Side Story 1: Forgotten or Not
This is a dream.
It was a dream I knew well—a dream that held a special significance for me—so I knew right away. My dreams are almost always incoherent. The conversations I have in them and the things that happen to me are random and illogical, but somehow, I still never realize that I’m dreaming.
But this recurring dream is different. It’s logical, consistent, and feels just like real life. There’s a sense of warmth and solitude to it as well, yet in spite of its realism, I always immediately know that it’s a dream. I know that I’m dreaming whether I want to or not.
In this particular dream, I live in everlasting darkness. The world is pitch-black, cold, and desolate, without the slightest glimmer of light to be seen. That darkness is all I’ve even known—and yet it doesn’t feel like some terrible hardship. Even if I can’t see, there’s always someone there with me holding my hand.
Sometimes the hand is soft, its grip gentle. That’s my brother. He’s been holding my hand for as long as I can remember. His grip is reassuring.
Sometimes the hand’s grasp is a little stronger, more full of emotion. That’s the girl who’s like an older sister to me. I know exactly how she feels about my brother, but I keep everything she tells me a secret from him. It can stay between the two of us until she becomes my sister for real one day.
And sometimes...the hand is timid. Its grasp is cautious, almost fearful, like it’s worried it might break me with the slightest touch. I can tell in an instant that it’s him.
His hand is slightly rough to the touch, his grasp a little too clumsy to call gentle. I can’t say whether it’s full of emotion or not—it’s more like he doesn’t know how to express his feelings. Still, though, his hand fills my heart with warmth and comfort more than anyone else’s.
I want to be special to him someday—like my brother is to my future sister. My heart is set on him. Even I realize how strange that is: compared with everyone else in my life, I’ve barely spent any time with him at all, and yet somehow, I just know. My heart races when I feel his touch. Hearing his voice is all it takes to fill me with joy.
But at the same time, I’m nervous. I can’t help but wonder: what does he think of me? Me, the blind girl who wouldn’t be able to live without having someone else around to help her?
Does he think I’m weak? Pathetic? Or worse, unsightly?
Just the thought of him seeing me like that is painful. I thought I’d accepted that side of myself. I always knew that I was defective. I knew that I was a burden—a pointless, petty existence whose only purpose was to be protected. I’d accepted it, but for some reason, I don’t want him to think of me that way. I know this is selfish of me, but I want to stand on even footing with him.
I don’t just want to be protected—I want to protect him. I don’t just want to be doted upon—I want to dote on him. I want him to show me the frailty he keeps hidden away from the rest of the world. I know that it’s impossible, that he’d never...but I want it anyway.
Day by day, he grows more and more important to me. Day by day, the emotion building in my heart overwhelms me. It’s an emotion I’ve never felt before, and I know it’s leading me around by the nose, but still, I can’t stop it. I don’t want to stop it.
If I could see, I’d never let him out of my sight. I’d comfort him whenever he looked sad. I’d smile right alongside him whenever he smiled. I’d run right over to him whenever I caught sight of him. I want to hold his hand.
But I couldn’t. I was a burden to him all the way to the very end. I made him cry. I made him suffer. I never overcame my weakness.
Please, God—if I can be reborn, then please, let me meet him again. Let me meet the strong and reliable, yet frail and gentle boy I loved once more.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
“Ah...”
I woke up. The pitch-black veil was broken, though the room I woke up in was still dark. I could dimly make out the familiar features of my own room’s ceiling above me.
“I knew it was a dream,” I mumbled to myself, a little dejected but at the same time a little relieved. It hurt to breathe, and I was so drenched in sweat it was like I’d just come inside from a downpour. The dampness on my cheeks, however, wasn’t sweat at all. The moment I realized that, my tears began to well up once more. I sobbed. I felt a crushing sensation in my chest, so much so that it was actually painful. My tears just wouldn’t stop, and I knew why. I was crying because I didn’t know why I was in so much pain.
It might’ve seemed crazy to other people, but to me, that dream was nothing unusual. I’d been having it for as long as I could remember, and I was very familiar with it. I’d never told anyone about it, though. Not my parents and not my brother either.
Even as a child, I understood that if I told them, they’d assume I was just being weird. As I grew up, reaching the same age as the me in my dreams and developing a concept of common sense, I realized just how right that instinctual understanding had been.
There’s another “me” inside me. I don’t have a split personality or anything like that, but in a strange way that I can’t really explain, I’ve always felt that way. Every once in a while she’ll appear in my dreams and teach me all about the joy she felt when she met him and the deep-seated regret she felt for the fact that her death caused him to suffer.
I always yearned for that boy I’d never seen. I’d grown up with that other me—the blind me in my dreams. It felt totally natural for the person she adored to be special to me as well.
I wanted to be worthy of him. Unlike back then, when all I could do was let myself be protected, the current me had the ability to see. I could walk on my own, with my own two legs... It made me happier than I could describe, but I still wanted to be better—to be someone he would be proud of.
I taught myself how to cook because I wanted to feed him something delicious that I’d made. I always worked as hard as I could in school at both academics and athletics, and I was always the top student in my class without fail. Seeing made me so happy that I started drawing too...but, well, I’m not exactly good enough at that yet to brag about it, I guess.
“I heard some guy asked you out again, Hikari?”
“Not just ‘some guy’—it was a senpai this time, and the star of the soccer team, right? That dude’s so popular, they call him the team heartthrob!”
“I can’t believe you turned him down; what a waste! You could’ve at least given him a chance, right?”
Around the time I got into middle school, I started getting a lot of attention from boys. I didn’t know what to make of it (though I think some part of me enjoyed it). I never actually wanted to date any of them, and I felt bad for them when I turned them down, but it was still nice to know that I was attractive in their eyes.
If I could ever meet him, I wondered, would he fall for me? That boy I’d never seen, who probably lived in an altogether different world, who there was absolutely no guarantee I’d ever find?
Whenever I woke up from that dream, everything that happened in it would vanish from my mind, fading away like a wisp of morning mist. I couldn’t even remember his name. But still, just thinking about the scattered fragments I could remember made a warmth spread throughout my chest.
I never doubted that I’d be able to meet him someday. It’s not that I was confident I’d meet him, exactly—it’s just that it never even occurred to me to doubt it. I’m not quite sure how to put it... It was like a child’s unwavering belief that Santa Claus is real, I guess.
These days, though, I’ve been getting scared. What if I never meet him after all? I don’t know when I started to think that way, but that’s a big part of why I always want to put all the effort I possibly can into living my own life. Maybe I’ll never meet him, and maybe someday I’ll fall in love with someone else, but when that time finally comes, I want to make sure that I won’t have any regrets.
...I’m forgetting something. I realized the moment I woke up yesterday morning.
At first, I couldn’t believe myself. Somehow, before I knew it, I’d taken almost a whole week off from school, even though I wasn’t even sick. Why would I ever do something like that? Was it because I’d been asked out by Murata-senpai, my fellow student council member, prompting my classmate Mikura-san to harass me? No, that couldn’t be it—that was nothing new to me; I’d been through that sort of situation plenty of times before.
I thought about it as hard as I could and came to a conclusion: I’d skipped school because I’d found something that I considered to be a higher priority. I’d played hooky to throw myself into that something...no, that’s not quite right. To catch someone’s attention...?
It was no use. I just couldn’t remember.
I’d forgotten something incredibly important to me. The reason I’d skipped school, the “something” I’d wanted to prioritize, the passion that must’ve been burning away within me—it had all vanished. The second I let my guard down, my fear seeped out from me in the form of tears. It felt like my past fifteen years of effort would all go to waste...
I barely managed to muster up the composure I needed to go to school yesterday. It didn’t help, though—not even when I got to talk with my friend, Yuu-chan. I had to force myself to plaster a fake smile across my face the whole time, and I burst into tears the moment I got home.
I don’t really remember much else after that. I made dinner, talked briefly with my brother, and before I knew it, I was fast asleep and dreaming...
“That’s right... My drawings...”
I sat up, turned on the lights, and went over to open up my desk’s drawer without even changing out of my pajamas first. That was where I kept my sketchbook. I’d made a habit of drawing in it whenever anything particularly sad, happy, or memorable in general happened to me. I thought that maybe I’d left a hint for myself inside.
I opened up the sketchbook and flipped through its pages, scanning over the pencil sketches that I myself had drawn. If there were any drawings I didn’t remember inside it, then surely they would be of whatever it was I was forgetting...?
“Ah...”
I found one. It was the last picture in the book. A picture that I knew was mine—I could recognize my own artistic style—but that I had no memory of drawing.
“Why?”
The drawing was a portrait.
“Why, why...?”
But something was missing.
“It’s...gone? But why? Why...?”
The portrait had no face. Or rather, its face had been erased. I could tell from the smudges on the paper that I’d drawn and erased it over and over. I’d tried to draw them properly, but I must have never been satisfied with it. It was obvious that whoever this person was, I considered them unimaginably important to me. Just like how the me from my dreams thought about the boy she knew...
Could it be that I met him, or at least someone who filled that same role for the current me...? But then I forgot them...? How? Why...?
As I traced my fingers across the drawing, a strange, conflicted sensation I couldn’t explain filled my heart, and I found myself crying again in an instant.
Beepbeepbeepbeep!
I yelped with surprise as my cell phone’s alarm brought me back to my senses. It was the time I’d usually get up...meaning I had to go get breakfast ready. I hadn’t stopped cooking, even during the week I took off from school.
I’d finally found a lead, but when all was said and done, it just made everything all the more painful. It was like the world itself was telling me that I’d never be able to remember whatever it was I’d forgotten. I shoved the sketchbook back into my desk—like I was running away from it.
“Since I forgot, does that mean that I’d be better off if I never remembered?”
No. It couldn’t. My heart immediately and violently rebelled against the thought. But then, what could I do? Even after seeing that unfinished portrait, I still wasn’t even completely convinced that whatever I’d forgotten was a person. It must’ve been something that I, myself, wanted to forget. The pain, the tears I couldn’t stop, were because I was weak. I’m sure he would be disgusted with me if he saw me acting like that.
“I can do this...”
I tried to pep myself back up and get in the right mindset to make breakfast, but even I was disappointed by how feeble and unenthusiastic my voice came out.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
I managed to calm down a little after I got to school. That was thanks to Yuu-chan, probably—my bright, cheery, ever so slightly derpy best friend. My gloom was quickly swept away whenever she was around. People say that it’s easier to face hard times when you have someone else there to be with you, and I was starting to appreciate how true that was.
She wasn’t the only distraction at school, though. Right after class ended, a girl leapt into my classroom and scared me half to death.
“Ah, Hikari-chan! You’re Ayase Hikari-chan, right?”
“Huh...?”
She had a pretty boyish sort of aura, and even though she was in another class, she burst through all the social barriers revolving around that sort of thing and strolled right into our class like it was nothing. I knew who she was—she was pretty famous in our school.
“Ah, did I surprise you? My bad,” she continued. “I’m Kazuki Rena! You can just call me Rena, though!”
“All right, Rena-chan. Did you need something?” I replied.
“Yeah, and I know this is gonna sound like it’s coming out of nowhere,” she said, scratching her head a bit bashfully, “but I was wondering if you might wanna study together tomorrow?”
“Study together? With you?” That was a surprise. I knew about Rena-chan from the rumors about the incredible first-year who took the track team by storm, but it was my first time properly talking to her.
“Sorta ashamed to admit it, but I’ve had a lot of crazy stuff going on lately, and I haven’t been able to, y’know, sit still and stuff... And I know I gotta study since finals’re right around the corner and all... So anyway, I need someone to watch over me and keep me on task! Please?!”
“W-Watch over you?! I’m not so sure about that, but a study group... Um, okay.”
“For real?! Awesome, thanks!”
Rena-chan was ecstatic, and honestly, it was a really timely opportunity for me too. I certainly wouldn’t be able to concentrate if I tried to study at home on my own, so I figured I’d have her return the favor and keep an eye on me as well.
Just then, a quiet, timid voice rang out. “Hikari-chan?”
“Oh, Yuu-chan?”
Yuu-chan was usually incredibly cheerful and more than a little loud, but she was also severely shy. She was openly shrinking away from Rena-chan.
“You’re having a study group?” she asked, a bit fearfully.
“Oh?” cut in Rena-chan before I could answer. “Hikari-chan, who’s this little cutie?”
“I’m Yuu!”
“You’re me?”
“You know who you sorta remind me of, Rena-chan...?” grumbled Yuu-chan. “You remind me of that guy!”
“I dunno who ‘that guy’ is, but I’ll take that as a compliment!”
“It isn’t! It’s the worst insult out there!” I didn’t really understand what they were talking about, but it seemed like Yuu-chan was lowering her walls just a little. Whoever “that guy” was, I assumed he had something to do with it. “Anyway, back to the study group—I wanna come too! I’ve gotta show Hikari-chan all my notes from the week she missed, after all!”
“The more, the merrier! You don’t mind, right, Hikari-chan?”
“Of course not! Would you like to invite any of your friends too?”
“Nah, it’s cool! I don’t really have many friends to begin with!”
“I don’t really think that’s something you should joke about...” Though of course, Yuu-chan and I couldn’t exactly talk when it came to not having many friends. I decided not to press the issue. Birds of a feather flock together, as they say.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
The day of our study group arrived. By pure coincidence, my brother had decided to have a study session with his friends at our house that same day, so we decided to meet up at a library near our school.
“Soooo hot...” I moaned.
“It iiis...” Yuu agreed.
“Yeah,” added Rena, “this is pretty rough...”
The midsummer heat was murderous both inside and out, and we barely lasted a minute before we were down for the count. And, as luck would have it, the library’s air conditioner was on the fritz, meaning that being in there was almost worse than being outside. The air felt stagnant in there—it was so hot and muggy, it felt like we were in a sauna. I was sort of worried it might damage the books.
“Maybe we should go somewhere else...?” I listlessly suggested. We weren’t going to get any studying done in that climate. The others agreed without hesitation. We left the library and headed towards the nearest of our houses, which happened to be mine. My brother had his own study group going on, but he never told me to stay away, and with only three of us, I figured we could just hole up in my room if we had to.
“Now that I think about it, Ayase-senpai’s probably at your house, huh?” mentioned Rena-chan offhandedly.
“You know my brother?”
“Yeah, we’ve met! Plus, I...”
“You...?”
She hesitated for a moment. “Nah, never mind, not important.” She chuckled, and it sort of felt like she was trying to brush the topic aside. Did something happen between her and my brother? At the very least, she didn’t seem reluctant to go to my house. “You’re okay with going over there, right, Yuu-chan?”
“This’ll be my first time at Hikari-chan’s house! I’m super duper curious!”
“I don’t think there’s anything at my house worth being curious about...” The most I could do in reply to Yuu-chan’s overly elevated expectations was let out a strained laugh.
Thankfully, the library wasn’t far from my house at all. It was easily within walking distance, and we had just enough time to make some pleasant, getting-to-know-each-other small talk before we arrived.
It was my own house, of course, but I knew that my brother’s friends would be in, so I couldn’t help but be a bit stealthy as I opened the door and peeked inside. I heard the other two quietly mumble “excuse us” as they stepped inside, so they must have been in the same mindset. You’d think we were trying to sneak up on someone to play a prank.
“Oh? Sounds like they’re really living it up in there,” commented Rena-chan. “And isn’t that voice...?” Yuu-chan, meanwhile, was quietly growling.
It was true—they were making an awful lot of noise in the living room. I wasn’t sure why Rena-chan and Yuu-chan seemed so interested, but the voices were definitely catching my attention as well. One of them was Tsumugi-chan, but the other...was the voice of a boy I didn’t know.
No...the voice of a boy I shouldn’t have known. I felt like I’d heard him somewhere before, though. Most likely I’d just heard him in passing at school, at some point or another...but somehow, strangely, I couldn’t get his voice out of my head. It was a mysterious feeling...like I’d heard him before, somewhere a long, long time ago. I felt a tightness in my chest, and the corners of my eyes were strangely warm.
I mustered up my nerve and looked back at the others. “Should we go see what’s happening in there?” They both nodded in agreement, and I reached for the doorknob. As I grabbed it, I noticed that my palm was oddly sweaty. Was I nervous? Nervous to meet that voice’s owner?
That voice... I really do know it from somewhere. But, no... It couldn’t be, right...?
My thought process was a chaotic, jumbled mess, but I took a long, deep breath and forced myself to calm down. Then I opened the door.
“I’m home, Kaito! What’s going on in—”
“BOOBS! ARE!!! FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!”
In that instant, the atmosphere in the room completely froze, and so did everyone in it. The three of us surely looked utterly horrified. I glanced around the room at everyone else, including the boy standing in the center who’d just shouted with all his might, and noticed they all had similar looks painted on their faces. His eyes were wide open, and he was staring straight at me. I was staring right back at him as well. I’d never seen him before...no, I had. I’d seen him somewhere. And I knew that it hadn’t just been in passing. I knew him. I just couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember him at all.
My chest hurt. I could barely breathe. I couldn’t tear my eyes off him. It was like I’d been compelled by a magical spell to be powerfully, irresistibly drawn to him. To that boy, whose name I didn’t even know. I was barely paying attention to the conversation, even as I participated in it—I was focused almost entirely on him. It felt like his name was on the tip of my tongue, but it just wouldn’t come out. I’d never felt anything like it—it was frustrating, heartbreaking, and infuriating all at once.
“And, umm, the boy who’s collapsed over there would be...?” I finally asked.
“Oh, right, that’s Kou,” replied my brother. “I’ve told you about him before, right?”
“Kou... O-Oh, yes, that’s right! Kou-san—I mean, Kou-senpai.”
Kou-san. The moment I said it, I was overwhelmed by the strangest sense of nostalgia. I knew him. I really did know him. The moment I said his name out loud, I was certain of it. I’d called him by that name before. But still, I just couldn’t remember. I didn’t know when or where I’d met him. My heart was pounding out of my chest; it felt like I’d end up grinning like an idiot the second I let my guard down, and my tear ducts felt like they were moments away from opening up the floodgates. But still, I couldn’t remember the first thing about him.
I knew that he was the mysterious something I’d forgotten about. I had no idea why I couldn’t remember him. Maybe I’d lost the memories in an accident, or maybe they’d somehow been taken from me. But I knew one thing for sure:
I loved him. No—I still love him. No matter how many memories I lose, I will never forget that one, simple fact. It’s like it’s engraved into my very soul. He might even be him, the boy from my dreams... But, no, that might be setting my expectations too high...
It might have been, and yet the pounding of my heart, the emotions welling up within me... Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to think of them as mine alone.
