It's been… eight hours since I found the note. Six and half since I got to the police station. Five since I got home.
I lie on my bed and try not to cry; I'm moderately successful. I want to scream and swear and punch something, a worse freakout than when I found Sayori's note this afternoon, but my parents are already concerned about both myself and my best friend, I don't want to worry them -or Sayori's parents- any more than they already are. It's a lot easier, too, to quietly cry while staring up at the ceiling, alone, in the dark.
The rain lightened up for a while as I walked to the police station, but it's been coming down pretty hard since it started to get dark outside. The wind's picked up too, howling on and off and driving the rain down in sheets. I turn over, away from the window, the little wet bullets colliding against it, and realize it's only eleven. Doesn't really matter what time it is, to be fair… it was all but decided for me that I wouldn't be at school tomorrow, if not from the time I found the note, then when I got to the police station and had to answer a thousand questions. The officers couldn't have been any nicer about it, sure, but… having to answer questions about my best friends mental health and habits made an already shitty day even worse.
For the thousandth time tonight, I become aware of the phone buzzing somewhere near my head. I turned the volume off not too long after I got home earlier, but I left it on vibrate, I knew I had to leave it on vibrate, in case something… happened, I guess. I'm not in the mood or any kind of state to communicate with anyone right now; I can barely think, let alone speak coherently. Still, I grope around the blankets, a little heavy-handedly slapping around the covers until I hit the phone. I hold it above my face and press the power button, but I regret that decision instantly as a flood of white light hits me in the eyes with the intensity of a tiny, single-mindedly angry sun.
I jam my eyes shut and let my hand fall back to the bed, accidentally dropping the phone to the floor in the process. "Dammit…" I'm nearly startled by the sound of my own voice- it's the first thing I've heard other than the wind and the rain for hours, and that stormy-silence had become almost… soothing, in a way. I tap around the floor with one hand, flailing around for the phone and failing, so I stretch and lean a little further over the edge of the bed…
And lose my balance, falling to the floor and very narrowly avoid losing an eye to the corner of my nightstand as I do. At least I know where the phone went- beneath me now, it buzzes a single time against my ribcage. Groaning -growling, maybe- I roll over and sit up against the side of the bed, grabbing the phone and thumbing the power button again. A message on the lock screen notifies me of a dozen or so missed calls; another warns me of a number of texts several times that (not that it's a bad thing, but word seems to have spread quickly, and a number of my friends as well as Sayori's have sent worried texts). A third, smaller box shows that there are other notifications besides the calls and texts.
I can't say any of this is surprising. It should make me feel better, that so many people are worried about the two of us, but… I don't get anything from it.
I swipe to one side and draw the symbol I use to unlock my phone, pulling the notification bar down and tapping the text box first. Almost all of them are people asking if I've heard anything. A smaller number ask if I'm okay, personally, and a smaller number still ask if there's anything they can do. Between two of these is the last update from Monika, one in a series that form a wall of text nearly fifty long spread out over the last few hours, the most recent reading "cold. soaked. home. let me know if you hear anything. hear for you 3". Similar texts from Yuri and Natsuki (Yuri's is grammatically and orthographically perfect, and Natsuki's refers to me as several increasingly insulting names before ending with "… sorry. Really worked up about this. Lunch tomorrow?" to which I text back "sure" despite knowing I'm not going to school).
The missed call log comes next, but after the first few, I don't bother scrolling through the rest. If anyone was calling with anything important, the would have left a message or sent a text after, I reason.
Voicemail is last, and most the same as the barrage of texts- questions and updates, neither of which I want to hear any more of at this point. I start deleting them at random, leaving some to listen to tomorrow just to have something to do to pass the time. As I go through the list, listening to some completely, deleting others after the first few words, I stop on one at random, intending to hear this one out to the end. The timer on the visual reads "5:03," but it turns out to be a whole lot of nothing, probably a pocket dial- street noise, rustling clothes. I delete it and continue on deleting others without reason for a while.
As I get rid of the most recent message, though, I can't shake a weird feeling that's been creeping up on me. It's not completely unlike the feeling that started when Monika encouraged me to check on Sayori after school, but at the same time isn't the same nauseating abyss I wandered into when I opened the door to her house, either. It's hard to tell if it's better or worse than the crushing, chest-collapsing sadness I've been mired in since I got home, though, especially when I can't even figure out what it is or might be.
I end the voicemail check and my phone goes back to the call long, the last screen I was on prior. A name catches my eye among the sea of numbers and names of people I have no interest in speaking to right now, and everything stops for a second. Seconds. A minute, five, and the screen times out. I keep staring at it anyways, dark and mocking, pleased that the room is too dark to see my reflection staring back at me.
In the middle of the ocean of names and numbers, surrounded by people concerned about my, and her wellbeing, a single call. Hours ago, just after dark.
The shakes had gone away, had been gone since I burst into the Literature Club, but now they find their way back as I press the power button, swipe and pattern in. I watch the screen numbly for a little while longer before I can do anything else, like something might happen on its own; when nothing does, I pull my voicemail up again. Thank God for modern technology… I can just scroll through the list of what's left instead of having to listen to all of them one at a time. I check names and times, trying incredibly hard to remember the ones I deleted, thinking, hoping the entire time, no I would know if I'd heard that…
It's not there. I go back and forth through the list three or four times, but the message I'm trying to find won't be found, because I deleted it. I know exactly which one it was.
I swear. I howl. The ability to speak leaves me, replaced by a throwback to primeval hate.
I start to pitch the phone across the room, but realize mid-pitch that if i break it, Sayori won't be able to call me again. I adjust as best I can; my hand hits the floor, and my elbow smashes into the nightstand beside me. For a moment, the pain is incredible, a direct, critical hit directly to the funny bone; my vision is white, alternating black-and-blue with each pulse of blood through my temples. But it passes quickly, completely swallowed up by a burning self-hate that I didn't know human beings were capable of feeling, lower than piss and just as worthless. She called you and you didn't answer, you fucking idiot! She needed you and you weren't there!
I punch the bed behind me, but it doesn't help. The second swing doesn't, either, or the third, or the fourth.
Deep breath. Count to ten. Breath out.
Nothing.
Deep breath. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.
Thirty-one. Breath out, because my face is hot and my temples are throbbing. My chest is shrieking, threatening to cry or to scream or to vomit or some combination of the three. I punch the floor and swear again instead, trying to choke down whatever this urge is. Another one, smaller, quieter, speaks up from somewhere deep down, half-buried below the churning, searing sea of disgust, wallowing in my own sadness all evening- call one of the girls.
But I can't, not like this. I'm a mess.
Instead, I look at the time on my phone, and then I do throw it, albeit backwards onto the bed, out of reach.
Four hours.
Four fucking hours have passed.
Four fucking hours have passed since Sayori called me.
Four fucking hours have passed since Sayori called me and I didn't answer, acknowledge, or even notice her because I was so busy being upset.
It's another twenty minutes before I can look at the phone again, and I almost expect to see another call from her, like a taunting ghost. But the only notification on the screen now is from Yuri. Weary and bleary-eyed -must have started crying and not realized it- I unlock the phone and pull up her text. "MC." No honorific. This is serious. "Are you okay? Monika's worried about you. Natsuki said you only sent one word back to her. I'm worried too." Surprisingly loose for Yuri. That she -and Natsuki, and Monika- are this worried about me, and not Sayori…
I type "no," and for a number of minutes I lose count of, it's like I don't know how to write. The screen shuts off, but I turn it back on before the lock kicks in. "no. don't know how to put it to words. no. not at all." Send, immediately followed by, "thank you. all of you. just not in a good place to talk right now."
Thirty seconds pass. "Are you sure? I'm still awake…"
"no," again. Send. I'm not even sure what that means.
"What… what do you mean? No, you don't want to talk, or…?"
Reading this, I realize it's a little past midnight. "I'll be okay. Ish." I hope it might help ease her worries if I try and write properly, even if it's not much, and just like realizing how worried the three of them are about me, a new wave of sick hits me. As neurotic as Yuri is, I know writing properly will settle her down, and it feels like I'm doing something to take advantage of her, somehow. "Get some sleep, okay? I'll tell Monika I'm okay. I'm… not, but I will be, I promise."
Something about those last two words has an unexpected bite; a few seconds of reading and rereading "sent," I remember Sayori's note. It takes me ten minutes before I'm able to look at the phone again, but at least I manage to keep myself from bursting into tears again. It's a start. "M-kun… not great, but I'll be okay. Thank you for caring, but it's late. Please try and get some sleep."
Yuri is the first to reply. "Okay, MC." Still no honorific. Out of the three of them, (four, counting Sayori), Yuri is always the most guarded with her emotions, even in text. Something as simple as not using an honorific is uncomfortable for her, and smaller things have nearly brought her to a tearful, stammering mess of apologies over nothing. "If you need ANYTHING, text me. Goodnight." I don't say anything back, for fear that she might take it as a reason to stay up any later on my behalf.
Monika's text comes in an hour later, and actually startles me- I must have dozed off on the floor and not realized it. Not really a surprise, considering what a shitty, exhausting day today has been. "Okay, MC-kun. I'll come by after school." No okay, no suggestion to meet somewhere. Just "I'll be there." I manage an "okay" back this time, but that's about all I have left.
The wind continues to howl like the faraway cries of some lost, damned soul lost at sea, and the rain is millions of tiny cannonballs trying to sink that drifting ship. It's not so soothing anymore… now it's upset, angry, vengeful. The sound fills my head with a number of unhappy thoughts, and the unhappy thoughts spill over into unhappy dreams, turning them into nightmares that I wake up from gasping and covered in sweat despite sleeping in my boxers on the floor.
The sun is just starting to come up when I finally fall back asleep for good, hidden behind a blanket of dark clouds. The last thing I think before drifting into the abyss is "how appropriate."