Life will screw you no matter how cautious you are. I took each step with care. I made sure no one found out what I was hiding. My heart. My feelings. My soul. I just couldn't allow them to be seem. I didn't know what I'd do if someone saw inside. I had always been like this. I couldn't change. Even trying to change was futile. This was me. Guarded. Controlled. Can't let go. It was easier to become someone else through my characters than to change the real me. I was a coward. But still I wanted her. And I didn't know what to do about it. I tried to get out of my boundaries. But they were guarded with thorns of anxiety. So I gave up. I was weak. Too weak to even say it out aloud that I was weak. So I did what I always do. Pulled the covers on my head and smothered that voice in me that wanted her.
She was smart. Too smart. That's how she sneaked inside my carefully guarded fort. Her and her only was the person who would see the fakeness in my smile. So for her, I gave some reality to it...
She was naïve. Too naïve. That's how she got my heart to hurt. Only her innocent gaze made it bleed. It wanted that gaze to be fixed on it. But it knew it was too weak, too cowardly to gaze back.
She was fierce. Too fierce. She won't back down no matter how angry I made her feel. She was still up the second day, looking at me, challenging me, daring me to make her go away. She knew I'd fail.
I wanted her. I just now had to be strong enough to need her. To need her so desperately, to make it hurt so much that I'd run to hold on to her…
"If you're not feeling well, go home. I'll manage your schedule here with the team and inform you. Don't wait up for me."
It was the third time Yashiro told me to go early. It was a script reading. My part was done. I was sticking around for Yashiro since we came together.
"Just go. I WILL NOT catch you if you fall!" he threatened. Actually my head had been hurting all day and I was coughing. Yashiro was under the illusion that I might catch a cold and go down with fever. As if! But he was quite persistent so I said my goodbyes and took off.
It was nearly 1 in the night. The road was quiet and deserted. I switched on the mp3 player to kill the silence. A song "Beneath my beautiful" started playing. I didn't bother changing the song. Whatever played was fine.
I kept driving thoughtlessly. I just had to reach home and shut down again for the night. I assumed I was driving thoughtlessly. Perhaps I was too immersed in thinking about shutting down that I didn't notice the sharp turn the road took.
I had been speeding since the road was empty. The sharp turn took me by surprise. Unconsciously I hit the brakes. Wrong move. The car was too fast and skidded out of control. It went spiraling down the road, tires screeched and burned, smoke rose from the burnt rubber.
I tried to control it. But in vain. It swiveled down the road. The driver's side of the car hit straight into a telephone pole. The glass from the window shattered and shot towards me. A huge piece hit my neck. Other small ones injured my hands and my face. But I didn't have the time to comprehend my wounds. My body was already pushed to the side by the force of the crash. Air bags opened before I hit the hard dashboard. But the worst wasn't over yet. The pole seemingly was not strong. It snapped. With a loud thud the entire pole slammed against the roof of my car. The roof gave way from some places. Unfortunately the places where the roof gave way were straight above my head.
It all happened in a instant. I tried to comprehend my surroundings. But the sharp pain pierced through my head. My ears were ringing. And I was sure I was bleeding from somewhere.
The last thought that came to my mind before my mind blacked out was that I never held her in my arms. And that was the greatest regret of my life at the moment I assumed I won't wake up again…
I don't know how long it took for my consciousness to shift from an absolute dark oblivion of nothingness to this eerie dream I'll call it. Was I out for days? Or had I already passed on from the world to another? I had no comprehension of anything. I just understood that it was dark and so utterly quiet that I couldn't even hear my own thoughts. That's how it stayed for an unknown period of time. Where was I? At first I couldn't tell. Then when I got some of my senses back, I realized I was in a small cage.
The cage was just hanging mid air. Nothing was holding it there. I was curled up in a ball. My head on my knees and I was just sitting there. Never trying to get out. There was nothing outside or at least I couldn't see anything outside the cage.
I was trapped but I somehow lacked the realization that I was trapped. It was queer phenomena. I stayed in the ignorant, quiet imprisonment for another unknown eternity.
Then I saw something moving outside my cage. It was far away. Out of focus. Slowly but surely moving towards me. My eyes fixed on it. I was curious but at the same time some indifference flowed through me too. I still was not aware of my incarceration.
Then I finally saw her. It was her. Kyoko. That's all I can say with certainty. I couldn't comprehend her looks for some reason. It was strange trance. But all that I could say with utmost certainty was that it was her.
She was just there. Was she smiling? Was she crying? I couldn't perceive anything.
But her presence suddenly shook up my slumbering consciousness. Suddenly I could see the bars of my cage. Suddenly I realized I was trapped. Perhaps it was the knowledge that there was a world beyond my cage that made me realize I was trapped. Whatever it was, all of a sudden, I was very restless.
I felt a dire need to be outside. There was this frustration inside of me. I can tell that her presence instigated these rumbling emotions in me. But despite the apparent desperation of my heart, I was still curled up in a ball on the floor of my cage; not moving.
The urgency to be outside with her was smothering yet for some reason a paralysis had overtook me. It was as if my conscience was trapped in a marble statue. It won't move no matter how much my conscience screeched. It was an agonizing dilemma.
My eyes were fixed on her. Checking whether she was there or not. I spent another infinity struggling against the paralysis. In vain, alas! And then I just stopped struggling. I had given up and accepted the cage. The desperation hadn't died. Just the struggle of fulfilling that desperate urge had. Was it sad? Was it hurtful? I didn't know. All I knew was that she was still there. For that moment, that was enough.
I kept staring at her despite the fact that I still couldn't perceive anything but the realization of her presence. And then it disappeared too. The oblivion was empty again…
All this while one particular sentiment was silent. Pain. Now it went rampant. It choked me mercilessly. I struggled for one breath but it smothered me. My throat clenched sharply. My lungs burned for need of air. But agony kept strangling me.
My struggled resumed all of a sudden. The desperation to have her became the desire to live. With every ounce of conscious energy I felt, I lunged for one gasp. The paralysis broke, the walls of cage disappeared and just as I fell into the darkness, I woke up…
My eyes suddenly shot open. A sudden flood of light burned them. With squinted eyes, I tried to look around. A commotion was going around. I could see Yashiro was shouting something that although I could hear, couldn't comprehend just yet. Boss suddenly appeared above me too. I was lying down. My heart was racing. My body was shivering from the aftershock of that incubus. I still couldn't move. My mind was going haywire. I put all my efforts into getting up. The feeling of paralysis scared the hell out of me. My heart was pounding against my chest. Suddenly I thrust my body forward and sat upright.
Yashiro put his hand on my shoulder, trying to get me to lay down. He was telling me to lay down but my mind was so much in a disarray. I just kept looking around not understanding the strange trance I was caught in. But somewhere within me, I knew I was looking for her. And she wasn't there.
"Kyoko" I mumbled. Yashiro saw me trying to speak and moved closer. The doctor and nurse had arrived by then. The doctor immediately injected me with something that was definitely a sedative. My mind suddenly blacked out again. I tried to fight it but it just invaded my senses. This time my conscience didn't try to perceive the oblivion I got stuck in. It was quiet silent nothingness. I didn't feel a thing. But despite the numbness of my mind, I knew what I had to do.
I had finally found it. My desperation to need her. Now I no longer just wanted her. I needed her. And I was going to use this need to force myself to break out of my cages and get her. Finally I needed her…