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Everything from those couple of days feels like it’s in needle-sharp focus. I remember seeing Kei outside the store. Normally I go there every morning since I knew it was right on the route that he took to school. I’d get up extra early, stop and get something to eat at the store, then retreat a little ways away and wait for Kei to pass. I’d stay out of sight, since I knew that seeing me would only cause trouble for him. It might seem strange, watching him pass every day, but it was the only way I could ever see him.
Ironically, it was on that day that this simple routine was broken. Kei was an early riser as it was, so I would get up even earlier. But on that day, Kei appeared even earlier than he ever had before. Perhaps he had a big test that day and he wanted to get extra studying in in the morning. He was flipping through note cards when I saw him, after all. I wasn’t expecting him to be here so soon, so I had only just sat down outside to eat. I was taking a bite when I spotted him. Our eyes met. He looked just as surprised as I felt. It was probably the first time in months, maybe even a year that he had seen me. Some of his classmates glanced over, wondering what he was staring at. I nodded to him, raising the milk I had bought. That was it. I didn’t expect anything else out of it, and I didn’t get anything else.
I heard his classmates questioning him as Kei walked away. I ignored them. I knew he wouldn't admit to knowing me. He couldn’t admit it. That’s what got me in this whole mess of waiting to see him every day. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t blame Kei. He had places to go, things he wanted to achieve. I accepted that I couldn’t be a part of that. Or so I thought.
I heard it on the news first. I was bored walking home after school, so I had pulled out my phone. Thank god I did. I had to pass by that same store on the way home, so when the police officer stopped me I was ready to respond calmly and feign ignorance. I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted if the information had been suddenly sprung on me like that, but I doubt it would’ve helped Kei. My chest hurt as I ran home. Thoughts shot rapidly through my head. I had to find Kei. I had to help him. He must be terrified right now. But the thought that kept circling back again and again was the harsh fact that Kei had just died. Yes, he came back to life, thank god, he came back to life. But he had, in fact, died. And I had been no where near to help him.
I started throwing supplies in a duffle bag as soon as I got home. Water, a little bit of food, some spare clothes, the first aid kit from under the kitchen sink. I was hoping Kei would call me, but if he didn’t I would take to the streets and search for him, praying I would find him before the police did. I didn’t even know if he still remembered my number from all those years ago. I know he had it memorized once. His mother had deleted it off his phone, but as soon as she’d left, he’d dialed it from memory.
Kei will always be special to me as my first and only friend. No one else had ever wanted to play with me because of my father, and things hardly changed as I grew older. But the reason I could never truly let Kei go, the reason why I got up at the crack of dawn to go to that store and wait for Kei to walk by every day, was because of that one phone call.
Kei had sounded cold and indifferent when he called me that last time. He had stated matter-of-factly that he wanted to be an upstanding citizen when he grew up, but he couldn’t do that so long as I was his friend. He told me we couldn’t see each other any more. Then he hung up. That was the last time we spoke. I cried and cried. Every day for a year I went back to the tree we’d played under, hoping he might show up. He never did.
Eriko came each day instead. She sat by me in silence for hours, until it was time for us to go back to our houses. Then she got too sick to come. I still went to the tree anyways. I finally gave up after I ran into Kei on accident in public, a year later. It was at a store in town. He pretended not to notice me. It was then that I realized that it was no use going back to that tree any longer. Kei wasn’t coming back, and if I wanted to see him I’d need to find him myself.
Like I said earlier, I probably could have moved on, however painfully, if it weren’t for that one phone call. Despite how cold Kei’s words and tone were, despite how easily he had decided to leave me behind, he had still called. His mother had deleted my number and instructed him to never talk to me again, and yet he called me anyways. It’s true that he had only done so to inform me that we would never talk again, but I still couldn’t get over the fact that he had chosen to let me know. He could’ve walked away right then, never said a word to me or offered me an explanation. And yet, he called. No one else had given me the courtesy of explaining why they’d abandoned me throughout my life. Not my mother, not my father, not the kids on the playground, not my teachers at school. They’d all given up on me before I’d even had a chance to try and prove them wrong. But Kei wasn’t like them. Kei let me know. And that’s why, as soon as I’d heard that Kei had died, my heart stopped. That’s why, when they said he was an Aijin, it didn’t matter. Those news networks didn’t know a damn thing about who Kei Nagai was. I knew who Kei Nagai was, and he was more human than anyone else in this pitiful world combined.
Just as it had been lucky that Kei spotted me that morning, or lucky that I had checked the news after leaving school, I got lucky again that day. Kei still remembered my number, and he called me just as I was finishing packing up. He was scared, just as I thought. At first he hesitated when I asked where he was, but I told him he could trust me. That was all he needed to hear. When he said he was under the tree we used to play by, my heart leapt in a cruelly happy way. So he had gone back to the tree again after all.
When I got there, I could hear the officer shouting. I moved as quickly and quietly as I could. When I spotted them, the man was aiming a gun at Kei. Rage shot through me in that moment. Kei looked so scared. He had already died once today. He didn’t deserve this.
As a man without friends, I had been in my fair share of fights, and it only took one swift kick to knock the officer out. It was such a relief to see Kei. He looked terrible, his shirt torn and covered in blood. But he smiled when he saw me, and I understood perfectly then why I was never able to let go. I offered my hand to help him up and he took it. When he got to his feet, I didn’t let go for a moment longer than necessary. I didn’t want to let go. It had been so many years since I had talked to Kei, let alone touched him. But there were bigger things happening, and I needed to get him to safety. It never once occurred to me that what I was doing was going to get me in trouble. I knew on a subconscious level, of course, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was Kei.
Kei’s hand was on my waist and it felt like I was flying as we rode deep into the mountains. Every time a car passed, he gripped me tighter. I think all the fear started getting to him because he pressed his head into the back of my shoulder. The selfish part of me wanted to enjoy the feeling of Kei being so close, but I couldn’t just let him suffer in silence. I comforted him, saying how the police couldn’t move too quickly and telling him that I had a place in mind where we could hide. Kei relaxed then and his grip loosened. Again, a part of me felt selfishly disappointed, but I shoved those emotions down. Kei came first, not my own neediness.
Unfortunately, my bike was low on gas. I hadn’t exactly stopped to fill it up before coming to get Kei, so we had to pull over at a gas station. It was empty when we first got there, and I handed Kei some money so that he could get a drink from the vending machine. It felt so wonderful, so natural, to be talking to him again. For him to be looking at me, acknowledging me, and best of all, smiling at me. It felt like how it used to, when we’d catch bugs under the tree by the shrine, or splash around in the creek. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I felt alive. That feeling didn’t last.
Kei died again that day. This time I was there, but just like before, I was helpless to stop it. We had left the gas station in a rush after a van pulled in, but it turns out we didn’t leave fast enough. The men in the van had spotted Kei and recognized him as the fugitive Ajin. They followed us, then attacked Kei after we stopped so that he could use the bathroom. He was already hurt, being held down by one of the men when I reached him. I fought with all I had, running at the other man again and again despite the fact that he had a bat and I was unarmed. I just wanted to take him down as quickly as possible so that I could get to Kei and we could get out of there. I wasn’t quick enough. The man holding Kei began to strangle him, and I had to watch as Kei slowly died before my eyes while I tried so desperately to get to him.
Kei died on the side of that road, eyes huge and scared. Utter panic blinded me when he stopped moving, stopped breathing. He wasn’t supposed to be able to die. But there was no mistaking that he was dead, that he had died in agony while I was only a few feet away, powerless to save him. In that moment I didn’t know if he would truly wake up again. I forgot all else and tried to run to him, tried to do something, anything. I screamed out his name, but I had barely took a step when the baseball bat hit me squarely in the stomach. The breath was crushed from my lungs and I collapsed on the ground. For a moment my survival instincts kicked in, and I was overcome with the fear of death. I scrambled onto my knees. I needed to move. I needed to survive. But, despite this, I paused.
Was it really so bad to die here, beside Kei? If he was gone, then what was the point in living? No, I wasn’t going to run. I would stay here. I would fight. I would tear apart these people that took Kei from me. And I would die on this road, next to my only friend.
Being an Ajin isn’t a curse. I know because Kei is alive. A curse would be to lose Kei. A curse would’ve been opening my phone and seeing on the news that local high school student, Kei Nagai, was declared dead at the scene of a freak motor vehicle accident. A curse would be watching Kei die in the middle of the mountains, and never seeing him get up again. No, being Ajin isn’t a curse. If it keeps Kei alive, then it can only be a blessing.
Right then Kei screamed. Just as I was deciding to die there with him, I heard his voice again. Once more, my instincts kicked in and panic arose as I found that every muscle in my body was tensed up. I couldn’t move, but I had to. Kei had screamed. Kei was alive. I had to get to Kei. Luckily, the two men attacking us were paralyzed too, and as soon as Kei yelled at me that we had to go, I could move again. We ran to the bike and I got us out of there as fast as the engine would go.
I don’t know if Kei noticed how badly I was shaking. My mind still hadn’t quite accepted the fact that he was there. He was alive! I had to keep my eyes on the road, so it took all my strength not to turn and look at him, to make sure he was really real. But I could feel his hand on my waist again, and that was enough.
Those assholes didn’t stop chasing us. I wanted them dead. With all my heart, I wanted to snap their necks, to make them pay for killing Kei. But if I wanted Kei to be safe then we needed to lose them, not exact revenge. Luckily a train was passing by and it seemed to cut them off, making them disappear in the darkness behind us. I wish that was the last encounter we had before we got to the hideout, but the night was ending, bringing with it the danger of being spotted in daylight.
The next person to notice us was another motorcyclist. His bike was faster than mine, and it was only a matter of seconds before he’d catch up. I told Kei to use his voice to paralyze him. I was afraid. I didn't’ want to be frozen again. I didn’t want to risk crashing. I didn’t want to hurt Kei. But I couldn’t let anyone else take him from me. I wasn't going to let him die again.
I clung desperately to the hope that I might be able to regain control of my limbs faster than our pursuer, like last time, and thus could perhaps prevent me and Kei from going off the road. However, Kei hesitated a moment too long, and the motorcyclist kicked the front wheel of my bike out from under us. Again, as if even the earth itself was trying to hurt Kei, he took the worst of the fall down the ravine. I momentarily blacked out upon hitting the gravel, but I awoke in time to hear Kei begging his attacker to call an ambulance for me. It hurt. Not just the scrapes and bruises from the fall, and not just from having been hit by a baseball bat earlier. It hurt inside, to hear how distraught Kei sounded, how utterly defeated he looked.
It took every ounce of self control I had to lay still and not let Kei know that I was alright. I almost exploded when the man kicked Kei in the ribs, but I held myself back, seething and biding my time for the right moment. Then the moment came. Our attacker turned his back, and without a second thought I broke my fist open on his face, smashing straight through the visor of his helmet and punching until a sufficient amount of blood burst from his shattered nose. I wanted to kill him. I wanted so badly to kill him. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t a murderer, like my father.
Kei breathed out my name, smiling so brightly. For the millionth time that day, I realized he was everything that mattered. I lied and told him I wasn’t hurt, then I reached my hand down to him to help him up. He didn’t take it. His smile faded, and it felt like the sun had been blacked out. Then Kei started saying it was all over. His leg was broken, he couldn’t walk, and he was putting me in danger. He wanted me to leave him. He wanted me to be safe. What he didn’t understand was that if I hadn’t given up on him all those years ago, I certainly wasn’t going to now. I wasn’t going to, ever, no matter what.
So I told him. I told him he was human. That we were going to go some place where he could still be human. That was all there was to it. Then I turned my back, and that was the third time Kei died that day, and the second time he died in front of me.
I had turned to search through my bag and get the first aid kit so that we could patch up Kei’s leg and get moving again. I heard Kei shift behind me, so I looked over my shoulder to make sure he was okay. The gleam of a knife flashed before me as Kei held it to his own throat. I screamed. I yelled his name. I reached out and tried to stop him. But, as always, I was helpless. The knife sliced through his neck as if it were paper. There was blood. So much blood. I watched as the light left Kei’s eyes, not slowly like the sun setting, but in a single instant, without warning, as if everything had been plunged into darkness. It looked so cruelly easy, so effortless. Kei was dead. Slumped before me on the ground in a pool of his own blood. He didn’t move.
I was too late. Again, I had let Kei die, and, again, I didn’t believe he was going to get back up. Despair washed over me and I went numb, everything else seeming so distant and blurry. That moment lasted a lifetime. Then Kei was moving, getting up, standing. I whispered his name, unable to tear my eyes from him. Nothing around me made sense, but there he was, alive and smiling down at me. I couldn’t move at first. I just stared at him, so happy and yet still in so much pain. I had just watched Kei take his own life. How else could I have possibly felt?
When we got on the other man’s bike I rushed us away from that place. Everything was still so numb, so I didn’t realize I was crying until my vision got fogged over. I was just grateful that Kei couldn’t hear my sniffling over the roaring of the motor. For a brief moment I took my hand off the handles and clasped it over Kei’s from where it was resting on my waist. I squeezed down. Then that moment was over and I grasped the handle bars once more, trying my hardest to focus on the road ahead. I have no idea how Kei felt about that, but in that moment I just needed to touch him, to feel the warmth of skin that was proof that he was truly alive.
I’d stopped crying by the time we’d got to the abandoned building I’d been taking us to. I sat on the floor, trying my hardest to take in everything that’d just happened and appear calm in front of Kei. I’d hardly be any help to him if I broke down now. I couldn’t stop looking at him as he wandered around the old storage shed, inspecting this new place. He paused in front of the mirror and pulled his collar back, examining the smooth and unbroken flesh of his neck that had been sliced open not long ago. I gazed at it too, hardly able to believe how perfect it looked when I had seen a knife tear through it with my own eyes. For the hundredth time I asked if he was okay. He brushed off the question, and I when I tried to press the matter he said he was worried for me. I didn’t like how readily he was trying to mold himself into this “Ajins aren’t humans” ideology. It felt like he was trying to separate us all over again. I didn’t realize at the time that that is exactly what he was trying to do.
Oblivious, I talked about staying up in the mountains with Kei, just the two of us, but Kei told me he wanted to live a normal life. I remembered that my grandfather lived in Kyushu, a small village, far away from the town we had come from. I hadn’t seen my grandfather since I was little, but I remembered how isolated the village was. If we could go there, Kei would be safe, and I could stay by his side. Kei agreed to my plan, or rather he led me to believe that he would go along with it, and I headed into town to pick up supplies. The whole time I was there I was happily picturing the life we would have together. We could stay with my grandfather at first, and I’d get a job. Once I’d earned enough money, I’d buy a small house for me and Kei. It’d be a peaceful life out in the country, away from everyone that hated me because of my father and away from everyone that wanted to hurt Kei. It was foolish of me to believe that now I could suddenly find some peace when the rest of my life had been turmoil.
I was exhausted by the time I got back. We’d need to rest during the day and move at night, so I proposed we take turns sleeping and keeping watching. I never should have gone to sleep first. When I awoke, Kei was gone. He had taken my phone and the bike. I ran through the trees, yelling his name, hoping beyond all reason that I would hear him calling back to me. I wasn’t even paying attention to where I was going, so it was hardly surprising that I tripped. I hit the ground hard, and didn’t bother getting up again. The hot summer sun beat down on me, reminding me of that summer day all those years ago when I came to our tree and for the first time, Kei wasn’t there.
Still, this wasn’t like last time. Last time Kei had called. Last time Kei had told me himself why he was leaving me. Last time I had some warning. But even as I lay there, tears starting to spill from my eyes once more, all my impossible dreams of life in Kyushu crushed, I couldn’t hate Kei Nagai.
It was true, this time was different. Last time Kei had left me for his own sake. He had left me because it would damage his reputation to grow up as friends with the son of a criminal. But this time, he had left me because he couldn’t stand to see me hurt, or to live in fear that the next time someone attacked us, I wouldn’t get back up again. He had left me because, unlike before, he didn’t want to lose me. And that hurt far worse than knowing that he had once seen me as a stain on his reputation.