Shiratori Haruto
I was walking down the narrow street with one-story high narrow houses on both sides. I had my hands in my pocket, and my head tilted down towards my walking feet. With my right foot, I kicked a pebble on the ground. It rotated, jumped a little up because of the irregularities in the road, and then stopped some steps away. PAT. PAT. PAT. With my right foot, I kicked the pebble again. It again rotated and went some steps away before finally lying dead on the ground again. PAT. PAT. My shoes stopped and stood in front of the stone lying on the ground. I moved my right leg a little back, and kicked the stone as hard as I could. It moved up in the air and flew some steps away in the air before finally landing on the ground and continuing to rotate and rotate for some time up and down before finally coming to a halt some steps away. My uninterested narrowed eyes were fixed on the pebble which lay on the ground about six to seven steps away. “So… this is the truth about me, huh?” My trembling lips said, “None even asked me how I was right now, even though everyone knew I had gone missing for some time.” I took out my right hand from my pocket, moved it up at my chest, and looked at my open palm. “What did I use to be back then? Such a loser… such a damned antisocial… like this?” I closed my palm into a fist, and continued to apply pressure on it. “That’s why none even tried to contact me all this week. But… why…? What did I do? Why am I like this? Why…”
“Why am I being shunned by everyone like this?”
I tilted my head to the front, opened my palm again, and moved it inside my pocket, continuing to walk. “I need to get back all of my memories as soon as possible.”
PAT. PAT. PAT. PAT. I tilted my head to a little left, noticing a small playground some steps away in the middle of the houses. My eyes were fixed at the same playground as I walked towards it. As I approached it, I had my gaze at my left, looking inside the wide open playground covered with greenery as far as the eye could see. “Oh yeah, I guess the crop fields are just around the back of these houses,” I murmured to myself as I looked at the playground, behind which were some crops rising up and flowing. I then tilted my head a little towards the right, and at the center of the field, I looked at a little dried-up well with green patches on it all around. Suddenly, the image of the boy, about the same age as me, with his right foot fixed on the brink of the well, his hands in front of his body on the brink, as he moved his later part of the body up, came in front of my eyes. I then remembered myself falling down through the dark walls of the well, my hands and feet cutting through the air, with tears in my eyes as I looked at the blue dot becoming smaller and smaller. SNAP. I snapped out. My eyes were wide open. My face was fixed at the well some steps away. I then remembered the image of me with a boy and a girl hanging out in front of that well. The girl was sitting on the brink of the well, with the two of us sitting on the grass on the ground. I opened my trembling lips in awe. Sweat ran down my cheeks. With my open lips, I stuttered, “S-Something dark h-happened h-here, d-didn’t it?” I took in a deep breath through my open mouth, and exhaled out. My lips were not trembling anymore. I stood silent and alone in the street surrounded by narrow one-story high houses on both the sides. My uninterested eyes were fixed at the well. “Whose… memories are they?”
“Are they… really mine?”
“Yeah, Haruto…” The womanly voice touched my ears.
I turned my head to the right, from where that voice came from. The street was empty, no one was around. “I wanna learn the truth as soon as possible.” I turned my right foot in that direction and continued walking through the street. “That’s the only way I can help Yashiro-senpai with his case, and that’s the only way I can solve these problems in my life and make it alright again.”
“It’s just been one day at school, and I’d already learned that loneliness was not my cup of coffee. I wanted to be around all of them. I wanted to hang out with friends too. I wanted to talk to Miyamura-san, even if it was just for some seconds. I wanna be in the middle of the class, and I can only stop all this and make things right between the class and me if I know what exactly I did which led me to all this. That’s why I wanted to learn about the truth. I wanted to see for myself what I had done, and why I deserve this. But, the memories which I was obtaining little by little… they were bizarre. They were… about me jumping off inside a well, playing games with some ‘imaginary friend’ of mine, or just flames rising up all over the little town in front of my eyes as I stood on the roof of some building. The questions just kept on coming up in my mind as I continued spending time in the real world.”
