Golden Time:Volume4 Chapter1
Status: Incomplete
24% 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'...
<~~24% Completed~~>
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