"I… I like you."
I had finally mustered up the courage to say it to her, the girl I had liked for so many years, almost since I started school. Even though we were never in the same section, never in the same societies, I had always admired her from afar. She was cheerful, considerate, warm. How could anyone not fall for her?
I had wanted to confess for the longest time, but now that our high school graduation was close, I was terrified someone else would do it before me. I couldn't risk losing my only chance.
So, I slipped a chit onto her desk, asking her to meet me in the school backyard. She came. My heart was a storm .... excited, nervous, and so, so afraid. What if she rejected me? But even then, it didn't matter. I just wanted her to know how I felt, even if it ended with rejection.
"I… I like you," I said again, my heart pounding so loud I could feel it in my ears. It drowned out everything else, the whisper of the wind, the chirping of birds. But when I finished, there was silence.
She didn't answer. Or maybe I just couldn't hear her.
I looked up. She was staring at me with a frown, as if I had spoken in a language she didn't understand. Her silence confused me, made me uneasy. Was this rejection? But she didn't look angry or disgusted. Just… confused.
Her expression unsettled me. It was almost like she was staring at something else, not me.
"I can… see you," she finally said, her voice low, skeptical, hesitant.
I blinked, my nerves tightening. "Well, obviously you can see me," I said with a nervous laugh, "I'm human, after all."
But she didn't laugh. She just stood still, her eyes fixed on me as if I wasn't real. Then, quietly, she asked, "What class are you from?"
Was she going to report me? It was just a confession, why would she act like this?
"3-C," I replied.
She shook her head immediately. "No, you're not."
My chest tightened. "What do you mean?"
"You don't know? You're not aware?" she said, her voice almost pitying. Her eyes roamed over me again, up and down, searching.
"Aware of what?" I asked, my voice trembling now.
She looked at my hands for a long time, then finally locked eyes with me. "You've died."
My whole body froze.
Her words slammed into me, cruel and incomprehensible. I looked down at myself. I looked fine, human. Normal. Alive. Why would she say something so absurd?
My heartbeat thundered again, this time out of fear. My chest constricted, my breath shallow.
"Kenji Ito," she whispered my name.
"You were murdered." Her hand trembled as she pointed at my hands.
I didn't want to look. But I had to.
And then- my world shattered.
The skin on several of my fingers was gone. Bare bones glared back at me, stained with dirt, as if they had been buried for years.
A strangled gasp tore from my throat. Tears blurred my vision. No, no, this couldn't be real. My hands had been fine when I came here. They had been normal.
"You're not aware of your death?" Her voice was low, trembling, but calm enough to feel merciless. "You're not human. You were murdered on your way home in your first year of high school."
Her words crushed me, one after the other. My legs felt heavy, cold, rooted to the ground.
"It was all over the news. People were terrified. You were murdered brutally. The killer tore off your skin, stuffed cotton into it, stitched you back together like a doll. Your bones were scattered on the road when the police found you."
Her explanation faded into a dull echo in my head.
I was numb. Broken. My life, the years after first year, everything I thought I had lived, my friends, my days at school, it was all slipping through my fingers. What had I been?
Her words drowned me in darkness. I could feel it swallowing me, crushing me, dragging me down.
And then I screamed.
The memory tore into me, raw and merciless. I remembered.
The night I was killed. The way he ripped my skin while I was still alive. The burning pain, the helplessness, the horror. The sound of my own screams.
It all came back, tearing me apart all over again. My heart raced, my eyes widened in dread. I wanted to run, to escape, but I couldn't. I was trapped in that memory, frozen in terror.
"Kenji?"
Her voice pulled me back, weakly, like a thin thread in the void.
I looked at her. The girl I had loved. The one I had always wanted to confess to. But what was the point now? I was dead. She was alive. We didn't belong together anymore.
She stepped closer. To my shock, she held my hand – or what was left of it. Bones, dirt, decay. She didn't flinch.
She smiled softly. "Yes, I accept your confession."
My chest broke all over again. What was the point of acceptance now? Tears spilled down my face.
"Let's find each other in another life," she whispered.
Her voice was so gentle it almost felt like a lullaby. I closed my eyes, my tears still falling, and sighed.
And then I disappeared.
______________
Yuko stood alone in the schoolyard, her eyes on the ground. Slowly, tears fell down her cheeks.
She remembered the boy she had once dated, the one she had loved so dearly. She had loved Kenji, truly, deeply, but the world had stolen him from her too soon.
Now, with his ghostly confession lingering in the air, she clutched the emptiness he left behind. Or the guilt?
"Now you're mine forever," she whispered through her sobs.
At her house, sitting quietly on a shelf, was a stuffed little doll.
A doll made from the skin of Kenji's hands.