Author's Notes: A lot of drama and angst up ahead. Like real life, just when everything seems too perfect, tragedy strikes.
Echoes Of The Past
Tragedy Strikes
Kaede had to pause for a while, breaking a gap in her musings as she felt a hot surge of emotions flow inside her. It was as if she had been there just now, had just listened to a policeman say that Doumyouji Hisaki, as the wallet and ID's confirmed, Japanese, male, 5'11", twenty-eight years old, has been found dead inside his car. It was a terrible nightmare she wished she could wake up from.
God, how she wished she had never answered the phone.
She had been devastated, shocked beyond her wildest expectations. At first, she had stepped into denial, wanting to know if it was a mean joke being played on her. Perhaps, Hisaki had lost his phone and some asshole was trying to scare the wits out of her. Or perhaps, he was held up in some dark alley, his car and wallet taken by force. Then, through some freak accident, the robber was found dead in the car with no identification except for the wallet thus was mistaken as Hisaki. It was all a mistake. It couldn't be happening. It was too ridiculous, too surreal. Doubting Kaede had called up everyone, everyone in his office and everyone at his condo unit. But no one knew where Hisaki had gone after he went out for lunch.
And he hadn't been back since.
There was a heavy gut feeling in her stomach, something most would call a woman's intuition. But she didn't acknowledge it; she just refused to. Kaede had decided to see for herself.
Calling the number back, she asked with a calm voice, guising the panic rising within her, where the site of the accident was. Then, she rushed off from the office, grabbed her things and ordered the cowering chauffeur to step on it. She didn't know whether the car or her heartbreat was racing faster. Upon arrival, there was already a growing crowd of curious onlookers in addition to the mass of paramedics, traffic aides and policemen.
She felt as though she was one of those going to be tested for a venereal disease and waiting for the possibilities of getting one of those incurable syndromes. Her heart was pounding, her mind was swirling and yet she managed to squeeze her body into the middle of the crowd and quickly pushed and squirmed her way to the front.
'Oh God' was the only thing she had managed to say as she saw the barely recognizable ruined wreck of the newest BMW model Hisaki bought just a month ago. It was crushed with most of the doors on the left side caved in. The car looked like it had went through a trash compactor, a very large and powerful compactor that tried to press it into a metal cube. Then, like a bulb lighting up in the midst of all the chaotic darkness, she remembered her purpose. The man, the victim. She has to see him.
She quickly went under the yellow tapes that secured the area and ran off to the ambulance nearby before anyone could've spotted her.
"Hey, where do you think you're going?" One of the big, burly police officers stopped her before she even got more than five steps from the lines.
She took a deep breath to calm herself and said, "I, Ms. Nagasaki Kaede, am on my way to see if my fiancé, Doumyouji Hisaki, was indeed the one who was involved in this accident." She brushed his rogue arm that was holding her shoulder. "Would you care to explain?"
When the policeman learned of her relation to the victim and her possible "higher connections," he quickly informed her of his state when they found him, how the accident happened and where his body was taken.
"It was all a blur. A truck had lost control of its brakes and it slammed into his parked car just after he had come out of that flower store. Then, when we had him out of the car, he was rushed into the nearest hospital, just a few blocks from here," he said and added politely, "Ma'am." Even before the man could finish his last sentence, Kaede was already running back to her car and zooming off to the hospital.
Flowers... he had stopped by to buy flowers. If only he had went straight to her office to pick her up. If only he had stayed inside the shop for another minute. If only he had went to another flower shop. If only... he had not thought of her.
As soon as the car stopped, Kaede strode briskly into the emergency room, asking the nearest information counter for assistance. The nurse looked at her face, which must have spelled distress no matter how she covered it, and instructed her to the room at the end of the west hall. She walked with hurried steps. She must see him. Whatever happens, she must see him.
She walked straight, unnoticing the few people looking at her, and then stopped at the end of the hallway, faced with a wide double door. She took the handle of the door with a clammy hand and looked up to see the last word she had wanted to see.
Morgue.
She felt her knees buckle under the intensity of the emotions that suddenly filled her. She leaned onto the door for support and then all strength abandoned her as she slid slowly down to the floor. It must only be a nightmare, a cruel figment of her imagination. There has got be some mistake. This was not happening. Not to her. Not to Nagasaki Kaede.
Kaede closed her eyes and maybe, just maybe, when she opens them again, she would found herself in her room, under her blankets. But the hard feeling of the smooth, tiled floor didn't change and she remained stuck in reality.
Her knuckles were white and her hand trembled as she turned the cold, chrome handle. She pushed with all of her strength left just to budge the door open and entered with unsure, unsteady steps. There, she witnessed the blood and the gore she thought had only existed in horror movies. Hisaki, or at least parts of him, was not looking very Hisaki-like at all. It was only then that it fully set in, that the painful jaws of reality bit down painfully hard on her neck. Just when Kaede thought everything was perfect, fate made her all-too-perfect world come crashing down.
Kaede was silent on the long drive back home. She didn't whimper, sigh nor made any expression whatsoever, which was all the more unnaturally scary. It wasn't what the driver expected. He expected tears, bawling, screaming, hitting; not a calm and definitely not a quiet Kaede. She just sat there, looking out the window at the bypassing trucks and cars, gaudy colored billboard signs and throngs of crossing pedestrians on their busy way.
But if you looked at her eyes, you'll realize she wasn't really looking at all.
Hours later, she sat on the balcony of her room, overlooking the well-sculptured Nagasaki lawns that bathed in the steady stream of the bright full moon. She didn't quite understand the pain that racked her body. It was as if she was beaten and pounded by a hundred clubs with numerous spiked ends and flagellated by nail-ended whips and yet miraculously, obtained not even a single bruise. Or at least, not a bruise that can be seen with the naked eye. There was excruciating pain, a wrenching and twisting in her guts that no medical operation would have been able to explain.
Kaede sat there by herself, not thinking, not moving, and not speaking. She simply wasted time, sitting in stony silence like the rigid gargoyles perched on top of the Notre Dame Cathedral. She never shed a tear, not one, for her body had refused to release her emotions. It was a defensive mechanism she had built back when she had her first heartbreak and swore off crying for men. There was a building tension in her chest that pained her to hold onto, but what could she do but bear the pain? So there she sat like a statue as minutes lengthened to hours and the sun slowly rose to begin another day. It was only then that Kaede finally stood up, only to go to the bathroom and prepare for the day's work ahead.
Three days, she worked herself to the nub, hardly eating and never sleeping at all. Dark rings circled her puffy eyes from lack of sleep and yet she toiled, even much harder than before, that you'd suspect she was on a high from some drug that kept her energy going despite the obvious lack of rest. Colleagues worried about her for though she still kept that prim and proper image of her, clothes neatly pressed and not a hair out of place, she could not hide the jaded look she now wore to work. But she went through the same routine as though nothing was wrong, as though nothing had happened.
It was the absence of grief that made it all seem delusive.
It was on the fourth night that her body finally gave in to exhaustion as she collapsed on her bed. Whether she had fainted or not, even her body could not tell the difference. Her bout with sleep was over. Her body had surrendered.
The only reason she dared not sleep for nights before was because she had developed a fear of dreams. It's not that she was afraid of dreaming of the gory sight she had taken in at the hospital, his face smashed in, body twisted in all the wrong angles and limbs splayed in different directions. It was because she was scared to be reminded of their happy memories, memories where he held her, promised to marry her and love her for the rest of their lives. These were promises he can no longer fulfill.
She did not want to hold on to the happier pages of her life, though short-lived they were, lest she be given a shred hope to hung onto...
When she knew deep inside that there was nothing left to hope for.
A/N: Thank you all for continuously supporting Echoes Of The Past! hugz