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The Ouma Kokichi who came back from the forest is not the Ouma Kokichi who entered it a week before.
They look the same: the same slight, short build that all the village grannies insist he would grow out of if he just ate another bowl of soup; the same unruly hair, the unique color that is the envy of every girl in class who read the magazines from the big city; the same long, elegant fingers that are just as likely to wrap around a pen as they would around a chopping knife.
They talk the same, too: the same melodious voice that always sounds on a verge of laughter; the same mocking, condescending tone that he uses for just about anyone. They go on the same rants, the ones about crime and punishment and justice, about the stupid characters making stupid choices in the stupid cop procedurals they watch together.
But there are differences, too. Hard to notice at first, and then impossible to miss when Shuuichi does. He no longer talks about what they would do when they graduate high school. The Ouma of Before would go on and on about the apartment they would share (of which he would get the bigger room, of course, because he has a much bigger wardrobe); about the classes they would have together in college (he would drag Shuuichi to every philosophy course they could fit, because he insists that if Shuuichi is determined to go into criminology, he’s at least going to be one of the good ones); about working part-time jobs and going out to bars and visiting shrines on the weekends, every beat of the college life they have seen in shows and movies. But the Ouma of Now barely mentions university, and he never talks about the city, except to sneer at Akamatsu when she comes back from her frequent metropolitan trips for the orchestra.
The Ouma of Before lied a lot: small lies, kind lies, easy to dismiss lies. Adults would scold him for it frequently, and the other kids in class found it off-putting, preferring to avoid him instead of playing his games. For Shuuichi, Ouma’s lies are an intrinsic part of him: they are what made him interesting, challenging. He likes trying to figure them out, separating truth from lie, importance from nonsensical. But the Ouma of Now lies constantly: about the weather, about homework, about himself. It’s no longer a fun maze, Shuuichi walking between his words, trying to figure his way out. If everything is a lie, what is there for Shuuichi to discover? There is a finality to Ouma now that has never been there before.
But the crucial, most damning clue is this:
A week after he came back from the forest, Shuuichi is finally able to visit him in the hospital, after the authorities and the medical staff finally pronounced him ready to see visitors. As he walks through the door, Ouma’s face lit up with a wide, familiar grin, and Shuuichi almost lets himself relax, his mind calming at the sight of a known face. And then Ouma calls out to him,
“Shuuichi-chan!”
And his world tilts on its axis.
Later, when he tries to explain it to Akamatsu, she gets a knowing glint in her eyes. For a moment, he thinks she understands this feeling of wrongness, the shadow of a truth too horrible to complement looming above them. But then she says: “It makes sense.”
“It does?”
“Sometimes, when people go through a… challenging time, they might come to some new understandings about themselves, you know?”
“What?”
“I know he doesn’t remember what happened that week, but it must have been scary, right? And maybe it made him think about some things… Like what’s important, and what isn’t.” She gives him an impish grin. “Or maybe, who is important.”
Shuuichi looks at her with a blank look. “Akamatsu-san, what are you talking about?”
She huffs, impatient. “All I’m saying is that Ouma-kun going from Saihara-chan to Shuuichi-chan doesn’t have to be a big deal, unless you think it’s a big deal, in which case you should talk to Ouma-kun about it, because it might be a big deal for him too!”
“You understand that none of that made any sense,” Shuuichi says.
“Of course it does. To anyone that isn’t you, that is,” she pats him on the back in consolation. “You’ll figure it out, Saihara-kun. You always do.”
Over the next few weeks, as he notices more and more aberrations, as he collects every Shuuichi-chan, every lie he can catch, he thinks about her words. He thinks about Akamatsu’s faith in him, unwavering since childhood. Her sympathy towards Ouma, who never liked her but tolerated her existence in his life for Shuuichi’s sake. He rolls around her words in his head, and they still don’t make any sense except for the one part that does.
You should talk to Ouma-kun about it.
He skims through psychology books. He looks up Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and then Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He reads interviews with people who have faced long-term isolation, people lost in forests and mountains and at sea, their experiences and recovery. On paper, it follows sound logic: Ouma Kokichi went into the forest, and then disappeared for a week. A classic, by the book traumatic event. And when he came out, his experience made him change his behavior, his brain reacting to whatever he went through during that time.
It’s logical, it’s sensible. And it feels so wrong that Shuuichi wants to dismiss it whole cloth, a solution that doesn’t even fit the shape of the mystery.
You should talk to Ouma-kun about it.
He still spends time with the Ouma of Now. They go to the movies and he listens as this Ouma dismantles the characterization and the plot, as he complains about the stale popcorn and the ever-present odour of urine in the theatre room. They work on homework together, Ouma helping Shuuichi with literature and Shuuichi helping him catch up in maths, the two of them lying on Shuuichi’s bed together, their bodies angled towards each other and their heads bent together in concentration. They ride their bikes to the river, sometimes joined by other kids from their class but often just the two of them, Ouma insisting that this time he’s really going to fish and then, inevitably, he always falls asleep in a sunny patch on the grass.
They talk, but they don’t talk. Shuuichi remembers summer nights spent lying on the ground under the stars, trading stories, confessions, fears. Even the Ouma of Before, with his lies and tall tales, was laid bare before him then, a strange compulsion for honesty gripping them both. Shuuichi knew Ouma’s loneliness, his anger for his absent parents, his disgust at the villagers’ complacency and stagnation.
Now, Shuuichi never even asks him about the week he spent lost in the woods. He doesn’t tell Ouma about a week spent in tense silences, the adults tip-toeing around him, no one wanting to say what everyone was thinking about the chances of one teenage boy lost in the woods during a summer storm. He doesn’t tell him about sneaking out to search on his own, not even telling Akamatsu because he knew she would insist on accompanying him and he can accept endangering himself but never her. He doesn’t tell him about what he found.
You should talk to Ouma-kun about it.
The Ouma of Now knows that Shuuichi is keeping something from him. The Ouma of Before would have known as well, but he would have needled Shuuichi about it until he broke, whining and crying about how best friends don’t keep secrets from each other, Saihara-chan, are you finally dumping me for Akamatsu? Shuuichi would have been blushing too hard to even think about lying, and the whole truth would have come tumbling out of him, freely available for Ouma to dissect.
The Ouma of Now doesn’t push, and he doesn’t pout. Instead, his grins go sharper, his eyes colder. There is an air to him of smug superiority, as if Shuuichi lost one of his games that he didn’t even know they were playing. Shuuichi keeping a secret – game over. One hit K.O.
You should talk to Ouma-kun about it.
So it’s half Akamatsu’s advice, and half Shuuichi’s need to knock Ouma of Now’s smug smirk off his face that leads to this moment:
They’re in their empty classroom. Shuuichi is cleaning the blackboard, while Ouma of Now is pretending to stack away the chairs, but really he is just messing around with the class layout. And Saihara asks: “You really aren’t very good at being Ouma-kun, are you?”
The Ouma of Now stills, and slowly turns around to face him. “Shuuichi-chan?”
“Ouma-kun never calls anyone by their first name,” Shuuichi says. “He thinks it helps him keep more distance from other people. Never have to get close enough to get hurt.”
The Ouma of Now - “Ouma,” maybe - snorts. “Didn’t really work out for him, did it?” he muses. “You know, I did notice it in his memories. But you know what else, Shuuichi-chan? This is still what he called you in his mind.”
Shuuichi’s breath catches in his chest. It’s part the rush of exhilaration at a confirmation of his deduction, and part an outpouring of grief so strong it feels like it could send him to his knees. He grabs at a chair to help him keep upright, but he can’t falter now. He has to know. “What did you do to him?”
“Hmm… Do you think I killed him, Shuuichi-chan?” “Ouma” taps his lips in thought. “Maybe I did. Maybe I saw him wandering the woods on his own like a fool, and I snuck a look in his mind and I liked it so much I decided to make it my own. That sounds like something I would do, no?”
He can picture it so vividly. Ouma, still upset by the argument they had that day, running into the woods, stumbling over roots as he rants about Shuuichi’s stupidity and stubbornness and cruelty, all three of his favourite topics. And then, whatever kind of creature “Ouma” is, seeing him and —
“No. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh?”
Shuuichi’s imagination is vivid, but his understanding of Ouma is far more vivacious. “No one would want Ouma-kun’s life.”
“Ouma”’s bark of surprised laughter is loud in the quiet classroom. “Shuuichi-chan! So mean!”
There is a part of Shuuichi that thinks: Not even Ouma-kun wanted Ouma-kun’s life. Loneliness hugged him like a well-loved sweater. Sometimes, Shuuichi would feel like even when they were close enough to touch, Ouma Kokichi looked like he belonged among the stars, as cold and untouchable as those distant rocks in space. Ouma liked it like that sometimes, he thinks. But not always. No one can like always feeling alone.
“You didn’t kill Ouma-kun,” he says.
“Maaaaaybe I did, maybe I didn’t!” “Ouma” says cheerfully. “I should kill you, though.” Shuuichi watches, revulsion and fascination warring inside of him as “Ouma”’s face starts to melt: the skin siffing off in strips of flesh, revealing sinews of bones and veins underneath, the multicolor gore of being alive. The human body is all layers, but here there is something entirely other underneath it all, threatening to burst wide open, liberated. It’s a monstrous sight, too terrible for words, and yet Shuuichi can’t look away from this suffocating form of intimacy. It is yet another part of Ouma laid bare before him, for Shuuichi to consume freely, without restraint, the way he so often felt like he could never, with Ouma.
“Ouma” steps up to him. “I really was trying to be perfect, you know,” he confesses, looking up beseechingly at Shuuichi. One eye is Ouma’s familiar purple — the other hangs like a loose socket. “Maybe you wouldn’t want this life, but I do. I really do, Shuuichi-chan.” He starts crying, big, heavy, perfectly shaped tears rolling down his face. "Isn't being a human so great? Isn't it fun? Food is delicious, and beds are comfortable. With the click of a button you can be warm even in winter! And it's so loud, with what humans say and louder with what they don't. So many amusing stories that they tell!"
With a mournful howl he lurches forward, and Shuuichi almost flinches back before he registers the gesture as a hug. “And here Shuuichi-chan is, trying to take it all away from me! Shouldn’t I kill him for that? Don’t I deserve it?”
Shuuichi looks straight ahead, his heart pounding in fear, in anger, in the worst kind of wretched sympathy. He has always been weak to Ouma’s tears: when he cried because Shuuichi got the last ice-cream in the store, when he cried because Shuuichi couldn’t come play with him, when he cried because Shuuichi was paying more attention to other people. Shuuichi always yielded. Everyone scolded him about it, and even he knew that he was being played. Ouma was the worst kind of spoiled brat, and he was greedy for everything, but nothing more than attention; positive from Shuuichi and negative from almost anyone else.
But Shuuichi was never quite able to stop himself. After all, it was one of his earliest memories: Ouma’s tear-stained childhood face as he yelled at Shuuichi that his parents were never coming back, and that Shuuichi might as well just leave him already as well.
“I won’t take it away,” he hears himself say it as if he was underwater, the sound distorted and faraway. He is sweating, his breathing loud and gasping, but his voice doesn’t tremble. The body and mind can recognize a predator, even as something in him yearns for a warm body against his, so familiar in shape.
“Ouma” stiffens against him. “You won’t?”
He ignores the gore, the blood and the tears and the swirling miasma dripping on their school uniforms as he clutches at “Ouma”s shirt, unable to fully commit to any closer touch but equally unwilling to let go. “I won’t.”
“Oh.” Its voice is small, almost swallowed whole by the space between their bodies. “That’s good then. Shuuichi-chan always tells me the truth, after all.” The hug tightens, fingers digging into his back. “I didn’t really want to kill Shuuichi-chan anyway, so.”
If this is it — if this is the only Ouma he gets to keep — then he has to keep him closer, safer, better. Even if the thing that is “Ouma” is lying, even if its tears were fake and this hug would one day turn suffocating, or lethal, Shuuichi would bear it. He knows the Ouma in his memories isn't coming back. Has known for weeks, longer than anyone else. When Ouma came back, he thought he was wrong. Maybe he never went to the woods that night, a nightmare his fevered mind has conjectured.
Now he knows he was right all along.
The body he has seen in the woods, the one he ran away from in desolate cowardness, is etched against his eyelids, an afterimage of a camera flash.
His arms around "Ouma" tighten. He won't be so quick to let go this time.