Time:
Drip…Drip…Drip…
I felt as if I was floating on a soft cloud. Through the air, it was a blissful paradise. It was warm. As if I was taking a nap on soft grass in the sun. Not too hot, but not cold either. I felt cushioned. That feeling when you fall asleep after a boat ride. That soft rocking you feel as you drift off to sleep. A release.
All of my life, I had been chained to a wall. Whether that be issues I had when I was a child. Or, the shackles of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And I had finally been set free. Free from everything. I could fully relax, after death.
So this is what death feels like? It's so peaceful…
"Not quite. Death is different for everyone. For you, perhaps, with your tumultuous life, I guess it could feel peaceful. That seemingly eternal running your mind has done doesn't let you fully relax," A quiet voice echoed throughout my mind.
I tried responding, but I had no voice. Or rather, I had no voice. Or sight. Or smell. Or hearing. That voice seemed to be inside my psyche, not outside.
"It's okay my child. I can listen to your thoughts. You must be confused right now."
Yeah. That's kind of an understatement. I thought I died…
"Yes. That's right. You did. I transported your dying psyche to this plane of existence. You are currently in a state of limbo."
Ah. I see…
"You don't seem too surprised, my child. In fact, it is almost frightening how well you are taking this."
Well, I didn't really have any expectations.
"I see…"
There was a long, awkward pause in the conversation. She seemed rather perplexed that I had no expectations for an afterlife. I just really didn't have the time to think about something like that. After a minute or so, the awkward silence became unbearable for me, so I piped up. Well, figuratively. My conscience piped up.
It's kind of dark. In fact, I can't actually see. Or smell anything. Or do anything.
"Ah yes, my child," she softly replied. "It may be a little bit easier to comprehend if you could sense what was going on."
I felt a soft touch on my eyes. Or rather, where they should have been. Suddenly, the darkness became a bright white. I opened my "eyes" and gazed upon an empty, white train station. It was really clean. And both sides had tracks that led into the light.
As my vision adjusted to the new set of eyes, I was able to see who was speaking to me. A beautiful goddess with flowing green hair and emerald eyes. She was dressed in a silken cloth, which elegantly wrapped her slender body. The cloth was pulled tight by ivy and gold embroidery, accenting her hair as well as the curves of her body. She was tall, but her eyes had a soft, calming sparkle to them. The inviting kind. Her long flowing hair was pulled back behind her small, pointed ears. Her collarbone protruded from her shoulders, and her slender arms seemed so soft. The cloth separated just below her hip, revealing a large, round thigh.
"You're going to make me blush if you keep staring!" she giggled.
As my gaze dropped from this amazingly beautiful goddess down to myself, I realized that I was just a specter. I had no corporeal form. I was just a floating soul in limbo.
"If I don't have a body, how am I going to make you blush?" I asked her, confused.
With outstretched arms, she smiled and pulled me in. I suddenly had a body. My body, but I had my leg. And there were no scars. My callous palms were soft again, too.
"My child, I am so sorry. It must have been so hard."
She pulled me into her chest tightly, and squeezed me. She hugged me. For a long while. Then, she pressed her chest into my face and squeezed me even tighter
"Hmmf. mm crmmrf brmmmf"
Hey. I can't breathe.
She seemed to understand what I was attempting to say, even though she gagged me with her chest.
"I'm sorry…I just felt like I had to."
"No, it's all good," I replied, "but why are you sorry?"
She softly started patting my hair, and then summoned a small table along with two chairs.
"You have been through so much. And you wanted to relax for all eternity. But I pulled you away from that. Even though you suffered significantly in your past life."
We both sat down, and teacups filled with warm green tea appeared out of nowhere. I suppose that you can do that if you're a god or goddess in this limbo dimension.
"It's fine," I replied, "this is much more interesting anyway."
"I'm glad you can say that, Yuuji. It means a lot to me."
"By the way, what should I call you?" I inquired.
"Oh! I almost forgot! My name is Sakurai! Please don't use honorifics either, I want to be your friend, not master or goddess…"
She seemed genuinely surprised that she forgot to introduce herself. Maybe she's a bit of an airhead. But that's fine. Actually, it's kind of cute. But Sakurai, huh? That's awfully similar to Mayumi's last name.
"Sakurai…Sakurai. Okay. Let me cut to the chase, then. You brought me here for a reason, right?"
I went straight for the elephant in the room.
"Ah, yes. We will get there soon. But first, let's talk more about you."
"Oh? I guess we can? What do you want to know? Or, you probably know everything already, so what do you want me to know?"
"Yes, my child," she softly replied, "we must go over your life story. Shall we start?"
"I guess we can…"
I had no idea how this was going to go, but I knew that there would definitely be some heavy topics in this conversation. And I didn't know how I would actually feel about talking about those. And have someone else tell me what I did right and what I did wrong.
Oh boy. Here we go…
^^^^^^^^^
I was born in February of 1993. I had a pretty normal infancy. I was a rather large baby, despite being born a couple days early. I had amazing parents who took care of me. They made sure I was fed properly, and fed me home cooked baby food. None of that canned stuff.
"You had great parents, Yuuji."
"Yeah, they took care of me very well. Even when I was probably extremely hard to take care of," I replied as I chuckled a little bit.
They gave me everything a baby would need, and then some. I grew up an exuberant kid. Apparently, I was kind of loud, but my laugh was adorable. I have no idea if that includes any bias or not, but that's what I was told. We were like a picturesque happy family. I grew up in a small home, but it was home.
"And then you moved to America"
"Yep."
I moved to America when I was about three. If I remember correctly, it was the summer of 1996. My father got a great job opportunity in America, so we moved. The house was much larger, and that's where I grew up.
We had no extended family in America, though. It was just us three. I was also an only child, after all. We didn't have much of anything in America, either.
"A bigger house doesn't always mean better." Sakurai said.
"Yes. I learned that from a very young age."
It was fun at first, but after a while, my parents started arguing about that decision. They up and left all of the connections they had made, and moved to a place where they had absolutely nothing, after all. That is extremely stressful. But, we made do with our new situation. We would go visit Japan every other year or so, I'd say. On average at least.
Both of my parents found jobs and started working, so they put me in preschool. It was such a carefree time for me. All I did was play all day, and maybe we'd learn a few things through fun activities. I had a lot of fun.
"It was there you met your childhood friend."
"Yes. I met a girl named Amelia."
We became good friends fairly quickly. We went to each other's houses for playdates almost every weekend. It was a good time. I didn't have any worries at that time. In retrospect, it was bliss. Ignorance can definitely be bliss.
Of course, preschool came and went. But my relationship with Amelia never really faded. We went to the same elementary school after we finished preschool. I had a great deal of fun during those days.
"Yes, you seemed so happy in those days."
"Yeah, I definitely was - Wait, were you watching over me the entire time?"
Sakurai broke eye contact with me, but that was the only answer I needed. It was pretty much an affirmative.
"I see…" I said as my voice trailed off.
^^^^^^^^^
Continuing on to elementary school, Amelia and I were put into the same Kindergarten class.
"You were pretty happy about that, weren't you?" Sakurai teased.
"...maybe…" I responded quietly.
Sakurai giggled at my embarrassment.
"You don't have to be embarrassed about that, you know~"
"Whatever," I shot back.
So, where was I? Ah, yes. Kindergarten. My elementary school years were pretty average I guess you could say. Nothing bad happened. At least not particularly. I learned English and Math at school, and Japanese at home. My mom taught me. I ended up learning two languages concurrently, but I had started Japanese slightly before English, so I guess it was my first language. And English was my second. But since I was learning them at the same time, they both kind of ended up being first languages.
In Kindergarten, we read those picture books that taught us how to count. And we learned some basic arithmetic. I mean extremely basic.
"How basic?"
"Like, 'if I have three cookies and I eat one, how many do I have left?' kind of basic."
"I see."
Anyways, I learned all that in Kindergarten. Oh yeah, in Kindergarten, we had a color system that showed whether or not you were behaving well. Green was good behavior, Yellow was something minor, and Red was bad. Like, you punched someone or pushed someone down a slide. I was like one of three people or so who got greens every day of the year. Amelia should have also, but she decided to draw all over the table in marker. I still have no idea what she was thinking when she decided to do that.
At the end of the year, when the teacher told us the results, Amelia started pouting. Me being me, I may or may not have slightly rubbed it in. Just a tad.
"Why did you do that? I thought you were best friends," Sakurai asked.
"That's precisely why I did it. We were best friends."
Sakurai looked at me dumbfounded, her left eyebrow raised. Like she's never seen that before.
"Anyways," I laughed awkwardly, "moving on…"
I got in trouble for that. And on the last day of school, I got a yellow. Looking back on that, it was absolutely hilarious. But, not so much at the moment. I remember shutting up as soon as the teacher said that.
So, at the end of the day, Amelia and I had one yellow for the entire year. Which was still pretty good. A bunch of kids had multiple reds, so we were pretty tame.
"Serves you right!" Sakurai interjected.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," I replied in a jokingly annoyed manner.
Amelia and I moved up to first grade. If we were able to choose our groups in any group projects, we, of course, partnered up. It was kind of fun, actually. I remember doing a solar system project. We had to make a model of the solar system, which we did together. Amelia's dad was pretty handy, and loved going all out on our projects. So, our projects kind of ended up being also one of his projects.
"How was both of your parents' relationship?" Sakurai asked me.
"Well, it was a little rocky at first, but because of my relationship with Amelia, it quickly smoothed over."
Amelia's dad was a single father. If I remember correctly, her mother had died when she was pretty young. Anyway, the system ended up being that she would come over to my house to do homework after school, and then, for projects, we'd go over to Amelia's house to do those. My mother ended up kind of becoming Amelia's mother as well. She had no real memory of her own mother, after all.
Again, first grade was pretty uneventful. Nothing in particular happened, it was just pretty fun overall. Then, we moved up to second grade. It was the first time that we weren't together in the same class.
"And before you poke fun at me, yes, I was sad."
Sakurai made a pouting face, probably because she couldn't make fun of me.
Overall, second grade was also pretty uneventful. Luckily, the curriculum was the same, so we had the same homework. So our system of after school activities still worked.
In third grade, we were in the same class. Same thing in fourth. School was pretty fun, but as we grew older, we made new friends. So we hung out less. But, we still would hang out every once in a while.
As we grew older, we cultivated our own talents. I was relatively good at anything I tried to do, so maybe that caused some rifts in our relationship. But in her own right, Amelia was way better at some things than I could ever be. Like singing. She had an amazing singing voice.
We finished off elementary school together, and were still pretty close. Though definitely not as close as we used to be. My parents allowed me to take Amelia with us to Japan this year, something I had been asking for a while.
^^^^^^^^^
The summer before middle school started, all was well. It started off just as your typical summer vacation. Some late starts, but a lot of fun. And no stress. This year, my parents and I scheduled our trip to Japan, but this time, we were going to bring Amelia along. I could show her the other part of me.
"What did Amelia think of Japan before she left?"
"She wanted to learn more about it, for sure."
She thought it was cool. And it would be her first time out of the country.
It was a typical long haul flight. I hated having more than one meal on a flight because I would feel sick and nauseous. And so did Amelia. Even worse than me, actually. She was too slow reaching the barf bag and decided to barf all over me. Which was an experience.
"Wait, she barfed all over you?" Sakurai laughed so hard she started choking.
"Yeah. That was…an experience…Of course, I never let her hear the end of that."
"That's actually super hilarious," Sakurai replied, tears in her eyes.
She was actually crying from the laughter.
"How about I barf on you? To see how you feel?"
"Please…No" Sakurai wheezed back at me.
Somewhat cross, I continued on with the story. My shirt smelled like vomit even after I washed it the best I could. Once we landed, I threw the shirt away and bought a new one at a gift shop. One of those stupid "I ❤ Japan" type t-shirts.
Once we left the airport, we hopped on a train to the hotel. Because I had been to Japan multiple times before this, the jetlag didn't affect me too much, but for someone who had never been on a plane longer than a couple hours, it would have been pretty hard.
After a couple hours, we went to eat, and Amelia loved everything we ordered.
"Except for heart and liver."
"Yes, I hated that too."
We showed her around, doing a more touristy style trip. It was loads of fun. We grew closer again, but sadly, all good times came to an end. We had to pack up and go home. It was a fun trip, but the flight back was kind of quiet. As it normally is. I promised I would take her back again, but that promise never became true.
We started school again, close as ever. But, we were never put into the same classes. It was okay, but we were just going through the daily motions. Get up, go to school, do homework, some free time, and then bed time. It was okay, but it was nowhere near as fun or fulfilling as previous years.
Again, we grew distant. It's somewhat hard to stay really close as you grow older, especially if you are in different classes. Amelia became really popular, but I kind of grew a bit more introverted. I kept to myself because people would become jealous of my talents.
I had taught myself how to do a plethora of things. I taught myself how to draw. How to compose music. To write. To code. If I could put my mind to it, then I could learn it. And become decent at it.
"You say they were talents, but, in reality, you worked really hard to cultivate those skills," Sakurai said softly.
"Yeah, but people don't understand that. Even most adults."
"In retrospect, I don't think any of those skills were talents themselves," I had started to reply. "I believe that my talent was actually the mentality I had. And my ability to self-teach myself. The idea that I wanted to do it myself."
"I see…"
"I just wanted to see what I could do. That's what it all ended up boiling down to."
I kept almost everything a secret for a long time. And that caused me to not really talk to people. Further worsening the situation, Amelia would come up to me relatively often and we'd just talk.
"And all the boys and girls were extremely jealous of you."
"Why would I, a loner, have the most popular girl at my school come to my desk and just talk with me?"
It was hard, but I just kept dealing with those ramifications. I didn't have the heart to tell her. She would just blame herself and then become extremely sad.
She would keep telling me that the bags under my eyes kept getting bigger. And they were. In Eighth grade, I was working hard to make some extra money. Through commissions and contracts. I could make a pretty penny for myself. Way more than anyone my age would normally make.
"It was then I realized I was falling in love with Amelia," I told Sakurai.
I was working hard to make money to take her to Japan myself. There, I would ask her to be my girlfriend. But that would never happen. She was such a good singer, she was starting to make a name for herself.
At the tail end of eighth grade, she would embark on a flight to a singing competition. First place would be able to be featured on a record by a famous artist. A "debut" of sorts.
"And then a tragic event happened…"
"...yes…" I replied.
She would never actually make it to that competition. The flight she boarded would never make it to its destination in one piece. A terrorist brought a shoe bomb on the plane and detonated it less than an hour from the flight's final destination. With a great fireball, The debris rained down from the sky. And so did Amelia.
"That must have been so hard on you," Sakurai whispered.
"When I heard the news, I was devastated."
Truth be told, I cordoned off my heart. In a blinding rage, I vowed to bring forth retribution and avenge her.
"Notice how I never said 'Justice?'" I asked Sakurai. "That's because, deep down, I knew what I was doing wasn't justice."
The one person who brought a shimmering light in my life had been extinguished. My light had been snuffed out far too early. And I could never forgive anyone who would do that to my Amelia.
"I'm sorry. I call myself a guardian goddess, but I couldn't protect you…"
"It's okay," I smiled at Sakurai. "I'm here now."
^^^^^^^^^
In the summer between middle school and high school, I decided to forgo my trip to Japan. I decided I wanted to fight in the military when I became old enough. I'm sure some others were in my situation as well. At this point, I had always been a little bit overweight. So I decided to get rid of that extra unneeded body.
With my money, I bought myself a gym membership. I decided that anything I would do to avenge Amelia, I would pay with my own money. It felt like using my parents' money would stain my honor. I worked out every day for multiple hours over the entire summer. My body became toned, and I pretty much remade myself. I restyled my hair, and I eventually got contacts, but I kept the glasses on almost everywhere I went. They just felt right.
But the anger in my eyes never left. Now, with an intimidating body and angry eyes, people were just outright scared to talk to me. Even the delinquents stepped out of my way in the hallways. I was a lone prince.
"And then you met some new friends, right?"
"Yes, I did. Without them, I probably wouldn't be where I am now."
I met some guys who didn't particularly care about my intimidating looks. They saw the wounded person behind those angry eyes. And we hung out a lot together.
Even in high school, I worked out almost daily. I grew stronger, and then eventually got my father to buy a rifle with my own money. I wanted to become a good shot for when I joined the military. I trained fairly often at the range, and found a talent I had. I was an adept marksman. The range safety officer, who was ex-military, saw that and cultivated my skills after I told him my story and that I wanted to join the military.
As I grew old enough to drive, I bought a car with the help of my parents. Me and the boys would sometimes drive around for fun. At that point, I started to put my anger aside and enjoy my high school life. But I never forgot why I was there.
On our drives, I felt as if I was on top of the world. I started to heal as I blasted music and drove a little too fast.
"How fast?"
"Ehrm, probably best not to say. For legal reasons."
Sakurai raised an eyebrow, and then I said "Well, it was definitely criminal speeding."
I chuckled a bit, and continued on with my story.
We would drive for hours, and then camp out somewhere sometimes. But when I got home, I would go and train. Either at the range or at the gym. That period was my first glow up, for sure.
I did all that was required of me at school by day, as well as kept up my skills and talents by night. I didn't sleep too much, because I would start thinking about my past. And about Amelia. Doing all that different stuff kept me distracted enough to keep on going.
High School was kind of a breeze, in retrospect.
^^^^^^^^^
By the time I was a senior, I knew that I was going into the military. Much to my parents' dismay, I applied for West Point and got in. With my grades and essay, it wasn't hard to get in, after all.
Once I got admitted, I excelled at Basic Training, because my normal workout was way more intensive than Basic.
"That was easy for you?"
"I wouldn't say easy, but it was not too bad. Even if it was infamous for being hard."
They were also surprised with my shooting accuracy, so I got placed into the sniper program. I was able to do pretty much everything they threw at me. I was promoted fairly quickly, and then I was recommended for the Delta Squadron.
"Delta?"
"Probably one of the most famous Special Forces Squadrons in the United States Military."
However, by the time I was able to actually be deployed in the field, the terrorist group I sought vengeance on had fallen apart. So, I was kind of lost. I didn't know what my purpose was, and I felt as if I had done all that work for nothing. But at least, I was able to save lives
I joined a counter-terrorism unit, and with my marksman skills, I was able to shine. I was able to thread the gap on multiple occasions, successfully ending hostage crises by force. With my trusty sniper, I was able to find myself again. Until I got deployed overseas.
I was transferred to a new unit overseas because they were in need of a specialized marksman. This time, I was in the hot zone. Though I always had my sniper rifle in a case somewhere nearby, I had to use an assault rifle most of the time. We were forward deployed overseas to curb the ongoing feuds between different countries.
"That was the first time I had to kill a fellow soldier with my own hands."
It was much harder to kill a soldier because they were probably like me. The joined their military with patriotism. And they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Doing that stained my conscience. And, as I started to think about that, I realized that maybe the terrorists I had killed were also similar to me. They wanted vengeance because maybe their family was killed by a drone strike. As I came to that realization, my mind was unable to dehumanize my enemies.
"Maybe I grew as a person." I said out loud.
"But you were now unable to escape your job…" Sakurai replied.
"Sadly, yes. At least not until my tour was done."
I had to keep fighting on to survive. I did that, but with each kill, the trigger felt heavier. It became much harder to pull the trigger because of that weight on my conscience. I felt as if I was the demon I sought to vanquish.
As I neared the end of my tour, tragedy struck. My unit had very few casualties, and as a result, we were able to trust each other completely and beat almost unbeatable odds. But our streak of luck finally ended on one summer day.
This attack still scared me until the day I died. We were returning to base on a smaller convoy, when, out of nowhere, we were ambushed. The lead vehicle had hit an Improvised Explosive Device, and was immobile. Moments later, we were surrounded by enemies, and were drawing massive fire. I grabbed my sniper rifle, and started picking off enemies that were further away. One of my battle buddies got on the turret atop the Humvee, and laid down suppressing fire.
One of the medics from our squadron disembarked and ran up to that lead Humvee and pulled a survivor from that wreckage. I started advancing, picking off any enemies I saw with RPGs or Anti-Vehicle weapons. As they started looming closer, I set down the sniper rifle and picked up an assault rifle that was laying on the ground.
I was shooting when I turned and saw that medic carrying a wounded soldier crumple to the ground. In a pool of blood. My buddy had been shot. In anger, I turned back towards the enemies and used an underslung grenade launcher to wipe out a group of enemies. Once I had seen that, my trigger became light again. They had killed one of my friends right in front of me. I tried my best defending the convoy until reinforcements arrived, but the enemy force was far too powerful. We were outnumbered almost ten-to-one.
"Those aren't good odds," Sakurai said.
"Yes, Those odds were far too slim for us to beat." I replied forlornly.
As we kept fighting, our path of escape had been cut off. They had completely surrounded us. As I watched my friends get cut down, one by one, I noticed that I was slowly running out of ammo. Not only were we running out of soldiers, we were running out of supplies. We couldn't beat these odds. Our numbers had already been cut by half, and we were running out of ammunition. This would be our last stand.
As I loaded my last magazine, I decided to tap fire to conserve ammunition. I had been shot in the chest, but my armor plates had protected me. But I had the wind knocked out of me. Once I ran out of ammo, I switched to my pistol, but was then shot in the leg. The enemy started to overrun us, and I started to lose morale. This was our last stand.
But then, we got close air support by a pair of A-10 Warthogs. They threw the enemy formation into disarray, giving the extraction team enough time to land and perform first aid on us wounded soldiers. We were all wounded in some way, though I was probably the worst off.
"I can only imagine the pain you were going through…"
"I didn't really feel much," I replied. "All that adrenaline in my blood kept me from going into shock."
As we ascended into the air, my consciousness started to fade. And I passed out. However, on our way back to the base, we got shot down by a stray RPG. It grazed our tail rotor, but the pilot was able to stabilize the craft and restart the engine before we crashed into the ground. By the time we got to base, we were all shaken up.
The doctors performed emergency surgery on me, and I somehow miraculously survived. The bullet wound just barely missed my artery, and they were able to save it. Though they did put massive titanium rods into my leg for a while.
Once I had stabilized, I was sent home to recuperate. I probably won't be able to go back. Nor did I particularly want to. Because I had grown more mature, my rage subsided pretty fast. Especially while at home, as I had a lot of time to myself as I healed up and recuperated.
"You had a lot of time to yourself."
"Yeah. And I just thought about many things."
^^^^^^^^^
I was honorably discharged from the military after those events. I was awarded a silver star for staying behind and putting myself in danger to protect my remaining colleagues. After about a year of anguish, both physically and mentally, I moved back to Japan.
I got my own apartment, and did some contract work here and there. Mainly just some coding, as I could work on my own time, and have overseas clients. I just wanted to live my days in my home country in peace. I could eat wherever I wanted to, and eat whatever I wanted to. I still worked out from time to time, but nothing like I used to.
I just lived out my days in peace. I had tremendous panic attacks, but that's something I would have had anywhere I lived. I just lived a reclusive life, not really going out too much unless I had to.
I was going through some of the boxes as I was unpacking, and found a small thumb drive in an envelope that was addressed to me. I plugged it in to my laptop and listened to the few mp3 files that were on it. To my surprise, it was Amelia's voice. When I heard it, I started crying. The tears just streamed down my face. I hadn't heard her voice in so many years. And on that final mp3, she just talked to me.
"What did she tell you?"
"Ha, well, she told me that she loved me. And that she was waiting for me to confess to her."
"And you were about to, right?"
"Yeah, I regret not doing it sooner."
I decided to make a song using the vocals she had given to me just before she had passed away. In my now abundant free time, I composed a couple of songs in honor of her voice. I never posted them anywhere, I just wanted to create them. In dedication to her. And so I could listen to her soothing voice.
"Music is something that heals."
"Did you ever heal, though?"
"No. I just didn't have enough time to heal."
"Time?"
"Yeah. The sea throws stones together, but time leaves us polished stones"
After a long silence, the goddess Sakurai and I locked eyes.
"And then, on a chance day, I fell into that labyrinth and died."
We both started laughing. It seems that I still have my touch of humor at my disposal. I then asked why we did that whole thing. Relived my past experiences. And she responded.
"To release you from that pain. So you can move on. To the next world."
The next world? What did she mean? I had no idea what she meant. But all she did was smile.
"For now, just rest. Your soul needs rest."
She sat down on her lap and put my head on it.
Is this the famed lap pillow?
"Yes, it is."
She smiled at me, and giggled a little bit. The table and chairs were gone, and we were sitting in the grass.
"Shit. I forgot that you can read my thoughts."
Sakurai just smiled at me, and I slowly dozed off to sleep. So that my psyche could be recharged. By that famous almighty lap pillow.
I was in bliss. In heaven.