To reflect popular opinion, dialogue (and only dialogue, not letters or notes and such) occurring in written form will be indicated with < > from here on out. I've updated the first post with an author's note on this as well.
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There's no alarm to wake me on Sundays, but a week of getting up early means that my body decides that it's time to get up far before my mind really wants to. I try to close my eyes, but it's no use. It's awake time at...7:00 AM.
Stretching my limbs, I yawn loudly. It's not like I have to hold it back in an empty apartment. Besides, the sound reminds me that I'm supposed to be tired. The fact that I'm not after one of the more stressful weeks of my life is sort of astounding, really. Between my first week of teaching and Saturday's discussion with Lilly, I have more than enough on my plate to keep me in dreamland, but here I am.
Sitting up, I realize that I have nothing planned today. The students' work is graded. The apartment is, thankfully, at an acceptable level of mess. Too clean makes me feel like I'm back in the hospital, with its sterile walls and sterile people. Too messy means that I feel like I'm a five year old throwing his toys everywhere. Right now is the sweet spot.
Letter after letter comes out of the package. Most of them are bills that I've paid already – and in truth, I thought I'd discontinued receiving mail based notification of them a year or two ago. I make a mental note to make sure of that as I put them all into a pile.
That's most of the letters. There are a few takeout menus, too. Most of the rest is equally uninteresting, until I find a single piece of mail that catches my eye. The envelope is a light blue color, and the handwriting on the front of it is neat and impeccable. It doesn't take me long to identify the writer. Her name helps, but the writing itself is more than enough.
I don't want to open this letter. It reminds me, unpleasantly, of a similar letter I received during my time at Yamaku as a student. Back then, it had been a would-be lover writing to sever ties forever. Now? I have no idea what is in this letter. Unlike Iwanako's letter, though, I feel bound to open this one. Too much has happened with Shizune and me to ignore something she has to say to me. A quick look at the postmark confirms that the letter is two or so months old.
Carefully, I open the envelope, and take out the contents – a single sheet of neatly folded paper. The creases are perfect, as is the penmanship. I force myself to read the letter aloud, so as not to skip ahead or skim. I want to read this in its entirety, and judge it on those merits.
* * *
Hisao,
I hope this letter finds you well. It has been far too long. You're probably teaching by now, or close to it. I'm sure that you're an excellent teacher if so. Dedication was always one of your strong suits.
I want to see you again. I don't like losing people, especially not people who are important to me. For four years, you were the most important part of my life. Your absence is a hole in my life that I feel every day. I miss you.
I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
Yours,
Shizune
PS: Misha says hello. She wants you to call her.
* * *
It's short and to the point. It's almost...e-mailesque. I imagine it might have been an e-mail, if she had a current e-mail address for me. I can recognize the style as Shizune's, but there's something sterile about it. That's probably because I never had to communicate with her in words beyond the awkward days at the start of our friendship. Everything was sign. Everything was face to face. We understood one another completely. This? This is different.
Reading the letter is strange. Her name sounds foreign, somehow, when it rolls off my tongue. I don't say it much these days. For as much space as the former student council president takes up in my mind, her name is verboten. Saying it reminds me of the crushed, hopeless feeling that accompanied our breakup.
It didn't feel quite as bad as waking up in the hospital, but I doubt anything could reach that level of despair. It came close, though. Closer than I really want to admit, because the woman who broke up with me was the same woman who
saved my life.
There's no other way for me to put it, no sugarcoating I can possibly apply. I was a shell of a human being when I arrived at Yamaku. I was going to sleepwalk through my time there and put a happy face on, but that plan didn't survive first contact with a bubbly pink-haired girl (who apparently wants me to call her?) and her best friend, a playful, competitive girl who could see just how much I was suffering no matter how much I tried to hide it. She never let me pity myself. She never babied me. She let me find myself at my own pace, and she helped me along every step of the way.
I fell in love with her. I was in love with her before I realized that I was in love with her. She's a difficult person. She knows it. She wears it like a badge of honor, sometimes. I'm pretty sure she knew I was in love with her before I did. I learned sign language for her. How could that have been interpreted as anything other than a silent confession?
I don't want to think about where I would be if I hadn't met her. When I do think about it, none of the answers are pleasant. No more detail is necessary. If not for Shizune, I wouldn't be teaching at Yamaku. I wouldn't be on the road to being a successful human being. I owe her a debt I can never repay.
I want to think of her happily, even now. How can I, though? How can I remember her with a smile on my face when...
No. That's not the path I want to go down. It'll waste an entire Sunday.
I want to crush the letter dramatically in my fist, but I can't bring myself to do it. She wants me to forgive her? I forgave her a long time ago. I even told her that I forgave her on that horrible day.
She probably doesn't believe me. Which is okay, really, because I don't think I would believe me, either. It's the truth, though. I did forgive her, and I'm not even particularly angry at her. Even so, I can't respond to this letter.
Shizune Hakamichi was the love of my life. We shared wonderful years together. At one point, I thought I would marry her.
Now, though? Shizune is a wound, a proverbial scar over my heart to match the literal one. Both fade a bit more over the years, but neither will ever truly heal.
That, more than anything else, is why I can't respond to her letter. That, more than anything else, is why I don't think I could ever see her or speak to her again.
I can't let that wound be ripped open again. I don't know if I'd be able to handle it.
I certainly don't want to find out.
---------
I don't want to be alone right now.
Those words reverberated through my mind, again and again, after I put down the letter. I don't have many friends here, which makes not being alone harder than it probably should be. A call to Mutou-sensei went unanswered. He's probably busy with research and grading papers and all that a university professor has to deal with.
That's why I'm here at the school on a Sunday after a walk that the nurse would have approved of. No official club activities go on, but for the majority of the student body who lives on campus, the athletic fields are open for all manners of activity. I smile as I see a bunch of students kicking a soccer ball around in something vaguely resembling an organized fashion. It brings back memories.
Usually, for me, just having people around isn't enough to make me feel less lonely, but there's something about standing here on the Yamaku campus that makes me a bit better. Maybe it's positive memories – even if most of those memories are somewhat tainted in retrospect.
Watching the soccer players is a familiar face. Hiroaki is probably the quietest student in my class. He doesn't speak, nor does he sign. My communication with him is limited to written word, though he can hear me just fine.
I don't know what it says about my social life that I'm going to strike up a conversation with a student on a Sunday, but beggars can't be choosers, and he seems a nice enough sort.
Rather than tap him on his shoulder and risk startling him, I walk around to his front and wave to him. He looks surprised at first, but he quickly takes his bag off of his shoulder and fishes around in it until he comes up with a pad of paper and a writing utensil. He writes quickly, and turns the pad of paper to face me,
<Good morning, Nakai-sensei! How are you today?>
My hands automatically begin to sign, before I remember that he actually doesn't understand it. My cheeks turn red in embarrassment before I recover enough to speak.
“I'm okay,” I say, with a shrug. “Just came up here to clear my head a bit, I guess. It's a nice walk from town.”
<It is, isn't it? I usually walk into town to get my groceries. Everyone here's been so nice and helpful so far, too. Yamaku is a wonderful place.>
It's his first year here. Judging by what I was told, the decision for him to come here was made no more than a month before the semester started, courtesy of a surgery gone bad robbing him of the ability to speak. In spite of all of that, he's always smiling. Even his writing seems cheerful.
Hiroaki is the exact opposite of how I was. I wonder how he does it. Granted, his life isn't at risk, but the trauma of losing the ability to speak coupled with having to go to a new school seems to me like a one-two punch of suffering that would be hard to recover from.
“It is a wonderful place,” I agree. He'll get no argument from me on that front. “I'm glad to hear everyone's treating you well, too. You're making a very quick adjustment.”
He looks embarrassed for a moment, and then writes frantically for several long moments, before turning the pad back to me.
<The nurse says that too. Really, I didn't have a choice. Things just kind of happened, you know? It could be worse. Much worse. I miss being able to speak, but there are workarounds, aren't there? Like sign language. I want to learn it. This pad is useful, but I'd like to be able to communicate more fluidly with my classmates.>
It is an undeniably familiar argument. Suddenly, he remembers something, and writes a quick addendum.
<Was it difficult to learn?>
“Not particularly,” I reply. “I'm pretty good at most languages, though. If you're motivated, it's a lot easier, and it sounds to me like you're motivated. The school offers sign language as an elective. Sometimes the classes fill up, but given your situation, I think a recommendation could get you in regardless of class size.”
<I'd like that. I want to make more friends here. I've had enough of being lonely.>
“Believe me, I know that feeling,” slips out of my mouth before I can stop it. Hiroaki cocks an eyebrow at me, and then scribbles on the pad some more.
<Are you lonely, Nakai-sensei?>
Big, brown eyes look at me with concern. It almost feels like he's the teacher and I'm the student. Hiroaki is mature beyond his years, and very perceptive. His gaze, in the classroom, darts from me, to the board, to his fellow students, but he always seems to be listening at the same time.
“I guess you could say that I am, yeah,” I admit. “I don't have many friends here – just another teacher and one of the janitors. I actually went to school here with both of them. Otherwise...I sort of just go home and grade papers and watch TV.” Embarrassing, but true.
<What about before you came here to teach? Did you have more friends back there?>
I am certainly not going to tell him about Shizune. The more I think, though, the more I realize just how depressing the answer is.
“Not really, no,” I'm forced to admit. “Only one or two good friends, really.” One was, of course, Shizune. The other was Misha. Sure, I talked to other people, and sometimes even hung out with them, but they were acquaintances at best.
<If they're really good friends, though, that's all you need, isn't it? As long as you have people to spend time with and laugh with, isn't that what matters?>
It is, and I'm being half-lectured about it by a student.
“It's awkward though,” I say. “The janitor is really more of an acquaintance. He's kind of strange.”
More frantic writing follows, and a small smile even lights Hiroaki's face.
<You mean Kenji, don't you? He is an interesting fellow. I see him on the way to class a lot. I haven't had the chance to see his puppet show yet, though. I feel kind of bad about it.>
“You shouldn't,” I say, a little too quickly. “You probably don't want to. Consider it friendly advice.”
Hiroaki considers this piece of information for about two seconds, and nods.
<Alright, then. I probably have to get going, though. We do have a quiz tomorrow, you know.>
“Of course I know,” I grin. “I assigned it. Don't worry too much, though. You'll be fine. Your grades on the assignments thus far are very good.”
He begins to write again, even as he picks his bag back up. This, I presume, will probably be the last thing he writes to me before he heads off to go study for my quiz. He seems to hesitate a bit more as he writes, thinking carefully before he rips the page off the pad and hands it to me. Waving goodbye, he turns, heading off in the direction of the dorms.
That leaves me alone with whatever it was that he had to say.
* * *
If you could ask about getting me into that sign language class, I'd really appreciate it. I want to be able to speak to as many people as possible without this pad, and I'd be able to participate in class more easily. I like science, but it's hard for me to express myself in the classroom setting when all I have is the written word.
Thank you for not pitying me. Everyone else who knows about what happened to me does. I suppose it's natural, to some extent, but I decided when I woke up unable to speak that I was going to make the absolute most of everything that I still do have.
Yamaku is where I can do that, with your help, and the help of my classmates.
* * *
It's difficult for me to imagine it was written by someone his age, and yet the words are certainly his. It's a remarkably mature view of life: focus on what you have, rather than what you don't.
It sounds pretty good to me, even if I'm someone who has a tendency to fixate on what he doesn't have every now and again.
I fold the piece of paper neatly and stuff it in my pocket before I begin my long walk back to town.
