A/N: From this point onward, depression, self-harm and other sensitive issues might be shown, portrayed or discussed in this chapter and others to come. Reader discretion is advised for those who are sensitive to such matters.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE – SHARDS, ALL OVER THE FLOOR (SayoHiro)

There was no relief more soothing or filling than the feel of putting down one's pencil or pen, standing up and turning in one's test paper to cap off exam week. It was this kind of euphoria that flooded Akihiro as he walked over to the front desk of the classroom so he could hand in his Moral Studies test paper and say adieu to the exams. With an effort not to whoop in delight, he packed up his things and left the classroom, having been given the liberty of leaving the room early once they were done as long as no noise was made to disrupt students who were still busy answering.

In Akihiro's mind, exam week and the one leading up to it had felt like a long, gruesome RPG grind. It was a tedious process, surely, but also a necessary one. Elsewise, he would never hear the end of it if he failed the exams this early into the academic year—after all, there were still two more batches of exams to go in future months before everyone can call it a year. As he looked back, he measured his grind-like efforts and found that they were adequate enough; he had definitely passed everything on good to excellent levels except for Math and Science, which were on the lower bracket as their equations had proven too tricky to all get right. Still, Akihiro was confident that he had scraped at least a C for both.

Along the corridor, students who had managed to also finish their exams early passed by, going out and about as they waited for their friends or went home early. Akihiro felt excited at the weekend that awaited him, a weekend where he could slack around and play games to take advantage of the lack of schoolwork. Most importantly, though, he was now free to get back on track with Sayori.

When the afterglow of their get-together with Monika, Kenta and the rest of the gang had died down, the stress of the exams soon returned in force, but no one seemed to bear the brunt of it more seriously than Sayori did. The last time that Akihiro had managed to talk to her properly was last week, right before everyone began settling down in order to focus on reviewing for the exams. Sayori had felt nervous then, admitting that reviewing was going to be tough, but in spite of Akihiro's offer to study with her, she had insisted on going about it all alone. Akihiro sensed that she was avoiding him then because she didn't want to distract him from reviewing; in a way, she was right, though he imagined that he himself could also be a distraction to her. In the end, he agreed to what she wanted, using her absence to fuel his anticipation at being with her once again after the exams were done.

It was with this same anticipation that Akihiro texted Sayori. Of course, he wasn't expecting a quick reply as she might still be busy answering, but he could always wait. "exams = done. gonna go home now, hit me up if u want to go out later, ok? take care!"

Upon arriving home, Akihiro cleaned up whatever needed cleaning and set aside his school things, ready to take on a long-delayed gaming session with gusto—at least until Sayori texted him back about going out later for the evening, in which case he would be more than willing to call the session off and be with her. In the meantime, he booted up his computer and started his game.

An hour into his session, there was still no reply from Sayori. Every now and then, he would put his game on hold to check if she was online, but he saw nothing. Initially, Akihiro decided to let her be, musing that she might be resting or napping, or that she had gone out with some of her classmates to celebrate the end of the exams before going home. Anything that would brighten up Sayori's day after the stress of cramming for weeks and answering those test papers for the past few days was fine in his book.

Two hours later, however, Akihiro began to worry. His cellphone remained silent as ever, and going online provided him with only more questions and anxiety. He glanced outside through his room's windows and saw the faint reddish hue of the sunset creeping in. Now feeling too worried to continue playing, Akihiro saved his game, grabbed his phone and sent a text to Sayori once more. For good measure, he went back online and sent a quick chat message to her as well.

Still, nothing came, and with that Akihiro made up his mind. Grabbing his jacket, he draped it over the simple white shirt he was wearing, donned his sneakers, and left his apartment to go to Sayori's place. So as not to catch her off guard, he sent yet another text informing her of his arrival.

The sight of people walking down the street and the other tenants at Sayori's apartment eased the tension a bit. While walking to where he needed to go, he had begun to feel that he was all alone, as if he was feeling Sayori's absence more palpably than ever. Akihiro swallowed nervously. Somehow, there was a creeping feeling at the back of his mind, telling him that what he was doing right now felt rather off, as if Sayori was a stranger or a casual friend that he was visiting for the first time. Upon reaching her front door, he held out his fist rather hesitantly and knocked two quick times.

"Sayori?" he called out. "It's me."

No answer. Akihiro knocked again, a bit more insistently this time. "Sayori? Are you in there?"

Still, there was no answer that greeted his call. Only the ambient noises of the apartment could be heard, piercing the white noise that seemed to be magnified around him all of a sudden. He was about to knock on the door a third time when he heard something from inside the unit. So she's home after all.

"Sayori? Come on, I know you're in there," he called out. "Are you okay? Can I come in?"

Of course, Akihiro knew that unless an actual emergency was involved, he knew better than to barge into someone's place, even if it was Sayori's. He waited patiently for an answer, punctuating the silence with an attempt to coax her out of her unit. "If you want, we can eat someplace downtown to celebrate the exams being over, how about that? You can pick wherever you wanna go, and it'll be fine by me!"

Silence. No reply, not even another noise to tell him that Sayori was indeed inside. Akihiro stared at the door for a few silent moments, his worry growing further. Was Sayori feeling really down today, to the point where she cannot even face him properly? As he wondered what might have caused her to feel that way, to his surprise, the door opened a little.

Sayori peeked out from behind it. Akihiro exhaled a sigh of relief, though the feeling did not last as he saw the look on her face. Her blue eyes, often shining with vibrant childlike enthusiasm, looked rather forlorn. Her hair was unadorned and rather unkempt, as if she had just woken up. Akihiro saw that she was still wearing her school uniform.

"Sayori, are you okay?" he asked.

Sayori looked at him and tried to smile, but the expression failed to materialize on her face fully. "I'm sorry for not answering the door right away," she said in a quiet tone. "I'm not f-feeling too well. . ."

"Oh, I see," said Akihiro in turn. "I just thought that you . . . that something was wrong. I sent you some messages, but you weren't replying."

"I know, I'm s-sorry," Sayori repeated glumly. Akihiro could see that her hands were trembling slightly. "After today, I just felt like going home. I didn't want to bother you, so I kinda forgot t-to reply."

"That's alright, no problem. Um, do you need some company? I can stay if you want."

"N-No, you don't have to. You didn't have to come over, y-you know?"

Akihiro smiled comfortingly. "Hey, I did say that whenever you needed me, I'll be there, right? So w-what happened? Is it the exams?"

"Y-Yeah, that's it, I guess. . ." Sayori let out a sigh. "Anyway, if it's okay with you, Akihiro, l-let's just talk tomorrow. I think I need to lie down and r-rest."

"Oh, that's alright, go ahead," said Akihiro, nodding. "I hope you feel better soon. I'm not gonna bother you too much if you don't want me to, but I'll be around to talk. Just hit me up through text or online, okay? I'll reply ASAP."

"S-Sure thing." Again, Sayori attempted to smile at him, and again her lips faltered at it. "Take care on your way home, okay?"

"Thanks. And you take care as well in there, alright?"

"I will. T-Thank you, Akihiro."

During the walk back to his apartment, Akihiro looked up into the sky. The setting sun painted the world around him in hues of orange and red, rousing and calming at the same time. As he looked, he was reminded of how autumn preceded winter, and whether or not what Sayori was going through right now was the autumn that heralded something bleaker in the future.

Two days later, when Monday arrived, Akihiro's musings had grown into full-blown fears. Sayori did not message him back over the entirety of the weekend, let alone visit him at his place. Even earlier, when the two of them would usually walk to school together, Sayori was nowhere to be found. Initially, he imagined that what she had told him about not feeling well had something to do with stress and a bit of sickness, but the thought that it could also be caused by the uncharacteristic sadness that she felt nowadays lingered at the back of his mind. It was this thought that Akihiro clung to now more than ever.

Though she had admitted to him that she was a bit busy for the day, Monika had replied graciously enough to his text at lunchtime, telling him that Sayori wasn't absent for today and that, contrary to what he was thinking, she seemed perfectly fine and free of any malaise or illness. Monika had been quick to ask as well if something was wrong, but since Akihiro had no idea what was up, he decided to tell her that he was just checking on her as per usual, stating that the two of them didn't manage to meet up over the weekend. Monika didn't ask anything more for now, and he refrained from bothering her any further, given that she was also busy with other things.

As the hours passed, Akihiro tried to focus on something else, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to do so. Again, he texted Sayori and asked her if she wanted to walk home with him later after school, but just like what happened since last Friday, no reply came from her. Privately, Akihiro was thankful that the exams had just passed; had Sayori started avoiding him during exam week, he imagined how difficult it would have been to focus on the tests while also worrying about how she was doing.

Upon arriving home later that day, Akihiro booted up his computer with the intention of playing some games to distract from his anxiousness, but he soon found himself staring at the game's title screen for a full minute. With an exasperated sigh, he exited the game, knowing that there was no way that he could channel his attention to focus on leveling up his characters and progressing in any game right now. He knew that it wasn't the issue of possibly dying and repeating a mission or dungeon all over again from lack of focus that bothered him. Akihiro wanted nothing more than to change his clothes and pay Sayori another visit—and perhaps one of these days he shall do so again—but there were certain thoughts holding him back. Was it reasonable to impose his company upon Sayori? Naturally, she would have something to say about that, but what if she was already feeling so low that she needed his company? On the other hand, after Sayori had made it clear in the past that she didn't want to trouble him so much for feeling dejected or lost, would his presence and efforts bring her mood down even further?

Evening came. Being too distracted to cook anything with what he had in his fridge, Akihiro went outside to eat. A nearby diner was his destination, and what he had was simple fare—fried rice with some dumplings and sweet sauce to go with it. With his worries starting to mount further, Akihiro knew he wouldn't be able to keep a lot of food down anyway, not when the thought of eating made him think of Sayori. He prayed that at the very least, whatever she might be feeling right now, she still remembered to eat properly. As much as he wanted to think that she was, Akihiro found it difficult to do so when he realized how much the diner he was in reminded him of his date with Sayori at the Starlight. It also hearkened back to the fare they had ordered from Daisuke's family diner during the study session at Monika's house.

That reminded Akihiro of something he had forgotten momentarily—that he didn't need to take on all this alone, and that Monika wasn't the only one he could approach. Taking out his cellphone from his pocket, he sent Kenta a text.

"hey Kenta. i hope i didn't disturb u or anything"

Kenta's reply came quickly. "don't worry bro, u didn't. wat's up?"

"can i call u real quick?"

"sure man, go right ahead. wat's it abt?"

Akihiro sighed, looking at his phone's screen, contemplating how he should reply. In the end, he knew that there was no other way to explain better than through a call, but he decided to at least tell Kenta about what to expect.

"i need help. it's about Sayori…"

To his slight surprise, his cellphone began ringing not long after he had sent his last text; instead of replying to his message, Kenta had decided to call him. When Akihiro answered the call, he sounded rather concerned.

"Hey, man, what's up? Did something happen?" he asked.

"Well, to be honest, I don't know," said Akihiro with a sigh. For the next few minutes, he explained what had happened with Sayori, starting from the days before the exams to the present day, narrating the similarities between how she currently was and how she acted weeks before when she lashed out at the idea of him coming over to her place. Kenta listened intently from the other end, though he did punctuate Akihiro's explanation a few times to clarify something or to ask about a certain detail.

"You know that this happened before, right?" Akihiro went on. "I'm just really worried that there's something that she's going through right now and . . . well, you know how she is, not wanting me to get bothered and all."

"I know, bro," replied Kenta. "I hope she's doing alright while she's not talking to you."

"Yeah, I hope so too." Akihiro glanced outside the diner's windows, watching people pass by as the evening grew darker and colder. "Do you think there's something she's not telling me?"

"Well, people always have something that they choose to hide. It's a bit hard to convince them to tell us about these things, since we can't exactly force them to all the time, right? Even if we say that they should tell us because we care for them, there's always something holding them back. I'll admit, back when I wasn't as close to Monika as I am now, I had second thoughts about telling her how I felt about certain things because I was scared about how she'd react."

"But that changed, right?"

"Yeah. With Sayori, I guess that's just . . . that's just how she rolls. I totally get where she's coming from—when people wanna be strong on their own, they tend to hide how they feel. But I think she doesn't realize that there are times when she actually needs you around, even if it's just to have someone to lean on."

Akihiro sighed again, running his hand through his hair, gripping at the locks there rather tightly. "Do you think she . . . she doesn't trust me enough?"

Now Kenta sounded rather surprised. "Hey, don't say that, man! I'm a hundred percent sure that Sayori trusts you. You've been best friends since you were kids, right? You've got some solid foundation right there with her, and I don't think her trust in you is bound to go down any time soon, or ever."

Akihiro smiled gratefully at that. "Thanks. I just . . . it might be possible, right? Like, she doesn't trust me enough to tell me how she really feels."

"Dude, she showed you how she feels well enough," said Kenta firmly. "Case in point: that's how you two ended up together, after she showed you how she felt. Don't think for one second that Sayori doesn't have any faith in you to tell you about her feelings and thoughts, alright?"

The confident and reassuring tone in Kenta's voice made it hard to believe otherwise. "Alright, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks, bro," he said appreciatively.

"Don't mention it, brother!" replied Kenta in a jovial tone. "By the way, I talked to Monika earlier, and she said that she might be delaying the next get-together to take care of a few things first, so stay tuned on that. I'll just tell you, Daisuke and Naoki about when it's gonna push through once Monika sorts things out."

"Oh, sure thing!"

"I hope you can convince Sayori to come along for the second time," Kenta continued. "Same goes for Daisuke and Naoki. I hope they can bring Natsuki and Yuri again. After the exams, we could all use a breather."

Akihiro laughed. "You've got that right."

Inside her apartment unit, Sayori was in shambles.

The stress of the exams and the emptiness that came from it lulled over her head like an executioner's axe just waiting to fall. She had conditioned herself as best as she could to actually score some good marks after the cramming she had done, but her determination faltered and dissipated when exam day arrived. Distracted by her own fears of not being able to do well, she had fumbled with each test. With each half-baked answer that she scribbled onto one test paper after another, Sayori felt more and more useless, and saw that in spite of her best efforts, it would be all for naught.

What felt worse was the aftermath. Watching her friends and classmates comparing answers and feeling hopeful that they had passed the exams with flying colors only served to emphasize how pathetic her efforts were. Naturally, that was hardly their fault, for students often gauged how well or otherwise they did once a particular test or activity was over. Try as she might to ignore hearing them, Sayori always ended up listening in the end, and with each victory her classmates seemed to predict, the voices in her mind laughed at her losses. By the time Friday—the last day of the exams—came, she had all but conceded. Avoiding people afterwards had been a given; Sayori could not bear the idea of looking into their eyes and seeing her own reflection in them, a reflection of failure and disappointment. Even worse would have been the idea of joining their conversations about comparing correct answers and revealing how many she had gotten wrong. People might say that it wasn't over until the test papers returned already graded, but Sayori had already given up on expecting anything grand.

Since that day, her room had felt like a prison where she could languish and rot for all she cared. Even looking outside through the windows made her feel pain, for it made her see a horizon that was filled with hope and joy, a horizon that a failure like her hardly deserved right now. It made going to school hellish, because it served to remind her over and over again of what happened, and yet she knew that there was nothing else she could do about it; even though it was a tempting prospect, not going to school would have more severe consequences, and Sayori was glad that at the very least she wasn't feeling down enough to start contemplating that yet.

Of course, the worst pain was imagining Akihiro's concern and bewilderment at her absence. Sayori terribly missed him, even more so than the first time that she shut herself away from him. The pain that she felt when he visited her last Friday—again, undoubtedly out of concern—was on a whole new level. The moment she had heard the knock on her door, she had begun to panic and contemplate on whether to ignore him or not, but how could she? Try as she might to keep quiet, Akihiro knew that she was at home, and it felt terrible to simply keep quiet and let him leave without ever answering the door. And so, against her will, she opened the door, spoke with him briefly about not feeling well, and retreated before she could break down in front of him. Even if the encounter took only a couple of minutes, Akihiro's face at the time etched itself in her brain, and the voices in her head used it to terrible effect against her.

You actually lied to his face. I thought you were sincere?

You rejected his concern again like it was nothing. Poor Akihiro.

Did you see how sad he looked before he left? I wonder what he's feeling right now.

You went for days without talking to him. It's safe to say he won't be happy with that.

"Stop. . . P-Please. . . Stop it. . ." Sayori moaned, wrapping her arms tightly around herself as she sat on her bed. Looking back into the past, she would be lying if she said this kind of episode didn't happen before. After all, unless a student was as good as Monika in terms of studies, there were a lot of moments when failure and disappointment in academics seemed inevitable, and Sayori had her fair share of downers in the past. The problem was that as time passed by, and as she grew up, the failures seemed to echo more resonantly and more lamentably, crippling much of her resolve to the point where her inadequacies far outweighed her capabilities. It had been much simpler back when she was a child—low grades and bad days often passed by quickly enough, even though the memories borne from them lingered at the back of her head. Now, however, they could linger for days, piling up along with other bad memories and giving rise to new ones. For Sayori, every time she felt like this, she remembered every little thing that she might have done wrong, and she wanted nothing more than to keep berating and degrading herself for it all. There was no comfort or rest in store for her; not even her stuffed animals by the window and Mr. Cow at the foot of her bed could provide her any comfort—they only served to remind her of Akihiro.

Quite distantly, she felt her stomach rumble. Sayori sighed, knowing that she could at least get up and make something to eat, but her arms and legs felt like lead. She had refrained from eating too much earlier at school, unable to face her friends or any other people that she would run into. Moreover, anything she might try doing for herself can easily be turned into a sin by the voices in her head. Combining this with everything else she was dealing with, Sayori knew that tomorrow—and potentially every day that would follow afterwards—would be nothing but a cold, empty and pointless chore. The idea of sloughing through each day with this kind of futility and despondence made it feel like a hammer was being smashed against her head over and over again.

Will this ever end? Can it ever end? The voices began whispering their answers, though Sayori did not have to listen closely in order to know what they were saying.

In the middle of the week, the biggest comfort that came for Akihiro was a call from his parents in Tohoku. It felt good to hear from them in the middle of the small crisis that was growing between him and Sayori.

"No, no, you didn't catch me at a bad time, Mom," he assured his mother when he had answered their call. True enough, when his cellphone began ringing for the first time in about a week, he had been doing nothing inside his apartment unit but staring at the ceiling. "How's everything there? How's Dad?"

"Tohoku is growing colder by the day," his mother told him. "Is it the same over there? Anyway, your father's still out, buying some things that we'll need for the seminar we're joining tomorrow. He might take a while."

"I see. It's getting really cold here too." With Sayori's absence, Akihiro knew that the chill in the air came both literally and figuratively for him. Not for the first time, he wished that his parents were around once again so that, after a gloomy day without sweet Sayori, he would at least have some additional warmth and comfort to come home to.

"Well, don't forget to wear a jacket all the time, okay? Any day now, the autumn rains will come, and before you know it, it'll start snowing."

"Yeah, don't worry, Mom. Anyway, I dunno if I texted you already about this, but we just got done with the exams."

"Oh, really? You didn't tell me about that yet, no. So did you pass with flying colors?"

Akihiro chuckled a little. "We won't know that until they return the test papers, Mom."

"Well, I just hope you didn't spend most of your time playing those video games of yours instead of studying," said his mother firmly.

"Don't worry, Mom, I didn't. Jeez, you sound like Sayori sometimes, you know?"

As soon as he finished saying those words, Akihiro stopped in his tracks, feeling sobered all of a sudden as he remembered Sayori's absence. Oblivious to what he was thinking about, his mother asked, "Oh, that reminds me, how's Sayori? We haven't talked to her parents for a while, not since we started preparing for the seminar."

"She's . . ." Akihiro cleared his throat, trying to distract himself from the images of Sayori languishing alone in her apartment that raced past his mind's eye. "She's doing okay. We also haven't talked much since exam week. She seems to be a bit busy. . ."

The call went on for five more minutes, ending with a promise from his mother that she would be calling again sometime next week. Akihiro looked forward to the call, wondering if things would be back to normal by then. The thought seemed futile in his head, but he clung onto it with the hope that Sayori will eventually bounce back from what she was going through.

A faint but lingering wind blew through the trees and streets when Akihiro went outside to eat dinner. The day had gone by on a very quiet note at best, and no matter how hard he tried to think of something to do, he found nothing. A quick session of Dungeon Delvers with his new Warlock character after he got home from school had helped, but he had grown tired of it rather quickly. He had been resting on his bed and waiting for his hunger to set in so that he can look for dinner when his mother called, and once the call ended, the evening resumed its silent, empty routine for him.

While walking towards another one of the diners down the street, Akihiro paused as he heard some ambulance sirens wailing faintly behind him. He turned to look around. Indeed, against the darkness of the evening, he could see blue and red lights sparkling alongside the twin beams of a vehicle's headlights as the ambulance approached at full speed. Like some of the other bystanders walking down the street, Akihiro moved closer to the sidewalk to give the vehicle a wide berth to wherever it needed to go. Deafening sirens and the roar of an engine going full tilt resonated powerfully against his eardrums as the ambulance passed by in a flash.

Around ten minutes later, while he was eating in silence inside the diner that he had gone to for tonight, the ambulance returned and sped towards the direction where it came from earlier. It seemed obvious that this time around, it was already carrying a passenger. Akihiro sighed to himself. Life usually went by smoothly in the city, but there were often moments when something would remind him and everyone else of its sobering unpredictability. The fire that broke out at school weeks ago, this ambulance carrying someone to the hospital, and Sayori's current predicament were examples of that.

But of course, as the age-old adage goes, life goes on. There was nothing to do but to cling onto the hope for a better tomorrow. After all, who's to say that spring no longer comes after winter, or that dusk will not give way to dawn?

It was the loud shouts down the hallway that startled Sayori from her reverie. A rush of footfalls outside her unit's door told her that some people were racing through the hall, their voices raised. Rising from her bed, Sayori ran towards the door and opened it slightly, peeking down the hallway.

She recognized some of the tenants that shared the floor with her—the kind man who lived with his wife two doors down and the single mother who occupied one of the upstairs flats, for instance—running towards one of the units further at the end of the hallway. "Call an ambulance!" one tenant shouted, but one tenant was already way ahead of him, calling for emergency help on her mobile phone.

For a moment, Sayori shared their panic; was it not always so when a potentially dire situation was taking place? Unable to stop herself, temporarily forgetting her own dismal mood, she went outside of her unit and walked gingerly towards the scene down the hallway. Once she was as close as she dared to go, she called out to the onlooker that stood nearest to her, a bespectacled middle-aged woman who lived downstairs. "E-Excuse me, ma'am. What's happening?" she asked anxiously.

The woman looked shaken, and she seemed to struggle with her own words to describe what was happening. "The woman who lives over at B-34, they said she . . . s-she . . ."

Before the woman could finish what she was trying to say, the door to unit B-34 burst open. Sayori also recognized the person who came out—a black-haired lady with a thin frame and near-protuberant eyes. She was going hysterical as the other tenants rushed to her.

"Did someone call an ambulance? P-Please!" she cried out shrilly. "My sister m-might not make it!"

"They're on their way, don't worry!" said the tenant who had called for one.

"What happened in there?" asked another urgently.

Breathless with horror, her face stark white, the woman leaned against a nearby wall for support. "I just g-got back from work earlier. The door w-was locked when I arrived, but I knew my sister w-w-was home. She wasn't answering when I knocked, so I went d-downstairs to ask for a spare key f-from the caretaker. W-W-When I got inside, s-she was lying on the f-f-floor. . ."

Unable to continue, the woman burst into frantic tears. It took quite a while before the other tenants managed to calm her down enough before she fainted from shock. Around ten minutes later—in what felt like an eternity to Sayori and the rest of the tenants that were gathered—the caretaker of the apartment came running up the stairs. "The paramedics are here!" he shouted, out of breath. True enough, a small team of four uniformed paramedics quickly raced towards the commotion outside B-34. Sayori quickly shuffled backwards to let them pass, stricken with shock and fear at what was transpiring.

When the medics reemerged several minutes later on a portable stretcher, Sayori caught a glimpse of the woman in question. She was paler than even her horrified sister, her eyes half-closed and glazed, and her mouth and chin shone with faint trickles of liquid that seeped out of the corners of her lips. Onlookers gasped at the sight, and renewed sobs of terror surfaced from her sister. The paramedics carried the woman down the stairs as quickly and carefully as they could, closely followed by the caretaker and the unnerved sister. With that, the commotion in the hallway simmered down; however, that didn't stop certain tenants from asking what exactly had happened. Fearfully curious, Sayori stayed awhile to listen to what they were discussing.

"Did someone attack her?" asked one individual. "A robber o-or something?"

"No, it wasn't a break-in of any sort," replied one of the tenants who had entered the unit earlier with a grim sigh. He wiped his face free of cold sweat with hands that still shook. "When we got in there, she was lying in the bathroom, and there w-were pills all over the floor. It looks like she t-tried to overdose or something."

Gasps of shock and horror followed the man's statement. "You mean s-she tried to . . . ?" His words faltered, but Sayori did not have to guess too hard as to what he had wanted to say.

"But . . . how can that be?" asked another tenant. "I mean, I-I know Miss Kobayashi, and she never looked to me like someone who . . . who w-would . . ."

Sayori looked away, feeling numb. Suicide incidents often punctuated the online world and the daily news, but this was undoubtedly the first time that she had witnessed such a thing in person. Of course, though she was not exactly present when the woman tried to commit suicide, to bear witness to the aftermath as she was being carried out barely alive on a stretcher was haunting enough. She understood the sentiments that the other tenants were now exchanging. Often times, those who commit suicide were the ones that people would least expect to do so, and this instance was no exception.

When Sayori finally managed to make it back inside her unit, the emptiness and despondence that she had been feeling earlier returned with renewed force, now mixed with horror at what had transpired and what kind of new thoughts it left her. With trembling hands, she picked up Mr. Cow at the foot of her bed and embraced her tightly. She knew that for a long while, the images she had just witnessed would be seared into her mind.

Her mind went back to the woman's sister, and she could only imagine the shock and distress she must have felt at seeing a loved one trying to take her own life. On the other hand, that was nothing compared to what could have driven the woman to commit suicide in the first place. On news about suicide, there were a multitude of things that were stated as the culprits: depression, anxiety, sheer stress from work, problems of a crippling magnitude. Even celebrities from across the world weren't safe from these causes, and some have already been pushed enough to take their own lives, their passing creating shockwaves across social media and the rest of the world. The cause of their suicides would be discussed and thought about for weeks to come, just like what the other tenants were doing right now in the wake of the incident at B-34.

Sayori did not like to imagine that what she had might be actual depression. She had never dared to look up what its symptoms would be, though posts about such warning signs were often shared on social media, reminding people to keep their loved ones close and to watch out for those who might be going through a lot. She always saw the same things: a persistent feeling of sadness or emptiness, self-isolation from friends and loved ones, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Other things were more personal, such as a feeling that there is no more hope for the future, or that one does not deserve happiness, or that one does not belong in the lives of others. As she reflected on these thoughts, Sayori felt more helpless than ever. Going by these musings, does that mean she was suffering from depression?

Does that mean she could end up like that woman from B-34, having no other end in sight except . . . ?

Sayori hugged Mr. Cow tighter, feeling the same kind of fear she felt during her troublesome nightmares. Inside her head, it felt as if the voices had obtained a new weapon to use against her.