(Where's the Walkthrough?)
https://ks.fhs.sh/
Innominate
The unconventional tale of a thoroughly conventional girl.
At least, so it seems.
Thank you very much to Piroska for editing. Your input is, as always, invaluable.
All I wanted was an ordinary love...
... was that too much to ask?
Act 1: Apprehension
Act 1 Prologue: Telegraph
Chapter 1-1: Cosmonaut
Chapter 1-2: Snow
Act 1 Prologue: Telegraph
Dear █████,
How are you? I wonder if you remember me.
Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you haven’t thought about me at all. Maybe you’ve already forgotten my name.
Do you remember when we first met?
No, it wasn’t ██ ████ ████ ██ ███ ████.
It was much, much earlier. In the █████ ████████ of ███ █████ ████.
Remember the school rooftop? I was up there, by the fence. It was long, long after the final bell had gone, and the sun was beginning to set. I made sure I was alone. I even ██████ ███ ██████ ████, though I figured no one else would be foolish enough to wander up there after hours.
What I hadn’t considered was that someone █████ ████ █ ███.
Do you know why I was up there, that day, on the rooftop?
I was █████ ██ ████.
I had ██████████ ███████ ███. I was █████. My hands were on ███ █████ ████. All I needed was to ████ ██████ ██ ██ ███ ███ ██ ████ █████ ███ ████ ███.
But you were there.
You opened that door, and, for the briefest moment, you saw behind the veil, behind the carefully crafted persona I had spent ███ █████ █████ maintaining.
You saw my secrets, the ugliness, the madness, the sorrow.
You saw me.
I couldn’t ██ ███████ ████ ██. It felt like ███ ████ ████████ ██ █████ ████.
I don’t know why you were up there; some errand, perhaps. You probably had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
But our eyes met.
And that was enough to ████ ██ ████. It was enough, after you turned around and left, to make me ██████ ███ ████ ███ ██████.
It was enough to make me ████ ██ ████.
Maybe that was where our problems started.
Maybe you should never have come up those stairs. Maybe you should never have made eye contact. Maybe you should have left me to ██████ ███████, to █████████.
Because it led you to ████ ████ ██ ███ ████.
Because it led to those words I █████ ██████ ████ ████.
Because, in the end, I █████████ you.
I ████ ███ ███ ████.
I just wanted to forget.
But…
I can’t.
I can’t forget you.
And because I can’t forget you, you ████ me, every single day.
When I wake. When I sleep. When I ████ ██████ ███ █████████. When ███ ███ █████████ ████ ██ ██. When I see ████ ███████. When I see ████ █████ ████.
It’s selfish, I know. You’re the one who’s truly suffering, ██████ ████ ████ █████████. You’re the one who’s most deserving of sympathy, of pity.
Everything is about you, you, you. People in the hallways look at me, they think about you. The teachers talk to me, it’s always about you. When our classmates whisper about me behind my back, it’s only about what I did to you.
You, you, you.
Never me.
It’s like I’m not even here.
It’s like that day on the rooftop never happened.
I don’t even know who I am anymore.
Tell me, █████…
Who am I?
Sincerely, ███████.
Chapter 1-1: Cosmonaut
[This is a heavily reworked version of my oneshot pilot "Godot", which can be found here].
Who am I?
Her back hurts.
That’s the first thing that crosses her mind.
The second thing is that her bed has become unusually hard and disjointed, as though she’s sleeping on piled wood.
She tries to open her eyes, and all she can see is darkness. She blinks, several times. She can feel her eyelids opening and closing, so…
So why can’t she see anything?
Blearily, she flops her left hand over to where she thinks her nightstand is, fumbling for the switch to the ladybird-shaped nightlight that usually hangs on the wall by the side of her bed.
Instead of the flat surface of her nightstand however, her hand contacts… something, and sends it tipping over in her direction.
There’s a sudden sploosh, the shock of something wet and very cold spilling onto her torso, soaking her clothes and freezing her skin.
She yelps, her voice screeching into the dark as she tries to leap out of bed.
There’s no carpet beneath her feet, like she was expecting. Instead, her shoes contact something hard, metallic, and extremely unstable.
Shoes?
There’s a great crash, wood on metal, tearing, rumbling. She’s knocked right off her feet, spinning, falling, totally disorientated. Her body impacts something hard and smashes right through it, pain lancing through her shoulder, the sound of splintering timber filling her ears.
Light floods her vision in the millisecond before she hits the ground.
The impact knocks the wind right out of her, cutting her voice off mid-scream of surprise, sending her sprawling over the linoleum floor. The thunder of falling metal and other debris roars around her like a car crash, slowly petering out as objects stop falling and come to rest beside her.
She clenches her eyes and hands shut, trying to regain control of her heart that’s beating wildly out of her chest. An eerie silence descends, broken only by the dull thump of her heart pounding in her ears.
Slowly, she opens her eyelids just a crack, taking in her surroundings.
Above her, a plain, white ceiling checkered with smooth tiling, like the kind they use at school. A single rectangular fluorescent light. One of those fire sprinklers with a jagged metal head poking out towards her.
Is this a dream?
She tries to sit up, hissing with pain as her right arm and shoulder protest, catching her fall with her left hand as she struggles to her knees.
“I-Is someone there?”
She jolts.
A voice. Loud, high-pitched, almost squeaky. Cutesy.
Surprised, she frantically scrambles to her feet, trying to get a sense of her surroundings and the source of the voice.
Staggering a little, breathing heavily, she looks around.
It’s…
A classroom?
It looks like a classroom converted into a storage room, or, less charitably, a dumping ground. The tables and chairs are stacked in wild, haphazard piles all along the walls, beside a few old-style blackboards on wheels gathering dust.
At least two dozen mops in their buckets are propped up against the piles, surrounded by various cleaning items- sprays, wipes, paper towels- scattered randomly everywhere. A few brooms with caked-on dust lodged in their bristles stand at attention like soldiers by the wooden sliding door.
To her left, there’s no wall. Just the slatted windows every high school in Japan must be furnished with. Outside, however, is a different story. The entire room seems to be shrouded in fog, a wall of white that lies just beyond the panes, through which only some gloomy light filters inside.
This must be a dream.
She turns her head to the right…and there stands a girl.
Pink hair. In drills. Both sides of her head. Chubby. A little short. Probably around the same age as her. Dressed in a school uniform of some description- white blouse, green skirt, black ribbon.
Golden eyes wide and mouth open in shock.
She’s frozen, like ice has replaced the blood in her veins. She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t know what’s happening to her. And she doesn’t know who this strange girl in front of her is.
For a moment, there’s absolute silence as both simply stare at one another.
Then, the pink-haired girl…
Screams.
A piercing, blood curdling shriek, resonating through the room. She briefly wonders if it’s even possible for a human to make that much sound.
The pink-haired girl dives behind a nearby pile of chairs, knocking over several mops as she does so, her face contorted in a look of utter terror.
Nothing makes sense.
Who is this girl? What is this place?
The clattering of cleaning items falling to the floor echoes through the room as the pink-haired girl crawls away to safety, her voice warbling and shaky, overwhelmed with fear.
“D-don’t come any c-closer… p-please…”
That snaps her out of it. She swallows, twice, trying to squeeze the tiny, croaking words out of her dry throat.
“S-sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, but… who are you? What’s going on?”
She takes another look around the room.
If this is a dream, it’s by far the weirdest and most realistic I’ve ever had.
After a pause, the pink-haired girl answers with another, totally insane question of her own.
“A-are you… h-human?”
“W-w-what?!”
What kind of question is that?!
Her heart is pounding again.
“What… what do you mean ‘am I human?’”
The other girl’s voice loses its stutter and gains some force.
“Well… you don’t look human so… what are you?”
Every answer only generates more questions, like she’s being spoken to in riddles. Her mind whirls, close to being overwhelmed by the sheer insanity of the situation.
“I-I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re talking about…”
She begins to pat herself down, searching for what the girl could possibly be referring to, smoothing out her blazer and maroon skirt.
Maroon skirt?
She’s not in the light blue pyjamas she swore she wore to bed that night. Instead, she’s dressed in the dark blazer and maroon skirt of her school’s winter uniform, complete with brown loafers. A good part of her clothing is wet and darkened, soaked by an unknown liquid. She’s suddenly aware of the sharp smell of chemical disinfectant, stinging her nostrils. That must’ve been what she spilt all over herself when she woke up.
Regardless, she’s still got all her appendages. She’s still got her arms, her legs, her torso and her head. She’s still human as far as she can tell. Nothing seems off.
What an odd dream.
“… everything looks fine to me…”
She catches a flash of pink as the other girl spies her through the gaps in the chairs, eyeing her like she’s a bomb that’s about to go off.
“So… you don’t realise what’s wrong with you?”
The girl’s bubbly tone starts to come back slightly, juxtaposing strangely with the vaguely insulting phrasing of her question.
“… no?”
A note of desperation creeps into her voice, but she’s rapidly running out of mental tether.
Finally, the pink-haired girl sighs, relinquishing her fortress of chairs, golden eyes looking everywhere but her direction.
“Okay… how do I put this…?”
She interlaces her fingers.
“… your face.”
“Huh?!”
That was not the response she was expecting.
The pink-haired girl hesitates, seemingly unable to find the words.
“Yeah… your face… why…”
She takes a deep breath.
“… why don’t you have one?”
What?!
Her right hand immediately goes to her head to dispel this ridiculous notion, covering her right eye and nose.
Except.
Nothing.
Her fingers touch smooth, flat skin.
Where there’s supposed to be the ridge of her nose, the sunken pits of her eyes, there’s nothing.
It’s all flat, like every detail of her face has been erased.
“Oh… my god.”
Both hands reach for her face, scrambling, feeling for what she knows should be there. Her nose, her eyes, her mouth. Her eyelashes, her brows, anything.
Smooth. Totally flat. Cool, unblemished skin.
She screams in surprise.
This is not a dream.
This is a nightmare.
“Oh my god. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”
She’s reeling, hyperventilating, utterly confused. Nothing makes sense. Her head is spinning. She begins to back away, pulling at her nonexistent facial features, trying desperately to make herself wake up.
Why can’t I wake up?! Why?! Why?! Wh-
Two hands suddenly grip her flailing wrists, and she becomes aware of two golden eyes framed by pink hair right in front of her.
“Hey! Hey! Breathe… breathe… it’s okay… it’s okay…”
That same high-pitched voice, now with a much calmer, soothing tone. The other girl is so close, she can practically feel her breath on her face… if she even has one, that is.
“You’re still breathing, and talking, and you can see and hear me, so… it might not be as bad as you think, okay?”
Her mind is totally locked up, so all she can do is nod, dumbly, even as she gasps for breath with every inhale. She closes her eyes, then opens them. She can feel the warmth of the girl’s hands on her wrists heating her frigid skin. Taking deep breaths, her heart rate begins to slow.
The grip around her wrists is released, the pink-haired girl taking a step back. The same eerie silence once again descends.
It’s broken by a halting, awkward introduction.
“Well… I’m Misha. My full name is Shiina Mikado, but nobody really calls me that…”
A cutesy name for a cutesy girl. Misha raises her right hand in greeting, wearing a thin, strained smile on her face.
She responds, her voice warbly.
“I… I’m Iwanako…”
Her voice peters out.
Misha cocks her head and raises an eyebrow.
“Just… Iwanako?”
Iwanako sputters, trying to form the words in her mind.
“No, I’m Iwanako…”
Huh?
Something’s… missing.
“I mean, I’m Iwanako… Iwanako…”
My last name…
“I…”
Her eyes go wide.
She knows, logically, that she should have a last name. Yet, her mind is drawing a total blank, as though she’d never been given one her whole life.
Is this dream messing with my memory too?!
Panic grips her once again. Iwanako desperately rifles through the mental filing cabinets in her brain, frantically searching for something, anything that might give even a hint of something so integral to her identity.
Who forgets their last name?
She searches, searches, searches, her heart pounding in her head.
Nothing.
Iwanako looks at her feet, almost in shame.
“I… I… can’t remember my last name…”
It’s simultaneously embarrassing and ludicrous.
Misha stands opposite her, her mouth opening and closing.
Then, a sad, almost resigned expression crosses over her cutesy features. It’s like she’s just realised something important.
“Iwanako… that’s because… hold on, could I call you… Icchan? Iwacchan? Uh… Nacchan! Yeah, that sounds better… can I call you Nacchan?”
It’s odd how Misha can switch between solemn and bubbly tones almost at will. Iwanako is slightly bemused at the strange request, considering the situation.
“Why?”
“It’s… a little thing I do with people. You can tell me not to if you don’t like it.”
It might just be best to humour Misha, or whatever Misha is.
“Okay…”
Another strained smile from the pink-haired girl.
“Nacchan… the reason you can’t remember your last name… and why you don’t have a face… is because… none of it is relevant to this world. The ‘real world,’ Nacchan, is not what you think it is. It didn’t see a need for you to have a name or a face, so… it just never gave you one.”
Relevant… to this world?
Iwanako is so confused that it’s making her head hurt. She can’t even muster up a response, the words sputtering and dying on her lips.
It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.
Despite the lack of facial features, Misha seems to sense the doubt coursing through Iwanako’s veins. Her voice becomes even more forceful.
“Think, Nacchan. What’s the name of your school? The name of your hometown? The name of your parents, your teachers, your friends?”
“What do you mean…”
Iwanako’s frustration rapidly spirals into confusion as she tries to answer.
I…
It’s…
It’s the same as her last name.
There’s nothing.
Nothing at all.
Everything’s coming up blank. Blank, blank, blank. The files are there, it’s just that there’s nothing inside them.
Her school.
Her hometown.
Her family.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
It’s as if a giant eraser has been taken to all the important parts of her brain, scouring Iwanako clean of everything that makes her, her.
The only thing she truly remembers is the ladybird nightlight hanging by the side of her bed.
Her fingers begin to quiver. So many things are missing. How did she not notice earlier?
“Oh… my god.”
Misha nods sadly.
“I know it feels like a dream, Nacchan, because it doesn’t make any sense otherwise. I thought the same thing at first. I thought it was just a dream.”
Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream.
Everything in Iwanako’s logical side cries out to reject this, to simply accept that this is some depression-induced nightmare cooked up by an overactive imagination she didn’t realise she had.
She begins to back away, step by step, her eyes darting around the room. This is too much, all too much. Everything in this… nightmare has been total insanity, like the seams of Iwanako’s world are being pulled apart, trapped in this ghostly classroom at the edge of the universe.
She’s done. She can’t stay here anymore.
“I… I want to leave. I want to wake up.”
Misha shakes her head.
“It’s hard, Nacchan, I know. You have to trust me. The world out there is not what you think it is. If you try to leave this classroom, you won’t go back out into the real world. You’ll just go back there.”
Go back where?
She’d sooner go anywhere else in time and space to escape this madhouse.
Anywhere except…
She throws the thought from her mind. She needs to focus on escaping. Still, Misha continues.
“You’ll just go back to the place you came from, Nacchan. You’ll go back, and you’ll play your part. You won’t have a choice.”
Play my part?
In what?
Nothing makes sense.
Slowly, Iwanako turns to the only obvious exit in the room, the unassuming wooden sliding doors.
With a sudden start, she brushes past Misha, driven by desperation, her fingers finding the latch and throwing open the door with a slam.
And she stops.
Where there should be a hallway, there’s only a black void in every direction, like the classroom is suspended in deep space.
Reaching her hand forward into the inky darkness, there’s a cool sensation, like autumn air, but nothing else.
“What the…”
Misha sighs, like she was expecting Iwanako to do this from the beginning.
“You see, Nacchan? Nothing makes sense in this world. You can see, speak and breathe, but you have no face. You’re missing so many memories, even your last name. The door outside leads to that black pit. I know it’s hard to believe, but… you see it, right, Nacchan?”
This is not real. This is not real.
“I…”
Iwanako takes a deep breath.
“I’m getting out of here. I’m going home.”
Iwanako stands on the edge of the threshold, the tips of her loafers peeking into the darkness. Her hands grip the sides of the open door like an astronaut about to embark on a spacewalk. Her heart is beating in her ears. She’s never been great with heights, even if there’s absolutely no indication of where she is in this great black void.
Misha stands behind her but doesn’t interfere.
“You can go back to the world you know, Nacchan, but you’ll remember what happened here, too.”
Every single thing Iwanako has experienced, from Misha’s nonsensical explanations to her terrifying lack of a face or memories, is utterly incompatible with reality.
There’s no way this is real.
This has to be a dream.
Right?
Iwanako turns her head and makes one final declaration, her voice resolute and forceful.
“I don’t believe you, Misha.”
With that, she steps out into the void.
And.
She.
Falls.
Chapter 1-2: Snow
So… you’ll always be my friend?
Of course I will.
Forever?
Forever and e-
It’s cold.
Light snow falls all around her, dusting the ground and the bare trees, the flakes settling on her shoulders and in her hair.
A gentle breeze passes through, rattling the naked branches and rustling the hem of her maroon skirt. She’s definitely regretting being so underdressed —thigh highs and the regulation blazer are certainly not appropriate winterwear— but there’s no time to rectify it now. She’ll just have to put up with it.
Iwanako peeks around the corner of the school building, spying the bare maple tree in the distance that is the assigned rendezvous. It stands like a skeletal sentinel, black woody tendrils hanging over a carpet of pure white snow.
And, at the base of that tree, dressed in a tan hoodie, back facing towards her, is the one person she’s looking for.
Her key. Her beacon.
Her escape.
He stands there, occasionally glancing around, rubbing his hands together for warmth. He’s faring a little better in the frigid air than she is.
Iwanako checks her watch. It’s already past four o’clock. He got her note. He’s already waiting for her.
She’s just nervous.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
You’ve got this.
Her racing heart disagrees, but there’s nothing left to do.
It’s time.
Steeling herself, Iwanako steps around the corner of the building, walking straight towards the maple tree with measured, steady strides, her loafers crunching the dry snow beneath her with every pace.
His back is still turned. She’s still got a little way to go.
The snow continues to fall all around her, the white-dusted forest beyond like some fantastical winter wonderland. She’s so nervous, she hardly even knows what she’s going to say.
Yet…
There’s a weird, fleeting feeling that everything just feels… oddly familiar.
The boy in front of her finally seems to notice her presence, as he suddenly tenses.
“Hi... Hisao? You came?”
The words seem to spill from her lips, tiny, barely audible.
Hisao turns, decked out in all his awkward, dorky glory, his trademark sprig of hair dangling from his head, a certain pink letter perched between his fingers.
“Iwanako? I got a note telling me to wait here... it was yours?”
His brown eyes are filled with apprehension and trepidation. Cute.
She smiles.
“Ahmm... yes. I asked a friend to give you that note... I'm so glad you got it.”
She speaks with little conscious effort, as though she’s memorised a script.
“So... ah... here we are. Out in the cold...”
His voice is gentle, nervous. It’s all turning out exactly as she wanted.
Love.
Love in the winter, with the snow all around her, with the one boy she wants a mere few centimetres in front of her.
Something ordinary, for once in her life. An ordinary love.
She makes her most important request.
“You see... I wanted to know... if you'd go out with me...”
Her words hang in the frigid air. She waits for a response, but Hisao stands like a statue before her, as though the cold has frozen him to the core.
A few flakes of snow fall onto her cheek and her lashes, but she doesn’t dare break the moment by wiping them away. The only sound she hears is the rhythmic beating of her own heart.
Then…
It all happens so quickly.
“...Hisao?”
His hands go to his throat, his fingers beginning to tremble. His eyes go wide and bloodshot, and a choked grunt issues from his lips.
“...Hisao?!”
Iwanako’s heart seems to be beating out of her chest. Most of her mind is reeling, totally confused as to what’s taken hold of Hisao, who seems to be suffocating on the air itself.
He begins to stagger, his knees shaking, his skin turning as pale as the snow that silently falls all around them.
“Hisao!”
Iwanako is utterly consumed with terror.
Yet, even as everything unfolds, almost in slow motion, a tiny part of her brain asks one, niggling question.
Has…
This…
Happened…
Before…?
He slumps to the ground, and she screams.
…
Her arms hurt.
Every heave of her lungs sends shooting pain up her chest and into her shoulders. The cold air stings with every inhale, yet she can’t help but gasp for breath.
“Help me! Please!”
Iwanako’s throat is being ripped raw with every scream. Even mere metres from the school building, it feels like she’s the only human on earth.
Her fingers dig into Hisao’s armpits, pulling him up as she tries to drag him another few paces.
“Argh!”
The strain is almost too much to bear. She lunges backwards, his limp body twisting and sliding along the icy ground, leaving a mushy trail of melting snow mixed with the brown soil underneath.
He’s heavy. Maybe it’s because he’s significantly larger than her. Maybe it's because she has noodles for arms. Either way, it’s a herculean effort to move his dying body even a few metres.
But she can’t abandon him here, to die a painful death in the cold and the snow.
Like she abandoned-
Doesn’t matter. She needs to move.
She presses two frozen fingers to his jugular, searching frantically for a pulse. Still nothing.
He may well be dead already.
“Somebody, please! Help me!”
Despite her rising desperation, and the sheer panic gripping her heart, Iwanako feels strangely… distant, like she’s merely observing this tragedy happening from afar, disconnected from her body.
She moves, driven not so much by conscious thought but by some sheer outside force, compelling her to stay standing, to not collapse under the strain, to keep dragging him ever so slightly farther.
She heaves. She screams. She pulls.
It feels like an eternity.
Like she’s trapped in a snowy, beautiful hell.
Is this real?
Maybe it’s a dream, transformed into a particularly cruel and realistic nightmare, and she’s actually safe in her bed, not out here, behind the school, trying to save the life of the boy before her.
Are nightmares ever this painful, though?
Another heave. Another scream. His feet limply bounce along the uneven ground as she pulls, his head lolling from side to side.
“Help! Please!”
How much further? Iwanako can’t tell. Maybe she’s like Sisyphus, condemned to drag Hisao across the snow for all eternity.
This is hell.
She doesn’t notice the tears streaming down her face until they begin to freeze over, icy trails that cling to her cheeks.
Please don’t die. Please. Please. Please.
I can’t lose you too.
She’s so far away. She’s mourning a boy already dead.
Voices suddenly shoot up from behind her. Out of the corner of her eyes, she spots shadows, figures, surrounding them.
The voices grow louder, though she can’t for the life of her make out what they’re saying, like she’s miles underwater.
Hands grip her arms, her shoulders, her torso. She’s not even in control of her own body anymore. The fingers that eventually relinquish their hold on Hisao’s hoodie must be someone else’s.
Why? Why? Why?
Why him? Why me?
The hands fall away, and she’s lost to the snow.
…
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The slightly unsteady beeping of the EKG machine echoes in Iwanako’s ears.
Before her lies a boy, dressed in a thin, blue gown, lying motionless on a hospital bed, an oxygen mask strapped to his face, all manner of cannulas, IVs and wires seeming to sprout from his body. She doesn’t even know how she got here. It’s like she’s been whisked from one horrific set-piece to another on a cruel and incomprehensible wind.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Still, his heart is beating. Somewhere, at the edge of her consciousness, she realises that means she succeeded in some way, that she saved his life.
It doesn’t feel like it at all, though. It feels like lead has taken the place of blood in her veins, weighing her down, slowing her thoughts until she’s just a zombie, blankly observing as Hisao’s chest slowly rises and falls.
What have I done?
The questions come, unbidden, to her sluggish and vulnerable mind.
You did this.
Did I?
Iwanako can’t help but wonder.
It was her who wrote the note. It was her who asked a friend to slip it in his maths textbook. It was her who chose the base of that cursed bare maple tree, far away from the prying eyes of the staff and students. It was her who walked up to him.
It was her who said the words that nearly killed him.
An accident. An accident. An accident.
She can only repeat it to herself so many times. It doesn’t change the reality in front of her.
A few vague memories penetrate the fog that clouds her mind. The unending sirens of an ambulance. The concerned, meaningless platitudes of her homeroom teacher. The whispers of her classmates that surround her like a nest of snakes, hissing with suspicion and rumour.
She doesn’t have the will to counter them. She doesn’t have the will to do much of anything. The hospital room is her only reality; a sterile, white-walled purgatory just for her and the boy she almost killed.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The guilt. The anger. The sadness. They all feed the voice that pounds at her mind, scratching at her self-worth, a voice that keeps her coming back, to open that door, to sit on that uncomfortable plastic stool and watch his chest rise and fall.
This is your punishment. Your penance.
Stay.
Stay with him.
That’s the least you can do.
She obeys, even when every minute, every second, pokes another hole in her heart.
So, she stays. She sits. She waits. Hour after hour, day in, day out, she watches over him.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
She stays as Hisao is wheeled in and out of the room for uncountable surgeries, the nurses and doctors a rolling wave that drifts in and out like the tide.
She stays as he slowly begins to awaken, the anaesthesia clouding his words and perception. His eyes are foggy and confused. She says a few words of comfort, but they are as meaningful and automated as the output of a vending machine.
She stays as her classmates crowd the room, a colourful flock of birds that shower him in gifts, flowers, sympathy and platitudes. None of them spare a glance in her direction.
She stays as they disappear, as the rabble begins to thin and the presents begin to vanish, as though Hisao himself is fading from the class’s collective consciousness.
She stays as he begins to retreat inside himself. It’s like the real Hisao died that day in the snow, to be replaced by a zombie bearing only his physical likeness. Gone is his somewhat awkward but earnest smile, the drive that pervaded his movements, the clearness in his voice. He simply stares, vacantly, at the walls or out the window, expressionless whenever his parents or the medical staff try to reach him.
She stays as the seasons begin to change. Through the window opposite her, she watches as the snow begins to give way to sunlight, the world awakening from winter into spring.
The distance grows. They’re less than thirty centimetres apart, but Hisao may as well be on a different continent. Even his close friends begin to drift away, one by one, unable to break through the wall he’s put up around himself.
Once again, it’s just her, Hisao, and the never-ending beat of the EKG. It’s as if they’re back to day one, when he was first wheeled into the room that now serves as their prison.
Why stay?
It’s a question she keeps asking herself, every time she’s at the door, her hand on the doorknob.
It’s because, back then-
Shut up.
If she could just stay by his side, for just a little longer.
Maybe…
Maybe things would turn out alright.
Iwanako feels that strange sense of déjà vu, like she’s spent her past life, and the life before that, and the life before that, in this chair, waiting.
And yet, words fail her.
Say something.
Anything.
Please.
She wants to give comfort, to tell him something that will ease his pain. Anything. Anything at all. Anything beyond the automated greetings and meaningless, pre-cut phrases of sympathy that are so painful to say.
Iwanako wants the words to bridge that impossible distance. They whirl in her mind, collecting and dissipating every time she parts her lips.
The words once tumbled from her mouth with ease, like she was reading from a script. Now, it’s like a vice has been clamped around her jaw, physically preventing her from reaching out, as Hisao drifts further and further away.
Just one word.
Please.
Nothing.
It’s as if he’s given up altogether. Silence reigns, broken only by that infernal EKG machine.
But she can’t abandon him.
She has to stay.
She has to.
So, she returns.
Again, and again, and again.
Nothing’s improving. Nothing’s changing. He’s still in that bed. She’s still on that stool.
Stay.
Stay.
You have to stay.
Don’t you remember what happened last time?
She does, she does.
But…
There’s only so much pain she can take. Only so many stabs her heart can survive. Only so much weight she can carry on her shoulders.
It’s all…
It’s all becoming too much.
I…
“I can’t take it anymore.”
She doesn’t even realise she’s whispered the words until they’re past her lips. The first words she’s said that aren’t greetings or platitudes.
The first words she’s managed to say from her heart.
Something warm and moist falls onto her cheek. She faintly realises that it’s the first time she’s cried since she started coming to the hospital.
Iwanako stands up. There’s no reaction from the boy in front of her. He doesn’t even seem to have heard her words.
She wants to stay. Every neuron in her brain seems to be begging her to resume her seat, to keep playing this game. Her body doesn’t listen. She turns for the door.
I…
I never want to come back here, ever again.
She’s going to leave him behind. The one thing she swore never to do.
You’re cruel. You’re heartless.
Something claws at her mind, fighting her, fighting every move she makes.
You can’t do this. You can’t. You can’t.
You haven’t changed at all, have you?
She needs to get out. Now. Before she breaks down entirely and can’t make it out the door.
As her hand grasps the cool metal of the doorknob, Iwanako turns her head, one last time, to the boy lying limply on the hospital bed.
“I’m sorry, Hisao.”
She pulls the door open. There’s no hospital hallway this time. Instead, an oddly familiar black void greets her.
Before she can even process what’s happening, she takes a step forward, as though her legs have a mind of their own.
Oblivion rushes up to meet her.
The last thing she remembers is the sensation of cool autumn air.
Let's get this show on the road.
I haven't hidden my somewhat unhealthy fascination with Iwanako as a character, if my oneshot library has anything to say. There's just something about her role in the story, simultaneously vital yet irrelevant, that's strangely captivating in a narrative sense. I can't wait to give Iwanako the spotlight she deserves.
As usual, updates will be infrequent with the rhythms and tempo of my life.
Oh, and don't be fooled by the structure: this is not a pseudo-route.
Without further ado, I hope you enjoy.
Stay safe, everyone.