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The Other Side chapter 4
Dying
HAYAGAME
Aoi
01.01.1995 - 27.07.2009
Beloved daughter taken before her time.
May she rest in the hands of God.
With those words the entire world crashed down on my shoulders. I had accepted it, but how could I believe it? How could I believe people when they claimed that an integral part of my life had ceased to exist? When I woke in hospital from my coma it was already old news. It had already been accepted that she was dead; it had been weeks since the incident and she still hadn't been found. They claimed that I was lucky to have survived, and that the fact that I could function normally was nothing short of a miracle. But I didn't feel lucky.
It was only when I saw those small black letters in last month's obituary, printed so concisely, that I could for the first time appreciate that my best friend was dead.
School was...fine. People were a lot nicer to me, the rumours had stopped. I missed Kuma, who had been sent to a new owner in need, but most of all I missed Aoi. I missed her grin, I missed her wicked sense of humour, her intense pride, her non-conformity. I missed her odd way of putting things, and the strange questions she asked. The more I thought about her, the more it felt as if I was carving a hole in my chest, the wood shavings piling up at my feet. I realized then that it wasn't the first time I'd felt that way. That I had lost someone important to me before. It was a sobering thought; I couldn't put my finger on who I'd lost.
I visited Aoi's grave, or more accurately, her head stone; there had been no body to bury. The words from the obituary were repeated.
HAYAGAME
Aoi
01.01.1995 - 27.03.2009
Beloved daughter taken before her time.
May she rest in the hands of God.
For some reason, it felt to me as if whoever decided on the words had given up trying to summarise Aoi and resorted to the old words. I wouldn't have. I would have written down words to describe her personality, words for her habits and words for the things she liked. I would have tried to describe everything, the trees, the sky, the city at night, the way her smile could lift years from my heart. I would have written down the words to the songs she had sung, and the emotions they invoked in me. I would have made sure that the headstone was so crammed with words and phrases, that the letters would start to overlap and merge together. I wouldn't have stopped writing until she stood before me again, brought back from the other side by will power alone.
One day I decided to go to the Atarashii-Kohaku River. It was cold; winter was nearing its peak and the north winds were blowing. I stood there, in the same place I had stood nearly 4 months earlier with Aoi by my side. I leaned over the rails and watched the peaceful river. The same river that had taken my best friend. A tear escaped from my eye and fell to the water, making a barely distinguishable ripple. I gasped in shock as I saw a face in the water. It was the face of a young child, just below the surface of the water, staring straight up at me. I vaulted over the rails and dived in to the river. Crap. It was freezing, my entire body was burning as if it were on fire. The numb silence pressed against me, smothering me. I opened my eyes, frantically searching for the drowning child. There, a saw a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. I saw the child, floating so peacefully, as if he was sleeping. His face was a ghostly white, and his dark locks billowed in the current. When I resurfaced for air, the noisy turbulence of the water was deafening in comparison to the silence under it. It was only then that I realized the utter insanity of what I was doing. I looked around in search of someone who would help, but the majority of people preferred to stay indoors instead of try their luck with the cold weather. I dived back down into the silent depths, and with a few frantic kicks was within touching distance of the child. I reached out my hand and grabbed his wrist.
A flash of brightness suddenly engulfed me. Squinting against the sudden brightness, I surveyed my surroundings. I realised with a jolt that I was no longer in the river. In fact, I was no longer anywhere that resembled any place I had been to before. I couldn't tell if I was in the ocean or the sky. Swirls of air and water caressed my face, flicking my eyes, engulfing me. A voice rang in my ear.
"Why did you return?"
I turned my head, looking for who had spoken, but could see nothing behind the veil of spiralling elements.
"Who are you?" I called out, straining my eyes to see the origin of the voice.
"Why did you return? I cannot continue to save you when you seem so determined to die." At these words I remembered the child.
"Wait! There's a child drowning! Please save him, he's only about 10 years old or so! You-"
"9 years old." The voice held a hint of amusement.
"You know him? Is he alright?"
"Yes, he is alright. He's talking to you now." I froze. How was that possible? I suddenly realized the impossibility of the situation.
"Where exactly am I?" My voice was cautious.
"You are inside me, the river" I accepted this, I didn't know why, but it sounded reasonable. "Or to be more precise, I am the dam that became this river."
"You...why did you save me and not Aoi?" I couldn't help but let out a small tear that was quickly whipped away by a gust of wind. I thought I could hear the river sigh.
"Aoi...was not a human. She was a sky guardian who had lost her memories. I simply helped her to return to the spirit world." I took a few moments to process these words before asking quietly.
"So she's okay then? She didn't really die?" A bubble of hope grew inside my chest. I felt the foreign feeling of joy, a feeling I had not felt since the night Aoi died. Or disappeared
"Yes she's fine." I closed my eyes and smiled, sinking to my knees, tears unashamedly running down my face.
"Thank you. Very much." The river allowed me a few moments to myself before speaking again.
"Now we must return you to your world. Your mother is worried." I nodded my consent.
"One last thing, what's your name?"
"Ahhh, my name...names are very powerful things, and one should not be so free with them. But I will tell you, my name is Kojiro."
The gusts of water and wind seemed to thicken around me, blocking out that light. I could hear, in the back of my mind, a steady beeping. The sound of my mother weeping, the hurried footsteps of a nurse. The darkness was almost complete when a sudden, inexplicable sense of urgency grabbed hold of me.
"STOP!" I heard myself yell. The whirring around me seemed to slow, then reverse. Slowly the light returned to my eyes.
"What is it?" asked Kojiro, curious, yet slightly impatient. "You don't expect me to ferry you across the worlds at your whim, do you?"
"No," I said fervently, shaking my head from side to side. "I just wanted to ask you something."
"By all means, ask me. It would be a waste if I brought you back from the edge of your world for nothing." My mind went blank, what had I meant to ask him? After a long pause, words spilled out my mouth. I asked a question that I didn't understand myself.
"Who...who is Haku?"
Kojiro paused. "Haku...could you be referring to Kohaku?"
"Yes." I said, filled with a quiet certainty.
"Kohaku: that is a name that the land still whispers of. I believe that he was the spirit of the river before it was dammed up. He could not accept it, so he left the dam, searching for a way to return it to a river once again. He never returned, and so I was born."
"How do I find him?" He regarded me silently.
"He is in the spirit world now, you should give up on this futile whim."
"NO! I won't, please tell me how to find him, Kojiro-san!"
"You do not understand what you ask for, Chihiro. Maybe a few years ago, but not now. Now crossing the border is a one way road. Once you enter the spirit world, you can never return. Not even the spirits can return to the material world." The spirals of air and water grew frantic and uncomfortably warm.
"I'm not scared!" The river sighed.
"The best way would be to find a link between the two worlds. But I don't know where any of these places are, so it's impossible!"
"You only said that's the best way, there must be some other way!"
"Yes, but it is irreversible. Death. If you are truly determined to make your way to the other side, you must die."
OGINO
Chihiro
16.09.1994 - 05.11.2009
Beloved daughter and friend.
Passed away peacefully with
the help of Bayside Medical
Centre.
May she find peace in heaven.
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