The click of my front door latching shut was a small, decisive sound in the sudden, enveloping silence of the empty house. For a moment, I just stood there, leaning against the solid wood, the borrowed weight of Haru's school blazer a strange comfort around my shoulders. Outside, the ordinary sounds of a Monday afternoon were muted, distant, belonging to a world I no longer felt a part of. Inside, the quiet was a different beast – familiar, yet today it pressed in, amplifying the frantic, exhausted thrumming in my own head.
My mother wouldn't be home for hours. The knowledge was a double-edged sword: relief at not having to immediately face her questions, her inevitable concern that would feel like another layer of scrutiny; and a profound, aching loneliness, the kind that settles deep in your bones when you're a wreck and there's no one to witness it but the four walls of your own misery.
Mechanically, my body began to move, propelled by a dull, instinctual need for basic comfort, for the illusion of cleansing. I peeled off Haru's blazer, handling it with a strange sort of reverence. It was still faintly warm, carrying his unobtrusive scent of clean air and old paper. I folded it carefully, almost compulsively, smoothing out the wrinkles with trembling fingers before placing it on the small table in the entryway, a stark navy blue against the pale wood. A piece of him, left behind in my disaster.
The journey upstairs to the bathroom felt like climbing a mountain. Each step was heavy, my knees protesting with sharp stings from the scrapes beneath my torn, muddy tights. In the stark light of the bathroom mirror, my reflection was a cruel shock. A stranger stared back: a wild-eyed, mud-streaked creature with tangled, leaf-strewn pink hair and the puffy, red-rimmed eyes of someone who had cried themselves empty. Dirt smudged my cheeks, my chin. My uniform was a disaster, a testament to Emi and Rika's casual brutality. A fresh wave of shame washed over me. This was what I had become. This was what they had made me.
The shower was a long, almost ritualistic process. Hot water sluiced over me, washing away the grime, the cold dampness of the park, the physical remnants of the attack. I watched the muddy water swirl down the drain, a dark vortex carrying away the dirt, but the filth I felt was deeper, lodged in my soul, and no amount of soap could touch it. My scraped knees and palms stung under the spray, small, sharp pains that were almost a relief, a distraction from the larger, formless agony within.
Afterwards, wrapped in the largest, softest towel I owned, I stood in my bedroom, the silence amplifying the chaotic replay of the day's events in my mind. Emi's sneering face, Rika's shove, the horrifying scatter of my bento and books, the cold mud, the laughter. And then, Haru. His quiet appearance, his patient kneeling, the offer of his handkerchief, his blazer, his steadying hand. His clear, signed word: SAFE.
Why? The question pounded in my head. Why had he bothered? Why had he run after me? Why hadn't he just walked away, disgusted or indifferent, like everyone else always did? His kindness was a confusing, unsettling warmth in the vast, cold landscape of my despair. It didn't make sense. People weren't like that. Not to me.
My gaze fell on my school bag, discarded in a heap by my desk. It was damp, smeared with mud. With a surge of renewed anxiety, I knelt and hesitantly unzipped it. The few textbooks I'd managed to salvage were warped, their pages crinkled and damp at the edges. Ruined. Another small, concrete symbol of the day's destruction.
But my notebooks… My heart clenched. The festival notebook, with my hesitant, flowing line – the one Haru had understood, the one Aya had been excited about – that was gone, left behind in the mud. And my private journal, the repository of my most secret thoughts, my anxieties, my unspoken griefs, the clumsy sketch of Haru himself… The thought of Emi, or anyone, finding it, reading it, was a fresh torment. Haru had signed SAFE. Did that mean he had them? Would he retrieve them? Could I even bear for him to see the contents of my private world, even if his intentions were kind? The uncertainty was a fresh spike of pain.
I changed into an old, oversized sweater and soft leggings, clothes that offered a sense of shapeless comfort, of being hidden. Haru's blazer still lay folded neatly on the table downstairs. I found myself drawn to it. I picked it up, its wool surprisingly soft, and brought it upstairs, laying it on the foot of my bed. A tangible link to the only person who hadn't looked at me today with contempt or amusement.
Exhaustion, profound and bone-deep, finally began to claim me. I crawled under the covers of my bed, though it was only late afternoon. The world outside my window was still bright, but my room felt dim, a cave of sorrow. I curled into a tight ball, pulling my blankets close, but the chill I felt was internal.
Sleep wouldn't come. Instead, images flashed behind my closed eyelids: Emi's face, twisted with malice; the shock of Rika's shove; the cold, unforgiving ground. And then, Haru's quiet, steady gaze; his gentle hands cleaning mine; his blazer settling warm around my shoulders. My own voice, raw and broken, whispering, "I want to die." The shame of those words, spoken aloud, to him, burned like acid.
What would happen tomorrow? The thought of school, of facing Emi and Rika again, of the festival group, of the pitying or curious stares, was a suffocating wave of dread. How could I go back? How could I ever feel safe again?
A faint shimmer, like heat haze but translucent and cool, danced for a moment in the dim corner of my room, near a vase of long-dead, dried flowers I hadn't had the energy to throw out. It coalesced, just for an instant, into a shape vaguely reminiscent of a pale, folded wing before vanishing. I blinked, my heart stuttering. Was it my exhaustion? My overwrought mind? Or was it that other thing, that subtle, unsettling magic that seemed to cling to the edges of my perception, more noticeable now in my raw, heightened state? If it was real, was it another facet of my brokenness, another thing that made me strange, a target?
I squeezed my eyes shut, burying my face in my pillow. I didn't want to see. I didn't want to know. I just wanted the pain to stop. I wanted the world to go away.
Haru's blazer lay at the foot of my bed, a silent, navy blue promise of… something. Protection? Understanding? I didn't know. But as the hours crawled by in the quiet, empty house, it was the only anchor in the vast, terrifying ocean of my despair. And I clung to the memory of his unwavering presence, a single, flickering point of light in an overwhelming darkness.