Anohana:Part 2 Chapter 3
Chapter 2 - Exchange Diary
Exchange Diary
“Phew, so boring.”
Meiko was playing the DS console she borrowed from Jinta. The screen quality improved a lot compared to five years ago, but soon after she was captivated by its freshness, she grew tired of it.
The blazing sun still shone at the white sky outside, but there was not a single window in the living room to let fresh light hop in, rendering the atmosphere dull. It was when night came and the fluorescent lights were on that her joyful laughter would feel more lively.
She could tell Jinta didn’t go to school, and she understood why. Carelessly she once told him that perhaps her wish was for him to go to school, which burdened him greatly. She felt the same towards the affairs with Atsumu and her mother. It was her “careless existence” that injured them. She could apologise if it were Jinta, but she couldn’t do even this much to Atsumu. Why could she?
Taking a fountain pen, she flipped a page in a diary and started writing, but the words she wrote vanished slightly above the paper.
Meiko could embrace Jinta and eat ramen, but why couldn’t she write or voice her thoughts to everyone?
//I really am isolated.//
Jinta once told her that she wasn’t an isolated person, yet this feeling kept lingering. When she returned home where her parents and her brother live, she accidently broke a cup. This mere accident threw the whole family like a pebble into the pond, stifling it with sinister atmosphere.
There was things in this world that could never be left, and she was one of them—a person isolated.
//Evil, am I?//
Meiko, again, began to remember the time when she first joined the super peace busters.
For her different hair and eye colour, she was referred to as an outsider in kindergarten. She knew nothing of what the word //outsider// meant, and she asked her mother. Her mother answered her, with a hint of loneliness in her smile, that there was no need for her to think about it at that time. It per se was an answer, but it didn’t answer her question. Not long after, she knew outsiders meant foreigners, and was taken literally as “outside people”. According to this word, she could imagine such a scene: in the freezing winter night, she was kicked barefoot outside the door. And as if receiving someone’s goodwill, she would hold some kind of pocket that would hold rice backpackers take along, the only things are sesame sprinkled on top of the rice. Warm orange fluorescent lights would seep out from the windows; laughter would crawl out from within. But she couldn’t join their circle. The doghouse was where she could sleep in. As her house raised no dogs, she would have to borrow a dog house from their neighbour. The dog residing in was a scary dog that howled frequently at her. Could she be in good terms with the dog? Would it bite her? She would imagine herself in this state and naturally fall in tears.
Before she met Jinta and the super peace busters, she was always the outsider. But they were the turning point for her: they treated her like they would to anyone else.
She could empathise with Jinta’s feeling of resistance to go to school, for Jinta now was too an outsider in school. But she couldn’t bring Jinta back to their circle, for she herself had become the outsider in this world.
Jinta treated so kindly to her, yet she couldn’t do anything in return.
Everything would have been better if she was alone from the very beginning. She wouldn’t have been so lonely now had she not gone through a roller costar of emotions. It was because she experienced the joy in living with the super peace busters that pained her so much when she returned to loneliness. The sultry feeling doubled and even tripled
“Jintan, come back sooner.”
Ding dong.
//What was that?//
Wind coursed in from the open windows. Listening to the crisp bell sounds, Meiko turned around, only to see Jinta’s mother staring silently at her. It was the picture of the deceased placed on top of the shrine, looking as though she was staring at her from that small window.
Ding dong, ding dong…
“Menma.”
It was an ever-present memory.
The breeze embodied the softness of lukewarm water mixed with BATHCLIN soap as well as comfortable humidity, caressing the curtains ever so softly. Jinta’s mother was stroking Meiko, who went to visit her all by herself. Her fingers were extremely skinny and out of place; countless injection scars stirred one’s sympathy; yet Meiko felt her touch gentle and caring.
“Actually, I have something I want you to help me with, Menma.”
“Yes, what is it?”
Meiko’s vision started to blur.
Wasn’t it she herself that embraced some kind of hope?
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