By Han A. Odasaku
He stands there, the image clear despite the fogginess. The fog is semi-translucent. The man looks around him; the desks of the class are filled with his classmates. He looks forward to the chalkboard; the teacher is writing questions for the class on the book they are reading.
He jots things down at a slow tempo. The sounds of pencils moving and whispers from classmates mute as he writes his answers down.
His eyes drift to a girl who sits beside him. She stares at him and then down at his notebook. Her eyes are grey and her hair is a deep brown. Her uniform is well-kept, her skirt flowing down to her knees, and her eyes drift from side to side, unsure.
"Can I borrow your notes?" The words come out muffled, but he connects the vague phrasing and hands his notebook to her.
He looks back toward the teacher—his face wrinkled, his breathing heavy. He sits down in his chair as the bell rings, announcing the end of the school year. The final moments of his high school career.
Carefully, he packs his bag and covers his ears with large headphones, making his way down the road before stopping and waiting for the crossing light to turn green. He looks at his phone and puts on a playlist before looking forward.
The road in front of him is now clear. The only person is an old woman standing right before him. He hadn't noticed the light change, signaling them to move forward. The people who had been beside him were now spreading out—going home, to the convenience store, and who knows where.
The old lady looks back at him, her eyes sad and compassionate. For the first time, he looks someone in the eyes. With his real eyes. She sees through it, looks carefully at him, and then grabs his hand.
She tugs weakly at him, guiding him across the road. He doesn't resist or pull away, simply allowing the old woman to do as she pleases.
Then she stops and looks at him in his eyes. "Listen, it'll be alright, Jun, and I'm sorry for not believing you." She smiles and embraces him tightly.
He looks at her, his mouth slightly open. This Jun wasn't him…
The door to his home is left slightly ajar as he walks in. His drawers have been rummaged through, his money taken.
A letter is left on his bed. "Thank you, son." It is written hastily by someone he barely knew.
He sighs and cleans up the mess before shutting his door, leaving himself in the dark room, quietly lying on his futon. Slowly, he gets up and looks in the shattered mirror at a reflection where it stands… A bird-shaped thing whose face is split haphazardly by the wild cracks running throughout the mirror.
He digs into his bag and pulls out his journal with the final ending points of the book written down, alongside his answer to the question. The pages are illuminated by the dim bathroom light.
"Why did he do it?"
"Because…" The rest of the answer is scratched out.
There, written in the left-hand corner: "Hey, Toru, would love to get to know you during the winter." Written on the page is the girl's number and her name.
He pushes the notebook back into his bag and lays down on the floor.
He closes his eyes. They shut, and he falls into slumber.
The morning comes without warning, with no essence of a dream he can remember. He groans as he sits up. He looks around his bathroom—the phone resting at his side, dozens of missed calls from an unknown number.
He lifts himself up, his legs shaking slightly. He looks outside, and there the fog shifts ever so slightly. It creeps up to his window and knocks and knocks before the fog shatters the glass and swallows him whole.
His eyes open wide. He looks to his side—the phone the same as in the dream. He quickly stands and looks out the window, but there is no fog. His breathing slowly returns to calmness. He falls on his back and looks around his room, the same as last night.
He carefully digs out his notebook and turns to the page of the girl's number before dialing it into his phone.
"Sorry, but the number you are trying to reach isn't available at the moment. Please tr—" He hangs up and looks around the halfway-organized, halfway-messy room.
He hangs his head and begins to look at his reflection—that sickening creature, mutated into something else, with its dead eyes and lifeless gaze.
He shoots finger guns before getting dressed and leaving the house. He wanders into a bookstore, picking up a book and flipping it open:
Notebook 1
"Mine has been a life of much shame…"
He reads the first sentence beyond the prologue and quickly shuts it before placing it back. He walks to another section of the store, opening a different book:
"People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others."
He reads this excerpt before shutting the book forcefully and placing it back on the shelf.
He closes his eyes, inhaling and exhaling before sighing and purchasing a book far from the other two.
He arrives back at his apartment and sits down before opening his new book, reading through its basic and simplistic plot.
When he looks up, he sees his phone vibrating on the floor beside him.
He looks to see an unknown caller and picks it up, putting the phone to his ear.
"Hey, how can I help you?"
"Hey, Toru, right? I was surprised to see you called me earlier—sorry, I barely woke up haha."
"Uh, my name isn—" he mumbles.
"What's that?"
"Uh, nothing. I just wanted to make sure you meant to give me your number?"
"Uh yeah, I was wondering if you had some advice on getting with Junichiro… you've talked, right? I wanted to get to know you since I can't understand what kinda people Junichiro likes." She laughs and giggles.
He explains what he knows about Junichiro—his likes and dislikes, or at least what he had heard during a group project—before hanging up without a follow-up and blocking her number.
His body falls to the floor, his head slamming against the hardwood. He exhales sharply and grits his teeth.
A small notification flashes on his screen: "Thank you for shopping at Sakurai Books." His phone slips out of his hand. He inhales and exhales, not making any major movements.
The next few days pass in a blur. He barely eats but goes out shopping—never at the same place twice.
On a particularly somber day, while buying a new light novel, it begins to rain. He opens his umbrella and waits by the side of the road for a bus.
Nearby, a couple laughs and acts with deep affection. He stares with vast indifference. The two whisper for a moment before the man approaches, his face clearly angry.
"Are you some kind of perv?" The man pushes him onto the floor, water splashing all over him, soaking his clothes and his book.
He stays in the water as the bus comes and the two enter, leaving him on the sidewalk.
He makes his way home on foot, tossing his belongings on the floor before entering the shower.
Afterward, he lowers himself to the floor. After the long, exhausting day, he falls asleep.
He opens his eyes. The room is dark, the door to his patio open wide, allowing a small amount of moonlight to enter. There it comes again—that thick, semi-illusory fog. It covers and consumes his body and mind.
He wakes up, his breath heavy. He feels his forehead—it's hot, and he is sweating. A fever dream. Despite his best efforts, he is now sick.
The next few days feel like an eternity, watching and reading everything in his home before turning to buying books online and waiting for their arrival.
A woman knocks on his door. He peeks through the hole before opening it, wrapped in a thick blanket. His apartment, even from the small opening, is clearly messy.
"I have a package for you." She hands him a package—small, too small to be anything he had ordered recently.
The woman leaves without another word, and he is left holding the package, clueless to its contents.
After five minutes, he opens it and finds a small plush rabbit. He chuckles and tosses it to the corner of his room before disposing of the trash and checking all sides of the plush.
The next day, he is forced to go out. In need of food and bottled water, he rushes to a general market where all sorts of items are sold—from books to video games to groceries.
He quickly makes his way back to his apartment before sitting on the floor, that small rabbit sitting on the bed.
Quietly resigned to his life, he does nothing but bury himself in grief. A social media notification appears: a family member's passing, another's birthday. The invitations to these events are absent in his inbox.
In the night, a crash comes from next door, waking him. Screaming and yelling—then a door slamming, followed by frantic knocking at his own.
"Hello?" he asks.
"Please let me in." He gets a clear view of her face, covered in bruises and cuts.
He opens his door and allows her to walk in before closing and locking it. She runs to the corner, clutching the plush and making herself small.
"Hey, open the hell up!" Another knock comes at the door. This time, it's a large man with broad shoulders and a thick accent.
Slowly, he opens the door, peeking at the man before it slams open—the doorknob smashing into him with such force that it knocks the air out of him. The man rushes over to the woman, grabbing her by the hair and trying to pick her up.
"Hurry and get the hell up, you whore." The man yells before knocking the wind out of her.
He grabs a knife and stands before the man gripping the woman. The man stares, amused by his small frame, before approaching. Instinctively, he thrusts the knife outward, into the man's chest.
"You fucking…" A slow trickle of blood leaks from the corner of the man's mouth before he drops the woman and pushes him against the wall, beating on him until his face is beyond recognition—until he is an unrecognizable monster.
Finally, the man falls over, no longer breathing. He stands. The woman has long since passed out, leaving him alone in horror. His face is beaten, disgusting—even for a monster.
"What did I do… What do I do…" In fear, he rushes into his bathroom, looking at himself. Now a grotesque black bird-like thing, his head shattered even more than before, the glass appears ready to fall from its frame. "WHAT THE HELL AM I?"
He runs, leaving the scene untouched, moving as far away as possible—running into the woods before collapsing after countless minutes spent in an unknown direction.
Looking around, he sees nothing but a large mass of fog approaching him.
"What do I do? I don't have anywhere to go." His breathing is heavy as he searches for somewhere—anywhere—to hide. "I'm scared… what do I do?"
The forest around him falls silent. The wind doesn't blow, nor do the trees.
"Hello." The fog takes illusory form.
"Who are you?" he asks.
"You, of course," the fog says. The feeling of warm liquid splashing on his skin makes him jump.
"We are two parts of a monster." The fog's eyes look down. "We are stuck in a storm—a storm that has made us bleed. We are bleeding, and the wind is blowing it into our eyes as we try to move forward. We're alone, but not really. We can't stop. We need to continue going forward… to find ourselves somewhere in that dark storm."
The fog doesn't speak again but walks into him. The fog in the forest disappears, leaving only the hooting of owls nearby.
He is left there, the man without a name. The Fog? Toru? Jun? Neither. He is a being—a human whose shame was so great that he was forsaken by it and now lives as merely himself. A horrific, shattered bird-like thing in the shape of a man.
He stays, weeping in the trees, his life of shame terrible—leading only to pain and disaster. I join him in his sorrow, leaving the fog and standing beside him.
The world forgot him, leaving him a shameful monster who consumed himself in his devastation. He was left a monster, trying to live a normal life among humanity.
Police investigations determined he was innocent—that the incident had been nothing more than self-defense.
However, his guilt ate away at him. He despaired and cried out to anyone who would listen.
"I have lived a life of much shame… I have bled and wept, and those things flying around in the metaphorical storm that is humanity left me lost." He stares into it—the bird-like thing. It has become warped from an innocent bird into a terrible predatory monster that has taken life.
"Not a single person could love a monster. This is no fairy tale. In reality, monsters die alone."
He walks down the road, head held low. There he stands on a familiar road. There, in front of him, is an old woman—the old woman. She looks at him and smiles. In her arms, she holds a small rabbit plush.
"Ah, hello Jun…" She speaks more weakly now. "Would you like to go out to lunch?"
End.