Our Untold Lies in Spring

Not all people are heroes and not all people are villains; they're just them---humans.

{ the end of the end }
Flesh. Bones. Cowardice… Fear.

Those are the only things I am made of. I am a shadow that passes by the hallways in school, an invisible man to my own parents and siblings and I can’t do anything about it no matter how hard I try. I believe that there is nothing wrong with being just an average person in the crowd, but there is nothing wrong with hoping to be different. Dreams are free after all. As a person who lost his voice, I�"if it were to be referred to in a game---- would be the normal passerby in your visual novel. Yes, I would be referred to as Friend A, Passenger A, ---completely nameless.

Up to now, I think it was a mysterious event that changed me, but at the same time when I linger inside my thoughts, it wasn’t. That something that took my life away and brought it back was a small thing I cradled in my hands---- her small pink flip phone that was obviously too girly for her.

“Welcome to the Wandering Spree!”

Her cheerful voice sounded alien to me when it came out of the white earphones, blocking all sound there was in the busy train station in Tokyo. It sounded like an echo more than a voice. I turned the volume up when I heard the train taking off on the steel rails bathed in cherry blossom petals as the canvas in the sky was dyed in a scheme of red and orange.

“It’s spring again, and I’m back from exile!”

Her voice echoed once more as I stared at the mute scenery before me. I slouched on the bench as the people ran towards the incoming train. Perhaps it would be better if I came late for dinner today. Spring has arrived and I doubt my sisters would even like to see me. I bet they already had new friends. I was the odd duck in the family compared to my cheerful sisters who would gladly put me under a bus to meet their pop idol and for them (and everyone else.) spring was a new beginning… for me it was only the opposite.

“Right?” I whispered to myself as a gust of wind blew after the train’s departure. And with this, I imagined her sitting next to me as my eyelids began to grow heavy.

“This is Shimekawa Mayu speaking!”

As the name echoes, Passenger A simply faded back to being Sorane Izaya.

{ the beginning of the beginning }
Noise was something you had to get use to when you’re in Shibuya�"one of the busiest places in Tokyo. This overflowing place shouts out the definition of the night life that would put any city to shame. The loud bustling cars, the ringing phones, the overbearing loud rumors from dark alleys as well as the sea of people crossing the pedestrians, they defined Shibuya (Not to mention Hachiko the faithful dog) but once you lived out your educational life there for a total of seventeen years, all sound seemed mute to you.

The train stations weren’t an exception. I sat down to one of the benches waiting for my train home, I ignored the cold air that sent shivers to my spine as well as the booming sound of pop music from the radio. I looked at the radiating screen on my phone, streaming on some nonsense news that appeared on my dash only to stop on one article.

“Slasher Strikes Again! 12 Men Dead In Ikebukuro”

The blue link under the title was taunting me but I ignored the feeling of curiosity in the end. After all, this didn’t concern me. Ikebukuro is a train ride from here and as long as this so called Slasher doesn’t knock on my door and mutilate me with his schizophrenic wife like any Jack the Ripper imposter would do, (if Jack had a wife that is) there would be no need for me to be worried.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the next train bound for Shinjuku shall be delayed due to traffic. We thank you for your patience. Again…”

The electronic voice trailed away as I focused on the cherry trees over the fence.

“I’m going to be late again for dinner again…” I sighed as I hid my phone, noticing that that battery was on the verge of dying. Someday, if I ever grow up into a fine man, I will definitely create a phone that feeds on a never-ending source of energy. I heard the sound of pissed businessmen cursing at their phones. Gentlemen, as pissed as you are, this boy sitting silently on a bench with a dead phone is going to appear in the news, dead, murdered by a menacing force of a so-called mother for being late for supper and I swear, if cursing was a way for a train to be magically dropped by Santa Claus on the steel rails then I would have done it every day.

I sighed as I heard all complaints from my fellow Shinjuku-ers. (Do they call us that?)

“Waah. I’m late again… Well not that it would matter.” I heard a rather loud and ironic complaint considering that the voice chuckled in between. I turned my head from left to right, wondering on who would be screaming (laughing) in the train station but then I found myself being the odd spaced out idiot that I was that I didn’t even notice the girl sitting on the opposite side of the bench.

“You’re heading for Shinjuku, too, right?” I stared at her. Long black hair, dark brown eyes, a uniform that belonged to a famous high school that I probably forgot of and a wide grin; the girl stared at her phone, talking to it as if it were human. I ignored her, placing my attention to the sea of people and for once, the making-me-puke sound of pop music.

“Hey,” I heard the voice once more and my head turned to her direction on impulse. “I’m talking to you.” She was now looking, her brown eyes staring deep into my soul as if it were a sharp blade.

I nodded back as I rewound her first question.

“My name is Shimekawa Mayu.” She beamed.

I nodded once more, not feeling on talking and somehow, (even though I didn’t like it) I was brought back to rule one on the first day of school parent’s advice on ‘Don’t talk to strangers’. And though she was a pretty girl and must be a girl who has the same number of years being alive as me, I wouldn’t risk anything on being stabbed, mugged and least of all killed. She furrowed her brows, somewhat confused and maybe I would have wanted to call it ‘confused’ even though she was obviously angry. She bit her lip and opened her mouth but no words came out. She stared back into her pink phone.

“Oh, I see.” She started off after minutes. “Are you scared of me, too?”

Guilt.

I felt it stab me for no reason. I looked back at her, the light in her eyes gone, her smile looked pained and forced. I didn’t know her or the school she attended but I couldn’t miss the ‘too’ she added on her last sentence. But as I opened my mouth to say at least one thing that I might regret, she smiled widely once again.

“Name?” Mayu asked, her voice a lot more like a whisper. I bit my lip before I took a deep breath. A conversation was ahead. Without phones. The anxiety that rose to my throat felt like food that I was about to throw up, I could almost actually taste it. It was the feeling of a timid person running up to McDonald’s to order a cheeseburger. But even so, I spoke.

“No one important.” I said, out of either stupidity or panic or maybe I was still the old Sorane Izaya that clung to dear mother’s words on not talking to extremely hot strangers in the train stations of Japan.

Mayu looked at me for a second and then I avoided her, looking back at the cherry blossoms beyond the fence, barely visible because of the night sky.

“Well then, it’s nice to meet you,” She said when I glimpsed back at her. “Passenger A.” She pointed at me, grinning.

And so everything in my gray life started to have color when I stared deeply into Mayu’s eyes. The noise in my ears muted and all I could see was her, looking back at me… like the heroine in all those video games talking to a non-existent character for the first time, and recognized him.

It was a messed up storyline for a cliché shoujo manga that should never have happened. Even so, I couldn’t help but feel a little happiness. And as the train arrived and I was transported to my humble abode, I couldn’t help but think.

1. Being Passenger A
2. Shimekawa Mayu

{ the middle of the beginning }
When I woke up in the middle of the night feeling unexpectedly energized, the place called Shinjuku was asleep. Getting bored staring at the ceiling for a matter of thirty minutes, I stood up and grabbed a stray hoodie lying down on the cream carpet and sneaked outside.

The night was cold; the lights around my neighborhood were out. In this time, it felt like everyone had left. The kind old man who gave me dried squid every morning before going to school was in bed, the two neighbors fighting about which of their dogs was louder were nowhere to be found and I couldn’t help but smile at the absence of my sister’s twin kicks to my back while yelling “Wimpy Nii-san!”.

I took slow steps, wandering the empty streets with nowhere to go, trying to escape the temporary feeling of insomnia corrupting my mind. It was too quiet; it felt like I went out of Shinjuku for a moment and as I spaced out once more, thinking about how I slept on my Math homework, I heard a sudden sound of a roaring engine pass by.

I was out of the neighborhood. It turned out that not all of Shinjuku stayed dead as some cars still litter on the road. Perhaps they were feeling insomniac, just like me.

I looked at my phone, seeing that I had spent twenty minutes of walking to reach the main road. I put it back into my pocket as I strolled farther away from my house, not expecting that much trouble if my parents stood still in their beds and not notice that I was gone as well as not calling for a kidnap case if they do.

As I passed the random stalls, a dark alley separated two buildings. At the darkness of the night, it looked like a never ending abyss ready to swallow a live human being and I, feeling all too groggy and curious, happen to enter the dark abyss (let’s call it that because it’s cooler) only to encounter the smell of blood filling my nostrils.

I immediately covered my nose when I went closer to the smell of blood being mixed by rotting flesh. My eyes adjusted to the dark and thanks to the moonlight, walking inside the dark abyss became bearable and less becoming a place to be peed out of fear but when I saw a man lying lifeless on the bloodstained ground, I felt fear rising up inside me. I felt my guts being disassembled as I saw the man’s ripped abdomen and cracked head. The bile rose up, but I swallowed it back, not knowing the exact reason why. My shaky hand dropped the phone that I pulled out, concluding that the man was already dead.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. I went forward, ignoring the calls of my own brain to run. But before I could even get too close to the body, I was interrupted by a familiar sight.

“Well, well…” She started as she went closer to me. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Passenger A.”

Shimekawa Mayu.

“Shi-Shimekawa-san…” I said unexpectedly or maybe it was because of the adrenaline rush.

“Oh, so you can speak loudly.” Mayu teased as she went closer to the body to the point of kneeling. “Poor man” She added, ruffing up his hair covered with flakes of dried blood. “He must have died in the afternoon without anyone finding him, and here in great Shinjuku, too.”

From the looks of it, this eccentric girl seemed a lot more carefree in seeing a mutilated body than me and I could tell from her eyes that she wasn’t a bit scared.

All of a sudden, she grabbed her phone and when I thought she was going to take a photo, she turned on the recorder and cleared her throat.

“Welcome to the Wandering Spree!” She yelled cheerfully. “It’s spring again and I’m back from my exile, I got my phone back!” She added. “This is Shimekawa Mayu speaking!”

I stared at her, rather intrigued in what I saw but at the same time, terrified.

“Now, now, tonight’s story is the murder of Mr. Unidentified in a dark alley in Shinjuku!” She yelled, her cheerful voice in complete excitement echoed as she skipped and turned on the blotches of blood found on the concrete. “Isn’t that interesting?” She added and stopped recording. She plastered a smile to her face and kept on spinning, like a ballerina on top of a music box, her shoes landing on back on the red pool beside the dead man and laughed.

My eyes widened, witnessing the sight of Mayu cheerfully dancing on a pool of blood, laughing as if playing on a playground. But somehow, an odd feeling rested in my chest. Not fear, not disgust. I couldn’t explain it, but I couldn’t help but smile at Mayu and how she looked utterly beautiful basked in the light of the moon. The whole event was hypnotizing, like I couldn’t feel myself being truly there…a horrid but beautiful dream.

And then Mayu turned to me, tilting her head and licking her lips.

“Who could you think have done it?” She chuckled. “The Slasher? You? Or perhaps, me?” She grinned and as she took steps closer, she scoffed. “Are you afraid of me, too?” Her question rose up into my mind, echoing, like how her words did earlier in the train station.

As always, I found myself at loss of words. I couldn’t speak, but my mouth only smiled, I looked at her as if she were a source of new life. I finally realized that this was an event that changes everything and inside of me, a spark of hope flickered---I wouldn’t have to be one of the crowds. I wouldn’t have to be nameless. And all that came from the sight of Shimekawa Mayu who stood in front of me.

“Hey,” She started off, skipping farther from me once more. “Do you realize how insignificant your existence is?” She added. “You’re part of the people who has ‘normal’ branded on their foreheads, it makes me sick. Seeing as if I know your entire life story, I can’t help but point out that you’re not meaningful.”

“Try me.” I managed to say.

“You were born in a family that loved you, maybe siblings who share hate for you but never truly do. You walk the halls in school, being greeted on; hang out with maybe at least one or two friends and you come home. Such a normal life don’t you think, Sorane Izaya-kun?”

It was then that I wondered on how she got my name but instead of asking, I went closer to her, stared at her brown eyes and said:

“And?”

“You make me jealous.” She said; her smile didn’t match the emotion in her voice. “Being a girl avoided by everyone, feared by everyone, is not normal. I did nothing wrong but I guess the reason why they were so afraid of me was my entire existence.

“Being a daughter of a big yakuza and all.” Mayu continued, her eyes dark. “Underground workers, information brokers, hit men…murderers. What can you not be afraid of? If you hurt the leader’s daughter they’ll send a whole gang to assassinate you. One look at your face and when I get home, I already know you. That’s how it works. That’s how the mafia works. But the cops never get to it. Money can do a lot of things now, can it?” She kicked the dead man’s head softly. “Now I wonder if this was one of my family’s enemies. His face looks awfully familiar.”

And as I stare at Shimekawa Mayu’s darkest side, I came to notice the unidentified feeling lingering inside of me. It was jealousy. She who could speak her mind, she who has an entire life planned out for her, she who has no anxiety for no one bothered her, she who has an interesting life out of doing nothing. I was jealous of that. Shimekawa Mayu had a name and I didn’t. And knowing the fact that the things she didn’t need were the things that I wanted, I couldn’t help but hold her hand and say:

“I’m not a tad bit scared of you.”

Mayu looked up at me and smiled.

“Izaya” She said softly. I cringed at the sound of my name in a girl’s voice. “It’s a beautiful name for a side character.”

I smiled back at her and without even knowing it, being enchanted by Shimekawa Mayu led me to a life where being a side character didn’t matter.

{ the middle of the end }
When Shimekawa Mayu entered my life, I witnessed everything painted in vivid colors.

In spring, I waited for her at the train station, talked to her until the sun went down. I noticed how soft her hair was and how beautiful she looked when she smiled at me and when I saw her sleeping soundly on my shoulder in a moving train, I felt like there was no other source of bliss than having her beside me.

In summer, we snuck out of our houses every night until we went home when the sun rose and all we did was wander Shinjuku. I found myself being invited by Mayu to dance in the dark abyss at the absence of the dead body and we did. Her eyes full of light, it enchanted me.

The way on how she said “Izaya” over and over as we waltzed in the dark was even more romantic than how the main characters of a movie would dance under the light.

I remembered how she leaned on my chest when we lied down on the tallest building in Shinjuku with only a blanket separating us from the concrete. The loud noise of exploding fireworks in the sky felt a lot more special than how I saw them as a child and everything in the noisy place became a lot more beautiful because Mayu was here. I observed the lights fade into the night sky as I captured a sight of awe in Mayu’s face.

“Isn’t this beautiful?” She asked me.

“Not as beautiful as you, Shimekawa-san.”

And then Mayu held up her finger to my lips, shushing me gently like I was a crying child.

“It’s Mayu.” She smiled as I blushed, granting permission to say her name with my lost voice.

“Mayu” I whispered to her in her ear, like it was a secret. And for me it was. It was a secret between us that I got to love Mayu so much to whisper her name and hold her tight.

“Izaya” She whispered back.

And that summer night, our lips met.

It was then I realized that the time I spent with Mayu was a dream; like how she was herself.

When winter came, Shimekawa Mayu was gone.

I was there beside her and I witnessed how she transformed into an entity of nothingness. Her words were empty groups that tied me up into silence. The eyes she gave that were once filled with light had faded into a blank gaze that gave out a dark void to get lost into. Shimekawa Mayu turned into a puppet by an unknown puppeteer.

The girl wasn’t Mayu but at the same time, it was.

She was empty, and I, who loved her too much couldn’t even say a word to her about what had been bothering her. And when Mayu said “Goodbye” like a whisper when I came to the train station, I found myself frozen in place and realized; Sorane Izaya had no place beside her. I was not a hero, I was cowardly Passenger A, a side character and I don’t have the guts to get Mayu out of the troubles bothering her and it led me to utter despair.

When the time came in a cold winter night, I saw Mayu off. I stood there in front of her at the train station where we met as she carried heaps of bags. I looked into her eyes once more and finally realized that there was nothing in her eyes to begin with. There was no light, or darkness… Inside her eyes was only a reflection of myself. I, who wanted Mayu’s life more than anything and she who wanted mine, were just people led astray by fate.

Or perhaps we have been licking each other’s wounds…wounds inflicted by the lives that we have not wanted to live.

Mayu gave a final goodbye and gave me her pink phone filled with the memories we spent together, it clearly said ‘Let’s try to forget’

But what could I possibly forget...Mayu?

The train went and she never looked back… but even so, this side character loved this heroine---- Sorane Izaya had loved Shimekawa Mayu.

Indeed, living a normal life was uninteresting, seeing Mayu leave hurt but becoming just a memory to her hurt the most. It came to me that no matter how much I had loved her, I will remain a side character to her and not her hero.

{ the end of the end }
I open my eyes and enter the train, her phone left on the bench. Whoever finds it might be the one for her or may become another side character that will end up in her enchanting curse.

I was bewitched by the sight of Shimekawa Mayu dancing on a pool of dried blood, a memory in which she noticed me as “Sorane Izaya”. Now, Shimekawa Mayu is gone and I am nameless once more.