It has been two years since whatever happened, happened. People say time will make you grow numb to your pain, and it'll just go away if you let it heal. I think what they're saying has some sort of value and truth to it. After two years of therapy and swallowing pills, I have finally grown numb to my pain, just as they told me I would; but it's not like I've forgotten about it, but more like I'm too tired to feel anything for anything.
For everything.
After we made our contract, Naomi paid all my debts that very week without telling me anything, and thus, all the money I had earned with the illusion of paying my non-existent debt to the bank, was left to my own personal use after her death. I used that money to rent a small place, enter the same university she used to go to, and study the same major she used to study. Literature.
Evidently, this girl had no friends, or anyone here who would give a crap about whether she was around or not. After asking around on my first day, I realized that nobody even knew about her. She was just the lone existence, that didn't even exist. No; she existed, but just wasn't there. She had no presence, despite being always present.
She was there, but she wasn't; until she no longer was.
A girl named Naomi Mitaki, was an unknown creature; A myth.
An invisible ghost nobody knew about.
I find the random place in the middle of the lecture room I chose at the beginning of the term, and sit down, keeping the longest distance possible from the crowd. I don't really mix well with other people, and I don't really mind it. Our mindsets don't really match, and those whose mindsets differ, almost always…
"Good morning, sunshine." Sitting next to me is an annoying creature. The one that has been pestering me since I first ended up here, and even years before that.
"How are you doing today?" She repeats for the fourth time in a row.
"Leave me alone, Sonny." Sonny. Pronounced like Sunny, just as bright as she is; maybe even brighter.
She's too bright to be real, and yet, too real to be fake… Or so she seems. But I already know how fake she is. As much as I hate to call her a nice girl, there's literally nothing else I can call her. No label I can give her. No group I can lump her in with and no trope I can categorize her as.
She's just a nice girl that can be cunning at times.
"Leave me alone, you say; and yet, you never punch my presence away."
"Do you really want me to punch you?"
"I didn't mean it in a literal way, and would you really want to beat up a fragile lady?" The truth is, I'm actually thinking about it, and she's anything but a fragile lady. "I wish you would turn into a bug so I can crush you with my shoe." I try my hardest not to punch her human form and fantasize about stepping on her bug form several times. It satisfies me temporarily.
"Turn into a bug, huh? Was that a Metamorphosis reference? If it was, then it felt really forced. I expect more from you." Metamorphosis; a short novel written by the European author Franz Kafka, in which a person gets turned into a bug for no specific reason.
He just does. He just is; and we get to see the world through the eyes of a roach throughout the entirety of the novel.
Even though she looks like she spends her nights at parties, Sonny is quite informative. She knows her stuff.
"Yes. It was a Metamorphosis reference. I'm quite surprised an idiot like you actually had an inkling of the meaning beyond my words."
"You really enjoy insulting me, don't you?" Her eyes land on mine. I look away, as I always do. She follows my eyes, as she always does.
"Do you really wish for someone as dazzling as me to be turned into a hideous roach?"
"You already are a black, hideous roach."
"That was racist." Sonny isn't dark-skinned. She's just a bit tanned, a curtsy of the solarium she frequents at times. But she still takes offense for some reason, which is why I keep stabbing her like this. I guess similar to two elementary school students, her annoyed reactions simply make me want to irritate her even more.
"It was meant to be. Insulting your entire existence is the only reason I have in my life." My comeback was met with an disgusted, apathetic frown; one a princess would give to a mere peasant. That glare transforms into a quizzical gaze of intrigue, from which I cross my legs and open my bag, to distract myself with my belongings. I know that look; it's the one she wears when she wants to ask something. I need to look like I'm busy before she starts telling tales once more.
My belongings. Books, pencils, pens, a laptop, a phone charger…
And a torn diary.
"Hey! why are you studying literature here?" It seems like my acting wasn't convincing enough. Sonny avoids my insults, as she always does, and asks me odd questions, as she always does. I exasperate a sigh, as I always do. She flashes a world-beating grin, as she always does.
"I don't know. It just happened one day."
"Are you sure about that? There are plenty of people here who like what they study." Her right leg hits my left leg, which is a quirk I've gotten quite used to. Sonny has been sitting next to me for years, and she swings her legs this way and that way like Newton's cradle whenever she gets interested in something, or stressed out by something. And just like Newton's cradle, it keeps on, going for a long time. She just can't control it.
"Well, unlike many people, I didn't come here to pursue my dreams."
"You're right. Judging by your attitude towards every particle of this place, I'd say you were here to pursue your nightmares."
I don't respond.
"I have a question."
"You have been asking a lot today; you know you won't die if you shut up, don't you?"
"No, I don't; and that's why I won't." She giggles at her response.
I grunt yet again. She ignores my objections and her next question. "Do you think literature is a boy or a girl?"
"That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. It's a record, even for you."
"If it's that stupid, then you needn't any time for hesitation, and thus, you wouldn't have been stalling by calling it stupid."
Literature
Connection
Meaning
Beauty
Naomi
Sonny
Girl
"The morally and politically right answer would be that gender doesn't matter and anyone and anything can be a boy or a girl."
"True. But I personally think what we call literature is nothing as noble as we imagine, and it's not something special. It's just a tool to create ideas and communicate them in a way that makes them believable to people. I think literature is a way of lying. So, unlike others who respect it, I think literature is just a boy; a cunning, but shy, naked little boy who needs attention. He deceives you into thinking he's wearing something heavy, while in reality, he's pure; not a single thread on his body. Just as human as anyone else. He's obviously not fooling anyone with his showmanship and his fake, deceiving faces and clothes."
I know where this eccentric comparison is headed to.
"It looks a lot like you."
Seconds pass.
Time passes.
No; it runs away, screaming in fear.
"Now I wanna see you strip." I hate this girl so much.
"Shut up."
"It's just for research purposes, though. I swear."
"Sure. I've used that excuse enough to know it's nothing but an excuse."
"But have you ever asked yourself what an excuse is? As a verb, it means apologizing. So, we use an excuse to excuse ourselves from a particular duty or a mistake. An excuse doesn't necessarily need to be bad."
"Either way, you'll never see me naked."
"I already have, though." She shoots back at me, a devious grin covering her face. The thing that makes me even madder is that she actually has. I wish I never met her.
Classes begin. Sonny stares blankly at her front and occasionally jots things down. I either stare at people's faces or sleep with my eyes wide open; something anyone would grow to master.
After the lectures, Sonny doesn't shut up about the things brought up during the time I was completely out; Greek mythology, to be exact. A part of me believes that she deliberately reviews things with me, knowing that I never actually listen to anything unless she is the one saying it.
She's too kind to be real, but too real to be fake.
The day goes on as normally as it always does. Events happen; people talk. Everything goes normally; and then, a poem appears out of nowhere.
A paper, torn carelessly from a notebook. As if the person who ripped it apart from its home was in a hurry. I find that paper on my desk.
"Came with a shattered body
Going with a heartful of sorrow
Looks like a red trail of blood
The trace I leave in this deadly hollow
Life is abandoning me, alone
And restricted, I wander in this ocean
Where the waters are shallow"
A poem.
No doubt about it.
"What's that?" Sonny pokes her head in front of me, and before I can yank the paper away, she skims the whole page. "Another invitation? I guess Will doesn't want to give up."
Will. William. The head of a small squad of independent writers, who's always surrounded by idiots.
"Still not ready to join?"
I don't respond.
"You're quite good at writing stuff. Are you really not gonna give it a shot?"
"Not really."
"So, you're a lone wolf, huh?"
"Not really."
I've been receiving invitation after invitation since the first time I wrote something, and the first time they read it.
"Well, then throw the thing away. Why would you even care what it says?"
Why? It's not even a poem from a specific poet. It's just some random thing somebody wrote. A random piece of nothing. No one would want to keep something like that.
I glimpse at the clock and say goodbye to Sonny. She looks at her watch, then gives me a sly smirk. "Oh, I'm sorry. You have somewhere to be. Sorry for keeping you occupied, kind sir."
I run immediately. There's a road that can take me home in almost half an hour, but I take a detour instead. The street on the other side is almost always full of random cars that always seem to be in a hurry. The light turns green, inviting people to cross the street. Although, it never stays green for long. I walk as slowly as I can. The light turns red. I'm exactly in the middle. And then, the cars honk. Some of them drive past me, leaving a cloud of smoke behind. My detour comprises going around a big square that separates four different routes, each leading to different places.
What am I even doing with my life? These event-less days with Sonny were not what I had in mind when I decided to come here. My usual thirty minutes trip home ended up taking forty-five minutes instead. The apartment I rented a while back is relatively small, compared to Naomi's place, which her parents sold away after her death. It's comfortable enough to live in, and the rent is not that unreasonable. But it's still small.
I pass out on my bed the second the fatigue hits, something that always happens. Being with other people is oddly tiring. My consciousness slowly gets stripped away from me.
Foolish of me to use that phrase, as if I was wearing my consciousness with me, to begin with. My consciousness is something I lost ages ago.
I don't fall asleep. I just shut down. During the day, I'm a lifeless Pinocchio, and during the night, I'm just lifeless.
There are people who say sleeping is a tutorial level to get you ready for death. It's an interesting idea. Death is also called "the eternal sleep", there are cultures in which the dead are treated as sleeping kids. We even treat the corpses of our lost ones like sleeping beauties, by putting and arranging their hands on their chest, and hiding the smell and appearance of death by using makeup. With that thought in mind, I open my right eye and stare at the ceiling.
If sleeping is the tutorial that gets us ready for death, then does that mean death is the final boss? If so, then how difficult is it to die? Does it really need a tutorial? My mind replays the conversation I had with Naomi that night, about what it means to die beautifully.
"Came with a shattered body
Going with a heartful of sorrow"
Whispering the first two lines to myself, I take out the paper and skim its contents once more. It's an amateur poem. It was written by a normal person, but there's a certain feeling that the words are screaming.
Solitude.
Confusion.
This is such a lonely poem. Amateur though it may be, it still connects these emotions together. And to me. As Sonny said, literature does not have to be noble.
I tear the paper apart. No specific number of pretty words will make me do anything.
This is not some random story where a guy who has lost everything finds inspiration in an idiotic poem, and gets motivated by those extra drops of ink on a white sheet, and changes his life, becoming a better person.
What is this unrealistic, unoriginal plot line I'm being pulled into?
I throw away the paper and lie on my bed once again. My mind aimlessly traverses to endless different places. Different memories. Good, and bad. And slowly, my eyes, and my brain, shut down.
Six days after that, a boy slits his wrists and dies of blood loss in his own bathroom. The rumors say that he was a part of the writer's squad… And that he also wrote poems…
And that he had recently lost everything he had in his life.