Beyond the Lines
We keep missing each other while trying to get closer
I hope one day we'd be able realize that we were indeed lost
—Yasashisa no Riyuu, ChouCho (trans.)
To a Walk
Oreki Houtarou jerked awake from his fitful sleep when he felt someone sit beside him. Feeling rather disoriented, he snuck a peek out of the window, seeing the low mountains roll by in the lightening distance.
Already dawn?
"You don't look so good." Irisu Fuyumi, who had been the one to ultimately wake him up, looked him up and down, a faint hint of worry in her features. "Had a bad dream?"
"Mm." Houtarou blinked sleepily, blankly stared at the seat before him for a while to get his bearings, and then sat up suddenly, the book that he had left unawares on his chest falling on the floor. Picking it up grudgingly and setting it on the armrest, he sat back once more, his hand automatically moving to feel his hair and finding that some of them were stubbornly sticking up in the wrong directions. "Where are we now?"
"I'm not exactly sure, but what I'm certain with is that we're still quite far from our final stop. We'll be pulling into Shinjuku at approximately eight-thirty." Irisu pulled at her sleeve to look at her watch. "…And it's just a little after five-thirty. Three more hours to while away."
Houtarou nodded curtly and stood up to go to the washroom, swaying dangerously as his motion sickness kicked in, although it wasn't so bad in a train like this. Irisu immediately stood up to assist him, but he waved her down. "I'll be fine," he said shortly, although his tone implied that he meant to reassure himself rather than Irisu.
Safely reaching the washroom despite himself, Houtarou immediately went to the sink and turned on the faucet, listening to the running water for a whole minute before remembering that he meant to wash his face. Splashing on some water, he combed his wet bangs back with his fingers, straightened up, and stared at the him in the mirror.
Irisu was right, he did look pretty terrible—but her polite remark that he "didn't look so good" might as well be the understatement of the century. The shadows under his eyes were worsening, the image that Irisu had shown him lending him sleepless nights after that day. Coupled with the fact that he looked slightly nauseated because of the slight swaying of the train whenever they hit curves on the railroad, he could not really say that he was the picture of health right now. Staring down his mirror image with a begrudging glare, he closed the running faucet and hurried out, his mood not lifting in the slightest.
Irisu was patiently waiting for him when he came back, the book that he had abandoned open in her slender hands. Sensing his approach, she gave him a slight smile, saying, "I didn't know you also read Holmes, Oreki-kun."
"Well." Houtarou sat in his seat, stretching lazily and yawning, willing his nausea to go away. "Satoshi lent me his whole collection when I told him that I was going on this trip. He figured I can use a bit of light reading since the ride is long. That is, in the spells when I'm not under motion sickness." He glanced at her, a temporary sarcastic edge to his tome when he spoke again. "It brings back some memories of when we were working on that movie of yours, eh, Irisu-senpai?" He remembered Hongou Mayu, the frail girl who wrote the screenplay for the movie and read Holmes to get a grasp of writing mysteries. He also remembered the grand botch that he had made in deducing the end to the movie, and suddenly wanted to give his past self a proper shaking.
"Ah, you still haven't completely forgiven me for that one even after I told you that I just acted for the best? That was ages ago." Irisu flipped to the page that he had marked. "You were finishing A Case of Identity earlier. Tell me, did it have some points that interested you greatly?"
"The intellectual puzzle was certainly good, but the emotional value of the story piqued my interest as well." Houtarou sat back, staring on the growing pink blaze along the horizon. "A young woman who didn't know that her stepfather was only deceiving her in the guise of a lover for her money, and Holmes deciding that such a woman wouldn't budge from her feelings for the man since she wouldn't believe the truth coming from him, a detective that she had just hired. And he knew that the criminal, whom he just freed, wasn't about to do any confessing, so he also condemns the woman to a life of eternally searching for the man she loved—someone who didn't even exist in the first place." He closed his eyes, suddenly tired. "It's… quite sad, to be honest."
Irisu watched him steadily, her blue eyes shadowed. "Fukube-kun lent you this book, you said. How did your friends and family react to the news that you'll be leaving for Tokyo?"
"Mm? I didn't tell anyone but Satoshi and my sister about the whole purpose of my trip, and luckily the two of them were pretty nice about it. To the rest of the world, Oreki Houtarou wanted to vacation all by himself, and no matter if it's the herald of the end of the world." He paused, reflecting about his decisions over the past few days before his departure.
Telling his best friend and his sister the suspicions that Chitanda Eru might be alive and residing in the capital was hard enough—and he didn't want to have to waste any more of his energy explaining himself to people other than them who would less than understand his feelings about the matter. Tomoe had been a good listener all throughout his explanation, and Satoshi was more than willing to part with a valuable book set if it can see Houtarou through his mission. Ibara and his own parents were kept in the dark, though—as well as Chitanda's parents, although Houtarou felt bad about having to keep the possibility that Eru was alive to them. But the rational side of his mind provided the fact that the possibility is nothing more than a possibility—that his journey might be nothing more than a wild goose chase, like in the case of Mary Sutherland.
"Do you have plans of going to college, Oreki-kun?" Irisu asked him out of the blue, turning another page of the book. Houtarou opened his eyes and glanced at her, wondering at why she was interested in the topic. She just continued her reading.
"I had wanted to study arts in the community college," he said simply, the memories of his sixteen-year-old self, standing in the sunset and conversing with Chitanda about the future, coming back to him like a long-forgotten song. "But then Chitanda told me that she wanted to study the sciences in some university away from Kamiyama. She wanted to learn how to make the local farmers' lives easier. She also told me that she wanted to study about two methods of going about it, and that she would only choose one to concentrate upon because she was ill-suited to the other." Fingers threaded together, and he fumbled with them for a while, blushing slightly at the thought. "I considered telling her that I would be more than happy to take up the remaining method that she wouldn't study so that we can take our knowledge together when we graduate and fulfill her dreams together. But I hesitated. And the right moment passed."
"Why?" Irisu was all ears now, her brow furrowed. The book lay closed in her lap.
The next words that tumbled out of his mouth felt almost rehearsed. "Because if I told her in that same instant, it would be like lying and living a lie." He pulled his hands apart and closed his right one, feeling his newly-trimmed nails dig into his palm. "I wasn't ready to relinquish my motto back then. I was still just a kid afraid of taking responsibility for words that I wasn't sure I can fulfill. In that regard, Chitanda was even more mature than me."
"Your motto…" Irisu raised her brow.
"I don't do anything I don't have to. What I have to do, I do quickly." The words tasted foreign on his tongue, now, even as he recited them. "I thought back then that if I took up that task of helping fulfill Chitanda's dreams, it would ruin my priorities." He wondered how the fifteen-year-old Oreki Houtarou would react if he saw him now, the nineteen-year-old Oreki Houtarou, riding on a train to search for Chitanda Eru in the bustling city of Tokyo. Likely, fifteen-year-old Houtarou would think it would be a waste of time to even react, but at the back of his mind he would always think, How did it come to this? It wasn't a future I would have wanted.
I know, he thought to himself. I would have thought of that too. Just not in the same context. After all, the middle-school me wouldn't even have met Chitanda Eru yet.
Beside him, Irisu sighed lightly and sat back herself, the both of them now thinking heavily about the conversation just now and the things that they might face once they set foot in their destination and start the search.
He yawned, and yawned. And yawned. It was too early for a visit to Chitanda's grave... but Mayaka had insisted. And there was no arguing with Mayaka, even more so now that they had been going out for almost a whole year and a half.
Fukube Satoshi tried to flatten down his hair but failed, and decided on remedying the problem with resignedly pulling a cap down to his ears instead. Taking the drawstring bag on the edge of sink, he proceeded to go out of the house, his easy smile flaring as he took in the sunlight breaking over the mountains.
"What a nice morning!" he announced to no one in particular, swinging a leg over his bicycle and starting on his way. The flat fields that greeted his eyes on both sides queerly cheered him up as he rushed along, the wind flowing against his face.
"You're late, Fuku-chan." There was no smile in Ibara Mayaka's voice as Satoshi braked in front of her, the back wheel of his bicycle skidding slightly and showering her skirt with bits of grass. "And you dirtied my clothes," she complained in further dismay, shaking her skirt out.
"Whoa, sorry!" Satoshi went to help Mayaka beat off the stuff from her dress, but she slapped his hand away crossly, glaring at him with narrowed eyes. "But it's just that the time you've requested was so, shall we say, early? I'm quite out of it... and the sunrise is just beginning as we speak." At the mention of the sunrise, they automatically looked at the horizon, Mayaka's expression softening at the sight of the faint glow spreading across the sky.
"So, Mayaka, shall we go?" Satoshi asked her, and they trooped away from Mayaka's house, Satoshi wheeling his bicycle by his side and watching his bag bounce slightly whenever the front wheel hit a stray stone.
"This is all so surreal," Mayaka began quite suddenly, making Satoshi turn his attention to her.
"What is?" he asked, even as he knew her answer.
"Come on, Fuku-chan. You know what I was talking about." Mayaka kicked a loose rock on her path, making it fly away some distance before them. "Chii-chan gone… and then Oreki, of all people, going to Tokyo… and with Irisu-san, of all people!" She looked rather mournful. "Times really are changing, right, Fuku-chan? It makes me feel strange."
He nodded, sharing her uneasiness. Houtarou had divulged the true reason why he was leaving for the metropolis, but even so, Mayaka's words rang true. After all… "Yeah, seeing Houtarou leave was certainly disquieting. He was a childhood friend after all. I'm sorry when Chitanda-san went missing, of course, but Houtarou's case was different. I thought he'd be the only constant in our group." But then Chitanda-san came and went, and changed Houtarou by the degree, he thought with a smile. He still didn't know whether to be happy or sad for his best friend.
"Don't call him a 'childhood friend'." Mayaka looked annoyed, and Satoshi pushed her a little more to cheer her up.
"But you've been practically classmates since grade school, right—"
"DON'T. CALL. HIM. A. CHILDHOOD. FRIEND." With each word, Mayaka hit him once with her bag, and Satoshi smiled when she huffed with an exhausted blush. She was again back to her old self.
"Alright, alright. Come, now. She's waiting." And with that final word, the pair walked on with a thoughtful silence between them, Mayaka idly swinging her bag back and forth as she walked.
And then there was the darkness. It enveloped him, blinded him, drove him almost to the brink of insanity.
The sounds of the falling rain befell his ears first, and then the sound of his own panicked breathing. It came out of him in short, sharp bursts, but when he automatically put his hand up on a wall that he just knew to be there to save himself from stumbling, he momentarily forgot how to breathe and simply cried out, falling sideways to the wall and hitting his shoulder as he caught his wrist, cradling it in his good hand. The pain of the forgotten fracture stilled him for a good while, as he felt the water seep in his socks and the raindrops drench the rest of his clothes.
"Must… come back… Chitan—Chitan-da—" He crept forward, eyes searching in the unfathomable darkness, his teeth chattering at the cold. He felt like crying. The memory of her blank violet eyes, staring vacantly at him as he stumbled out of the temporarily unguarded room, haunted him. He had to find help.
Now.
Now.
Now—
"Now…" He staggered his way through the dark, the wall supporting him, the floor unsteady under his feet. And then he fell into a chasm so deep that he couldn't even fathom—
Then warmth. Or cold. He couldn't tell exactly—but it was getting warmer— A gentle warmth, to be sure—
"Please look, Oreki-san."
Her voice—? No, that can't be, can—
And, despite his fear, he opened his eyes, found that he was standing up with a bicycle by his side, and looked over his shoulder at the slender, pale figure of sixteen-year-old Chitanda Eru behind him, her arms spread out to catch the resilient spring breeze. He suddenly realized that he was sixteen years old again, too. He felt lightheaded—but hadn't he been anything but a sixteen-year-old freshman at Kamiyama High?
What was I thinking about again?
"This is my place." He followed her eyes, the smell of the late cherry blossoms permeating strongly in the air. "All we have is water and soil. The people aren't getting any younger either. I don't think this place is the most beautiful ever, nor do I see that many possibilities here." Her voice, as if from a melody, filled his head. "But…" She looked down, and then he could catch a glimpse of the sweet, sweet girl that Chitanda Eru was— "I wanted to show it to you."
He turned his head forward, and considered his words as he let them out one by one. "Speaking of which…" This is the moment, tell her—what you truly feel—
But—
And the moment passed, as if in slow motion, and Chitanda Eru looked up at him, eyes blank and vacant—
"No—" he choked, and he was again hungry, and hurting all over, and blind—
He stumbled out of the darkening, unguarded room, and ran out, ran out as his last bid to freedom, running like he had never done before in his life, not for himself, but for Chitanda's sake, for she mattered more than everything in his life—
And then… there was the darkness—
"Oreki-kun. Oreki-kun."
"Ah!" He shot out from the comfort of his seat, eyes wide and pupils dilated, his breathing as shaky as his arms when he put weight on them to steady him up. Beside him, Irisu stared at him with worried eyes.
"You've had another bad dream," she said, grabbing his arm.
"No," he corrected her, and his lip was trembling. "It had always been the same nightmare ever since."
And when he looked out the window, he found that he wasn't in Kamiyama anymore.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
The book Houtarou was reading in the train is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I confess that I had been a self-proclaimed Sherlockian when I was in high school, and have read all of the books and short stories. (Tehe.)
You can check out my profile for some songs to download and listen to while reading my fics. I listened to them while writing, so maybe you'll capture the emotions that I had wanted to convey whilst listening to them as well. They're all in Japanese, mind. I'm a J-pop/rock fan.
Reviews are highly appreciated. I read them over and over until they get threadbare, don't worry. Your time won't be wasted by submitting a thought.
And I just happened to be fired up so I wrote this chapter so quickly. I wonder if I'd be this quick again.
Love you guys. Wait for my next update.
