other — do you remember? — I'm not hiding anything from you, you're not hiding anything from me, and we share with each other. We've even made a pinky promise — "Finger cut-off, ten thousand fist-punchings, whoever lies has to swallow thousand needles..." Don't you remember? Really… But it's okay if you don't remember, we can do it again, come on, don't turn away, give me your hand…

What… What's with your hand?.. You… Why are you looking at me like this?..

Windy.

Take one breath. Take another.

So calm and nice.

Something dirty, something unreal was seen, but has dissipated a long before. Maybe, a minute, or maybe, ten years ago. This is not important — it is so still here that even the seconds running cannot be heard.

That was not a dream, because she sensates such an unity with the world which can exist only during the soundless daydreams, and that means the actual dream is happening right now.

So calm and nice here, there is no need to leave. There is no path leading back anyway.

The wind rises.

Her chest is overflown with the presentiment of the infinite flight.

Realization — at the same instant she will open her eyes, and onwards the unshadowed space which never knew any worry, or malice, or hatred, will unfold.

There is no need to hurry.

She is opening her eyes and drowning into the clear azure sky.

Now you're sitting quiet and listening to me. Don't go after me, got it? I'm asking — you got it? And don't look for me, there's nothing you can do anyway. I've warned you for the first and the last time, remember that well. Don't go after me.

You go — you are killed.

After Misa woke up, the first thing she consciously distinguished from the dream had turned out to be a black-brown wooden ceiling, and then — the same wooden walls on which the oily spots of dim light were quivering; the room was strangely small and rather resembled a box: the ceiling was overhanging too low, and it seemed that the walls were slowly and almost insensibly shifting to each other even closer and closer, a little bit more and it would be impossible to breath naturally; the windows whether were utterly missing or, boarded up tightly, were conflating into the half-light impalpably; exposed, Misa was lying on the greasy futon: blunt pain extended to her arm which appeared to be slovenly and awry bandaged, Misa did not dare to move it; while looking over the place, she tardily turned her head to the side and — with an odd combination of fear and relieving — realized that she was not the only one in the room.

A person was sitting nearby, on his knees, benumbed as a bronze monument, he did not turn back, did not change his posture and did not show by anything that he noticed Misa or, at least, realized her presence; he was rawboned and stooped at the same time, as though inside his body a barely visible confrontation between an enormous aspiration to hone his position to perfection and a weak-willed want to bend over and drop his forehead to tatami, he was so focused on himself that an impression was being created that he was not breathing, he was not alive at all, and through his stillness he seemed an inseparable part of the room: if he had gone, everything else would have disappeared and the unnatural, hypnotic energy of this piece of space, of this stuffy place absorbed into gloom, of this actual whirlpool inside which hundreds of mesmerized people disappear despite all the pleas to beware, would have dissipated. The seconds and minutes were passing, but person remained as motionless as before, and the staying in in uncertainty and the expecting for the worst were harassing Misa more and more, and eventually she chose rather to break the silence: the tension had reached such an extent that it had become impossible to bear it any longer.

"You… Who are you? Where are we? Is that you who brought me here?.."

Silence.

"Who are you?.."

"No name belongs to him."

"Where am I?"

"No shelter is given to him."

"What are you talking about?"

"He plucked a flower that grew on the roadside. He plucked the flower and admired its petals. So beautiful!"

"What do you want from me?.."

"He plucked the flower, hid it and admired its petals. He plucked the flower and killed it. Beauty is evanescent."

"Killed it?.."

"He turned upset as he thought he would have been able to stop the inevitable. His hands were shaking and his knees had buckled. He was deceiving himself as he imagined he had been almighty and the only worthy to behold the perfection. But people's minds are like the winds: the one weakened, the other one grew stronger. He beheld the perfection, and although he had lost it forever, he preferred to forget about his own weakness. He threw away a withered stem, locked the door to the room where he beheld and left after swore on his blood that he would regain that distant moment of bliss and would replace with it all the humble and empty years of his life only about to come."

The person fell silent, and only his shoulders were shivering from the strain: as though he was lost in attempts to refrain something disgraceful that was desperately bursting out of his body, and was literally obsessed with those attempts which had not made sense any for a casual observer; through the person's every word sadness and obsession were shown, and with every word pronounced that person appalled Misa, however not only that: perhaps, she did not realize it herself for the reason she was unable to disjoin his aloof speech into meanings and notions, Misa had never done suchlike things after all, but Misa's soul was responding to that speech, as if reminding of something left far behind, intentionally thrown away, — and Misa would not concede of what exactly, even if she had known.

And the person kept speaking.

"He had to find a new flower, and therefore he left, and very soon he managed to. The flower blossomed among the grey stones and blinded the passers with its elegance. Nobody dared to touch the flower: their hands were filthy. But he plucked it in admiration. That flower was doomed to the same fate, and the next one, and another one. What had taken root in the ground is not able to relinquish it; the fragile elegance must not be soiled with touches. He did not understand and did not want to. The only thing he wanted was a moment of bliss.

He brought many flowers to the room. He lost count of broken stems which were thrown away without remorse. And he was inconsolable, aware of the truth that no flower would replace that miraculous wonder which was found in the remote past and was so unwisely lost. And he lost the urge to sleep, to eat and drink, although was not going to stop his searching. Eventually he had weakened. Now he cannot straighten his shoulders and cannot move without fear anymore. Now he barely managed to carry the flower to the room where he behold…"

Misa was not listening to the last words: she understood clearly, if right the next moment she got up from the futon and went for the fadedly illuminated exit which was seen in the opposite wall, the person simply would not be able to stop her, and in that case if the exit was locked, it would be the easiest thing in the world even for her to knock the person over on the floor and take away the keys; Misa did not like the second option: she was not sure of that completely, even though she wanted to be, her legs were trampled and her hand was bandaged, and from the very beginning Misa never thought of such an outcome, she was pursuing the only purpose — to find her brother, and that seemed an easy task, because he constantly stayed somewhere nearby, disappearing and appearing, like a relentless and vicious wraith, however she had neither enough agility nor acumen to predict where and when would she catch sight of her brother again and to comprehend why did he need to mislead her into the depths of endless Tokyo alleys mockingly, — she refused any thinking, and denied it all with a persistence inconceivable for her past self, and just recklessly followed the path that the blond boy wearing a battered sweater on the bare skin was pointing at.

Misa was obliged to get up, come over the person, open the door and escape — obliged to her brother, to his concern, almost alike a father's one, to their shared memories, to the years spent side by side, to the entire childhood of hers, and, what is the most important, to that absolutely unthinkable — if only it would not have occurred in reality — moment when she realized with fright that her brother, with years passing, estranged from their little world and eventually abandoned it altogether: he was throwing off bonds knowingly and almost imperceptibly to glance, and even Misa barely had time to detect the last, critical stage of his renunciation; she clung to the subtle threads, which were unifying her brother and herself yet, for as long as it was possible, but the threads were torn from the softest touches, and Misa had achieved nothing: another thing, a distinctly extraneous and therefore repellent one, had grown inwards her brother's life too firmly, it had replaced all his wishes and had become the only need, it was beckoning and compelling to sacrifice for itself; and Misa felt that the place, which before belonged to her alone, was occupied by that unknown thing to which she could not think of any other description except for that it was reflecting in her brother's eyes since then and was covering his face with an ashen shadow, and she was only able to watch dazedly — until the very end.

That was the reason why Misa followed her brother when he left home.

That was the reason why Misa had to defeat the person who killed flowers.

That was the reason why Misa, despite trembling knees, despite gnawing pain in her hand and deep fear verging upon disgust, is getting up, imitating a firm tread and reaching after the door, the person is close, the person is shrieking, her leg is grabbed, and the unusual strength appears somehow, she is pushing away the person's hand with a fury, the door is not locked, how it is not locked, is there freedom really, is she lucky at last, oh god, from behind, from the floor, a strangled wheeze is heard, she is almost flying out to the street, the late evening, so cold, she does not recognize the locality, but also has no time to think it over, she is warily gazing around, seeing the road in the end of the narrow labyrinth of naked buildings and rushing to the light.

When I was little — do you remember? — I was bored all the time, and it was interesting only nearby you, and in the evenings I forced you to go outside, almost dragged you by arm, and asked you to show me the stars. It seemed to me that since I was little, there was just not enough height for me to look at them myself, and you were elder and taller, and that meant you could see much more than I did. So funny, though!.. You were not able to see a single thing: no star is shining above Tokyo, but I just didn't realize it then. And you were elder and smarter, and you understood everything clearly, but always — every time a new story — were telling me about the galaxies that perhaps never even existed. You were thinking up new fairytales, and I believed them. Even now I do. Such beautiful fairytales…

Misa was walking for a very long time, as if driven out, and did not know where she was walking to: everything remained unfamiliar, the cityscape had coalesced into one monotonous high rippled wall, and only the road was responding with the sound of her footsteps; for all that time she had been wandering, her brother had not appeared — or had not allowed to get any sight of him, — although Misa hoped for that endlessly, looking into the abrupt bends of the alleys with a sinking heart. Misa forefelt that their meeting would still occur, but how and when remained in mystery, and that was ridiculous, because it had not been going that way before: Misa constantly, deeply, almost physically perceived the presence of her brother and for that reason clearly understood where her next path would finish at, and trembled, and with her entire soul aspired to the endpoint, which always turned into the deception, and the path started anew, intertwining with itself; and then Misa plodded through the concrete darkness and did not see the one landmark worth her aspiring: no matter how tough it had been for her to manage those ten days spent without a roof above, Misa had known no sign of an absolute loneliness.

Perhaps, she would reel awkwardly, like a doll, would reach out for the walls feverishly, but they all are heartless, they would recoil and push her far away, and she would fall onto the asphalt, but it would tear asunder, too, and there would come an everlasting fall into nowhere — as much cruel as senseless.

She would not even be allowed to break into shards.

And when he appears, Misa does not believe at first. And then, recognising and realizing, rejoices like a child, despite for one vague inexplicable reason this meeting seems for her to be the last one. And then she runs.

The chasing leads her to a grey two-storey building, brother has gone out of sight. but too little time has passed yet: he would not go too far, he has found the way to get inside instantly; a door marked with paint is locked, but there still is a narrow stairway leading to the upper floor area; after climbing up, Misa somehow notices the worn black sweater and blond locks in the aperture of the farthest window and rushes there in a wink — luckily, the frame is not moved aside, but to that moment when Misa manages to enter, the room is already empty.

Her path is coming to its endpoint, but will not start anew, no, it never will, this is the last frontier and there is nowhere to run from here. Everything that has happened to these seconds is nothing; everything that has gone before as if never existed at all.

Misa — impatiently, excitedly, aflutterly — is going down the cracked stairs, and a quiet screech of her pace is impaling the silence.

An unfinished room: the walls not completely painted over, a loose polypropylene film, a lightbulb on a long wire in the middle of the ceiling, the floor stained with the same paint, a few panels are lost, the abandoned tools, a stool, the carton boxes, the windows and doors tightly boarded up from the inside. There is nobody.

Misa does not believe: she is throwing herself to the windows, running from the first to the second and third, pressing against the door, listening to the outwards, banging on the dark boards, trying to rend them, but she is not able to, she has no strength, she is pounding, clawing with nails, getting splinters in her palms and fingers, yelling, straightening in reed, turning pale and very slowly, a tiny step by the tiny step, retreating, and feeling one more wall behind her back, and shuddering, and falling in, and burying into the floor, and cannot shed a tear, and groaning like no human would, and cannot hear herself.

There was no escape for anybody from here, there was no entry for anybody in here.

Nobody is here.

Once long ago people were happily looking into the sky and were blinding themselves, and when they were asked why had they given away their keen eyes to the sun, they only laughed and shaked their heads; but the sun disappeared behind the blue mountains and never came back, and people decided to pretend as if they still owned their happiness, although every single one of them secretly knew they were looking into the void.

22.02.17