A Sonata of Solitude
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
-Rudyard Kipling, Recessional
Chapter One:
A Requiem of Remembrance
I thought I had forgotten you.
I thought those days we spent together laughing and learning, those days you scolded me, those days we fought and screamed and made-up, were nothing more than a long-since drowned memory. Your scowl, your determination, all that you were - I thought those things were as dust in the winds of time, swept away. That all we had shared, and all we had dreamed of, amounted to nothing more than a stray thought, floating, suspended in the serene lily-strewn pond of my memories.
I thought I had forgotten every piece of what you were.
Yet somehow, the thought of you forgetting me never crossed my mind.
I still remember it now. That day, when everything had come to a halt, and we had been called together. Twenty of us in the staff room during the lunch hour, summoned for a meeting of unknown purpose. Tittering, unsure, confused.
Then... you.
In the principal's wake, a scarce pace behind, was you. Like a ghost, you had walked into the room, silent. A blazer, a shirt, your dark hair hanging in messy strands over your face, a structured mess - or was it chaotic order?
At first, I hadn't recognized you. It had been so long... and you were different. The boy I had once known, with his narrow face, slim shoulders, and studious demeanour had vanished. In his place stood a man - his shoulders filled out, his jaw stronger. A trace of stubble, hurriedly shaved, swiftly forgotten.
I didn't know you.
We had all grown silent with your entry, unsure of what to expect. What was coming. With our attention having been gathered, the principal had introduced you - but I didn't believe. Couldn't believe it could be you.
Not after all those years.
Uesugi Fuutarou.
You had shuffled around the room, slowly introduced to person after person after person. Co-workers. Companions in arms. Strangers. When my turn finally arrived, as you were brought before me once again, I was trembling.
I still remember that shaking, subtle and yet total in its coverage, the uncertainty and the unconscious fear driving my body as a strong wind drives waves at sea.
Anticipation.
Nakano Itsuki-sensei.
My name was said, you bowed politely, and I could feel it, achingly deep in my bones.
The indifferent coldness of meeting a complete stranger for the first time.
A shiver had gone up my spine as you turned away, leaving to approach the next person. A foreign element. An unspoken fear. Perhaps that was what compelled me.
"Uesugi-kun..."
You had turned back, just for a moment.
A hint of recognition. A hope of reconnection. Of reclaiming what we once-
No. No, that was wrong.
Ice.
Indifference.
A pure and undiluted strain of apathy.
You turned forward again without a word in reply, and then you were gone, swept away to the next teacher.
Unconsciously, I had grabbed my arm, squeezing slightly below the elbow. It was all I could do to stabilize myself. To impose a sense of calm when my mind was a disaster scene.
He's here. He's back.
What do I do?
The newest hire at our school, a young teacher straight out of university. Four years my junior, a science and mathematics educator. A prodigy, or so the principal had said - never less than perfect grades, and with a fantastic understanding of pedagogy. A genius who had supposedly completed the five-year education degree in just under three and a half.
As expected of him.
I felt sick to my stomach.
Introductions completed, we had been dismissed, and you had followed the principal back out of the room without a word. Even as the lunch break had ended, and I had walked back to my classroom, I had been locked in the spiralling inner contours of my own mind, trying desperately to come to grips with my new reality.
A reality where you were back in my life.
It had been ten years since that day - that day when everything had changed.
Pausing outside my door, the subdued sound of rowdy teenagers leaking through the paper-thin walls, I'd had to stop and take a breath, to steady myself. To investigate what I was feeling.
Anxiety. A touch of nostalgia. An unsettled feeling, deep in my chest.
None of those things should have been enough to yield the effects I was experiencing.
I don't understand.
Biting my lip in concentration, I had stepped through the door, and had tried to put thoughts of you behind me, at least for a moment.
I had tried my best - I really had. Yet, my students had been able to see right through me. They all could tell that Nakano-sensei wasn't present, their teacher absent, her thoughts locked in a vortex swirling in place, winding and winding and winding. Lost in memories that were slowly emerging from the silt of the depths. Long buried.
Long forgotten.
I remember - it got so bad that a beaker smashed. My face flushed, I was forced to clean up the mess, thankful at least that no children had been hurt by my errant blunders.
How is he here?
I had thought I had forgotten you.
It was therefore rank hypocrisy to not want you to have forgotten me. Yet, despite that contradiction, the ice in your eyes and the ambivalence with which you looked away both were enough to make me feel sick - unsure of what to do, unsure of how to be. Unsteady both in hand and in mind.
...It hurt.
I had never wanted you to choose me.
I had been hoping for someone else to be chosen. Any of my sisters would have been fine. Any of my sisters would have made me happy.
What I had never expected was for nobody to be picked. For all of them to break in their own ways. I had never expected to have to put the pieces of my sisters' selfishness and ambitions back together all by myself - to not even have one person I could congratulate.
I had never thought that the most shattered of all of us would be you.
Yet, there we were, ten years later, and it hurt.
I don't want to see him.
When the day had finally come to a close, with its shocks and its mishaps and its missteps and its several broken objects, I was grateful to simply be able to go home. To escape my thoughts, at least for a while. To escape from the gnawing anxiety seeping up throughout my body, screaming that the world was ending.
As I exited the school, my worry grew - but to no end. To my eternal relief, that day was one of the few where I didn't run into you. That first day, at least, I was safe. A faltering thing. It wouldn't continue that way.
Yet, a comfort nonetheless. I could go home and escape everything.
Home was near. Home was warm. Home was safe.
Home was lonely.
The shelter of my small, one-bedroom apartment, on the second floor of a complex, was an enclosure, a nest to keep me safe. Warm and homey, it was a place where I didn't have to be Nakano-sensei, or responsible, or anything more than I had the strength to be. It was a place I could safely remove the hardened shell of an adult I'd developed over the years, a place where I could be vulnerable.
The seal keeping me safe from the outside world was, however, far from perfect.
Exhausted, I had dropped onto the bed, barely having the strength to take off my shoes. My head still spinning, unable to process all of the emotions I had put it through. I was sinking into the soft material, the blanket wrapping around me.
Trying to conceal me from thoughts of you.
It was impossible.
Impossible that after everything that had happened, after we had gone our separate ways and lived separate lives and dreamed separate dreams, our paths would cross again in such a fundamental way. That my tutor from so many years ago would now be my junior.
A pillow had been pulled over my head. A refuge in the darkness from my thoughts - but to no avail. The thoughts followed me nonetheless, diffusing in through the fabric and slipping in through the gaps.
After all, the problem with running away is that you take yourself along with you.
The emotion I was feeling was becoming more solid, in that dark ensconcement. Tangible.
Regret.
Regret that it had been ten years. Regret that I'd been happily living my life without you.
Regret... and a faint, ember-like guilt that I'd left you behind in the mist of the past.
Yet, consigned there, you'd somehow re-emerged. Re-entered my life.
I had sat up, blankets tumbling from my shoulders. My apartment had felt cold, and it had felt empty. Small, enclosed, yet somehow not the fortress I had always thought it was. Grabbing a stuffed animal off the bed, I had tightly held it to my chest. A base, material comfort.
Yet, it wasn't working.
My thoughts had turned again to you.
What has his life been like since we last spoke? What hardship has he been through? What triumphs?
Uesugi-kun...
Shaking my head, I had risen from the bed, and discarded the plushie which had failed entirely in its sworn task to serve as my shield. There was no use in brooding - I would find no answers within the confines of my head.
Yet, try as I might, those visions of you refused to leave my mind.
Flames on the stove, a pan frying vegetables, rice in a pot. Food, my comfort, my love. Yet even that was a reminder - of how when we had first met, you had insulted me. Of our trials and tribulations to get closer; and then, our eventual separation.
With my supper made, I had sat to eat. Yet the thoughts of you continued to seep into my mind, flooding unabated in rivulets and streams and torrential downpour. Hadn't we gathered around a table, the six of us, studying together?
Looking around, I was alone.
A part of me suddenly longed to call my sisters. To hear their voices.
To not be alone.
But... it was an awkward time of day - none of them would be free at a time like this. Not just for idle chatter. Maybe Yotsuba, but...
Instead, I had settled for texting each in turn, and leaving them to respond at their own pace. As had often been the case of late, Yotsuba had been the first to respond, only a few minutes later. Well after I'd finished my dinner, Nino and Miku had responded as well, a brief lull in their work allowing them to check their respective phones.
I didn't expect a response from Ichika until the morning - not with the giant ocean and the commensurate time zones separating us. She'd never been an early riser.
Somehow, reaching out to them, it helped shield from the feelings which loomed over me. Strength in numbers, and all of that.
I had washed my dishes, and had put them to dry. Darkness was quickly falling, the dying light flowing through the small window in the back wall - my sole source of natural lighting - slowly changing colour. Through the glass, the red dusk warned me of the impending night.
Laying down on the bed, I sought to distract myself once more with a book. A romance novel which lived on my bedside table; I had been slowly working through it for months. It was... titillating, watching the slow, pining romance grow between the two characters.
I had experienced romance before. More than once. I had gone through the joys of love, and the pains of loss. I had been swept off my feet, and had also had my heart shattered.
Ten years had passed for me as well.
Just as you had lived life without me, so too had I lived life without you.
Yet for now, I was alone. For now, I was lonely.
Ah... I'm thinking of him again.
I shook my head. It was a stupid thing. I had never harboured romantic feelings for Uesugi Fuutarou. For you. I had watched the pain that love inflicted on all my sisters - and I had silently vowed not to fall prey to the same foolishness. I'd eventually broken that vow - but not with you.
It's not like that. It's just the regret.
Like a hard ball in the pit of my stomach, ever-present yet only quietly whispering at the edges of my psyche.
You betrayed him. After everything that happened, you let him slip away.
It was hardly fair. Such things are always mutual. Yet, the voice in my head, the whisper in my gut, had refused to stay silent, even as I turned page after page after page. It had continued even as I eventually closed the book in frustration.
Taking my evening shower, it was no better. As the water ran through my long hair, heating my scalp and my back, my thoughts were distracted, taken up with thoughts of you - analyzing, pondering, hypothesizing. The only emotions were the embers of guilt, and curiosity; but those two things were enough to almost overwhelm me.
Shaking my head, water spraying out onto the walls, I cleared my mind of such painful thoughts.
You were my inspiration. Inspiration, though, is never enough to carry one through to the goal-line. My career, my teaching - they were all products of my own hard work.
You have nothing to regret, Itsuki.
I stepped out of the shower, water dripping down on the mat at my feet. The cold air over my body made me shiver - and I quickly reached for my towel, wrapping myself in its temporary embrace. Yet, somehow, the shivering wouldn't stop. I dried, and dressed - but I couldn't seem to get warm.
Returning to the body of my apartment, I wrapped myself in blankets, layer upon layer upon layer. The thick fabric, trapping my own body heat, was finally enough to slowly restore my sense of warmth - but I still found myself shivering. I had retrieved my book, and had attempted to immerse myself in its pages once more.
The story pulled me in, and I was eventually enthralled in its pages. Love, slowly building, growing, irrefutable... not something which could be destroyed by something as trivial as absence. Which couldn't be ruined by something as simple as the passage of time.
Eventually, before I knew it, swaddled in my blankets, my hair still damp, I had fallen asleep - and I was being rudely awoken by my alarm, blaring noisily and disruptively from my phone, screaming at me that the time had come for me to get ready.
To go to work.
To have to see your face again.
Blearily, I had risen, and had spotted my book on the floor, spine up. Retrieving it, I had put in my bookmark, placed it back on my bedside table, and then walked into the washroom. Looking into the mirror, I saw hair everywhere, mild bags under my eyes, reddened cheeks.
I'm a mess.
Sighing, I had begun to wash my face, brush my hair, and had applied a small amount of make-up - the minimum amount professionally required to not look like a human disaster zone. A few minutes later, the signs of the previous day's distress were mostly gone, hidden.
I still remember how I felt as I was finishing those last details - part of me, a small part of me, was hoping that with the touch of a brush, the brief application of a powder, I could hide from you my confusion. My guilt.
I had hoped you wouldn't notice.
I'd completely overlooked the possibility that you didn't care enough to look.
The morning commute was grey - clouds overhead signalling the oncoming storm, rain forecast to pour in the early afternoon. I had grabbed a small folding umbrella and put it in my bag before leaving. It was part of my morning routine - as I ate breakfast, I watched the weather forecast. Riding the subway on my way to work, I flipped through flashcards on my phone. Inspired by a stint Ichika had spent in France, I'd started trying to learn French a few months before.
Je m'appelle Nakano Itsuki... ah, wait, no, in the West it's reversed... Je m'appelle Itsuki Nakano. Je suis japonaise. Je suis une institutrice. Je... je...
I hadn't gotten very far.
My stop approached, and I had stowed my phone. Grabbing my bag from the floor, I had stepped out into the subway station, up to the street level, and then made the quick approach to the school.
I was hopeful that I wouldn't see you.
I had stopped by the staff office to get my lesson preparations in order - chemistry classes in the morning, physics in the afternoon. Different grades, different classes, a diverse set of lessons to teach. The thing I'd dreamed of when I was finding my own feet.
For once, I found it hard to care. My mind was preoccupied.
As I had finished my preparatory work and began to leave for my class, the door to the staff room had slid open in front of me, and in you had walked, contrary to all of my wishes.
We made eye-contact - but only for a moment. Scarcely a moment. Your eyes, a brief flash of hesitation, and then they elided over mine and away. Simply another co-worker. Simply another semi-anonymous face in the crowd.
I felt a stab to my heart.
With a shudder, I walked by you, papers and binders pulled close to my breast, exiting the room. Your presence, shoulder by shoulder, was foremost in my consciousness, like a magnetic force drawing my attention.
I knew I was just imagining your eyes on my back as I left.
My classes were on autopilot. Chalk on board, quick strokes, my usual pedagogy. Yet, my mind wasn't there. I was distracted. Things hadn't improved - my mind was still wandering. To you. To my own feelings around you. To anxiety.
The chalk snapped.
Muttering curses under my breath, I had crouched down to grab the broken pieces.
Whispers.
They knew something was wrong.
I rose back up, and eyed my students.
They know.
Giving a confident smile, I put on a mask, and turned back to the board.
They can't know.
I returned to writing. Balance equations. Endothermic reactions. Oxidation. Each class that passed through my door had a different subject. Each class that passed through my door was a challenge. Each class that passed through my door was an embodiment of my dream, my success.
I couldn't let any of them see.
Finally, the lunch bell rang.
Freedom.
Temporarily, freedom.
I bought lunch at the school store, and then went to eat in the staff lounge. My co-workers, my friends, ate and laughed with me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that you were there too. You'd already made a connection to one of the male teachers, and were sitting together eating. A soft laugh. A friendship, maybe.
Once again, it struck me that you were no longer the boy I'd once known.
One of my friends asked me if I was alright. Asked if I was feeling well. I turned. I laughed it off. It was nothing.
They can't know.
The knot in the pit of my stomach resurged.
Before I knew it, the bell had rung, and I had needed to return to work. However, as I'd been about to step into my classroom, I'd realized that I had forgotten to print out the quizzes I'd planned to give to the final class of the day. Muttering under my breath, I'd returned to the staff room.
You weren't there.
It was empty.
I had hurriedly inserted a USB stick into the printer-connected computer, and had begun to print my files. As the machine whirred to life and began its convoluted ritual of sacrifice, ink spilled like blood on the page in precise, intricate patterns, I could only stare out the window.
The door slid open.
I turned to look.
You had entered again.
I could feel the sharp pain in my heart of your apathy. Of my regret.
I hated being a stranger.
So I called out to you. Not with a memory of the past. Not with a reference to the severed bond we'd once shared. Not with the thousand-and-one things I wished I could have said.
I simply said hello.
Anything more would have been too much.
Anything more might have been better.
Your icy eyes, golden like a dragon's hoard, preciously guarded, slipped over me without recognition. My words fell on deaf ears. Or rather, purposely indifferent ears.
Walking over to your desk, you ignored me entirely, without even an acknowledgement.
In the depths of my chest, my anxiety and the embers of guilt simmered - but were subsumed entirely by the sudden burst of indignation that rose throughout.
Our past was one thing.
Ignoring one's senior entirely was another thing entirely.
I stalked over, irritation coursing through my veins. I was going to tell you off. I was going to express to you some iota of what I was feeling, of the myriad emotions rushing through my veins.
"Uesugi-sensei, ignoring one's seniors so rudely isn't a good way to begin your career here."
Wait. That wasn't what I wanted to say.
You had simply looked over at me then, the ice glittering in your eyes like hoarfrost in the winter's sun. A moment's silence between us. Then, your face unchanging, you had inclined your head.
A soft-spoken apology. Nothing more.
Then, you were gone.
Leaving me behind in your wake, unsure of what to do.
Whrrrr. Click.
Returning to the classroom with the quizzes clutched to my chest, I entered a few minutes late. Offering apologies to the waiting students, I stowed the materials, and began to lecture.
Force. Momentum. Charges. Torque. Mass.
Inertia.
Click. Click. Click.
The chalk was a pattern. Repeated, it was an obsequious tool, letting me lose myself in the inanity of my daily life. The repetition of teaching what I'd taught every year.
Was teaching us like this?
Click. Click. Click.
Force diagrams. Cosine. Tangent. Coefficients of friction. Vector addition.
Click. Click. Click.
A break. A short, inconsequential break.
I don't remember it anymore.
I spent the whole time thinking of you, and of my own stupidity.
The quiz came, and I spent the test time working, only occasionally getting up to wander the aisles, ensuring that there were no cheaters. It was monotonous.
Click. Click. Click.
A pen. In and out, in and out.
Was this how it was for him?
I glanced out the window.
Was this how it was for my mother?
The bell rang. The tests were handed back to me. I carefully stowed them in a folder, and put them in my bag.
The students left.
I was once again alone.
Alone in the heat bath of regret and residual anger, left simmering, unreleased.
Does he hate me?
I returned to the staff room - I had various duties at the end of the day. My work didn't end when the students went home. Sitting at my desk, I had pulled out a red pen, and had begun marking the quizzes. It was best to get such things out of the way as soon as possible. To defer was to drag out the process. The unpleasantness of determining the academic worth of other human beings.
The door slid open. I looked up.
I was both afraid, and hopeful, that it was you.
I was both saved and betrayed - for you were nowhere to be found.
I returned to my work. If my head was to be filled with thoughts of you, it would be better for it to be filled with nothing at all.
So, I submerged myself in the monotonous to escape my own mind. Distraction.
Click. Click. Click.
Eventually, I had finished marking the final quiz - and the sun was already growing low in the sky. Stretching in my seat, I could feel my muscles sigh with relief, freed of their burden. I had stowed the fully-graded quizzes in my desk and had locked it shut - task completed at last, I rose, and threw my bag over my shoulder. Looking around the staff room, empty, I felt a sudden, invasive sense of loneliness.
I shivered, and then shook my head.
Get it together.
I slipped out the door, and locked it behind me.
The walk down the hallway to the front entrance of the school was a long one, my shoes clacking on the linoleum with each footfall. Most of the students had already left - only a scarce few who had stayed late for especially strenuous club activities remained. As I had walked past a window, I could see some girls outside playing soccer - drills and passes and dribbling and all the other things one needed to do to make the ball nothing more than an extension of the body. I had paused for a moment to watch.
They were driven by a common desire. Striving together for a common goal.
Together...
Sighing, I had re-adjusted my bag on my shoulder and kept walking.
The commute home was as grey as the way out - if anything, the clouds looked darker and angrier, their pregnant underbellies swollen with the rain to come. As I had descended the steps into the subway station, I had glanced upwards at their menacing, overcasting presence, and had prayed that the inevitable collapse would wait until I got home - until I was safely returned to the loving embrace of walls and ceiling and floor.
As I stepped onto the subway car and sat, I pulled out my phone, and once again reviewed flashcards.
J'aime la viande. Je n'aime pas... pas...
I frowned.
How do you say "Umeboshi" in French?
I switched to searching online, using the subway station wifi as we pulled into an intermediary stop.
Hmm... "une prune salée"... so... je n'aime pas la prune salée.
Satisfied, I had returned to my studying. Yet, there remained an itch at the back of my mind - the very act of turning through flashcards, despite their digital nature, made me think of our first meeting. Of when I had chastised you for doing exactly what I was doing now.
The embers of guilt in my chest flared, unbidden.
Don't think about it. Don't think about it, Itsuki.
My stop had come, and I had gotten off the train. Rising to the surface, I had been grateful to see that the rain had chosen to remain in the sky, defying the call of gravity for a few more precious minutes. Hurrying home, I'd already been able to feel the first few raindrops on my head as I had ducked under cover at the entrance to my apartment building. Climbing the exterior stairs to the second floor, I had fiddled with my keys for a moment, and then had stepped inside.
The vacant interior had felt even more empty than the day before.
How long will this go on?
Closing the door behind me, I could begin to hear the pitter-patter of rain falling on the roof far above. I'd long held that one of the coziest feelings in the world was being warm and dry inside with a hot cup of cocoa while the rain poured outside in its torrential numbers. So, with the drizzle providing its quiet symphony, I decided to do just that.
Taking off my shoes and stepping up out of the entryway, I had meandered into the main room of my apartment. Lowering my bag next to the bed, I'd wandered over to the kitchen, well-stocked, and began rummaging through the cupboards. Eventually, I had found it - a hand-crafted hot chocolate powder that Ichika had sent me from a shop near one of her shoots. Setting the water to boil on my kettle, I began to search again for a mug - a far shorter endeavour this time around.
It was a girthy thing. Another present from Ichika, far wider than it had any right to be, a beech white with wood-like patterns running down its ceramic side. Painted on the side with either careful brush strokes or cleverly-designed machine output were a series of gourds, of all different varieties.
I remember choosing it because of the irony. Here it was late spring, and I had my own little taste of autumn splendor.
Carefully measuring out two tablespoons of the brown powder, I sealed the tub and stored it away again, not to be retrieved until the urge so took me again. I was always careful with Ichika's gifts - they were difficult to replace, and I wanted to treasure them. As the kettle began to whistle, my hands drummed gently on the table, patient.
Pitter-patter pitter-patter.
When I'd deemed it sufficiently boiled, the kettle howling in protestation, I had poured the piping hot water into the cup. Watching the liquid consume the powder, lifting and twirling it in eddies and flows, turbulent and laminar flow interspersing, and then one overtaking the other entirely, I'd felt a sense of calm. Stirring the admixture with my spoon, the powdered clumps broke apart, swirling in clouds under a boiling, writhing sea.
All memory of its previous state was gone.
I added some milk.
Pitter-patter pitter-patter.
Carrying the cup to my table, I had set it gently down, a slight ringing as I didn't quite place it levelly. Grabbing a light blanket off my bed, I had wrapped it about my shoulders, leaned back, and had closed my eyes. The sound of the rain falling was easing my aching nerves, bringing calm to my restless heart. My breast gently rose and fell with the intake and output of breath, a rhythmic motion.
Pitter-patter pitter-patter.
I warmed my hands about the mug, its thick ceramic quickly being heated by the rapidly cooling liquid inside. Equilibrium would soon be approached - and it was pulling my hands along with it. Leaning down, I blew across the surface of the liquid, gentle ripples sent forth across the way, reverberating and reflecting, circles turning into cones into more complicated geometric patterns.
All the complicated grandeur of hydrodynamics.
I took a sip.
Still too hot.
I contented myself with warming my hands.
Yet, even with only a sip, I could feel my insides warming up - though whether that was due to the heat or the flavour, I didn't know.
Pitter-patter pitter-patter.
I walked over to my bed and grabbed my book. Opening it up to the bookmarked page, I was mildly distraught to see that, in falling to the floor the previous night, the corner of the page had been bent. Straightening it out to the best of my ability, I had returned to the table, and to the blanket I'd left piled on its seat. Returning to my cocoon, I began to slowly read, taking the occasional break to sip my drink.
Pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-
It was morning.
At some point, I'd finished my hot chocolate, and exhaustion had compelled me to transition directly to the bed.
As the sun streamed in through the window, the rain having stopped was almost disturbing - a layer of sound which was louder in its absence than in its presence. Discomfited, I rose, and showered - I'd been too tired to do it the previous night. Then, I made myself a filling breakfast, giving myself a bit extra as a treat. The last two days had been hard.
I had returned along the well-trod path from my apartment to the station, the station to the station, and the station to the school. It had been years that I had followed the same route every day.
Walking into the front door of the school, I had paused a moment, and squared my shoulders.
Today, I won't let him rattle me. Today, I'll be calm, and cool, and collected.
Suddenly, I realized that a queue was already forming behind me of students waiting to get into the building - all looking at me curiously. Hurriedly, I scrambled to the side, letting them through.
...Tomorrow, I'll be calm and cool and collected.
Embarrassed, I followed the swarm of students into the school, and made my way to the staff room to prep. It was bustling, with many of the teachers at their desks making final preparations. Sitting down, I spared a glance about the room, half-hopeful, half-fearful.
Yet, you weren't there.
Late... or early?
Opening my desk, I sorted through my materials for the day - I was teaching the same material as the day before, just to different classes. Reading over my lesson plan, which I'd prepared nearly a month before, I refreshed myself on exactly what my course of action was. Then, pulling the planner out, I slid the desk shut again, and locked it tight.
Striding out of the office, my skirt swirling around my legs, I had breathed a sigh of relief.
Still no sign of him.
Perhaps you were just late. Perhaps you'd already been and gone. I couldn't have possibly known.
I hurried to my classroom, my planner pressed tight to my chest - careful of my step. I'd had numerous incidents through my career already of slipping and having papers fly all over the place. It was humiliating, and I wanted to take every precaution to avoid it. Turning the corner and approaching my classroom, my vision suddenly narrowed to a point at the end of the long hallway that followed.
You might not remember.
It was you.
Falling into the same damned trap as me.
Papers spilling everywhere, all over the floor. Possibly close to a hundred of them. Internally, I winced. I'd been there before.
I glanced at my classroom.
I glanced down the hall.
Then, I sighed, and began walking towards you.
As I arrived, you wordlessly glanced up.
Today, I will be calm and cool and collected.
Silently, I squatted down and placed my planner on the floor. Then, I began helping pick the papers up one by one, collating them and collecting them and organizing them. When I had about thirty, I had looked up at you. Still wordless, your face was unreadable - but I remember wondering if perhaps something had softened about it.
Perhaps that was just my own hopes whispering sweet lies in my ears.
Once the wayward pages had all been retrieved and chastised and detained, we both rose back to our feet. You murmured a quiet thank you, and left. It was soft, and it was quiet.
Yet, you had thanked me.
Maybe things are not as bad as I thought...
Lost in thought and confusion, I had retrieved my planner and wandered back to my classroom, and entered with my head still in the clouds. Hands flying across the chalkboard, I created a world therein - equations and diagrams and graphs. A language all of its own. I was an artist, painting a picture in white stone; and hoping that the young minds gathered in front of me could grasp at least one small part of it.
The day flew by. By lunch, I had felt that I'd hit my stride - my lessons were being received even better than usual. It was as though, after an initial wave of confusion, my mind had cleared.
In the afternoon, I had been soaring. The students had been engaged, asking questions and probing the edges of my knowledge. I'd felt great. One student had even come up to me and mentioned how interested she was in the subject, and had asked for advice about further studies. As I had stepped out of the staff office at the end of the day, I was buzzing.
Then, I saw you again, out in the parking lot as I walked by. Standing next to a motorcycle, typing something on your phone, helmet precariously hanging from one of the bars. Somehow, with your stubble and your fuller face, it... suited you more. I could see the concentration, the way you bit your lip as you typed. A hand rose, a familiar motion, and you swept your hair to the side. Then, with a small chuckle, you put the phone away, and mounted the beast.
As I walked by, I raised a hand in greeting. A small phrase. Good job today.
With a rev of the engine, you roared away, leaving me behind without a response.
The walk to the station felt ever the longer. Watching the cars shoot by on the road, I wondered how long you'd been able to afford a motorcycle. When you'd managed to procure such a thing. When you'd emerged from the morass of a decade before, and learned to spend money for your own sake.
Even though my choice to take public transit had been a conscious decision on my part after years of being chauffeured everywhere... I couldn't help feeling a twinge of envy. Of the freedom that having your own mode of transportation could bring. With it though, came also a sense of sadness.
I knew you'd heard me. The lack of a response must have been intentional.
Maybe I just got the wrong idea this morning.
The ride home on the train felt even longer.
The front door of my apartment loomed before me - but my hand hesitated at the handle. Over the last two days, my apartment had felt... different. There was part of me that didn't want to be there. Opening the door and stepping inside, I hurriedly took off my shoes and put down my bag. Rushing into the main room, I quickly stripped out of my work clothes and hung them up. Then, I changed into more casual wear - jeans, a shirt, and a long woven sweater that Nino had gifted me the previous Christmas. Glancing back into the room, I shook my head, and stepped back outside.
I don't want to be stuck in here with my thoughts again.
I instead made my way to the nearest mall. I'd given myself some half-assed justifications: my book was nearing its end, and I wanted to buy the next in the series; I was running low on various things around the apartment, and I needed to refill; I'd found a hole in one of my t-shirts a week prior, and so I wanted a new one.
Those were all true things.
They just weren't the truth.
I remember the chaos that was inside my head, the suddenly re-ignited spark of insecurity and simmering flames of guilt, fed by your indifference. The heat driving me to distraction, driving me to make any attempt I could to flee into the silent, cool depths - to where I didn't have to think about you, and about what we'd done to you... or rather, what we had failed to do for you.
After everything you did for us...
So, I chose to flee.
The crowds were swarmed around me, hustling in the late-afternoon frenzy to buy everything under the sun there was to buy. A new video game had been released, some A-line title - people were lined up around the block. Home-makers were crowding at a supermarket's entrance, gunning for the limited-time sales.
I was completely surrounded by people, and their noise and their chatter comforted me.
I was just another face in the crowd.
Walking through the stores, the evidence of my retail therapy began to accumulate. Eventually, I was approaching my limit - bags were hanging off each of my arms, and I was beginning to regret not bringing a means of carrying my acquired goods. Exiting the mall and approaching a major street, I put my bags down carefully so as both to not damage the contents and also make it impossible for any wayward snatchers to partake in their foul business.
Pulling out my phone, I ordered a ride-share, a service which had exploded in the past year in Japan after being around nearly unused for almost a decade. About five minutes later, a white car pulled up. Gratefully, I slid into the back seat, loading my bags onto the cushions next to me.
Strapping in, I was whisked away from the crowds and the noise - but with it, I was also taken away from the shield I'd temporarily formed for myself.
The ride wasn't nearly long enough - and yet, at the same time, it was too long. Sitting in the back seat, watching the trees shoot by on the side of the road, I couldn't help but feel my mind wander back to you. Was this how the trees looked to you as you navigated home from work? Or were you so caught up in the technicalities of the road that you couldn't see them at all - were these sights reserved only for passengers, free to just sit back and watch? Unable to step in, to change anything about their circumstances?
My thoughts didn't stop even as the driver pulled up in front of my apartment - yet I was forced to take a reprieve by the simple, mindless task of unloading my myriad shopping bags and transporting them up the stairs.
Inside, surrounded by detritus, the proof of my cowardice, I was once again entirely alone.
Taking off my shoes and leaving the bags by the door, I wandered over, and fell backwards onto the bed. Pulling my phone out of my pocket - thankfully, these pants had pockets - I checked my messages.
Ichika still hadn't responded. Miku and Nino had only sent sporadic messages - the only one messaging frequently was Yotsuba, which was to be expected, given she didn't have much else to do. She was in the midst of recovering from a sprained ankle, and was likely immensely bored with a complete absence of stimulation throughout the day apart from coach-mandated physiotherapy.
Maybe I should go up to Tokyo and see her...
The thought caught me by surprise, and I waved it away as being silly. It was the beginning of the school year - I couldn't afford to throw away a weekend to run up to Tokyo. As much as I may have wanted to. As much as I may have wanted to just... get away. To escape from the already frustratingly mundane panic of seeing you every day.
Maybe I can meet up with Miku or Nino on the weekend. That's probably more reasonable.
It had been a long time since we'd all been together. Too long. Navigating to the photos app on my phone, I scrolled until I found the photo I was looking for - the last time we'd all been together. It had been two years prior, all five of us on the beach, sparkling sand surrounding us. Ichika, Nino, Miku, and I all in long green dresses - and Yotsuba in her flowing white in the middle.
She'd been so happy that day. We all had been.
With a pang, I realized how much I missed my sisters. All of them.
Clicking the button on the side, my phone's screen went dark, leaving only the reflected image of my face behind. Tired, stressed. I sighed, and rolled over. The deafening silence of the apartment, the emptiness, was beginning to get to me again.
I was beginning to grow tired of being alone. Of being lonely.
Unbidden, an image of the past rose to the surface of my mind - of a similar small apartment a decade prior. All five of us, desperate for independence and freedom, and friendship and love, had moved out on our own. We'd worked, and dreamed, and laughed - all of it together. All of us together.
All six of us.
I rose to my feet, and rubbed the bridge of my nose, shifting upwards the glasses which had increasingly found their place on my face.
I'm tired.
Folding the glasses and putting them on the table, I made dinner, had a shower, and then went to bed.
Better to be unconscious than to suffer.
The next day was as bleary and grey as the last. Yet, its contents were anything but. That day, it was like a second turning point - though I'd had no clue at the time. If the first turning point was your arrival, the second was the morning when I arrived in the staff office and found a senior teacher waiting for me.
At first, I was terrified.
I thought I was about to be fired - though for what reason, I hadn't any idea.
I was wrong.
"Nakano-sensei, you can speak English right?"
"Um... a bit," I replied, frowning. "My sister lives in America. Kushijima-sensei, what's this about?"
"Excellent. Well, you see... we have a bit of a dilemma..."
She informed me that the advisor for the English Conversation club was going on maternity leave, and I was temporarily being assigned to them for the next fourteen weeks until her prospective return. I was duly informed that I was to go to the clubroom fifteen minutes after the end of classes, and introduce myself - I would officially begin my duties the following week.
So, at the end of the day, I did just that.
As the bell rang, I read over the list that Kushijima had given me. There were four members of the club - the bare minimum required for official club status.
Aoki Kenji. Chikamori Yui. Tokuyama Hikari. Morrissey Xavi- oh wait, no, it's a Western name. Xavier Morrissey. Why did they write it like that?
I had made my way to the club room, which was just a small room on the third floor; hardly larger than a broom closet. Opening the door, I found a group of four students, as well as one of the teachers with whom I was less well-acquainted. From what I'd heard, she typically ran a program of some sort during lunch, and so I rarely saw her in the staff room.
She had introduced me one by one to the students.
The first, Aoki, had been a sullen looking boy with dark hair that fell over his eyes. I couldn't help but laugh, at least on the inside - he had a passing resemblance to you, after all. Whether that resemblance was a mere passing thing, or a more fundamental relation, that I couldn't yet be sure of.
The next, Chikamori, was a bright-eyed girl with streaks of dyed-blonde hair; she reminded me a bit of Yotsuba, the way she seemed to overflow with energy. I was taken aside by the teacher later and instructed to ignore her dyed hair- it had apparently been quite difficult to get her to come to school as it was.
The third, Tokuyama, was a brown-haired girl with extremely intelligent eyes. The president of the club, she was silent as I was introduced, her eyes probing mine. I had shivered uncomfortably - it almost felt like she was looking into my soul, and reading it with ease, a feeling that rendered me distinctly uneasy.
Miku. Definitely Miku.
Finally, Morrissey wasn't at all what I'd expected going in. I'd thought perhaps a foreigner, or at least someone mixed-race - but the person sitting in front of me was, as best I could tell, entirely Japanese. Of course, these days, that hardly meant anything - and I felt a bit ashamed of myself for having had such preconceptions up front.
After the introductions, we had a short conversation in English. While mine certainly wasn't perfect, I'd managed to pick up a fair bit from my occasional trips to visit Ichika...
...and from my study sessions with him.
As though summoned, the door to the room had slid open, and in you had walked. A small collection of papers in your hand, you'd handed them over to the supervising teacher - a delivery from Kushijima, additional details about the proposed activities of the club while she was gone. As she rifled through the pages, she looked visibly distressed at the sudden increase in paperwork to be completed by the end of the week. I couldn't help but feel a surge of sympathy.
As you began to leave, I felt it in my gut - an overwhelming urge to try and form some kind of connection. Perhaps I was feeling sentimental, because of the language. Maybe it was because of the boy who looked so much like you.
"Actually," I piped up, "I have it on good authority that Uesugi-sensei is quite fluent in English! Would you be willing to speak to the students for just a short while?"
You had turned back.
You had looked at me, the ice in your eyes receding only due to the incredulity on your face.
You had paused.
Then, a sigh.
"I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request," you said in perfect English - to my untrained ear with a perfect accent to boot.
Of course, I had no idea what the hell that meant. My English wasn't good enough at the time.
Perhaps seeing the look of sheer confusion on my face, you had smirked. It was the first time I'd seen any kind of emotion on your face that wasn't ice - I wasn't sure how I felt about it.
"That means no," you added - then, laughing quietly to yourself, you left.
As the door slid shut, I sighed to myself. That part of you, at least, hadn't changed.
The students seemed to have found your display quite inspiring, as they spoke of little else for the next fifteen minutes. Tokuyama had quietly informed the rest of us that you were quoting a movie - though I'd never watched it. That said, whenever I tried to talk to any of them, it seemed to me as though they all had their guard up.
It was understandable, given they'd only just met me - but it hurt my feelings a little. I remember making a vow under my breath as I left for the day that I would work hard to earn their trust.
As I had returned to the office, I had cursed as I realized how late it had already grown. Despite myself, I'd had fun conversing with those kids. Pushing assignments I needed to grade into my bag to take home, I sighed - it was going to be a long night. Locking my desk shut, I had set out for home.
As I exited the building, I saw a familiar figure straddling a motorcycle in the parking lot - it seemed that you, too, had only just finished your work for the day. As you stood there, fingers tapping on your phone, I walked by you. I raised my hand and offered my greetings.
Once again, no response.
Irritation surged through me again. It was obvious it was on purpose - that you were behaving like some insolent child, refusing to speak to someone you didn't like out of petulance.
"So," I said, a hand on my slightly thrust-out hip, standing at the head of his bike. "Tell me."
You silently looked up at me, an inquisitive look on your face.
"You've been ignoring me and ignoring me and ignoring me. Every time I try to speak to you, every time I try to be friendly - you ignore me. Be honest - do you hate me or something?"
You eyed me up, still silent. A long look. A look that held within it more meaning than I could fathom at the time. There was a weight in the air, despite my tone as I asked the question. You were chewing over your words, I could tell - trying to decide what to say. How much to say. How much to reveal.
How much of your soul you were willing to bare.
The silence stretched uncomfortably, seconds turning into half a minute of pure silence. I grew uncomfortable, my hand growing anxious on my hip. Still, I didn't move - somehow, I felt that if I backed down at all, you would leave without saying a word. I forced eye-contact, barely blinking, my eyes trained onto yours.
Then, you broke the connection, and I knew I'd won.
"No," you sighed.
My heart suddenly skipped a beat, a rush of adrenaline running through my body.
"I haven't hated you in almost half a decade, Nakano-sensei."
It was like a bucket of ice water had been dropped over my head, drenching me in the frigid cold.
You started the motorcycle, a roaring sound as the ignition brought the engine to life. Walking it backwards, you looked at me; and the ice that was filling my veins was reflected in your eyes. You shrugged, and your foot hit the accelerator - and you were gone.
I slowly sank to my knees on the concrete pavement, my skirt the only thing protecting me from the rough surface.
Almost half a decade...
Five years since he'd hated me.
Yet, I hadn't spoken to him in over nine.
He hated me. He really hated me for what happened.
I could feel a burning sensation in my throat - whether it was tears or something else, I wasn't sure. Forcing myself to my feet, I swallowed it down. I was in public. I was in front of the school. I was at my workplace.
I can't let them see. I can't let anyone see.
Stumbling, I began to walk towards the subway station that served as the link between my wandering feet and my bed. I wasn't paying attention to anything around me. Foot after foot after foot after foot after-
Ah, stairs. I needed to go down those.
I barely remember the train ride home - I couldn't bring myself to immerse myself in my phone, or to distract myself with silly things. The feelings crushing me from both within and without were too strong, too overwhelming. The stations whizzing by, the people - it was all just visual noise, nothing was processing in my mind.
I ended up missing my stop by one, and so when I came up to the surface, I was forced to trudge along the road, backtracking along the route of the train far, far below. In the grand scheme of things, it was faster than taking the reverse train back - my apartment was slightly past my normal station anyways.
My brain was dully making such calculations in the background, barely able to devote any processing power to such trivial inanities.
Eventually, I managed to reach home - climbing up the steps, I was struggling to stay on my feet. I reached my front door, and pulled out my keys, jangling against one another as they came out of my pockets. I brought key to lock - but my hands were trembling, and the scritch-scritch-scritch of metal on metal echoed across the second-floor walkway as I fumbled with the doorknob.
I finally managed to get it in.
The door swung open, outwards. I stepped out of the way, pulled my key roughly out of the door, and slipped inside. Swinging the door shut behind me, I carefully locked the door.
I took off my shoes, and put my bag down.
I stepped up out of the entryway into carpeted hallway.
Then, I doubled over, and collapsed to the floor.
The burning in my throat returned, the puffiness in my cheeks, the tightness around my eyes mirroring the tightness in my heart. Curled up with my forehead on the floor, a heaving sob racked through my body; I was shuddering in place, the build-up of pressure in my chest rising to insurmountable heights.
He hated me. He hated me. He hated me. He hated me. All this time, all along, he hated me.
Images roared through my head, unannounced, unwelcome, uninvited. All the times you'd smiled at me. All the times you'd scolded me for simple mistakes, things that you knew I could do better on - that you believed I could do better on. All the times we fought, all the times we screamed at each other, the times you made me cry-
When you had said you loved all of us.
When we came up with that plan to each wait in a separate room.
When we never got a chance to carry it out - because you never came. Because you never came at all on the final day.
Because you never came to that school again.
The sobs grew louder, and I slowly rolled to the side, my hunched-over position transforming into a far simpler thing - a woman curled up into a ball on the floor, trying desperately not to cry her heart out. My chest was constricted, the emotions inside screaming, and it was all I could do to stop my mouth from following suit.
I'd suspected it - but somehow, that didn't make the pain any less real. It didn't stop it from feeling like I'd been torn apart.
For ten years, I'd allowed you to slowly slip beneath the surface of my memories. I'd allowed you to slip away, to swallow the guilt, to believe that everything was fine.
I'd moved on.
I'd left behind a simple high school friendship, a thing of a mere year.
I'd moved on.
I'd made new friends in university, I'd found purpose. I'd even, for a time, found love.
I'd moved on.
I had desperately believed I'd moved on.
Yet, I'd been lying to myself. Lying that it was nothing more than a remnant of youth. That you were nothing more than a whisper of a memory in my past.
That what had happened had left me unaffected.
Lying to myself about my feelings - and lying to myself about yours.
As tears finally burst their dams and rolled down my face, as I shuddered on the floor, curled tight, my knees pressed to my chest, there was a strange clarity that came. A strange place of calm, detached from the storm that was raging down below.
I had loved you.
I'd suppressed it for so long - telling myself I couldn't love you, that my sisters' happiness was paramount, that the whole thing was stupid. That I couldn't possibly fall into the trap of having my emotions controlled, of being vulnerable in front of someone else.
I couldn't let anyone see.
I couldn't let you see.
Nevertheless, even after everything... I had loved you.
Then, I'd let you slip away, my feelings drowned in the waters of my memory, gasping for air that was never coming, lungs filled with murky black water and the ever-receding light of the surface slipping further and further away. So deep were they buried that I'd convinced myself I'd never even truly known them to begin with.
Ten years.
Trembling, I grasped at the carpet, fistfuls bunching in my closed hands. My breath was coming quickly, ragged intake and ragged output.
Ten years.
Here you were, here my feelings were - slowly emerging from the sandy depths, rising to the surface and experiencing the rebirth as an aquatic phoenix, aqueous and ill-formed. True shape unknown, ever-changing, phantasmagoric.
I never got over it. I never really moved on.
That realization sent me into another round of trembling. Slowly rolling onto my front, I began to crawl along the short hallway to the main room of my apartment. It was slow going- because my legs were shaking so badly that I was certain I couldn't stand. The detached part of my mind was elsewhere entirely, turning over this revelation, this realization.
Reaching the bed, I clawed my way up, eventually reaching a nest of blankets and plushies and pillows and comfort. Ensconcing myself in softness and warmth, the tears continued to flow, burning as they went. My mind was a whirr, trying to brokenly put together the pieces of everything I was feeling, all the tiny shards that had been shattered and submerged all those years before.
I don't remember how long I stayed like that. Hours. Days. Years. Mere minutes.
Eventually, the tears dried up, their source drained barren. I was left numb, the detached part of my mind slowly re-connecting as the maelstrom of emotion began to slowly clear into nothingness, a hurricane dissipating into wispy strands, each on their own bereft of power. My layers upon layers of wrapping peeled away, and I shakily rose from the bed. Trembling, unsure, I walked to the washroom.
Glancing into the mirror, I didn't recognize the woman looking back at me.
I'm a disaster.
I couldn't bring myself to care.
On my return, I had put on the kettle, and had grabbed a mug - a smaller one this time, one I'd bought for myself at the hundred-yen store when I'd first moved into this apartment. Throwing in a tea bag and some sugar, I had simply waited, motionless, for the water to boil. As soon as the kettle had begun to whistle, I had filled up the mug until there was about three centimetres of room at the top. Then, leaving it to steep, I had gone and collapsed into a chair at the table.
What the hell am I supposed to do tomorrow? After... all of this?
After about five minutes had passed, I threw out the tea bag, and filled the remaining volume with milk. Stirring with a spoon, I took the piping-hot tea to the table. Fingers slipped through the handle, carefully arranged to keep my knuckles away from the rapidly-heated ceramic. Sitting, I let the tea cool, closing my eyes and breathing.
What the hell do I do?
I swallowed.
He hated me.
I leaned forward and blew on the tea.
He hated me. Can we ever come back from that?
A rising vortex of steam, swept away by my breath, structure destroyed in a moment by a thoughtless, casual act.
Is that even something I want anymore?
Tentatively, hesitatingly, I brought the cup to my lips - and found it was warm, but not scalding. Drinking gratefully, I felt the sensation of it running down my throat, granting me warmth from the inside. Before I knew it, the liquid was gone, and I was left only with the bottom of an empty mug. Looking down into it, the light from the ceiling's fixtures reflected on the finished ceramic, casting rays on the surface - a cardioid.
I remember, even in the depths of my numbness, finding that wryly ironic.
Sliding the mug away from me, I simply stared ahead.
The tears wouldn't come anymore. Everything just burned; a dry burning, one reeking of friction and frustration - like a woodfire wrought of dry brush and tinder, hastily put together in the depths of the bush, hoping nobody would discover the lawlessness of the flames.
I hated it. I hated it so deeply that it was difficult to put into words.
Rising suddenly from my chair, I was struck with an urge. Walking over to one of my cabinets, I opened it, and pulled out a glass - a gift from Nino. Setting it down on the table, I opened my fridge, and pulled out a white wine. I'd bought it a few weeks prior, and then had promptly forgotten about it.
Grabbing a corkscrew from a drawer, I brought it to the table, and drove the screw down into the soft wood sealing the contents within. Torque drove the blade deeper and deeper, burrowing and piercing and puncturing. Eventually, its grasp of the heart of the cork complete, I mightily pulled on the wings, and the cork was torn free with a soft pop.
Looking at the vapours rising from the released bottle neck, the detached part of my mind laughed sadly.
"So... he really did hate me after all."
Then, ignoring the glass entirely, I drank directly from the bottle.
A/N: Thank you for reading the first chapter of my new fanfiction, "A Sonata of Solitude"! Since you made it all the way to the end, I can only hope that you liked it!
This is hopefully obvious from reading the chapter, but this is not intended as a "reader-insert fic", despite the use of second person. The "you" in this fic is, and always will be, Fuutarou.
This fic was my entry for NaNoWriMo 2023, a challenge where you write a 50,000 word story in one month. I've never actually managed to complete the challenge before, so this is my first time! The fic is entirely finished, modulo some remaining editing; there are five chapters in total, each about 10,000 words long. I'll be posting a new chapter once every three weeks until they're all out. I hope you enjoy them!
Finally, an advertisement: the author of "Marching Forward", Miimbot, has also written a Fuu/Itsuki story for NaNoWriMo! It's called "Lesson Five". It has a similar basic premise, though I'm confident we've taken things in different directions. It's been published concurrently with this chapter - please consider checking it out!