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There used to be a shadow there. Down there by the docks, on the edges of the yellow lines of a train terminal. There used to be something. Or someone.
All the streets are empty these days, or rather they're just filled with the insignificant heads now. But there used to be someone there. If you told anyone you'd look like a madman. Trick of the eye. Delirious exhaustion. Mirage of someone who never existed.
If you asked around, struck lucky and found A stranger with blonde hair and a green notebook who'd entertain your questions, then perhaps you'd see a look of recognition in their eyes. Then came an awkward silence that made it seem like they had been choked for a moment. Like the air had closed in on them, and all they could do was turn away and refuse to talk about it with a strange heartbreak in their eyes. You never saw that man again, but you remembered the look in his eyes.
There used to be someone there, filling in the yellow lines and leaning on the rails of empty bridges. Your friend who never told you his name, not really. Nor his number.
"What do I call you then?"
"You'll never need to call me. Besides, you wouldn't be able to find me anyway."
"Then, how will I see you again?"
"I'll just have to find you everytime, then. I have my ways, you know. What, did you think you'd get rid of me that easily?"
"… Err, no. You don't seem like the kind of guy I can get rid of that easily."
You adjusted your sleeves, looking out to the open ocean instead of him. His sing-song answer got your attention again.
"E-xac-tly!! For better or worse, I'm stuck here, so I have no option but to be your problem. It can't be helped, there's no choice about it."
He shrugged his shoulders, a wry, crafty-looking smile on his face. As the moonlight cast long shadows onto the concrete dock, you looked at him with your arms crossed for a moment. Maybe for a bit too long, but he never mentioned it. It was hard to not look. Some days, something about him seemed blurred into the mist, as if the edges of his frame was melting into the backdrop of the night. If you squinted, sometimes you could see the little shadow of the wind look as if it went through him instead of past him, but it must've just been a trick of the eye.
Like something condensed out of fog, or sketched out from a dream. You thought little of it. A sigh escaped from your lips as you thought about your retort to his words. You could've taken the bait then, but…
"You know I wouldn't entirely mind that, right?"
He fell silent. Mouth slightly open for a few seconds, cheeks faintly red, you could almost see something resembling surprise on that impish look being deliberately suppressed. He pressed his lips together in a thin, soft smile after, choosing to look out at the ocean instead of directly at you, hands in his pockets.
"Yeah, I know."
That night he remained oddly quiet still, though he couldn't resist being annoying every once in a while as the hours went by.
Once it was almost early morning, he disappeared when you had your back turned to him for a few seconds. As if he was never there at all. The winter fog didn't stir when he left. It never did.
He never stayed long enough to see the sun. You never found him where warmth approached. That man only existed under neon lights, reflected off the moon's shine, in the cold air of a city that had lost it's teeth.
Like a piece of a dream broken off and made into a person. Just as confusing, just as fleeting.
But he kept his promise. He knew how to find you when he needed to. His presence was sort of constant once nightfall began. A timely coincidence. Stroke of luck. It's all meaningless, but you had grown used to having him around. Even if it felt odd at first, there was something oddly disarming about him that you could never point out.
Even if everytime you touched him, it felt like holding snowflakes. Even if everytime you held his hand, it felt like he would drift away into the void again, leaving nothing but cold realization and nostalgia in his wake.
"Why do you stay?"
You turned to face him, vending machine coffee can in hand, not entirely sure of what he was asking about. He tends to ask odd questions, removed of their context at times. Landing right in the middle of conversations without beginning or ending properly. Perhaps that is why you never learned to say goodbye properly. Even the act of conversing was only filled with pauses.
Semicolons, no full stops.
"Stay with what exactly?"
The look in his brown eyes was vaguely wistful. As if he was no longer there with you. Like he had been returned to another moment in another time. Far from you. Here and there at the same time. It wasn't the man in front of you speaking—more like a broken off crumb of him that was left somewhere else along the way.
"This world. What's the point in staying?"
The question made you stop in your tracks for a moment, but when you thought about it, it was clear that you couldn't give him a meaningful answer. Or rather, the answers that you had to give wouldn't convince him. Your worldview would be insufficient for him, and his wouldn't be enough for you.
Yet, the world goes on regardless, ever so close but never quite the same.
"…Maybe there isn't, but then what's the point in leaving either?"
"That's where the problem starts, doesn't it? It's all the same. No matter what choice you make."
You couldn't say anything just then. You wanted to argue, say otherwise—staying silent felt too much like giving up, though you couldn't tell on what. But the words couldn't form on your tongue.
Even if they did, would he believe you?
"Why do you stay then? In this world?"
He laughed at that question. A bright yet hollow laugh that couldn't seem to keep it's airy tone throughout, dissolving into something shaky and fragile.
"Why do I stay? Well, I tried leaving, but it didn't work out. I thought I'd found what I was looking for, but it just ended up being the same thing. Maybe I did find it, I just didn't expect what it would be like."
"A world without you in it?"
"I don't think it's the kind of thing anyone can know without seeing it, don't you think?"
You thought you understood what he meant just then, but he only smiled at you with the gaze of someone who knew more than they were letting on.
Then again, you never expected to fully understand him anyway.
Clinking your coffee cans together, you just smiled in turn.
"Well, if there's no difference, then I think I'll stick around a little to see how things go. Just for this moment."
To be with him for a little longer, perhaps. To live through the cold nights and watch as the sun rises again. Over and over again.
There's a whole life in just that, in knowing that the sun exists, even when you can't see it.
"Just for this moment, huh?"
He was looking away from you, into the distance. But for some reason, you felt like he was smiling.
"I'll take that, I think."
The cans were long thrown away before the night ended. One empty, other full.
—
These few nights, you weren't able to see him anywhere. Not beside the ever moving train tracks or looking at the ocean by the edge of a lonely pier. The shadow had left, and took his cold touch and senseless jokes with him. Maybe he simply had no reason to find you anymore. Maybe it was something else.
It was always hard to tell with him. Days of absences weren't uncommon with him—but everytime he did disappear, you wondered if he was finally gone for good. If the snowflake had finally melted in your hand and slipped through your fingers. If the dream was over, if you were going to be woken up with a cold splash on your face.
You searched for him everywhere. In the places where the neon lights and smoke couldn't touch. Between alleyways, shortcuts, underground rail tunnels and everything in between, in the crevices of a city that frays at the hem.
He was right about one thing. You wouldn't be able to find him, even if you wanted to.
It was only on the third day that you found a small napkin from Cafe Uzumaki in your coat. You never remembered ever visiting that place yourself, though he mentioned that he used to go there a lot once. The napkin hadn't been there before, and it was unlikely someone had slipped it in.
Maybe it always was there, and you didn't realize.
Maybe it never existed before you found it.
Perhaps the napkin itself was just a part of that senseless winter dream you had so long ago. One that involved a strange man covered in bandages, looking like reality blurred itself around him.
Only one line was written on it, along with coordinates for a place you couldn't recognize. No apartment or house number.
'I'll let you find me this time.'
The ink was faded, too faded for a note that was supposed to be new.
But you wanted to catch him—no, needed to catch him—before he could dissolve like the fading winter.
—
The grassy field you were in right now felt like an unlikely place for him to be. The sunlight illuminated the headstones scattered in neat lines around you. In the night, it might've been eerie, but right now it was oddly peaceful. The soft wind sweetens silence.
Your eyes trailed over the names of the headstones as you walked past the row. S. Oda. Next to it, O. Dazai. So on and so forth between scattered flowers and dust covered stones.
It was still too early for him to show up, even though it was late afternoon and the sun was setting already on the horizon, mirrored in the distant sea stretching out to infinity. Golden bleeding out and melting into the all consuming nothing. Shining the brightest just before it turns away and leaves the world in the yoke of a long night.
You've only ever seen him in those late hours. It was an odd thing to assume, but in your mind, you could hardly picture him in the warm light of day. There was something about him that made it seem as though if he would step out of the fuzzy timelessness of a misty night, then the dream that he was a part of would simply break.
There was something about him that didn't feel quite real.
Or rather, he was beautiful in a way that only those things that don't exist are. The same way old memories and faded photographs are. Painted over in nostalgia, always existing in the shadow of a past that can no longer be remembered properly.
"Looking for someone?"
Your gaze turned away sharply from the sunset to the source of the familiar voice. There he was. That strange man you called your friend, lips curved into that same wry smile, leaning against one of the headstones.
You never heard his footsteps in the grass.
"Yeah. Yeah I am, actually."
You sighed, walking up to him in quick strides. "Where the fuck had you gone off to?! I was worried you were gone for good!"
"Aw, am I so special to you that you can't go a few days without thinking of me? I'm flattered, truly, but-"
Your unimpressed look had the words fading on his tongue, dissolving into a fit of giggles instead. "Fine, fine! Don't look at me like that. I just felt like surprising you a bit."
"By inviting me to hangout in a graveyard?"
"Yeah!"
"… You could atleast be a little less shameless in admitting that, you know."
The brunet shrugged his shoulders carelessly. The very idea of feigning embarrassment where he felt none was just stupid to him. In the end, he knew you wouldn't press for questions.
Because in the back of your mind, perhaps there had already been a doubt that you'd get the answers you wanted from him.
For a moment, you entertained the thought that perhaps if he did not tell you everything, then you'd have reason to keep him around a little bit longer.
In the light of the fading sunset, you could almost see the blue of the sky through him. Something like fragility existed in his frame, not the physical sort, but rather the kind of a reflection in still water—delicate to disruption. Blurred by the coruscating light, he looked as unreal as ever, but this time, you didn't touch him.
It wasn't because you didn't want to.
But perhaps if you had extended your hand then, he would've dissipated like the smoke that hangs around in the alleyways late at night. The dream that quickly fades; the one you know you can't leave in your hands forever.
The patterns of the snowflake are gone. All that remains is it's slow melting edges. A short moment that you've extended for far too long. Longer than it was ever supposed to be.
"I know you want to ask why I was gone, but you don't really want an answer, do you?"
Your fingers trembled in your pockets, before they curled up into a fist.
"It's not that I don't want answers. I just think that it'll make no difference even if I got them."
He sighed. Not the playful kind, filled with faux-disappointment, but rather one that carried an exhaustion far too heavy for someone so young.
"You're right, it won't. It won't change even a single thing."
You didn't know what to tell him then. There was a strange tension in the air, like a string just ready to snap, but it never did. It only existed in the uncertainty of the moment.
At the same time, too much and not enough.
"I know."
"Know what?"
"That I won't see you ever again."
The words were quiet on your lips, falling off just a little more shaky than you wanted them to. The long silence after it was far from reassuring. And his eyes had the melancholy look of someone who knew what would happen, yet nonetheless foolishly wished for a different outcome. "You said, there isn't a point in whether I stay or leave."
"I did, but I wanted otherwise. As stupid as it was, I wanted it to mean something if you left."
He only smiled softly at that answer, looking away from you and into the open ocean.
"Pfft. It's a bit too late for that now. I've been gone already. You know that. I've already left."
"Why? Why did you leave?"
"Well, why would I stay? There's nothing worth the cost of prolonging a life of suffering."
His words only made you realize the incorrigible gap of understanding between the two of you. Perhaps that is how it was simply meant to be. Your reasons for staying would be too flimsy for him, and his reasons for leaving would always be too empty for you.
So, in the end, you didn't ask further.
Not when you already knew that there would be no point.
"You're right, there's nothing worth it. But if it makes no difference either way, then there's something I want to do. Simply because I can. Because it'll mean nothing."
You uncurled your fist, reaching a trembling hand towards his face and placing it on his cheek. A featherlight touch, only grazing the surface of his skin. Almost afraid to press any deeper, in fear that it would simply fade into him. The touch felt cold and airy, almost barely there. You wished for a moment that you could grasp tighter, but there was nothing to hold there. Not anymore.
His lips only curved up in a light almost nostalgic smile, tilting his head to lean into the touch, eyes closed.
"So this is what you wanted to do, huh? Well, if you say it'll mean nothing, then I'll just have to believe you."
—
It meant nothing, but you don't think you'd ever forget that shadow of a man, who melted away with the winter snow. In the corner of your gaze, perhaps there'll be a flash of beige every now and then. A trick of the eye, mirage of someone who never existed near the yellow lines of train stations, railings of bridges and boardwalks by the sea.
In the pockets of your winter coat tucked away in the closet, there were only two things. An empty red, white and black cigarette box with Bar Lupin written on it, and a small note on a cafe napkin.
'I think I want to be remembered this way. I think I want to be remembered by you.'