Chapter 6 – A Week Without You

A mix of apathy and confusion plagued Kyou in the following hours. He silently waited for some kind of explanation, and as soon as the homeroom teacher entered the room, it was given. Adjusting his glasses, the usually strict teacher with a strong voice spoke in a tone that was hard to hear: “We are sorry to inform you that Usami Ai suffered an aneurysm this past night. We were told that she didn’t suffer and died in peace. Due to this, today we will have only half the lessons. Everyone is supposed to go home at noon. I know it is hard, but we need to do some tasks for today. Open your books to page 34.”

All the students were shocked, and during the lessons, many of them checked on Kyou from time to time, who was still processing the information.

Aneurysm? Genetic development? Previous concussion on the skull? Did she know about it?

“Life is such a dark mess right now that if I decided to look away from it, I feel like I would be avoiding looking at the whole world.” Her words popped up in his mind like a dark emissary. She probably knew. Then why didn’t she have surgery? Ah, of course. Many aneurysm surgeries have a great chance of killing the patient, and since no one knows when or if the aneurysm is going to burst, leaving it there could be considered a valid option.

Kyou was drifting, lost in the ocean of his feelings. He would be happy to have peace at school, happy that he wouldn’t have to go to any festival, happy to be left alone, so why was he so troubled? Being unable to understand himself made him so restless that even Chopin was not able to bring him any kind of peace on his way home. Giving up on listening to music, he noticed that the news was buzzing with the death of the Prime Minister of Japan in a traffic accident around noon in Tokyo. Reporters were pointing out inconsistencies in the police reports, raising doubts that this could be a cover-up for something more sinister. But that didn’t change his life at all. Another death was getting his full attention at that moment.

Unable to arrive at a conclusion about his troubled feelings, he decided to accept them as the shock of losing a classmate and thought that it probably would be solved by a few days of good sleep. After eating an early dinner, sleep was exactly what he decided to do. But before he did that, his mother got home and called him.

“Kyou… how are you?”

Kyou looked at his mother, confused. He was completely healthy and safe; what could she be worried about?

“I’m good,” he said, his voice lifeless.

His mother just looked at him, her eyes holding a deep sadness in her heart. She had gotten the message from the school about what happened, but she didn’t know how to deal with this situation. He didn’t realize it, she thought. Not seeing the point in pressing something the person involved hadn’t noticed himself, she restrained herself to say only what was expected, “Tomorrow we will go to Ai-chan’s funeral at night. Be sure to come straight home from school tomorrow.”

Funeral. The word echoed inside his mind as a noun without meaning. He had no idea what that would look like. But obedience was the way to go here.

“Understood. Anything else?”

Harumi’s eyes narrowed in subtle pain hearing this, but with a soft voice, she replied, “No. You can rest now, Kyou.”

With a nod, the boy excused himself and went to bed early. The house was silent, the bed was comfortable, the room was dark, but he was having trouble sleeping. Thinking that maybe he was not exhausted enough, he decided to turn on his computer and waste some time. Upon starting it, he saw the icon of Tower of Josehan, an online game that Ai had gotten him a beta key for so they could play together. She had even come to his room to download it and left a Full-Dive VR headset at his home as well. Of course, he had never touched any of it. And as alluring as playing a game would be right now, his stomach repulsed the idea of touching it. In fact, after seeing the icon, he decided to turn his computer off and go back to bed. He would eventually sleep, he thought. And after one hour, he finally did.

Before Saturday classes, the mood was still somber in his classroom, but Kyou didn’t pay too much attention to it or to anything that happened around him. From time to time, some students would talk about another incident.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Hey, did you hear about the Tokyo sniper?”

“Yeah, I saw it on TV this morning. Seems like a foreign businessman got killed last night by a sniper or something. Crazy stuff.”

But Kyou was not interested. He just wanted the day to end, but something else was on the schedule today.

The funeral was simple, with a few people from school and even fewer family members. Ai’s mother seemed to be the only relative present the whole time. Her sad expression was permeated with regret and relief. Nonetheless, she was silently crying most of the time.

Kyou just followed his mother, noticing that Mia was also there, crying on her own in a corner of the funeral chamber, but they didn’t even greet each other. Mother and son paid their respects, offered their sympathies to Ai’s mother, and went back home. Kyou didn’t have a clear memory of the event as soon as he sat down in his mother’s car.

The next morning, Sunday news was filled with the mysterious deaths of five teenagers the previous night while playing a Full-Dive VR game, which shocked the game industry and halted the development of the game. Apparently, hundreds of people were playing the game at the time, and only five suffered this fatality. The police were investigating the circumstances, but nothing conclusive had been found yet. Kyou decided to pay a little attention and noticed that the name of the game was hidden, but the chances that it was Tower of Josehan were pretty high. Well, not that that mattered anyway.

When he arrived at school on Monday, another piece of gossip reached Kyou's ears. “Hey, did you hear it? It seems that Mia is absent today because she was taken by the police last night.”

“What? Police? Did she commit a crime or something?”

“It seems she was involved with some bad people, but I don’t know the details. Maybe drugs or something?”

“Woah, scary!”

What was she doing in a club? Well, not that I have anything to do with it anyway, he thought, as he started to go back to his world, waiting for the hours to pass so he could go home.

While walking through the school halls that same day, Kyou overheard an argument between two male students.

“Takehiro, you need to fight in the competition! I know you can do it!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I hurt my ankle; I’m still healing.”

“It has been two months already! You ARE healed! Come on, man! You fought so hard for this! Isn’t Shizuka going to be disappointed?”

“Shut up, man! Leave me alone!” Takehiro walked away.

“Hey, Takehiro! Come back here!”

The boys moved away, and Kyou couldn't care less about it. So, he went back home to end that Monday as fast as possible.

Returning from school the next day, Kyou found a dead black cat on the side of the road. There was still blood on the ground, and Kyou lamented that the cat seemed to be very young with a lush pelt. Another life lost too early, he thought, and then continued his way home.

On Wednesday, another piece of gossip was circulating among the students.

“Hey, hey! Did you hear about the first-year that was hospitalized? I heard he was being bullied by some second-years.”

“Ah, those guys, right? I hope the police get involved and they get what they deserve.”

“Yeah, but it’s a shame that guy had to go through this. I heard he was hospitalized for that.”

“Wuah, sounds really bad.”

Kyou remembered that time when Ai confronted the bullies and wondered if this would still have happened if she were still alive, but it didn’t matter now that she was gone.

While going back home on the same day, Kyou noticed a young foreign boy crying in the middle of the street. Everyone else was ignoring him, and since Kyou was not a police officer, he decided to do the same.

And then Friday came. When classes ended, everyone took their stuff and went home, but Kyou kept sitting in his chair. At this point, seven days without her persistent smile had passed. Seven days without her calling his name with some kind of stupid demand to disturb his peace. Peace. What he had right now was supposed to be “peace,” so why wasn’t he happy? Why had every day felt like a sluggish walk through a putrid swamp of mud? Why did it disturb him every time he noticed that Ai should be coming to talk to him, but she wasn’t anymore, that he did his best to ignore it? Why did it seem like she left a hole inside his chest? What is going on here? What--? It was then that he noticed he was crying. Alone in the classroom, with only the sunset as his witness, Amatsuki Kyou was crying for the first time he could remember in a long time.

“Why am I--? Ah, I see.” He closed his eyes, putting his hand over his chest in a tender movement.

“I loved her.”

Saying these words opened a dam of feelings that filled his soul completely in a myriad of emotions. First, it was surprise. Second, it was joy. Third, it was self-disappointment. Fourth, it was despair. He, the man that could defeat the world if he wanted, was faced with the immutable truth of death. He, who was supposed to never fail in anything he put his mind to, had lost his only chance to tell his first loved one how he felt. And to what? To keep living as a cog in a corporate machine-based society?

No, screw this! Kyou pulled out his tablet and started doing lots of research and fast-reading many articles regarding quantum science achievements until he arrived at a conclusion.

“It will take another 50 years before the technology to allow time travel will become possible. There is no chance in hell I will be waiting that long.”

But if science didn’t have the answer, what could?

“What if I approached this problem thinking outside of the box? What is ‘outside of the box’?”

After a few seconds, he said with a hopeful tone.

“This is it.”