Golden Time:Volume4 Chapter1
Status: Incomplete
54% completed (estimated)
Golden Time 4: Chapter 1
Chapter 1
(Linda...)
"...ngh..."
In the middle of his futon, Banri opened his eyes.
Linda, he'd said.
Almost in shock, he gradually felt around his cheeks the heat of a long sigh he let out.
Was what he was seeing a dream?
The warm remnants had dripped from the core of his body into the pit of his stomach, but the aftertaste of calling out to her was simply too vivid. His heart was still beating hard.
The towel-blanket that covered him to his head was damp from his night sweat. In the thin darkness, suffused with his own body odor, he realized that he was curled up and dug deep under like an animal in a deep burrow.
As if he were twisting himself, he stuck his head out and at the same time, his cell-phone's alarm sounded beside his bed. It was morning.
The world before his eyes: his familiar one room apartment.
His own room for living alone. The interior, an idiotic beige and white, wood-tone.
As he did it, Banri thought 'what an awful mess.' Not having arisen from his bed yet, only his eyes were moving. Where there would be a television screen, there was a still open notebook computer, half-empty PET bottles and snack-food bags. And disposable chopsticks. Not wanting to get his hands dirty, Banri eats potato chips with chopsticks. And because washing the chopsticks for the sake of the potato chips was bothersome, he was using those disposable chopsticks they have set by the cash register at the convenience store for the benefit of people buying boxed lunches, by the sign saying "Please use chopsticks!" Up to this point, he had never turned them down.
Everything he couldn't tidy up was scattered aimlessly around the center cushion: a charger, gum, some bags, a wallet, comics, discarded socks, nose-blown tissues, finger wiped tissues, tissues dirtied somehow at the formation of the galaxy, and in another alternate universe were discarded clothes, lecture handouts, loose-leaf papers, and miscellaneous things stuffed in through the mail-slot.
And stretched across the floor, a parallelogram.
It was the shadow of a stool.
In the north and south, through the gaps in the yellow curtains the morning light shone through, cutting straight lines, and in them the dust in the air could be seen drifting, dancing in the beams. He thought: it’s the world of morning. The sunlight was brilliant. It looked like today’s weather would be good again.
It was already time when he had to get up and go to first period.
But, far from getting himself up, he could not, so long as he could stop the cell-phone alarm. Banri remained lying down still, his chest moving up and down with his shallow breathing.
His outstretched arms felt heavy, his legs had no strength, and he was unable to throw off his towel-blanket. The back of his head buried in the pillow still, he kept looking up vaguely at the ceiling.
The morning light on the other side of his eyelashes was dazzling. Frowning with eyebrows unkempt since the trim he’d received the previous month, Banri resisted still the shrill sound of the alarm.
In Tokyo, July had arrived.
Three months had passed already since he’d come up to Tokyo.
The stickiness of his skin was surely due to the heat of the night.
Still laying down in the bed soaked with his body heat and sweat, Banri pressed the back of his hand against his forehead. His forehead was hot and sticky, and where he touched his body felt bad.
He wondered what the heck happened overnight, where he’d gone.
Was that all--- a dream?
Blinking his eyes in the warmly humid summer morning, Banri somehow raised his bangs from where they had stuck to his forehead. He simply didn't think that it was all a dream. That was just no way, he felt.
As proof that it was not a dream, his lips throbbed painfully in time with his heartbeat. With the terrible heat and swelling, he could not close his mouth very tightly. With all due respect, one thing is Ikariya, another Matsumoto Seichou, otherwise, lips as huge as this are considered to be pretty in a tribal environment... but no, already it didn't matter. At any rate, even he understood that the swelling was obvious.
Last night, Banri had fallen flat on his face in the middle of his room.
He'd cut his lip banging his mouth on the floor pretty hard. It bled terribly, but still, he was lucky his front teeth weren't broken, and he had to believe it was the way he fell.
While trembling in pain and shock, he couldn't do more in any case than press hard on the cut with a tissue. The bleeding had dripped all the way down to his chin, but he had a feeling that rushing over to the hospital emergency room would be a bit much, and wavering over what to do, he entered once more into a sleep-like trance... it seemed like.
There were traces of blood here and there on the towel spread out over his pillow. And on the sheets. And on the front of his tee-shirt. And on the tissues scattered about also, there was the color of dried blood.
And then,
'Linda!'
"...ngh..."
---Like a high-pitched scream, the cell-phone alarm was still sounding.
Crying and shouting like some invisible person, the sound was incredibly hurtful to his ears.
With all his might, Banri shut his eyes. It somehow seemed awfully difficult to grab the cell-phone with his right hand and kill the alarm. As things were, he got out of bed as if he were rolling out of it.
But on the wooden flooring, no strength in his knees, his body folded like an old man's, just like that. He couldn't straighten himself up. He didn't have the strength to support himself.
Crouched on the floor on his hands and knees, in a poze as if he were bowed down in worship, covering his face with hands that had dropped his cell-phone,
"...Why, like this..."
He moaned.
And then, like that, a flash-back--- that was the only thing you could call it, he was enduring a great wave of explosive feelings.
What was happening to him now? What had happened during the night? He didn't understand it precisely. Banri simply understood that last night, temporarily, his past self had awoken in his body.
A few hours ago, in the middle of the night, the Tada Banri from before his memory loss had suddenly and surely woken from sleep and was here in this body.
He remembered it being like a fish jumping out of the water, thinking "Aah! I'm returning! To my body!" Who had thought that, or seeing as the core personality was clearly no longer there, that it was this body, or rather this body that thought like that was something he could only barely comprehend.
It was every emotion coming at him at once: surprise and delight, bewilderment, bafflement and dismay. They were all one thing.
'I want to go back to be with Linda!'
That was all Tada Banri asked.
Mother didn't matter, father didn't matter, home didn't matter. In that time a bit ago when Banri tried with all his might to run off and return home, it was about one woman only.
That woman, formally called Hayashida Nana but answering to 'Linda', of supple build, was formerly his female friend, and was now his club senior, and now, because of that, with that,
"...ng, ...ng"
With that.
---Every gasp was as if his heart were being grabbed and squeezed.
He wondered what kind of mechanism it was.
Cowering down still, his body twisting, Banri tried repeatedly to somehow get a good breath. He attempted to calm himself down and return to himself, to breathe slowly in and let it out. But his lungs and stomach stiffened as if he were shivering, his chest squeezed in tightly as if it were scared of something, and he couldn't get them to work together. Half in a state of panic, on the verge of suffocating and yet on the edge of hyperventilating too, Banri shook his diaphragm awkwardly and rubbed his forehead against the floor.
He was thinking, wishing to escape from reality, and that he seemed to be quite the 'keening woman.' He'd seen from the television that it was the custom somewhere in Asia. It was said they would go crazy at funerals, wailing exaggeratedly on purpose, in the so-called 'Sakura' form. While watching the professional women do their work, screaming and bawling in a virtually trance-like state, Banri had been thinking "If I tried that, I'd probably do it backwards." He was surely in such a state now, making his back go up and down violently. Like he was being hit squarely by hypersonic waves, every cell of his body was on the verge of destruction from the ferocity by which they were being made to vibrate.
Already, he was entirely mush.
He thought of his normal shape.
He had known for quite a while now that the person he was before he lost his memories had had a crush on Linda.
Just by looking at the smiling face next to Linda in the photo, that was of course the proof, himself. He told himself, that guy is in love. You're entirely exposed, you, I mean me.
And now Banri, meeting Linda-senpai once more, having become a college student, without even knowing the full situation, from the start felt her worth caring about ...no, he thought she was rather nice. As much on the outside as on the inside, and when later it became clear, as he learned more of the past, he was already thankful, from the bottom of his heart, for her support in his very existence, and as far as Banri was concerned, Linda had been a "special person" for a long time already.
If he had not met and fallen in love with Kaga Kouko, it wouldn't be strange if he were going crazy with a second crush on Linda by now.
He even knew that was how he would have thought.
But, that was all.
Even so.
For no more than one night, or rather for a few moments, no, maybe just for a few seconds, his former self, from before he lost his memories, had returned to his body.
It was definitely a situation where the feelings when he started running for Linda's side, the strong attachment he must have had, built over a long time and many shared experiences, had been installed into his current self.
In the heart of the present Banri welcoming the morning, the forcefully spoken words "I want to go back!" torn out of his body as if in reckless yearning remained entirely there, though his memories had not returned.
Truly, he wanted to say 'What the heck?' He wanted to ask somebody.
In just one night, this much of his heart had been stolen away.
(I wonder what Linda is doing right now?) (Would she be thinking of me?) (What does Linda think of me, I wonder?) (Just what am I as far as Linda is concerned?)
---Really, he felt like he had been stolen away.
He was becoming unable to think of anything normally, of other things. Surprisingly, the core of his thoughts had turned to mush. Separately, Banri thought of his own problems. Though he'd never been the type to call himself sharp-witted, all things considered, his current situation was really bad.
Looking rather like a cat sitting atop a fence, he raised his stunned face in both hands. He did not understand the meaning. He realized that when Linda had been here, he had been hoping without any reason for it. He truly did not understand the meaning of it.
Looking at the stools, he thought. It would be nice if Linda were sitting over there. Looking at the kitchen, he thought. It would be nice if she were there in the kitchen. He looked at the window and thought. It would be nice if she were there by the window. Here, at my side, it would be nice if Linda were here now. And then, even this pain, this empty heart, would all be resolved.
What was he saying...
All he needed to pierce himself was sharpness, but he was too blunt. Just hitting himself viciously with the back of a heavy kitchen knife hurt, but it didn't cut!
...He would not deceive himself, not even in jest. It was like his self was being washed away.
He was in over his head, all his thoughts, his emotions, even his very self were becoming a rushing torrent, forming a whirlpool that swirled around a single woman called Linda. Whatever he did, he couldn't break out of this whirlpool. Not even breathing, trying to fight back, he had so far been unable to return to normal movement. Crammed and filled to bursting, like a balloon inflated to its limits, he was at the end of his rope, and couldn't stretch the least bit more.
He was doing really well with ordinary difficulties. He remembered the face of his former self. Even so, the troubles of the former Tada Banri, everything: his studies, sitting for exams, taking part in club activities, hanging around with his other friends, all while a state of being afflicted by emotions for one woman, were something hidden from him.
(...I flunked my exams because of such things...)
He was talking to himself like it was somebody else's problem, but even so, he thought that the face in the photo, laughing to where you could see the teeth in the back of his mouth, was clearly feeling good about things.
(Or rather...)
The photo.
All of a sudden, there was a chill up his spine.
Of course, he could not set aside the matter. He realized that he didn't know where the photo taken of his face with Linda's was. For certain, it had disappeared from the place where it should have been, and given the circumstances, he could only think ‘somebody' had found it and taken it away.
And that 'somebody', should it turn out to be ‘girlfriend'...
"...Ah, ah, ah...! Enough already!"
'Horrible, horrible, horrible, I'm horrible, I'm the worst, I should die, or rather not think, or at least think properly,' Banri moaned as if in prayer, churned his hair with his hands and bounced up and down energetically.
For the moment, the world was a giant slalom. Raising his voice stupidly, "Eh!?" unable to stand, he sank to the ground once more, just like Bambi.
His vision kept spinning, as if he'd been riding on a merry-go-round. And then, though he had intended to sit straight down, of its own accord his body was rapidly listing to one side. Had he realized it, it was as if he had motion sickness, with nausea welling up from his stomach.
He was in awful shape.
Frowning silently, Banri sat foppishly, sideways with both hands on the floor, supporting a body that seemed to have collapsed. Was his bad condition due to the wound on his lip, which had been throbbing in pain the whole time? Could it be as bad as that? He considered going to the bathroom to check in mirror and see how bad his face looked, but without strength in his limbs, of course, he could neither stand up nor walk.
Frustrated, Banri shuffled, almost crawled, over to the low table in the center of the room on his knees. He remembered the gorgeous mirror that Kouko had given him. Taking hold of it desperately, clinging to it like he was drowning, he checked his face.
Described within the mirror,
"Oooh...!?"
A cursed, ugly face was revealed.
What the... he gasped in silence for a moment. It felt like he was that lout they called "Porco Rosso."
His first impression of the wound on his lip was that it was worse than he'd ever imagined. His entire lower lip was swollen like an over-ripe field berry... it looked something like a snake gourd. His lip must have split along a line in the shape of a letter 'Y'. Streaked vividly with dark dried blood, fresh enough to make one want to look away, they had swollen up hugely. The area which had gotten bashed was bruised deep purple. You could call it elegant, but such elegance in the old days was only permitted to the emperor--- stop it, I don't have the heart to joke about it right now.
The swelling that he wanted to avert his eyes from stretched from around his chin to his cheeks, all the way to around eyes. Banri's face was swollen to five times larger than normal.
His eyes shut just like some insolent newborn baby, his sweaty, slippery skin gleaming strangely, breathing through his nose while letting his lips droop carelessly, not wanting to admit that this was his own face, and it would be reborn seven more times yet, he had been thrown a perfectly straight, plain fast ball. Catching it was going to be a pain.
And his face was not its normal color. Flushed red and swollen up, if he tried to hold his hand against his cheek or his forehead they were hot, as if they had caught fire. Come to think of it, wasn't it too hot where he just touched his forehead?
"In other words... do I have a fever?"
The dizziness, the feeling out of sorts, and now a feverish face. He didn’t have a thermometer to check it with, but his current state was proof enough.
When he had calmed himself down and checked how he felt, more than the heat of a July morning, he felt a chill seeping out from the marrow of his bones. Now he was shivering.
Banri, somehow propping up his body against the wall, staggered towards the bathroom for now. He managed to take care of that, sitting down as if collapsing, but when it came time to leave it was on all fours. Like this, if his hair were long, he’d be just like Sadako.
Quickly falling to the floor once again, unable to get up and by will-power alone pulling his pants on about 70% of the way, he thought. This was, perhaps, really, a bit too much in a physical sense. He wasn’t going to be able to get better by himself. He had a feeling that as time went on he was only going to get worse.
There certainly had to be a clinic specializing in internal medicine in the neighborhood. He remembered spotting one while walking about.
Getting up somehow or another, he finished pulling on the remaining 30% of his pants. Grabbing his wallet (insurance card inside), his cell-phone and the house-key, and pulling some house-shorts near at hand over the lower half of his body, Banri headed unsteadily towards the door.
Stuffing his wobbly feet into sandals and opening the door, he went out into the outer corridor. The direct sunlight dazzled his eyes. The door lock didn't want to set, and he struck the door knob over and over again with the keys, to no avail. Almost seating himself there, he managed to set the lock after several tries. Starting to walk off,
"...Aaa..."
Dizzyness. It was useless, of course. The world was once more a merry-go-round.
He fell to the side as if he'd had his feet kicked out from under him, hitting the next door rather hard. He sank down to the floor, unable to get back on his feet just then.
The next apartment, come to think of it, wasn't that of a stranger. Banri hit that door over and over again with his feeble fists.
Shortly, the sound of stamping feet came to Banri's ears through the door, their owner making no attempt at concealing her displeasure. The angrily opened door was stopped only by the fallen Banri's head.
"Y're noisy!"
Her voice was low and rough, reverberating as if from the depths of hell, but,
"...Ah?"
She seemed to realize right away that the pitiful creature fallen at her doorstep was her underclassman neighbor.
In Banri's barely open eyes, whether by chance or not, there was a perfect view, looking up at an angle from below at the figure standing there imposingly in the door.
He was absolutely not looking over that too-white skin with his gaze, over and over, up and down, as if he were licking her all over. He was feeling so sick that even if he had thought of it, he wouldn't have been able to control the movement of his eyeballs.
Over her slim body, she wore a oversize black skull and crossbones tee-shirt. Her bare toenails were painted jet black too. As much as she was sinister, there were those white thighs, boyishly firm shins and ankles. Shell-like ankle-bones. If he looked at upwards once more, it was likewise black... she was somehow wearing boxer shorts like a guy.
He wondered if he would be trampled to death, without hesitation, if he were to say something like "Wasn't there a thong hanging on the veranda when I looked the other day? Why isn't it there?" Because he understood that much, Banri turned his head limply to the side, averting his eyes from the panties.
Irritated, her scowling eyebrows were punkishly thin. Without makeup, her features were like those of a beautiful child. The jet black hair that fell to around her chin seemed strangely devoid of life. She didn't seem womanly, her body too small and thin.
Holding a cigarette pinched in her fingertips, she silently inhaled a mouthful. You could hear the little flame burning. As if she wanted her lungs to be soaked in nicotine, keeping her thin lips closed for a bit, not breathing, NANA-senpai was looking down at Banri.
Presently, smoke leaked out from her mouth.
"What are you doing?"
"...I am, in distress..."
In the rain! A failure! An abandoned dog! It seemed like that kind of situation.
"NANA-senpai...?"
Banri looked up at the person beside him, filled with many thoughts and feelings.
"You seriously, really are a super nice person! ...You were, weren't you!?"
"Your face is really ticking me off."
That voice was so ill-tempered, it could have continued "You want me to give you a bindi by cigarette burn?"
Whether it was due to her bad temper, smoking, her band or all of the above, the low, rough quality of NANA-senpai's voice, for no apparent reason, was easy on his ears. Perhaps his sense of hearing was overheating, but it seemed to Banri to belong in the same category as sonar echoing in the deeps of the sea.
NANA-senpai grabbed hold of Banri's elbow firmly and helped lift his wobbly body. She was also holding a plastic bag from the pharmacy with antibiotics prescribed for him, so he wouldn't drop it.
If you saw them up close, they were perhaps a little... no, a very suspicious looking twosome. A very ill-tempered punk woman with a pallid face and a really ugly looking guy (with a big bandage on this mouth) with feverishly glittering eyes. But from an outsider's perspective, under the clear, pleasant morning sky, they were simply walking companionably arm in arm.
The sidewalk of dull red and grey pavers combined into a checkerboard pattern relayed them on from the clinic to the combined station and shopping district, and continued onwards to the apartment building where Banri and NANA-senpai lived. A row of ginkgo trees leafed out thickly, casting dark lacy shadows about their feet.
He looked at his watch when they left the pharmacy, and it was barely nine thirty, but the sunlight coming down from above was already baking their skin. The voices of the cicadas could not be heard yet. But, he had a feeling that in this hot wind, they'd turn the volume up really loud any time now.
Moving his uncomfortable mouth carefully, Banri,
"Really, thank you very much... it seems that I misunderstood you somehow, NANA-senpai..."
Looking up at NANA-senpai, he tried earnestly to convey his gratitude.
If he were to stand straight up, Banri would actually be about ten centimeters taller, but in his current weak-legged state, Banri's nose came up to around NANA-senpai's shoulder.
The reply was one chilly snort. Without so much as a twitch of her narrow chin for Banri's sake, perhaps wanting a cigarette, she licked her lips with the tip of her tongue.
"NANA-senpai, in the wilderness of Tokyo, putting up a brave front so as not to be underestimated, truly having forgotten entirely the kind and gentle ways of neighborly love, not even accepting the Unagi-pie my mother and I had bought, just somebody from Kawaguchi, changed by the city into an extreme cosplayer..."
She may not have had the black makeup around her eyes, but her gaze was sufficiently sharp and cold as she glared back at Banri, irritated.
"I'm not from Kawaguchi! And I'm not a cosplayer."
"Ah, excuse me... but, err, or was it Kami-Nakazato?"
She growled "Wa-ra-bi," altogether like a wild animal in a cage.
But still. What to do in this odd situation?
NANA-senpai, the one that knocked down Banri and Kouko with a guitar once, the one that had that trendy, very loud poetry reading spot (though he wasn't really sure of that). And the one that took Banri is his shaky condition to the clinic. He wondered who in the world could have imagined this scene.
At the very least, it was one amazing moment, both surprising and moving. He had thought he only wanted to get some help in standing up, but he truly not expected to receive so much.
The clinic was smaller than he'd thought, and barely five minutes distance from the apartments where they lived, but though he was made to wait quite a while, it took time to check and treat him, and it even took time to get his medicine from a nearby pharmacy, NANA-senpai accompanied him all the while without a cigarette. Even beyond that: when he didn't have quite enough to pay the bill, she even lent him some money.
Because he had had the impression of this person as really scary, and terribly dangerous, somebody who shouldn't be expected to be nice to him, it had moved him all the more. It rather felt like he was a mangy stray dog out in the rain who had been randomly helped by somebody.
"...I will not forget my debt to you, my whole life long!"
Neither will I forget she's from Warabi, Banri thought of the greater Tokyo and northeastern Japan roadmap while reflecting deeply.
"Shut up. Look here, don't stagger. Walk straight, pig-face."
Still wearing a black night-shirt, worn out and torn in several places, and tired jersey pants, her flip-flops flapping, NANA-senpai put her hand underneath his arm and,
"Ugh, it's all wet! ...It's arm-pit sweat!"
As if in complete revulsion, she twisted her pallid, unhealthy-looking face. Heh, Banri laughed,
"It's arm-pit sweat!"
For a guy with a fever, he was strangely tense. Making his eyes glisten like a newborn babe's, while looking up at the 'truly gentle delinquent.' Shamelessly sticking and cuddling up to her, perhaps thinking about such extraneous things like 'the substance referred to as a bra isn't really needed in this human life.'
"Hey, what's with you!"
"It's arm-pit sweat!"
"No its not! It was a sign they were telling us about!"
"That it looks like my lip wound is starting to fester, and I'm getting feverish."
"...Hmm. That's what it looks like. Well, at a glance it looks awfully bad. ...Perhaps you got hit?"
"Huh? Indeed. Me, me. It's from me to me."
"Shut up and be quiet."
"Watcha gonna, do..."
"Shut up and be quiet, or I'm gonna kill you."
"Ma-n, NANA-senpai... you're so stand-offish, or should I say smoky..."
Being lent a shoulder was a nice thing. As it was, Banri, caught up in the moment, seeing the bones across her tee-shirt getting sharper, tried to push his nose into her slender shoulder.
"...And besides, wow, being watched really close under the eyes of NANA-senpai, the awful bear...eek!"
There being no use arguing, she grabbed a handful of hair on the top of his head as if it were a bundle of straw and tore it off. But isn't that the way it is? It was already too late to be thinking he'd gotten carried away with things. The rising screech from the pain in his scalp twisting his still painful mouth, Banri was at NANA-senpai's mercy, unable to make a sound. And in that way, without a shoulder being lent to him a second time, he was hauled back by a silent NANA-senpai, by the hair of his head, and arrived back to the apartments.
"Look, just stand up."
Tossed towards the entrance as if he were flung, shoved into the elevator and then leaving it,
"Go."
Just one word. Then like a condemned criminal from a time before human rights might be simply thrown off a cliff, he was kicked in the butt by a sandal. Not the most surefooted even at the best of times, Banri fell over easily, and,
"Are, aren't you being rather mean!? Treating the injured me like this... just when I thought you really nice, you're suddenly cold... huh!? It must be that so-called 'tsunderation', where you're prepared mentally by being dragged around by the nose..."
"Shut up."
"...Though if it were Linda-senpai, then she'd certainly be kind to me...!"
"That'd be nice, wouldn't it? Linda, catch!"
Grabbed by the back of the neck, he was once more pushed away. Stumbling forward and clinging to the corridor wall,
"Oh... My..."
That person, was there.
Feeling like he was halfway through a test of spirit, the name belonging to that person...
"...Ngh..."
Not saying anything more, not even a greeting for the moment, Banri only dropped his jaw in wonderment.
That person squatted down before Banri's eyes, peered at his awful visage, and then looked up NANA-senpai's face.
"Good grief, NANA-senpai... venting your anger by beating up on your neighbor Tada Banri...?"
"He's an idiot, maybe. Dunno. He's not my type."
Looking like she was dying to have a cigarette in her mouth, NANA-senpai restlessly fiddled around with a 100-yen lighter in her hand.
"This guy did it to himself, and suddenly came asking for help. That's all."
I'm out of smokes.
Saying that point blank, NANA-senpai promptly withdrew to her own apartment.
Her door closing with a snick, those left behind, Banri and,
"She doesn't listen when I tell her she ought to stop smoking. I mean, I was surprised. What, what to do? Suddenly from NANA-senpai came an e-mail saying 'I'm taking Tada Banri to the clinic.' Already surprised, leaving the lecture I came here for now, but, I mean, are you okay? Really, what happened here? Did you get injured?"
"..."
"...Tada Banri? Can you stand?"
"..."
<~~54% Completed~~>
| Back to Prologue | Return to Main Page |
