This is how I disappear.
A simple exchange of words would suffice – there would be no need for tears. The more inconsequential he makes himself, the more easily for people to forget him...and forget their deeds. This time, he would let them continue to be ignorant – he didn't want them to remember all those memories of hurt and the feel of constantly being always alert so much that the tenseness of the moment makes you snap and pull the trigger to your head. No. He'd shoulder that burden alone. It was his alone to bear. He knew that at once when the day after Nyx came and everybody forgot except him.
It was him who had silently crept inside their rooms and collected their armbands and evokers and placed them surreptitiously inside a plain cardboard box – him who had burned down every bridge connecting to S.E.E.S. He felt like Mitsuru at times, being now that he was the one keeping secrets from them. It was him who had explained to them how a shiba inu had wound up inside a coed dorm or why an elementary kid was staying at a dorm filled with high school kids.
It was better that way – he thinks, he convinces himself – that way, it would be easy as falling when he leaves; a clean break like they say.
He planned to leave dorm right when the term ends – he had no desire to stick around for Graduation Day. Carrying his possessions in one small box and a larger box housing their weapons, armbands, evokers and a few documents pertaining to what they used to do and his clothes in a shabby suitcase, he locked his room and went downstairs. He would want to leave quickly – he was not one who was fond of goodbyes and permanent ones at that. But he was not so lucky that day.
He spotted that brown-haired girl lounging downstairs – feet up the table, head burrowed in a magazine and body encased in a pink dress. He gulped – why you of all people? He thinks and decides to just walk past her, hoping that she would ignore him altogether. I mean, that was what she did the whole time they were here. She just ignored him. He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly and proceeded to walk to the front door and intending to sign up in the log book for the last time when –
"Oh, hey – uh, wow, this is...awkward. I don't really remember your name. But, what are you doing? Isn't today Graduation Day? I'll be coming in late but I'm still going. How about you?" her voice is lilting and a little sing-song but it was her voice all the same and that made the sound perfect to him.
His heart squeezes for a moment but it releases it in an instant, it had only hurt a little – it only stung a little. He had hoped once that their strong affinity to each other would never be erased. He had believed that love can transcend anything. He wasn't naive, not at all. If anything, he was fairly realistic but now, when her face clouded his vision and sweetness had poisoned his blood, he didn't feel the same way at all anymore, truth be told.
I'm trying to leave, he thinks but then, that would be far too blunt for his liking. So he only settles with: "Why start caring now? You never used to." With all the sharpness in all the right edges and just a hint of bitterness that would always be there even if he tried to get rid of it. He'd choose sharp over blunt – though he thinks there is not much difference between the two – because for him it would be easy to just lie and keep the person from figuring him out than being blunt but completely transparent.
He turns around and finds her forehead scrunched up and her face frowning. "You don't need to be so rude, you know? If you don't want to answer then just say it nicely." She snaps at him.
He grits his teeth but the words I'm sorry still slipped out.
He expects her face to soften – her lips to fall into that same old mouth he used to kiss, her eyes to just hold him where he stands – her beauty to just arrest him. But she just tsks and turns her head sharply away, burrowing it inside the magazine again, erasing that image from behind his lids.
"I'm sorry, Yukari. Sayonara," he whispers and then trudges out before his head explodes and his calm composure slips.
I never thought we'd burn down. I never thought we'd fall apart. You can't know the truth and I can't tell you. This day, it would be perfectly ordinary in your eyes, but in my eyes, this is the day I lose you forever. This is the day that I broke up with the girl I once envisioned having a future with.
His back is to the door and he falls down slowly, his head in his hands. He didn't mean to sound like that at all – he didn't want to end his sentence with a goodbye or puncture it with a frown only to be the last image she would ever recall of him. But most of all, he didn't want to sound so ominous about his goodbye to her.
Dreamless dorm, ticking clock. I walk away from a soundless room. Music suddenly blasted from his earphones, causing him to jump up. He hadn't realized that they were in his ears – it had finally come to a point when it neither mattered (or felt) whether if it did or not. It has become a permanent fixture to his head. He looked down and saw that the device had slipped from his pocket and that slight tumble to the ground caused the device to open up on its own and play a random song. He turned it off. He was not up for music today.
No – it wasn't random, he thinks and then looks back to the time after Nyx when he took a walk in the shrine and saw a girl on top of the jungle gym.
He had thought it odd at first to see a girl so high up – he knew of no one except Maiko who could climb that high up. Yukari did her best but she only ended up halfway and complained that her skirt is too short for climbing and called the contraption a "Pervert's Delight: An excuse for men to sneak a peek" and to add more insult, also called the guy who invented the bar something along the lines of "...just as stupid and perverted like Stupei" and "creep". In fact, she only tried because he had requested that from her. If that weren't the case, she'd just steer clear of the "pervert's delight".
"Hello there!" she called him.
He looked up and even though the sun was in his eyes he had decided right then and there that her smile was possibly rapturous and wide. He had not been smiled just so.
He did not know how to respond to that girl. He could only continue to look up at her in all her glory. Copper hair flamed around her like a halo and when she turned around XXII bobby pins slashed silver across one side her hair. Her bangs were lifted by the sudden gust of wind and he caught sight of bright red eyes. Her lips were lifted up with mirth.
He had the strangest urge to bow down before her. She looked so queenly and regal high up in her position with the sunlight bleeding out from her sides and face so, so...luminescent.
She tilts her head to the side and the sun hides behind a cloud and you'd think that it would steal away her light but it didn't. Instead, it seemed to linger around her visage.
"Would you mind telling me your name?" she asks. It was a simple question really but it had stumped him.
"My name?"
"Dude, don't go spacing out like that in front of the dorm."
He jerked his headphones away from his ears. "Mm...Junpei?"
A capped boy with a goatee loomed in front of him, hands on hips and face in a half-smirk, half-smile. "S'right, dude." He caught sight of the boxes. "Wait – whoa. What the hell are those boxes for?"
He looks down at them sheepishly, clearly forgetting that he had them in the first place. "Oh, didn't I tell you?" he mumbles. "I'm moving out of town."
"What! Seriously! Don't just go spouting out ridiculous stuff like that. And what the hell you tryin' to do sneaking out when we're all away? Yeah, I know we weren't really the best of chums but don't think we'd never throw you a goodbye party or even just plain old goodbyes, Minato."
He knew it was just an excuse to pig-out but it nonetheless made him smile to see that at least the Junpei he knew was still there. "Don't worry about me. But...thanks anyways. I really have to go." He stands up and brushes the dirt of his jeans and picked up the boxes. A flash of crimson fluttered to the ground and he watches it with wide eyes. He knew it even before he saw the black print to one side.
And as fate would have it, Junpei picked it up. "Here ya go. Hmm...S.E.E.S? What does that stand for? Some sort of club that sees stuff?" he chuckles at some inside joke Minato failed to see.
"Something like that."
"Hey, are you going to see our senpai graduate? I totally was there a minute ago but I realized that Yuka-tan was probably running late so I came to bring her lazy ass there. Prolly drag her if I have to."
He practically rips out the fabric from Junpei's hands and stuffs it down the box. "No. I really have to go. I'll miss my train." He stops for a second and looks at Junpei.
"Alright. If that's what you want. I'll probably just skip myself but...something very vague is telling me that to be in the school is the right place to be today."
This is the last time I'll ever see you.
"Goodbye Junpei." He pauses, looking for the right words to end their rewritten friendship. "Look after Yukari for me, will you?" he blurts out.
Junpei's eyes widen and when he searches his face, he sees something strangely foreign and at the same time strongly familiar that prompts him to say the words, "I will..., you're the leader."
He flinches ever so slightly at being called leader but then shrugs it off and takes the steps two steps at a time before reaching the sidewalk.
"Come up?" she asks me.
And maybe it was her commanding tone that made him come up those hazardous bars or maybe it was just plain curiosity but at the time he could swear it was because she had that magnetic pull inside her that urged him forward, strange as she was, but it was that that kept his foot pushing him up to her.
When he finally reaches the top, she holds out her hand to help him but he only pushes it away. "I can do it myself, thank you," he pants and then heaves himself up.
She looks at him curiously. "I know...but, aren't you tired?" it was no more than a whisper really but it had reached his ears.
"Why would you say that?" He intoned it with curiosity, fighting the feeling that she knew something about what they do.
She looks at him and her eyes seemed glassy, tired even. "Nothing. No reason at all..."
She seems mature, he decides then. He knew that look. It was a look that S.E.E.S possessed. The burden that was knowledge of The Dark Hour had ushered them into maturity pretty fast. In some ways, it had robbed them of ignorant days and innocence, throwing them into the harsh world of blood and gore, of deception and something so ethereal with otherworldly powers and personae.
"Isn't the sun nice?" she asks suddenly. Her face is looking upwards to the sun."Whoever thought I'd cease to see the sun's radiant glow?"
"What?" he asks and suddenly wonders if the girl is crazy or a figment of his imagination.
"I'm sorry – I guess I'm rambling again. That always happens even to strangers." She laughs lightly. "I always talk too much and listen too little. I'm trying to change that now though. These days I just want to keep silent, contemplate about life and smithereens and such." He follows the slight motion of her throat when she swallowed.
"I'm sorry, I'm completely monopolizing the conversation." She turns to him again and looks at him expectantly as if all she wishes is for him to fill out his part in their conversation.
"When you say sorry," he says slowly, "I feel like I've done something wrong to you."
"I'm sorry –"
"There you go again."
Her eyes widen and she laughs louder this time. "This is perhaps the strangest conversation I had ever had the chance to be in...well, except for the ones I've been having in the dead of the night." There was a twinkle in her eyes and the ghost of a secret lingered in them.
A boy in nondescript stripped pyjamas raced through his mind and the faint echoes of premonitions and promises of friendship sounded in his ears.
He barely caught whatever she is saying. "...But I guess all that has to end someday right? I never thought it would be I who would be breaking up with him above all things. I always treasured the guy and was afraid that he'd somehow grow tired of me what with all those pretty girls all around him so I always did my best to show my love and appreciation. I know...I know. It's sort of cheesy. Okay, maybe a lot now that I actually said it out loud. But wait – isn't this strange and sort of wonderful? I like talking to strangers, they always listen."
"Wait. What are you talking about? You sort of lost me there."
She leans back with her elbows supporting her body. He thought it was a rather uncomfortable position considering the thin bars but he took one look at her frail and thin body and the way she positions her body exactly so – the way an experienced fighter would look – and he convinces himself that she could handle herself pretty well without him worrying about her.
"In my life I had done so much crap but I feel like I redeemed myself with what I had done. There's only one thing I think that screwed up my ticket to Heaven or whatever the hell is after this life. I broke hearts a lot. Not that I was conscious of it. It was always a gut feeling. May it be whenever they always ask me out on dates – which were at the time I thought was purely out of friendship – or when they slip out subtle and not so subtle hints."
"You're quite a man killer."
"That sounds perverted and mean. I'd rather the term charming much more."
"Whatever you say. But I still don't know your name. You said you'd tell me if I come up."
"I don't remember anything about that promise and I'll have you know I take promises and contracts seriously." She got that far-away look on her face again that made him think about what she was thinking.
"Believe me, I know all about contracts." He assures her.
"I don't doubt you," she whispers then stands up from where she is – she is barefoot, he now only realizes, and she is wearing a gauzy, white gown and he was surprised when he saw red headphones dangling from her neck – her toes curl around the bars and she holds out her hands for balance. Around her, the wind whipped around and her white gown fluttered and a flash of purples and blacks were seen blossoming in her creamy legs but it soon flutters down and he wonders if it was only a trick of the light because she can't have wounds like that. He knew them far too well to be familiar with those kinds of wounds.
The ones inflicted by shadows were the hardest to disguise.
He steps into Naganaki Shrine for the last time, reminiscing about all the memories still fresh inside his head. He'd leave now if he wanted but something drew him to this place. Maybe it was her and maybe it was that time in New Year when they had all wished. The place was deserted and he looks around, feeling the affinity break. It had lost its luster after all.
"You made a contract with him too. No use trying to hide it. He told me so. I know a lot about this world we live in."
He winces and his fists suddenly tense. Even after all the space she gives him, it was still so much to comprehend and believe in such short notice. How was he supposed to believe a stranger who won't even tell him her name? If that was even unstable, how can he be sure that this girl is telling the truth or if she just read too much books on the supernatural side to corrupt her thinking? He had also caught the word 'too'. Did that mean she had the same contract as his?
"Don't worry. I know all about Tartarus, the dark hour...everything. Because it happened to me. We are two sides of the same coin. Whatever happened to me, will happen to you. Don't be afraid, I won't hurt you. I'm just killing time before that day comes when they all remember."
So they would all remember. How pointless for him to go through all those arrangements. But by then, he would have already left them and broken a promise to meet them up at the school rooftop by Graduation Day which is incidentally today now that he recalls.
"We have the same memories. Well, maybe the essentials. Our friends are the same but we had different conversations. Yukari, Junpei, Fuuka, Mitsuru, Ken, Akihiko, Shinjiro, Koromaru...I could go on and on and on if you want. The same promises...yes. About that. We made a promise right? Graduation Day. I'll be waiting there...if you'll come. Then, we'll both go together – to that place."
"What place?"
She smiles mischievously at me. "I'll tell you if you come. Though it won't matter anyways, we'll both be going there regardless of where we are. You can't hide from Ryoji-kun."
He suddenly drops the boxes to the ground, sending up dust particles everywhere. He began to run – leaving the boxes carrying the secrets never once thinking about the consequences. Maybe she was still there. He checks his watch and runs even faster. Fuck, what the hell does she mean 'that place'? She makes it sound as if he's going away again like the last time. And here he was, thinking that all the hard questions made sudden sense when he finally finds The Answer but then this girl comes along and brings up ridiculous ramblings about dimensions and different planes and identical fates that muddles his mind and makes his head burn with curiosity. And what was that part about Ryoji?
He had managed to keep these questions at bay all through those months of quite solitude. But now it was too hard not to ignore, not when their promise rang clear and loud in his mind and ears. Two things to fulfil now, he thinks, one to S.E.E.S and one to that girl. Why did he always find himself in the weirdest situations and promises?
"Fuck," he wheezes and manages to get inside the high school.
Was he too late? He sees students everywhere with their families – they all seemed otherworldly to him now, as if he was just an observer of live and not an actually participant of it. He pushes past them and a volley of insults and frowns were directed to that popular, blue-haired transfer student. He hardly cared what they think now. He all saved their sorry asses from dying; they should be grovelling at his feet by now if they knew.
He took the steps quickly, faster, and the door to the rooftop entered his line of sight. He pushed it open and the bright light was enough to blind him for a few seconds.
Then –
"Look who decided to keep his promise?"
All of S.E.E.S was there and even though his resolve had been unbroken from the time they forgot, it seemed as if that very same resolve was walking out on him. He had never felt so glad to see a bunch of people in all his life. He had thought simple words would suffice for goodbye but he was very wrong. Something pink pushed past them and propelled herself to the blue-haired boy and clung to him tightly. And she could only stutter sorry as the dam breaks and every single eye on that rooftop that day shed a few tears. He was even surprised that cold Mitsuru and composed Akihiko shared a few tears.
He suddenly swayed – I feel...ugh. My body. His knees slam down the ground and he assures them that he was only sleepy before taking two, three deep breaths to steady the loud pumps of his heartbeat. Everything around him seemed to be too far for him to grasp, blurry even. The sounds of laughter were still heard but it was only an echo now, a light, fluttering, hollow sensation inside him. Was he going blind? Deaf? He swallowed and felt his throat close up around something hard. His heartbeats grew in sound and speed.
"I'm here," he feels a hand, light as a feather and cool as the sea, touch his shoulder.
He needn't look up because somehow, he knew who it was. Knew even before it spoke. Still, he looked up – and the world ceases for a while.
Bright coppery hair, red eyes and that smile looked down upon him. He looks around – or tries to – and finds out that they weren't seeing the girl. Her gaze flickers and settles on a certain silver-haired man talking to Mitsuru. She looked back at him and he saw something bubbling underneath those red eyes of hers but before he could discern it, she had smothered it back. He got the oddest sensation that she felt something for that man.
"He is a fine gentleman," she says to him, as if she plucked the words right out from his thoughts. "Adorable, really. A proud, handsome, cry baby. He seems to like Mitsuru very much in this dimension though," she adds dryly as the said two hugged fiercely. He heard her breath catch in his throat.
There was a moment of silence.
"Are you ready to go?" she says. "He's waiting for us you know."
He is afraid. For the first time. When he looked into the eyes of Death, he only felt a cold thrill creeping up him but not fear. When he chose the manner in which he is to die, he only felt calm and accepting. Tartarus had banished that fear. Doing things that puts his life in the line taught him to control that fear and use it to his advantage. He had always manipulated fear. But now...his fear lies in the act of vanishing from the world.
She kneels down on all fours, bright and luminescent and he could almost taste the strawberry scent coming off her skin. "I'm here," she leans closer and gives him a kiss on his wet cheek.
She stands up and he touches the place where she had kissed him. It was indescribable, that kiss, as if blood boiled beneath that mouth and as if the world would ultimately come to another end when both people from different dimensions kiss.
She holds out her hand and he grasps it tightly but doesn't heave himself up.
"Let go of that fear," it wasn't her voice that spoke next. It was Orpheus. And because it was his voice, he finds himself up on his feet and walking. Walking to a bright place.
He didn't look back even once.
This is how I disappear.
REFERENCES:
This is how I disappear – My Chemical Romance
Dreamless dorm, ticking clock. I walk away from a soundless room – line from Burn My Dread –Yumi Kawamura.