From ANOTHER STORY, by yasu
Klack...klack...klack...
Perhaps because it was passing through a tunnel, the sound of the train moving surrounded her. At the moment, Nozomi was feeling very gloomy. Like a child who doesn't like something, she turned her head back toward the inside of the train again and again, but slowly turned her face back to the window.
The window became a mirror. Reflected there, she could see her own face. A woman who was tired, a face that had lost all of its spark.
"Today, I'll die..." Nozomi muttered to herself. "My husband..."
While the reflection of herself in the window looked so tired, Nozomi was looking back on the last 28 years of her life. When she was in elementary school, her father was transferred a lot because of his work, so she had to change schools several times. Because of that, she did not make very many friends. Then, in the winter of her second year of high school, her parents died in a car accident. She wasn't able to take over the care of her parents' home, but it wasn't because her relatives were well-off to do so, either.
"It's okay, Nozomi-chan, it's just you..." They told her this, but the reality of it was that to be alone in this family was no fun, and it was quickly understood that she was sensitive to the smallest things, and was hurt easily. So, naturally, Nozomi learned to hide her feelings. She became more concerned with how she appeared to those around her than she did about herself.
Also, since she wasn't very good at connecting with others, Nozomi became an extremely introverted person.
Though she was presented with many problems, she made her way through a junior college. Of course, she had a part-time job to pay off her educational expenses. It wasn't that she had to do it, she just thought that working was natural for a student to do. After graduation, she succeeded in finding a job, and she began her life on her own. It wasn't skilled work at all, but she was just happy in the same way that people are when they find somewhere to belong.
Though her new life had some sorrows, there were some little bits of happiness, too. To Nozomi, though, there was something bad about continuing to live her life this way forever.
And then, yesterday...
She was fired from her job of eight years due to company restructuring.
"We want you to leave the company in three months."
She intended to do her best. She had her objections to the decision, naturally, but she also understood that there was nothing she could do about it. However, she would have been fine, if that was all that had befallen her. It might have been not so good for her to be able to look inside of herself like this, but she was able to.
Though it was sad, she had become used to doing such things.
However, to Nozomi's already wounded heart, there was one more thing that would serve as the final blow.
Nozomi, bearing the shock of the sudden restructuring, after work, she set herself on going to his house. Surely, if they met for even a second, she would be overjoyed.
"Tomorrow's his birthday, and so we'll spend the night together, and I'll give him more than twelve hours of celebration no one else can give."
If I just have him...then I can be saved, Nozomi thought.
On the way home, she bought two cakes, and made her way to his apartment. Climbing up the stairs, and knocked on the door of the innermost room of the second floor. There was no answer. It looked as if he had yet to have come home. Since there was nothing she could do, she waited in front of the door, underneath the cold sky. As soon as she started wishing that she could see him right away, she felt a strange chill.
She guessed she had been there for about an hour. From the bottom of the stairs, she could hear the sound of familiar footsteps. It's him!
"Ah! Yasu-kun....nnnnnn..."
She wanted to run up to him, but her body wouldn't move. There, in the shadows, he wasn't alone. He was in the company of a woman that Nozomi didn't know. At first, her face registered an expression of surprise, but suddenly she became very serious.
"Just what do you think you're doing?"
"Oh, since it's Yasu-kun's birthday tomorrow..."
"Did he promise to meet with you?"
"Ah...no, it's wasn't arranged or anything...I just had something I wanted to talk with him about..."
He looked a little disgusted, and said, "Aah, don't get so worked up about it, that's just how you put it, anyway. You say you worship me, but I don't belong to you, you know, and what happens when we date each other again? What a strange misunderstanding."
As for the woman, just standing there saying nothing, Nozomi looked her up and down.
Nozomi was very sad.
"Hey, hey, do you always make that face? It's no good for you. You're really one of those girls who gets irritated all the time, aren't you."
"......"
"If you don't say anything, then why are you here? It's cold, I wanna go inside."
It was a cruel way to cut her off. No, looking back on it, could it be that she wasn't his girlfriend anymore? Or was it just Nozomi's simple way of thinking? But, that couldn't be right. Surely, it can't be right that they're "dating". But...
Slam.
The door closed in front of the dazed Nozomi. As he disappeared into the room, the shadows within moved before Nozomi's eyes as if they were in slow-motion. As if on strings, she left. So many things she could have done whirled about in her head, but she couldn't put them in any kind of order. When she noticed enough to wonder how far she had run, she came to a nearby train station. In the depths of her heart, she supposed, she thought that even if it was just a little bit, she wanted to go to somewhere far away.
"This train that's here right now, since I don't care where I end up, where's the farthest that it goes?"
After giving her a dubious look, the station worker encouraged her to go down by the tracks, seeing that she appeared to just be someone with some troubles in her life. Without knowing where she wanted to go, Nozomi randomly chose a seat, bought a ticket, and just like that, boarded the all-night train. The train went on and on. It arrived at its last stop. Then, of course, the lines all changed to local ones.
To say that only the local people used these lines, well, the strange thing about it was that other than those in charge standing in front of the doors, no one got on. After the next station, Nozomi was the only person riding the train. She felt sleepy, listening to the sound of the rails. In the middle of this aimless journey, looking back on her life, she began to think that there was no one in the world who could possibly feel that she was important at all.
Nozomi tried thinking it through. If, for some reason, I weren't in this world anymore, would there be anyone who would be saddened by it?
...No one came to mind.
Nothing at all came to mind.
No matter what I thought of, they were all a bust.
Should I just kill myself?
However, I got to thinking, if someone forgot about me after I had died, everyone would think that person was absolutely horrible.
"So, I'll kill myself today, on his birthday. Even on the winds of gossip, it was fine with her, for if the news of her killing herself on his birthday reached him, even if everyone else forgot about me, every time his birthday came around, he'd remember I was here..."
It's a malicious decision. Even I think so. Dark and narrow-minded as it may be, compared to the cruelty with which he cut me off, this is just a meager little revenge, after all...
So, as far as I'm concerned...this is my final day...
"Today, I'll die..." Nozomi muttered once to herself.
Gazing at herself in the dark glass, her reflection looking vacantly back at her, suddenly a dazzling light came across Nozomi's eyes. It looked as if the train had finally come out of the long, long, dark tunnel. The world outside had become brighter, and the sun itself was fairly high in the sky.
"So bright..." Nozomi shielded her eyes with her left hand. And so, that's how more than half of Nozomi's last day on Earth passed.
"Where in the world am I?"
Nozomi looked outside. There were many things that seemed quite contrary—the space between buildings was quite wide, and you could see a long way. It looked like she was really out in the countryside.
Thinking for a while, she had feelings of déjà vu as she gazed at the unfolding scenery out the window.
"Oh? I think I might have been here before...am I hallucinating?"
She tried to remember.
It could have been somewhere she had been as a child. Since she had moved around so much as a child, her memories had become muddled. She had no confidence. But, Nozomi tried getting off at the next station.
It was a small station, with no one inside.
Though there was no one to check tickets, there were a few small stores around. To her right, she could see a small convenience store. Certainly, that convenience store was the first thing she could see, but looking at the building itself, she remembered something. On the lower floor, wasn't there some kind old woman selling sweets? The neighborhood kids called it "The Red Roof".
"Surely, I've been here before." Her memories returning little by little, Nozomi decided to take a walk around the city. Of course, there were some things she didn't remember at all. But, there were the places, the scenery, the signs, that she did remember, so much she felt that she knew them. Walking slowly, Nozomi spoke to herself.
"Ah, surely, before..."
Without thinking, she took off in a little run.
Climbing up a hill, there was an elementary school there.
"It's still here..."
It seemed that no one had cared for it in some time, and it had become an abandoned lot. Little by little, Nozomi was able to remember. It was a school for all grades, but only about 25 people attended. It was a very small school. She had, at one time, attended classes here. From first to sixth grade, she attended classes in the same classroom, with the same people; that was the kind of school it was. Nozomi climbed over the rope lying in the dust, blocking off the grounds.
When she was a child, she thought that they looked so vast, but now that she looked at them, they were unexpectedly small. It was a flat-roofed, wooden school building. Next to the large flower garden in the corner, there stood a small building.
"I've missed this place!", Nozomi said, running to the front of the small building. When she put her hand on the doorknob, the lock opened on its own. Opening the door just a crack, Nozomi peeked inside.
The only adult to stand in here, finally she walked into an entranceway with a dirt floor. Stepping inside, immediately in front of her was a vacant room, about eight tatami square. To her left, there was a small kitchen. Strangely, it wasn't very dusty at all. Crouching down, she went further inside.
"What? Could it be..."
Nozomi spoke in an amazed tone, and without thinking, stepped inside the room, her shoes still on and covered with dust. The eight-tatami space looked to be something of a storage closet, the last half of the room or so being so dusty that she couldn't go in. There sat many books and paintings, and stuffed animals were neatly arranged there, sitting on a shelf.
"My little secret room...it hasn't changed at all...it's just like it was, back then..."
Nozomi, touched, looked all around her. Her favorite stuffed animals. The stories that she wrote. The paintings that she had painted...everything, Nozomi's most prized possessions.
"But, why...?"
Nozomi picked up some of the books, and looked through them. The books, she had written them all by hand. These were the stories that, in elementary school, Nozomi always wanted to write. She tried reading a number of them. Surely, there were some that were very childish, but, reading them now, she was surprised at how well she wrote her stories: all of them, stories she had since forgotten in her faraway memories.
"Now that I think of it, I wanted to be a fairy-tale writer, back then. With my daily life being so draining, I had forgotten I even had that dream at all."
Since then, she hadn't seen herself the way that she was now, at all. She had failed at following her dreams, the glimmering dreams of her past.
Nozomi mumbled to herself. "When did I turn out the way I am now, anyway? Why is it that I can't laugh from the heart anymore?" Suddenly looking back in the corner, one book caught her eye.
"Oh? What could this be?"
Though it was written by hand, it was done so more neatly. It was a book on the larger side, with an old brown cover. She picked it up. The title was "Another Story".
"Another Story...?" Nozomi tilted her head. "Is this a book that I wrote? It's quite an elegant little book, though..."
She had the feeling that she had written this book, but she also felt as if she may not have. She tried flipping through the pages.
The story of a world long, long ago, or perhaps far into the future, Gaia...
"What is this? But...that's my handwriting..."
Surrounded by a strange feeling, as if to confirm something for herself, she slowly opened the old front cover.
[The Beginning Before The Beginning]
The story of a world long, long ago, or perhaps far into the future, Gaia...
Once, Gaia was a vast, beautiful world, blessed with abundantly fresh water. Then, the gods made humans out of that water and Gaia's soil. The gods also passed onto the humans five music boxes. . Contained in each of the separate boxes was "love", "dreams", "wisdom", "courage", and "hope". With "love" came the power to bring new life; with "dream", the power to imagine; with "wisdom", the power to make things of the imagination reality; with "courage", the power to face terrible problems; and with "hope", the power to create the future.
Thus, human society grew larger and larger.
It was if you could believe that peace could last forever.
But, the humans were foolish.
At that time, the humans became aware that the gods possessed one more music box. Thinking that surely the melody contained in that box would be a wonderful one, they deceived the gods, and obtained the sixth box. Everyone had their own expectations for it.
"What do you suppose they've brought to us this time?"
However, the melodies contained in that box were ones of "jealousy", "resentment", "disease", "death", "thievery", "betrayal", "regret", "anxiety", "strife", "murderous intent", "discontent", "poverty"...
These sufferings that had never existed in the world of humans before, were released upon them. The people started meeting one another in hatred, and seeking to possess even more territory than they had before, met again and again just to kill one another.
The gods, while lamenting the foolish behavior of the humans, became very angry. Before long, they tore the lands of Gaia apart, and transformed the seas to sulfuric acid. Then, they scattered the melodies of "love", "dreams", "wisdom", "courage", and "hope" all throughout the land, hiding them away.
Thus, the world of Gaia fell into an era of total darkness: "love", "dreams", "wisdom", "courage", and "hope" being completely lost to them.