Chapter IV: Don't Forget Me Secret Garden
A/N: The supernatural bits are coming in now, so do look out for them. I apologise for the lack in editing because I'm flying off tomorrow morning and I wanted to get this out to you guys before I leave, as a thank you gift. Moreover, a great big thanks to the mysterious person who voted me in the RKRC awards! Thank You!
To my reviewers, thank you, I'm in a rush, so next time k?
To be completely honest, I can't remember what happened. Nothing. Not my name, not my past, not my favorite colors, food, nothing. All I can hear at the words, the voice singing through my almost blank memory. That, and the color white.
It has been a few days, I think, but I can't be sure. It's not that I couldn't see the world outside this strange room, it's just that the rising and the setting of the sun doesn't quite make much sense to me at all. Because even as I step into the sun's beams, it's not warmth I feel and even as the moon rises with the windows left open, there's not a draft of coolness on my skin. Just... nothing.
Still, I sit in this living room, richly furnished yet surprisingly Spartan at the same time, enjoying the sunset every evening. There's a special kind of charm, I suppose, in the ending of the ay. In the deep colors that are splayed all over the land, giving hues to the normally clinical colored room I sat in. Yet, my connection to this magnificent sight of nature's beauty seem to stem far deeper than simple admiration of the brilliant shades. Nonetheless, I could not remember, all that remained were the words.
"Yuugure ni kimi to mite... orenji no taiyou... (in the evening I saw you... the orange sun...)"
But where did the music come from?
"What beautiful words to sing to the sunset."
A voice sounded behind me.
Surprised that another person could and would enter this white washed prison of mine, I did not reply, merely continuing my observation of the scenery outside.
"Who are you? I thought this house has been abandoned for a long time."
Abandoned? The furniture was so well kept without a speck of dust! And if it was abandoned, then why was I here?
"Well, it isn't anymore." I softly murmured, answering myself more than him, the boy, no, man what was behind me.
"What are you doing here then?"
He seemed to be full of questions, simple questions that I couldn't quite seem to have an answer to.
"Does it matter?" I could not help but reply coolly, hiding my growing sense of helplessness behind a wall of nonchalance.
I could hear his footsteps as he walked further and further from the door and closer and closer to where I sat.
Thump. Thump.
It sounded familiar, the weight, the shoes slapping against the wood...
Thump. Thump.
He walked in a rhythm I must have known and was very much associated with, because it all seemed like a past memory echoing through the vaults of my hidden thoughts.
Thump. Thump.
He was behind me.
"You look familiar."
"Can you tell? You're looking at my back."
"You remind me of my friend who's in the hos-"
He never quite finished that sentence because I turned around.
#
His hair was that of the dying sun. Crimson and set a flamed by the fading amber beams of sunlight, his violet eyes only added to the sense of loss I could feel permeating around him. The despairing tone of his voice was now given a face and a meaning as I openly stared at the man in front of me. I supposed it was only fair that he was allowed to leave his gaze on my face as well, but when it was obvious he was gawking, it started turning decidedly uncomfortable.
"Anou... is there something on my face?" Not that I could see anyway, there wasn't a single mirror to be found in the house.
Reaching towards me, he caressed my hair as he leaned forward to continue his staring session.
Blink blink.
"Anou... is something wrong?"
"Hen ni." He choked out. "Who are you?"
"Does it-"
"Yes. Yes it does matter. A great deal."
He spoke so forcefully it scared me. Like I was supposed to understand him, like I was supposed to respond to that deep urgent need that wavered in his tone.
"I... I don't know. I swear I don't know."
Sighing, his fingers lifted to rake through his unruly locks as I openly stared at him. A handsome boy-man, his striking features must have turned a lot of heads wherever he went. Did they make me stop in my tracks in the days when I still remembered? Were they a part of my daily routine back when I had my memory? Still, as I continued to stare at him, it seemed that he was in some kind of a personal turmoil, a battle waged in a frail and fragile human frame.
"So what do you know?"
"Nothing really. Not my name, not my past... only white, and that song, and..."
"And...?"
He leaned forward, peering into my eyes as though he could pry some sort of secret hidden within their depths. And though I knew not how my eyes looked, I knew without a shadow of doubt that he would only see vast emptiness in them. How could someone without a pass hold anything else?
"And a name, I can remember a name, that's all."
#
There was a knock on the door. Though he did not need to be so formal with me, I knew that Kenshin did it more for the sake of politeness, than any real necessity. It's been about a week since I've gotten to know the strangely familiar boy who was the soul of courtesy, the same courtesy that belied a kind of urgent need to break through the barrier my strange amnesia built. Always, always he was asking who I was, what I remembered, but my mind drew a blank beyond the music and the color. Always.
"Come in."
A sandwich in hand, he offered it to me though he knew I would decline, like I did the seven days before.
"Don't you ever eat?"
I shrugged. How does one eat when one's appetite is not whetted?
"How is she?"
He stiffened as I brought the topic of his friend up once more. He was worried about her since her accident, and though I knew that it would hurt him to be reminded of it, I could not help the curiosity that was piqued by her existence. Who was she? What was she to him? How did she get into the accident?
"Still the same." was his seemingly nonchalant reply.
"No reaction at all?"
His silence was all that I needed to know. It spoke far more than the rigid posture he assumed or the sharp turn of his head as he concentrated on chomping down the salami sandwich in his hands.
Don't ask anymore.
It only reminds me of how she looks as she slumbers on.
Her dreamless coma.
"So how was your day?"
He answered and I asked yet another meaningless question. It seemed so redundant and useless that I wanted to block out all his presence even as it creeps into my thoughts and my waking moments. Each minute I spend alone is a minute I spend pondering about an existence that seems so excessive. As if there isn't enough people, as if there isn't enough stragglers. Still, as I sat there wondering, my eyes drift to him and knew that despite wanting to will myself out of actuality and erase myself from reality, it was moments like these that I was grateful for my being... to be with him.
"Kenshin."
"Ah?"
"She's only been... asleep for eleven days right, so shouldn't she be waking soon?"
He grimaced and frowned at the abrupt change in topic as he continued to glare at the crumpled paper-wrap in his hands.
"Nobody knows, nobody really knows, not even the doctors."
"You... you care a lot about her don't you? So why are you here with me?"
He sucked in a breath as though the air around him held the answers he's been searching for. Holding it, I knew that he didn't want to reply though to remain silent would be rude. And from my knowing him for the past week, he was anything and everything polite and sensitive.
"After I heard about her accident the first thing I did was to run to the site where the car crashed into her, not the hospital. I don't know why. I knew she was in a coma, I knew that she was not waking up anytime soon but all that ran through my mind was that she must still be stuck. Somewhere, anywhere. Left behind and so her mind can't catch up with her body, I just wanted something to believe in I guess."
He buried his face in his upturned palms as though praying. Continuing forth, he hardly stopped to catch a breath.
"And from there, I walked, I walked and walked calling out her name, hoping... then I finally arrived here. I met you. You. 'How could it be?' I asked myself, 'how could there be someone who looks just like her but isn't?'"
He stood up to pace around the vast room, looking like a demigod in all his glory as his blood-red hair shone with the benison of the fading beams of sunlight. A shattered demigod.
"I went to the hospital and saw her lying there, just lying like the she that I could not recognize. She doesn't belong to the silence and the coldness of the room. She's the sunshine and moonbeams and all that. She's the one who brings me out of my trance when I start to wallow in self pity. She's the one who grabs my hand and tugs me forward when all I want to do is stumble and fall. She's the one who... who..."
By then, he crumpled onto the floor in a crying mess. Maybe this was what he needed after all.
"And that's why you came to me, because I looked like her, and unlike her, I'm still awake."
Tears rolled unchecked and unbidden down his cheeks as he bawled his broken heart out.
I walked to him and pulled him close to me as the color white flashed through my mind once more. I've done this before, I knew I did, though the weight in my hands felt foreign, the same feeling of protectiveness and warmth flooded my being. The color white flitted across my eyes as I stared at his crimson bangs.
Then, I spoke the words that came from somewhere in me that I didn't recognize. It sounded so hollow and empty, like an echo through a deserted cave.
"Never again, Enishi, promise me, never again."