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It's a strange feeling to lose your memories. Not every element that made up yourself has been stripped away, and the touches that can be triggered by reading past favourites and listening to music that spans history shouldn't be much different from the past ...... This is just speculation on my part. The fact that I, as an apparition, still have an obsession with a stable life is perhaps part of the evidence.
However, as I often lean against the bridge pillars attempt to analyse the experiences that create these traits under the elevated late at night(mostly in a vain), it is like grabbing some crystal balls in which present not the future, but the past, and they keep slipping from my grasp, shattering in the distance. The autumn night breeze is already enough to make one shiver, and I can recall Rilke's poem, which now sounds like irony: whoever is alone at this time will always be alone; whoever does not have a house at this time will not have to build one.
Houses are indeed indispensable in urban life. When I was not on assignment, I took the tram several times around the small town, trying to find some trace of it, my original place.
It was a rainy evening and the crowd moved along the carefully planned streets, naturally separating at each neighbourhood, the layers of umbrellas reinforcing the order built up by numbers, which always struck me, despite the fact that I was currently excluded. The traffic moved slowly, rolling over the wet column of light, the amber street lights reflecting like jewels, and a golden retriever pulled its owner along the street for a walk, bells and collar making a distinctive sound.It was soon covered by the shadow of the umbrellas, splashes of water falling on the fur. People rang the doorbell or pulled out their keys and pushed the door open, the lock holes creaking with friction. Housewives have already prepared dinner for their husbands and children. The smell of Japanese food is not obvious, but the layers are rich and the aftertaste is long. Now that the food is no different to me than the grass, it still evokes a feeling of nostalgia and sorrow. It's not just the tea with Madeleine cupcakes, but everything I touch - the dog, the tram clanking past, the sound of heels on the stone steps in front of the door - has some vague shadow hidden behind it, like objects that have fallen under the sofa and are covered in a layer of dusty. You have to wipe them clean to identify their shapes and features.
The whole city radiated a homogeneous familiarity to me, therefore that attempt came to nothing. My desire to be alive again is not quite strong, and the difference between the two would not be obvious if the conditions were as bad as they are now, but if I could regain my mind, realise my existence as a real person, not just a number or a name, and have everything work out the way it should, which is to return to a mansion with a yard and plants, in the middle of the crowd, like this, cook with the ingredients already prepared, and have all sorts of ways to spend time in your spare time, that would be satisfying. For now, the only way to get there is to continue with this "job".
On the face of it, everything involved in working as a Shinigami is full of turmoil and unexpected crises, but I manage it well most of the time, swiftly collecting the souls of the unpunished, without knowing the cause and effect, and passing through my hands for a short time without feeling any guilt or sympathy, more like tending to something inanimate.
One day, the task was particularly difficult and it was late at night when I finished. I was unhurt, but still felt very tired and almost fell when I walked across the slippery steps at the canal. I wondered if I could head somewhere around to stay temporarily, struggling with the timing, and it was impractical to expect that anyone would open the door to a salesman or any profession now.
But tonight my fate only swung between wandering around and having a quiet retreat - and as it turned out, it didn't choose either.
That part of town is considered a wealthy area, mostly detached. Outside the front gardens there were often signs pinned up with the owner's surname and sometimes occupation, so that visitors could identify them without interruption. I made a mental note of the signs as I walked around until I saw one that said "comic book artist". At least a reader's visit seemed more acceptable than showing up for money or insurance, and I had no choice now. When I rang the doorbell, a young, obviously disturbed voice came through: "Who is it?"
"Good evening, I'm ......" and to my surprise, he said "Come in" and opened the door straight away, more like a whisper to himself, as if he knew who was outside and had been waiting for HIM. I didn't observe his appearance, but walked straight in, taking care not to touch any of the decorations.
In my experience, people would have classified it as a straightforward prank, looked around for a few seconds, complained and closed the door. But he stood for a long minute, so I was able to sit on the sofa and incline my head. I began to take a closer look at the man. What attracted me more than the conspicuous and slightly dishevelled haircut and the various accessories was the expression on his face, which was a mixture of so many things. It was hard to say whether he was willing to convince himself that the sound he had just heard was an illusion. I interpreted it as a return to a nightmare that had haunted him for years, if he believed that someone was really standing outside the door, but if not, it suggested that everything was just like a long, dry day.
He returned to his table and continued working, I think on the next issue of his work. However, one could tell that my presence had interrupted his thoughts and dragged him into another cloud of obscure and opaque memories.
Despite no longer having a form and the other man's preoccupation, I still didn't dare to rummage through the papers spread out on the coffee table for more information. In general, they were rather disorganised, covering a variety of areas just seen from the cover: clothing subscription catalogues, design magazines, serious literature and a few crossed-out manuscript sheets that appeared to be definite waste. In my attempts to recall whether I have seen him since becoming an apparition, my impression is equally vague, perhaps the man who took pictures from the tram platform, or a name I have seen many times at the newsagents, but further knowledge at the level of "talented author" is obviously not helpful at this point. (I've been trying to get some information from the newspaper, but it's hard to imitate wind-blown forms by grabbing them with your hands ...... so that's not going to happen.)
It took me a while to realise why my curiosity had acted on him, deep in my brain, I felt he was just welcoming me to the place, not some reader or salesman. It's a unique feeling, realising that your presence was, and even still is, vividly perceived by some people, rather than being trapped in the limbo like your consciousness with nowhere to go.
The sound of the nib snapping gradually became more frequent and he stopped, aligned the manuscript paper and put it aside. Afterwards, he walked over to the huge triangular shelf at the side of the room and pulled out a sketchbook similar in style to those on the table, but the pages were a little yellowed and looked like they had never been looked at again since he had drawn them before, hence why they were in the deepest part of the shelf.
It had a label attached to the cover, presumably a number or a detail such as the time period in which it was created. The stickiness had long since disappeared, and with a gentle tear he dropped the incredibly fragile scrap of paper on the table, in front of me to be precise. It actually had two letters written on it, and happened to be my initials.
Combining this information, I began to feel that all my previous speculations had their validity... What was I to him before? An editor, or a friend? From my current perspective, I would never have been happy to have any relationship with someone who needed to throw his weight around like that, and was mostly compelled to do so at the time.
I watched as he spread out the record, the apparition having long since ceased to need to breathe, and there would be no risk in moving over to view it. There were scenes drawn on it that were clearly in the same hand as the manuscript on the table, some detailed items, but the faces of all of them were blurred and surrounded by some descriptive text, mostly abbreviated and strictly labeled with time and serial numbers and basically the same syntax, which I might have thought was something like an experimental report if it weren't for the fact that it was describing habits and events that took place in his house.
The artist flipped through it extremely slowly, lingering for a few minutes on each page, his fingertips brushing over the ink that had soaked into the paper, as if trying to re-establish the past circumstances from it would explain the conundrum that now lay before him. As his gaze moved, I gradually realised that the person writing this is not entirely objective, but more like a deliberate detachment caused by the uncertainty of which tone to choose. There was also something very odd about this book; certain pages were mutilated and, judging by the blackened edges, appeared to have been burned with precision, but if one were simply trying to erase information, this would be the absolute most troublesome way to do it.
Linking to the surrounding text and patterns, that was either something that would reveal the identity of the person being recorded or a clear sketch of an individual, something that also made it more difficult for me to make a judgement. The person he described lived the same regular life as I did and had more or less the same hobbies, but there seemed to be some secret that could not be discovered, and all traces relating to it were removed in the manner previously described, and I could not recall any clues from myself, so I had to leave it for the moment.
Under a certain passage about sleep I saw a small line written in red pen, "Do not trespass in my bedroom again." Almost immediately, I realised that it was my own handwriting.
That is, we used to live together. It's a bit funny to say that my first reaction wasn't to observe the man's expression, but to look around the entire house, from the beams and the huge floor-to-ceiling windows to the furniture that clearly didn't fit my aesthetic, and that, according to the description, I had mostly agreed to some kind of fetching activity out of the coercion of that secret and ended up inevitably involved in each other's lives.
I read on, struggling to substitute myself behind those two simple letters ...... It is said that Ernest Maher saw a poor schoolteacher at the end of the aisle on the bus, only to realise that he was just looking into the mirror the next second, and I looked at the statements - some even written by myself- only to feel that all the experiences, memories and thoughts were so far away from me, that those crystal balls were kept safe and sound with him and would turn to sand in my hands.
In the final pages, the narrative suddenly turned into a distinctly emotional flashback, as if it had been patched up later. He repeated a date six times, and the entry under each day ended abruptly, like a typewriter gone awry.
In this section, there were no more traces of fire - which is also suspicious, since the ending often seems to me the most likely place to reveal secrets. As the ambiguity that had flowed between the sentences disappeared, the words seem to be little more than an arrangement of overly stimulating words: "death", "secret"... On the penultimate page he wrote, "So he’s just using me to solve 'problems', who cares about such things." , and on the last page there was only a large dot of ink, as if it had been stained with water, perhaps tears, or perhaps the pen had simply been left hanging over the paper for too long.
At dawn, I left there. The fact that fate had brought me so close to discovering the truth of the matter and deliberately prevented it with inexplicable stains, scraps and gaps could only mean one thing: the TIME is yet to come.