Chapter 10

Natsuno was stretched out in the darkness. The only source of light was the panel of his stereo, the only sound his low-volume AM Radio, but that soon became annoying and was shut off. All that remained was a long silence. The faint light of one device and silence.

From there Natsuno tried to conjure the image of death to mind but it wasn't going well. 

Today--no, it was already yesterday--Tohru was buried in the mountain. He was no longer anywhere on this earth. 

Eternal cessation. At the least, no matter how dark, no matter how dark, no matter how distant any other sensation may be, "death" was completely different from this sensation. This was death, wasn't even something you could have cognizance of.  Yourself, the source of cognizance was obliterated, so there was nothing left remaining. Even if everything but yourself remained there, that was something that was far beyond Natsuno's grasp now. To Natsuno it was similar to the entire world vanishing but without Natsuno himself there cognizant of the world being lost. That kind of nihility. Nihility and nothing to hold awareness of, perfect nothingness. 

Tohru had ended up going there and Natsuno too would eventually. His parents too, Tamotsu too, Aoi too, all humans pushed their way there. Towards the ruin of losing everything in the world.

He didn't think it was scary. It was nothing more than ardent curiosity. A nothing that couldn't even be imagined  but that clearly existed was incomprehensible. Even though it definitively existed, it wasn't something anyone could touch. The moment one made contact with it, it became impossible to hold knowledge of it. 

Yourself no longer there. A self to feel "there" didn't even exist. Even though he was the one who should have wanted that. Natsuno was the one left behind. 

The continuing deaths. Megumi. Tohru. There were others too. He thought that he'd seen funerals here and there throughout the village. And moves. Where they fleeing from someone from somewhere? Even Tohru found it suspicious. Said this year was strange. Enough people that it could be called strange were leaving the village, yet Natsuno was still the village's prisoner. 

As he breathed a soft sigh, Natsuho realized the small sound. It was like the sound of a rolled up cloth unrolling down. He casually looked towards the direction the sound was coming from, the swaying curtain near his bedside. It wasn't as if the wind were swaying it, it was more like someone had been rolling the curtain up and let go of it, as if it were still fluttering from that.

Natsuno found himself watching over that movement. The curtain immediately stopped, hanging expressionless, unblown by the wind.

That was probably his imagination, he thought. Thinking he'd heard a sound, thinking he saw it sway. He realized he heard a faint noise outside the window. It may have been the sound of Natsuno waking up and creaking in his bed. The night had unexpected sounds.

Natsuno stared fixedly at the curtain. The window was opened, but. --He thought it was open. When returning to his room he didn't remember closing it. 

The curtain didn't move. There was no longer any sound. As if it were all saying it was his imagination, on the contrary, Natsuno held a firm conviction that somebody had definitely moved the curtain. Somebody opened the curtain, and made a noise outside of the window.

Natsuno rose up and pulled the curtain to the side. Just as he stretched his hand out enough to faintly see outside, the exact same sound as before was heard.

I knew it, this was it. Natsuno opened the curtain just a bit from the side. The glass of the window was like a dark mirror of the room, a shadowed reflection of himself depicted there. When he opened the curtain further, ten centimeters past the window's sliding door, he peered into the lusterless darkness. There were no nearby sounds.

Natsuno drew nearer to the frame around the glass. The light within his room cast his own shadow over things but as expected he couldn't see anything. In the hazy shadows of darkness, the empty courtyard stretched out long to the side, beyond it forest, a visible thicket. Very nearby was the dense thicket of raspberries. They were swaying. Neither the nearby underbrush nor the tree tops were moving. Only the feeble branches of the raspberry plant were moving as if shivering, and that too stopped immediately. Just like the curtain before. 

As he watched over that movement, somebody was watching over him as he watched the darkness, so he felt. He could feel their gaze. The presence of somebody watching him, from somewhere not far off, was there.

Even focusing his eyes, he couldn't see beyond the shadows of the night. If someone were even one meter deep within the forest lurking, Natsuno probably wouldn't be able to see it. There wasn't enough light outside of the window. 

Without averting their gaze, pouring into him. Definitely, somebody was looking at Natsuno.

But, who?

What immediately came to mind was the face of a girl the same age as himself but that didn't seem very realistic. Natsuno had acknowledged that Megumi was gone. Megumi's desk was still at school but lately there were no flower ornaments at it. Megumi's desk that remained as others avoided it was moved inconspicuously each time seats were changed, and by now was forced out towards a back row out of the line of sight. That was one link in the greater part of erasing Megumi's existence from this world. Having a tangible realism to it, Megumi's death was engraved into the world, and that notched out truth was already well worn in.

That by now Megumi did not exist was as clear to Natsuno as the fact that he did. Therefore, the someone who was watching him could not have been Megumi.

"...Tohru-chan?" With a voice not loud enough to call it giving voice, that was what poured out. They said the dead went to say their farewells to the living. It was a terribly common ghost story. Was it possible this was a case of that? While thinking that that was impossible, that did have a grain of reality to it. 

If so, how great would that be? If there was something to visit to say farewells, Tohru's will, something that abided byhis intentions remained even now while his cast off shell was buried.

His eyes pondered the darkness but after all he couldn't see a thing. Nothing made any other noise. The thicket of raspberries didn't move. While standing there, the feel of that gaze faded.

Something that might have been Tohru had departed. ---That was the feeling Natsuno had.