Sleep was a distant, unattainable shore. I lay shipwrecked in my bed, the blankets pulled up to my chin, but the cold was inside me, a glacial creep that no amount of warmth could touch. The quiet of the empty house, which earlier had been a thin veneer of solitude, now pressed in with an suffocating weight. Every creak of the old floorboards, every distant sigh of the wind outside my window, seemed to amplify the roaring emptiness within me.
My eyes were fixed on the bland, familiar landscape of my bedroom ceiling. How many hours had I spent staring at its unchanging expanse? It was a canvas for my anxieties, my fears, the silent screams I couldn't voice. Tonight, it was particularly unforgiving, reflecting back the full measure of my wretchedness. Tears, no longer the violent torrent from the park, but a slow, ceaseless, hopeless seep, tracked silently from the corners of my eyes, down my temples, into the tangle of my still-damp hair. Each one was a small, salty admission of defeat.
"I want to die."
The words echoed in the hollow chambers of my mind, my own voice, raw and broken as I'd whispered them to Haru. The shame of that confession was a fresh burn. To lay bare such an ugly, desperate truth to someone… to him, who had only ever shown me quiet consideration. What must he think of me? A pathetic creature, not only deaf and strange, but also fundamentally broken, wanting to discard the very life he had, in his own quiet way, tried to preserve this afternoon.
The suicidal thoughts, now invited into the open, swarmed with a renewed, vicious intensity. They weren't new, these insidious whispers. They were old, familiar companions, shadows that had lurked at the periphery of my existence for years. But tonight, they were bolder, more insistent. It would be so easy, they hissed, to just… stop. To let go. No more pain. No more fear. No more being a burden, a target, a disappointment. The allure of oblivion was a seductive siren song in the profound darkness of my despair. Why keep fighting when every small step forward only led to a more brutal fall?
My gaze drifted to the foot of my bed, where Haru's navy blue school blazer lay, a darker rectangle in the dim light filtering from the streetlamp outside. A complex ache resonated in my chest. It was a symbol of his unexpected kindness, a warmth I hadn't deserved, a gesture I couldn't comprehend. But it was also a reminder of my deepest humiliation, of the state he had found me in. I reached out a trembling hand, my fingers brushing against the soft wool. It still held a faint, clean scent that was uniquely his. For a moment, I imagined him, his steady presence, his quiet eyes that didn't flinch away from my ugliness. And the tears flowed harder.
A memory surfaced, unbidden, a painful shard of light piercing the oppressive gloom.
The ceiling is different. This one has glow-in-the-dark stars, a whole galaxy scattered across it by loving hands. I'm small, maybe six or seven, tucked into a bed that feels impossibly safe and warm. My hair, then a lighter, sunnier pink, is spread out on a pillow embroidered with little rabbits. I'm smiling, a wide, gap-toothed grin, because Mama is leaning over me, her own smile soft and loving, her hand cool on my forehead. She's humming a lullaby, a gentle, wordless melody that I can feel vibrating through her touch, a comforting rumble in my small world. The sounds around me are softer then, less sharp, more easily deciphered. Papa's deeper laugh echoes from the living room downstairs, the clink of teacups, the murmur of the television. It's a tapestry of ordinary, beautiful sounds, woven into the fabric of a life that feels simple, whole, and endlessly bright. I wriggle my toes, happy and content, my small hand clutching a worn, plush bunny. There are no shadows under the bed, no monsters in the closet. Just the gentle glow of the plastic stars above, promising sweet dreams.
The warmth of the memory, so vivid, so painfully clear, receded like a dying ember, leaving behind an aching, desolate cold that was far worse than before. The contrast was a fresh stab to my already bleeding heart. Where had that little girl gone? The one who smiled so freely, who felt so safe, so loved, whose world hadn't yet been fractured by silence, by cruelty, by the insidious poison of self-hatred? When had the stars on her ceiling stopped glowing?
I was still staring at my own blank, indifferent ceiling, the present crashing back with brutal force. The tears were a torrent now, a quiet, desperate deluge. That little girl in the memory was a ghost, a stranger from a forgotten lifetime. What was left was this hollow shell, this repository of pain. The journey from that warm, star-dusted room to this cold, dark bed had been a relentless stripping away of everything good and bright.
My hand, the one that wasn't clutching a fistful of my blanket, strayed to my own throat, a strange, detached curiosity in the gesture. It would be so easy to make the pain stop. So easy. The thought wasn't frantic anymore; it was quiet, almost reasonable, a logical conclusion to an unbearable equation.
The room felt colder suddenly. The shadows in the corners seemed to deepen, to stretch like grasping fingers. A faint, almost inaudible whisper, like dry leaves skittering across pavement, seemed to brush past my ear, though the window was closed. I squeezed my eyes shut, a fresh wave of fear – different from the fear of Emi, this was older, more primal – washing over me. Was I truly alone in this room? Or were the dark thoughts I harbored drawing other, unseen darknesses towards me?
I rolled over, my back to the room, facing the cold, indifferent wall, and pulled Haru's blazer from the foot of the bed, clutching it to my chest like a talisman. It was just a piece of clothing, but it was the only tangible thing I had that connected me to a moment, however brief, where someone hadn't recoiled from my brokenness. I buried my face in its soft wool, inhaling that faint, clean scent, and cried until there were no tears left, only the dry, shuddering gasps of a body and soul pushed beyond their limits.
The night stretched on, an eternity of staring into the darkness, the ghost of a lost smile haunting my every waking, miserable thought. And the ceiling watched, silent and unmoved.