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Amane Yugi is dead.
It was that morning that I learned of it, and it was in the teacher’s lounge that I sat in silent stillness for hours, coffee chilling at the bottom of the cup I gripped with white knuckles.
“You don't have to come in today, you know?” came the distant words of a colleague. “I'm sure somebody around here could pick up the slack. Take the day off, relax.”
He must have noticed and come over to offer the advice in a moment of worry, yet it did nothing but lay heavy stones in my chest.
You don't have to come in today because he won't be there waiting for you.
A small crack had snaked its way through the porcelain where my thumb rested. It traveled up to the rim before I urged myself to set the mug down and wave him off—hoping to shoo away the thought while I was at it.
“No need,” I had assured him, the corner of my mouth twitching in an abandoned attempt at a professional smile. “It's been a while since I last missed a day of work. I have a good streak to uphold.”
Though I said it to put him at ease, maybe it was myself that I was trying to convince. Despite that, his shoulders slacked and he soon returned to busying himself without further question, yet I remained ever taut. Relax? How could I?
How fulfilling it was to turn a page, knowing you had read all it had to offer and were ready to proceed to the next. It was a spiral of guaranteed progression from the moment the book opened, to the moment it closed with a satisfying thud. Or, at least, that was how it had been before. There was always a beginning, middle, and end to these things. No novel could go on forever. Maybe that was why lives were so easily recorded through them. There was always a beginning, middle, and end to these things…
Thick smoke swirled in the air, nicotine so pungent that no amount of desensitization could drive the scent from my nose. I swatted the wisps away from obstructing my vision with one hand, frantically flipping pages with the other as my eyes scanned words they were hardly allowed time to process. I had read it over and over again, from silently glancing over entries, to reciting it all from front to back, and yet every attempt caused it to make as little sense as the last.
11/25/1955: Amane Yugi is born 13 minutes before the birth of his brother Tsukasa.
04/01/1967: Amane Yugi enrolls in the Kamome Academy middle school division alongside his brother.
03/31/1973: Am■ne Yu■■ graduates from Kamome Academ■ with passing grad■s.
06/23/1983: ■■an■ Y■g■ submits his application for a ■■■ as a Kamome Academy sci■■ce ■eac■■■.
0?/07/198?: A■■■■ ■■gi receives a l■ve confes■■■n from his ■■-worker, h■■■■er he r■■■cts her and
12/??/198?: ■ma■■■ ■■■■ ad■■■s a str■■ ca■ wh■■■ he names af■■■ ■■■
?1/??/1?9?: ■■■■e ■■■■ re■ei■■s a ■■■ opp■■tun ■■ ■ ■■■■■■
??/??/????: ■■■■■ ■■■■’■ par■■■■ ■■pr■■■ th■■r w■■■ ■■
The quicker my eyes scanned the words, the more they lost their meaning and blurred together into a story of desperate chaos. My mind felt as though it were unraveling with each second I spent trying to will this reality into being, and I took a long pull from the pipe that idly jutted from the corner of my mouth, feeling the smoke channel into my head and erect a wall of fog to surround my brain.
Past, present, future. Nothing had been altered, no entries scrubbed from the tome that was supposed to record every last detail of his life. It was right about all of my students to come before. Ayaka went on to have that lakeside wedding with his childhood sweetheart exactly as it had predicted, and Osamu became a high-school dropout as everyone had predicted. An exception was—had always been—fundamentally impossible, and there was no doubt of that in my mind.
With a heavy exhale, the smoke puffed from my lips and cleared from my head. Not a second later, it was replaced by a fresh draw, like waves steadily lapping against a shoreline in an unending rhythm of pushing and pulling.
The only possibility could be if he was still alive. Maybe the body was a fake, or the reports were a cover-up. Maybe Amane was only bedridden and his classmates wanted to pull a cruel prank in his absence—though I had never seen him sick before. Never mind that, every boy his age was a walking sanitization code violation, he had to get sick sometimes.
One thing I quickly began to loathe was empty rumors. After hearing enough, you find yourself doubting the validity of even the simplest things.
I began to feel nauseous the more I skimmed through the future excerpt. It spoke of all of the milestones he would reach one day: His first part-time job, a license, college admission, and the graduations to follow it. There was nothing more cruel than the idea that he could have been robbed of it all, and at the thought, I slammed the book closed.
It can’t be true , I thought, burying my fingers through my hair. It can’t be true.
Amidst the silence, there came a clattering. Or maybe it had always been there, hidden beneath the sound of my unsteady breath. Pulling my hands from my face, I saw that amongst the clutter of the desk, a rock had been jousted by the heavy thump of the book and now rattled where it sat. It tipped against the edge, and as it soon tumbled from the desk, my hand snapped out to catch it. A chill leached through my glove when it dropped soundlessly into my palm.
“Would you believe me if I said it was real?”
Though he wore a smile, his laugh bled from his lips as though if not released through a joyful expression, it might otherwise escape in a fit of shrieks and sobs until his voice became raw. Why didn’t I hear it?
“Whenever I look at that rock, I feel like I could go anywhere. But…”
His wide eyes affixed to the stars in a desperate longing, yet all that reflected in his irises was a blackened abyss, the moonlight only serving to deepen the dark circles under them. How couldn’t I see it?
“I've made up my mind now. I'm not going anywhere.”
Dammit all.
The thing meant nothing to me—a moon rock , how naive was that? Still, it meant everything to him. So why would he hand over something he claimed to be so precious without a second thought? And to his homeroom teacher of all people?
It was easy to pay it little mind at the time, brushing it off as no more than a show of appreciation from a student and stowing the rock away to forget it just as quickly as I had received it. Only now did its weight seem impossibly heavy in my hand. This wasn't a simple gift, oh, no, it was a legacy—an omen of farewell that I was blind to recognize.
Feeling his warmth utterly drained from its cold surface, I must have known in my heart that…
“Amane Yugi is dead.”
Dozens of faces stared back at me, some deadpan from the news, others frowning in forced pity, and others still whispering and giggling amongst themselves in apparent ignorance.
I wished to give them something more; an explanation, words of condolence, anything to keep that statement from lingering in the air any longer. And yet my mouth hung ajar, unable—unwilling—to say anything that might give it more truth. Instead, my gaze dropped, locking onto the attendance record and beginning to recite a song I had grown utterly numb to.
“Daitan Ebashi, are you here?”
Listening to the faint calls of acknowledgment in response to their names, I went down the line absently making a record of the present students. Still, no matter the effort, I couldn't tune out the whispers that surfaced from the student body.
“Hey, did you hear? What happened?”
“Naoto Ina.”
“About Yugi? I don't know. But people are saying he was holding a major grudge. I mean, serious enough to kill his own brother over.”
“Aiko Li.”
“His brother? You have to be crazy to do that.”
“Aman—”
“Maybe we shouldn't talk about it. If he finds a reason to hold a grudge against us, I bet he'll come back as a vengeful ghost or something…”
“Enough!” I snapped, causing a deafening silence to fall over the room in an instant. It was only when I raised my head to see the stunned faces of my students that I grimaced, taken aback by my own outburst. After drawing in a deep breath to regain my composure, I corrected myself, saying, “The only people I want to hear talking during attendance are the people I call by name. Are we clear?”
Nods and blurted calls of “yes sir” dispersed about the group, order returning at once. And still, the full classroom only seemed to make the one empty chair that much harder to ignore. To the rest of the student body, it seemed to make no difference.
I recalled a time many years back when illness claimed the life of a boy who had been rich in popularity. In response, his classmates filled his desk with flowers and covered his locker with sentimental messages. For Amane, a single red camellia laid upon his desk. That was it. No tears, no letters, and no goodbyes. The clock only kept ticking in an unchanging rhythm.
Another person lost his life, somewhere another life was born in his place, and the world spun madly on, in a merciless cycle of life, death, and everything in between. I continued teaching, my students chattered in the hallways as they always did, and at the end of the day, silence fell upon the school the same as it had every evening that came before it—like nothing had ever changed.
By the time I waved off my last loitering student and gathered my things to leave the classroom, the camellia had already begun to wilt on the desk, its vibrant petals turning to muted shades of yellow and brown. Ironic. Maybe Amane was no different.
For the two years that I knew him, it seemed as if he were slowly withering away. He started off enthusiastic if not a bit shy, telling me when I asked that he was eager to learn and make good grades. Yet even if that were true, it wasn't long before Bs turned to Ds, and that smile he wore so proudly began to look more like an obligation than a choice.
How couldn't I have been concerned? He was barely passing, and from the looks of it, barely trying. I encouraged him to open up to me, always asking what was keeping him from his full potential, but he would only brush me off before changing the subject to something bizarre and—by some great coincidence—utterly unrelated.
He must have thought himself slick when he would clasp his hands behind his back as a subtle attempt to hide his bruised arms. Cuts, gashes, friction burns, at one point or another I had seen him decorated in them all, though his winter uniform did well to hide them, which I was sure he was more pleased about than I would have liked.
Looking back now, it was easy to tell that his behavior grew more aloof by the day, and the passions that once brought him to life seemed to only ignite a dying flicker in his eyes.
Had I spoken to his parents about his worsening condition, would he still be sitting in that vacant chair today, gazing out the window to idly daydream with his chin resting in his hand and his work left abandoned on his desk?
Maybe that idea was less realistic. If his homeroom teacher could pick up on such blatant marks of abuse, his parents, who lived with and raised him, would have been blind to not notice even sooner than I. Such only served to cement suspicions I kept in the back of my mind, but what good were they without proof?
If only he had spoken up. If only he had asked for help. If only he had been straightforward for once in his damn life.
No, I couldn't blame him. He was just a kid burdened by monsters he was never taught how to handle—or should have never needed to learn how to handle, for that matter. There must have been something more I could have done or said. Though it seemed absurd, I even found myself wondering if the moon rock was what tethered him to life, and by accepting it, I effectively stole what remained of his hope for myself.
Such spiraling thoughts came to an abrupt halt when a paper slipped from my hands, and leaning down to pick it off of the floor, my gaze locked onto the day's attendance record.
Out of every name, there was only one absence.
Music chimed from a distant intercom, the evening announcement for all to return home now a muffled fly in my ear. On a normal day, this would be the time that I would crack open a first aid kit and steel myself for the never-ending complaints that followed. “Would you rather let it get infected?” had quickly become an obsolete argument, and I found myself needing a better one each week, but as long as he was getting treated, the daily hassle was tolerable enough. Maybe freedom from that obligation should have felt nice—at least nicer than it did then.
But, of course, I knew that there would always be a day when I had to let my students go. The old must make way for the new, and so I couldn't afford to cling to him any longer.
With a slow deliberation, I plucked a pen from the desk and lowered it to meet the attendance log, allowing it to hover over the name that I was sure would soon be erased from and forgotten by the entire school in a month's time.
This is the only farewell I can wish you now.
Or it would have been if a sudden creaking hadn't ripped my attention away with a jolt. Despite myself, I was sure I scowled when I glanced over the paper and saw a kid seated and dressed in what would usually be a boy's winter uniform. He must have either lost his summer one or missed the memo for the uniform change weeks later, but either way was no concern of mine.
“Didn't you hear the announcement, kid? We're closing up shop,” I muttered as my attention returned to the sheet.
“Aw. But didn't you say I could come to you if I ever needed to talk?”
My blood ran cold, pen halting in its place. Surely I was imagining things, only hallucinating the voice I wished to hear, and yet the possibility that I wasn't made dread tighten its grip around my heart until it felt like it would burst. When I gathered the courage to lift my head again, the classroom was forgotten, and I could see nothing save for the boy seated across from me.
His hand cradled the dying camellia, finger tracing its delicate petals. Soft light streamed through his translucent frame, and when he turned his face to me, those unmistakable amber eyes that were once hidden underneath the brim of his hat seemed to pierce through reality itself. The second dragged on like an hour before he flicked his wrist and tossed the flower to the floor, crushing it beneath his shoe as he stepped towards me so soundlessly that it was as if he were walking on nothing at all.
The air grew frigid when he drew in close with his hands tucked behind his back, his chilling presence alone sapping the room of all heat, and at that same moment, he cracked a haunting smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. It vaguely resembled a smile I was painfully familiar with, and yet it was anything but.
“Well?” he hummed with the tilt of his head, his voice a lonely and hollow sound in my ears. “Did ya miss me?”
My heartbeat pounded like a drum in my head, a faint sort of stinging welling in my eyes from tears that would only channel into a pool of deep regret within my chest instead of ever escaping the vessel that caged them. I felt as my hold tightened around the pen, and fueled by a renewed certainty that my body had long before my mind, the name was scratched from the log.
Amane Yugi is dead.