Iroha
Spring
[Although its scent still lingers on
the form of a flower has scattered away*]
April
When he opened his eyes, he could see nothing else but a stretch of white ceiling. Somewhere above him, the steady tick-tock of the wall clock punctuated the silence sharply, inconsiderately, as though trying to tell him something that he already knew, over and over again. The problem was that he couldn't seem to decipher what it was that the clock was trying to tell him.
Oreki Houtarou looked left and right without turning his head, and saw nothing but blank walls. No clock.
He closed his eyes again, and this time he was suddenly aware of a shuffling of slippers somewhere in the hall, on the other side of the door. And then came the sudden sound of the door opening. He knew who it was. She had always been dropping by to visit from the very first day that they had decided to dump him in this ward.
"Are you awake, Oreki-san?" a gentle voice permeated through the air, making Houtarou open his dark green eyes again. He frowned. Even after a few days in this hospital room with the routine of the girl visiting him every day, he still couldn't get used to the way she always went here to just exist, like stand by the window or walk all around as if she wasn't used to lie down all day—which he couldn't understand. Houtarou usually lived life like a hermit crab.
Houtarou wondered why this girl, Chitanda Eru, always bothered coming down the hall to just talk with him (or more accurately, at him, since sometimes he didn't bother answering at all when he was on his depressants—he can never go to sleep normally these days). It wasn't as if he was that interesting, after all. In contrast, this girl was a living, breathing personification of energy—it was as if she existed for the sole purpose of living. Houtarou dared to think that she could do anything she set her mind on if she would only take interest in it.
Engulfed in his depressing thoughts, he decided to roll over so that his back was turned to her, and said nothing at all.
He knew nothing about her except that her name was Chitanda Eru, and that she was supposed to be confined in the room on the other end of the hall, but kept insisting on traveling here to see him because this room had been unoccupied ever since she had first resided in here. He couldn't imagine what kind of sickness could have kept this girl in this ward for so long, if her wording was to be taken as context. She talked of this ward like how Houtarou would have talked about his own home.
"Oreki-san?" he heard her say with a questioning tone, and her steps paused somewhere by the window. "Ah, look how nice the weather today is…"
Houtarou rolled over once more and stared at the lithe figure by the open window, letting the disconsolate sight of the flowing curtains register dimly in his mind. The ticking of the clock seemed to drown the sound of the breeze, and he scowled and fisted a hand in his sheets. It was as if everything was intent on not letting him off the hook today.
"Oreki-san, so you're awake." Even this girl seemed to want to join in the number of things that were intent on keeping him aware of his surroundings. She turned to smile at him. "Good morning."
Houtarou sighed. "Say, Chitanda."
"Yes?" She tilted her head, her lively violet eyes sparkling. It was a rare occurrence for Houtarou to initiate a topic of interest.
"How could you be so cheerful?" He raised an eyebrow, and Eru looked confused at the question. "I mean, you've been here longer that I am."
"Why can't I be cheerful?" Eru asked. Then she looked around. "Ah, is it because we are in 'this' place?"
Houtarou skimmed over the numerous euphemisms that described this place: the extensive care ward, the special cases ward, the "catbox"… Whatever it was really called, this place was where those people who cannot recover from their illnesses anymore were shunted in. This was the last stage. When one usually graduates from the "catbox", you could be sure that he or she will never come back again.
He found it apt how they decided to take a leaf from Vonnegut's short story in nicknaming this place the "catbox".
Swallowing all the bitter responses rising in his throat, he instead smiled without feeling anything but a slowly spreading hollow feeling in his stomach. "Yeah. We're, shall we say, the 'hopeless' cases, aren't we?"
Eru laughed softly. "Hopeless is… such an ugly word." She leaned back on the wall. "I'd like to think that maybe the people in this place are just special. Closed off from the mundane world, like a sanctuary."
"That just makes it sound like we're in an asylum, you know." Houtarou heaved a groan and sank back into his pillow.
"You seemed determined to hate 'this' place." Eru turned her head slightly to the side to enjoy the breeze that blew in through the window.
Houtarou kept silent, deciding that the conversation had already tired him out. Eru, already used to the taciturn nature of the boy before her, just smiled her little cheerful smile and continued to watch the world beyond the window.
The silence between them settled like cherry blossom petals on the ground.
"I am a fixture in this place, so maybe you hate me as well," Eru suddenly remarked, as if it just came to her.
Houtarou frowned.
"I don't hate this place." And then, "I hate the fact that I'm sick enough to be here."
I'm tired of living a half-assed life, he might have added, but his pause stretched a moment too long.
Eru held up a finger and wagged it disapprovingly. "That's no good, Oreki-san," she chided him gently, but then her smile grew. "We're still living. That's what matters most in this place."
Houtarou did not reply. The room was silent for the space of a heartbeat.
"You said that 'hopeless' is an ugly word," Houtarou said, "but why would you choose to go here if you've rejected hopelessness?"
He saw how Eru's smile withered slightly, and then felt absurdly guilty. "It's a popular misconception about this place—that everyone here is just quietly waiting for death." She shrugged. "But the longer one stays here, the more one realizes that it is not so. It is always peaceful here, unlike out there in the real world. The real world, after all, is like a huge board where seven billion people are playing a game, all of them thinking that they know the rules."
Houtarou seemed struck by her strange simile.
"So we're basically running away."
He could practically hear the pause as Eru hesitated. "I had never planned to call myself courageous after all. Perhaps… I am also scared."
Houtarou looked away uncomfortably. "Sorry."
"No, it's fine." She took a deep breath. "What do you want to do when you get out of here, perhaps?"
Houtarou raised himself on his arms, and looked squarely at the girl. She seemed to be in earnest this time. "That was a random change of topic. And… I haven't really thought of that." Haven't really been thinking that I can rejoin the real world again.
Eru smiled. "Well, that is understandable."
Houtarou scrunched his brows together. "What about you?"
"Oh…" Eru sighed. "I think I'd like to get married and have children."
Houtarou raised an eyebrow. "You're, what, sixteen?" Strange girl.
Eru caught his gaze. "It's such an impossibility, right?" She laughed. "But that's what I had always wanted. To have a family of my own, and children that will take care of me when the time comes. I can never do that for my parents in my condition, so…"
Houtarou let out a sigh, and looked out to the blue sky, framed by the window. "If I ever get out of here, maybe…"
"Maybe what?"
Houtarou shook his head. "Nothing."
May
Houtarou stared at his legs, which were motionless beneath the sheets.
Letting his head fall back on the pillows, he listened as Eru shuffled around once more in his room in her slippers, her abundant black hair tied back in a ponytail today that showcased the back of her white neck. Houtarou just watched mutely as she went to the window, the curtains still in the absence of wind.
"You're just around my age, right, Oreki-san?" Eru began, and he nodded, shifting around on his bed so that he could get a better angle of her. "If I hadn't been hospitalized, I should have been a first year high school student by now."
"Yeah." Houtarou tried to picture the face of his best friend Satoshi, and frowned when the mental image seemed blurry. "And I should have been going part of the way home with Satoshi every afternoon."
"Who is Satoshi-san?" Eru asked politely, and Houtarou could hear a strange hunger in her voice.
"My best friend." He remembered Satoshi cracking a joke that failed to make anyone laugh at his introduction to the class back in middle school, and then shrugging it off with his motto—"Jokes are to be made on the spot, so too are misunderstandings to be dispelled right away." "He's a… weird guy. Now that I think of it, he has a lot of hobbies. Unlike me."
He smiled slightly, which made Eru smile as well, the expression being so rarely seen on his face.
"He sounds like an interesting person."
Houtarou's smile wavered a bit. "He is. I don't know what possessed him to decide on befriending me, of all people. If he was in my shoes now, all of this inactivity would have killed him first day off. That was how energetic he was. How fond of living. Ibara's right in choosing him to fall in love with."
"And Ibara-san is—?"
"Well, she's an old friend of sorts, although I don't think she'd use the exact term to describe me as well." Houtarou's tone was wryly humorous. "She had a thing for Satoshi ever since middle school. I've never really understood why until I got sick and got into this place."
Eru's eyes were far away. "Well, that's one of the better things about staying here, right, Oreki-san? You get to think about a lot of things uninterrupted."
"I guess so." Houtarou grimaced as he tried to move his legs and felt the severe pricking after being motionless for so long. "But when the thinking gets uninterrupted for too long… that's when one of the worse things about being here begins, I guess."
She nodded. "Mm."
"How about you?" Houtarou hoisted himself up in a sitting position on one arm. "What about your friends?"
"I never become friends with someone for too long," Eru said with a smile. "I always fall sick after a while. My constitution was never sturdy enough for me to go to school regularly, so I was homeschooled." Eru gazed up into the cloudy sky. "That's why I am happy that I could talk to you like this, Oreki-san."
"…I see."
Houtarou wondered about her. Eru seemed like the kind of girl who could be popular at school, with her lively eyes and manner, and while she was not the most beautiful girl that he had ever met, her insatiable curiosity and warmth made for a pretty girlish picture. Chitanda Eru was, in his opinion, an unconventional beauty, notwithstanding the unnatural paleness of her skin and the noticeable frailty of her arms.
"Oreki-san?"
"Eh?"
It seemed as if Eru had been calling out to him for quite a few times now, judging by the urgency of her tone. Murmuring an apology for his inattention, Houtarou shook his head and focused on her face and voice, willing himself to forget the spreading numbness in his legs.
"What were you saying?" he asked in a bland tone, and Eru pretended to look annoyed.
"Oreki-san, that's no good," she pouted. "You should pay more attention when someone is speaking to you."
Houtarou raised his eyebrows, and Eru dissolved in giggles.
"I'm just kidding," she said, sobering up, and smiled lightly when Houtarou sighed. "Well, I was asking if you'd mind me asking you a rather personal question."
"Well, I wouldn't," Houtarou said slowly. "But if it's too hard, I'd end up not answering at all."
"Oh, that's fine." Eru smiled. "I'd understand. Rather, I'm sorry for having to pry."
"What is it, anyway?"
"I was wondering what brought you in here," she said, shyly. Her hands were fidgeting, pressed against her stomach. "You don't have to answer…"
Houtarou frowned, and then stared down at his chest, covered by the dull hospital gown. "No, it's okay with me. I have something wrong with my lungs," he said with a dismissive air. "Carcinoma or something. Whatever it is, when we found out, it was too late. I didn't want to get treated, so my father decided to take me here to compromise." He smiled mirthlessly. "My sister was against the whole arrangement, but…"
He pictured Oreki Tomoe's stricken face when he announced that he wanted to go to the "catbox", her tears turning into wrath the next moment when she realized what he was saying. "You're just running away," she had told him, almost screaming, "You can still get treated, you could take the risk of undergoing therapy, what the hell is the problem with that?"
It was the first time he had seen his brilliant sister, who was always the calm one, the one who knew what to do, break down and cry stormily into his chest.
"Sorry, aneki," he had said blankly, over and over, as he stroked her dark hair. "It's going to be fine."
White lies.
Eru could see his forced smile, and came over with a sympathetic hand laid over his.
"Could I return the question?" he said awkwardly, and Eru took away her hand quickly, blushing.
"Well, in my case, it's the heart," she said in a low voice. "I have a generally weak body, but they say that sometimes my heart gets tired, so I can't do much in the way of exercise. It's dangerous for me to get excited as well." She looked down. "Well, I don't mind being kept here, since I don't want to stay at home, but to tell you the truth, Oreki-san… I don't want to graduate from here either."
They were silent for a few minutes, before Houtarou uncharacteristically decided to break the silence.
"It's the same for me," he murmured, surprised at the realization. "I don't want to graduate from the 'catbox'."
The unspoken words echoed all around the silence of the room, just heard by its two occupants.
If I have to die, and die soon, I don't want to die here.
* Iroha excerpt translation from the Japanese © Professor Abe Ryuichi