Kara no Kyoukai:Chapter01 02

／2

On the night at the end of August, I decided to take a walk.

The air is a bit cold for the end of a summer. The last train has already left and the town is quiet.

It's cold, quiet, and old, just like a dead city. Even the passing people seem cold and artificial like photos. It reminded me of an incurable disease.

... Disease, illness, sickening.

Everything, the dim houses, the illuminated convenience store... everything seemed as if it would crumble if it let its guard down.

In it all, the moon shines through the night.

In this world where everything is lifeless, it seems like the moon is the only thing alive, and it hurts my eyes.

... That's what I mean by sickening

When I left the house, I put on a black leather jacket over my light blue kimono.

The kimono gets trapped inside the jacket and burns my body.

But it's still not hot... no, rather...

For me, it was never cold to begin with.

---

Even though it's midnight, if you walk, you see some people.

A man hurrying down the street with his face down.

A young man pondering in front of a vending machine.

Many people hanging out in front of the convenience store.

I tried to figure out what reasons they had for being there, but I never did figure it out; being just an outsider.

First of all, there was no meaning behind me myself walking out late at night.

I'm just repeating what I used to do before.

... Two years ago.

I, Ryougi Shiki, was about to head up to my second year in high school when I got in an accident. I was carried straight to the hospital.

I heard that my body didn't get any serious wounds, but the the damage was concentrated on my head.

Since then, I was in a coma.

Maybe because my body was uninjured, the hospital kept me alive, and my meaningless body also tried to live on.

And finally, about two months ago, Ryougi Shiki recovered.

I guess the doctors were shocked - it was as if a corpse had come back to life. I see, that tells me how much they expected my recovery.

And myself too, I was shocked for another reason.

My memory up to now was a bit weird.

To put it simply, I cannot trust the memories I have.

This is different from memory disorder, or rather what people usually call amnesia.

According to Tohko, memory is composed of four systems that the brain operates: Writing, saving, replaying, and recognizing.

"Writing" is to take what you see and to write it into your brain as information.

"Saving" is to keep that information stored.

"Replaying" is to recall the stored information. In other words, remembering.

"Recognizing" is to confirm that the information recalled is the same as the event that actually occurred.

If one cannot perform any one of these processes, they have a memory disorder. Of course, depending on which system is dysfunctional, the case of memory disorder will vary.

But it my case, all these functions are working properly. I can't really feel my previous memories as my own, but the function of "recognizing" is working properly as I can tell that the memory is indeed the same as what I've experienced before.

But still, I could not be confident about my previous self. I could not feel that I am who I was.

Even if I do remember my memory as Ryougi Shiki, I can only recognize the memory as someone else's. Even though there's no doubt that I'm Ryougi Shiki.

The two years of emptiness has reduced Ryougi Shiki into nothing.

Unlike what society thinks, it has caused what's inside of me to crumble into nothing. My memory and the personality I should have had... the connection was utterly destroyed.

With that being the case, my memory became nothing but an image.

But because of that image, I am able to act like I used to. I can communicate with the people I knew and my parents as the Ryougi Shiki they knew, but without any concern for my real feelings.

To be honest, that troubles me so much that I can almost not stand the pain.

...... It's just a mimicry I'm not living at all.

Just like a newborn baby. I don't know anything and I haven't experienced anything. But the memory of the past eighteen years has made me into a complete human.

I already have the emotions people originally learn from experiencing many events as my memory. But I have not actually experienced them. But even if I wanted to experience them, I already know about them. There is no amazement nor feeling of being alive. ... Just like not being able to be surprised by a magic trick which you already know.

And just like that, I continue to act like I used to without feeling that I'm alive.

The reason is simple.

Because if I do so, I might be able to return to my previous self.

Because if I act like that, I might figure out the reason to why I take these walks late at night.

... Oh, I see.

Then you could say that I am in love with my previous self.

◇

Looking up after noticing that I have walked a long way, I find out I am in the office district.

Buildings of the same heights are standing side-by-side along the road in a well-mannered fashion. The surface of the buildings are filled with glass windows, and they are only reflecting the moonlight right now.

In the darkness, the large mirrors created by the buildings are reflecting each others' figures hazily.

It's a quiet night tonight.

The group of buildings by the main street is like a world of shadows which monsters roam around in.

Deep in it, there is a shadow taller than the rest. That building like a twenty-story-high ladder looked like a tower reaching for the moon.

The name of the tower is Fujiyoh.

There are no lights on in the mansion called the Fujiyoh building. The residents are probably all asleep. Probably because it's already almost two in the morning.

At that instant, An uninteresting shadow caught my eyes.

A silhouette of a girl floats into my vision. Not metaphorically, the girl is literally floating.

There is no wind.

The coldness in the air is abnormal for summer.

The bone in my nape creaks from the cold.

Of course, it's just my imagination.

"I see. So you're here today too."

I don't like it, but it can't be helped what I can see.

And like that, the girl we were talking about was flying as if she were lying on the moon.