Chapter 236: I waited
The One Who Waited
(Shishioiri)
I sat on the concrete barrier at the edge of the rooftop and looked north.
Far away, past the jungle and the buildings and everything that nature had swallowed in the months since I could remember, there was a wall.
Just visible at the horizon line if you looked long enough, pale grey and enormous, cutting across the world like someone had drawn a border and meant it.
I don’t know why I kept looking at it. I just did, the same way I kept coming up here, the same way my feet kept finding this rooftop every morning without me deciding to go there.
My feet swayed over the edge.
"Hm," I said, looking down at the long drop to the courtyard below. "For some reason I’m not scared of this anymore." I tapped my chin about it. "I swear, days ago... or weeks ago maybe... haha... I was so scared I couldn’t get near the edge. And now I’m just... sitting here." I looked at my feet, dangling. "Weird."
I looked back at the wall in the distance.
Something ached. Not pain exactly— more like the feeling of reaching for something on a shelf and finding the shelf empty, except the something was a word, or a face, or both, and I couldn’t tell which.
I clutched the stitched bunny tighter against my chest and took a breath. "For some reason," I said to nobody, "it feels like I’m forgetting something important. Someone important."
I nodded.
I sighed, looked up at the blue sky, watched a bunch of clouds move past.
Eventually I climbed down from the barrier and walked toward the exit door and left.
***
The alley caught my eye on the way through the courtyard, the way it always did now.
I stopped and looked at it— the narrow space between two buildings, the patch of ground at the back of it. "I swear I slept there once," I said, out loud, because I said things out loud sometimes when there was nobody to hear them.
Then I frowned. "No, I probably didn’t. Why would I sleep in an alley." I nodded to myself. "Right. I definitely didn’t."
I kept walking.
At the south wall I stopped again, which I also kept doing without knowing why.
I stood there looking out at the overgrown streets, at the vines threading through the buildings, at the distant treeline, and something in my chest pressed outward like it was trying to get somewhere.
"Hon," I said. The word came from nowhere. "Jis... Jis..." I stopped.
Blinked.
The second word had been right there a second ago and wow... it’s now just gone, like it had stepped back around a corner before I could catch it.
"Weird," I said, to the wall, to the overgrown city beyond it, to the sky. "I keep saying this. I’ll probably forget it soon, since I already forgot the Jis-something." I nodded. "ಠᴥಠ."
I looked up at the sky and walked around the courtyard for a while, just walked, no destination, the way I did sometimes when the inside of my head had too much in it and moving helped.
And then I stopped, because at the other end of the courtyard, in the spot where two buildings cast shade in the afternoon, there was a bench, and something about the bench made me paused and stare at it.
"I swear," I said slowly, looking at it, "someone used to sit there."
I stood there for a moment. Then I let it go and went home.
***
I greeted Mom and Dad. Ate dinner. One of the uncles knocked and dropped off some cans. Normal evening. I went to sleep.
In the morning I woke up and showered and ate breakfast, and then I walked toward Mom, who was cutting something in the kitchen, her dark long and beautiful hair was flowing down around her face the way it always did.
I held up the bunny. "Mom. Why do I like this bunny so much??"
She looked at me. Then at the bunny. Then back at me. "Because it’s a gift from your dad."
"Mm." I nodded. "Okay."
I looked at the stitched seams, the uneven ears, the way one eye sat slightly higher than the other. I don’t think that’s why though... I’m not dumb, I’m smart, yep... suspicious.
She sighed and turned back to the cutting. "Go eat."
I went and finished eating. I was pretty sure the reason was something else entirely. I just couldn’t find it when I looked.
***
I went outside and walked around and eventually ended up at the south wall the way I always seemed to end up at.
I stood there looking out at the eaten city and thought: I came here because of... And then the thought stopped. Just stopped, mid-sentence, like a door closing.
I stood there for a second longer and then said, out loud: "...What was his name again?
No answer came. I sighed.
I turned back toward the courtyard and spotted the bench again.
This time I walked over to it and sat down at one end. The wood was warm from the afternoon light. Something about the weight of the bench under me, the specific angle of the shade, the view from this exact spot— this feels comfortable, I thought. Somehow. This feels right in a way I can’t explain.
A kid about 6 years old wandered over and looked at me with big curious eyes the way small children sometimes decided a person was interesting for no reason.
I patted him on the head and shooed him. "Go go. Shoo shoo. I’m thinking about something."
He nodded seriously and went.
I sat there for about an hour, thinking about something I couldn’t name, and then went home and ate and showered and slept.
***
I woke up and something was different, except I couldn’t say what. The same way a room felt different when something had been moved, except I couldn’t tell what had been moved or where it used to be.
I ate breakfast and showered and got to the door before I realized I’d left the bunny in my room.
I stood there for a second.
Then I left without it. Which was weird. I always had it. But today something was pulling me faster than I could stop and think about bunnies, and I went straight to the south wall, running the last part of the way, because the feeling had gotten worse overnight and the only thing that seemed to help it even slightly was looking at the city.
The guard was there, same guard, the one who’d started noticing me. He leaned against the wall beside me after a minute of both of us looking at nothing.
"Hey, kid," he said. "You’ve been coming here for days. Who are you waiting for?"
I looked up at him and my chest clenched. "...There was someone," I said.
"Someone?"
I pressed my hand flat against my sternum. "There’s... someone... I..." I couldn’t finish the sentence. The words ran out right at the part that mattered.
He put his hand on my head. It felt wrong in a way I couldn’t explain, like the size of it was wrong, like it was someone else’s hand that should have been there.
"Kid," he said. "Why are you crying?"
"...Why am I crying?"
I touched my face. Water. I stared at the water on my fingers for a full second, genuinely confused, and then I ran.
I didn’t know where I was running to. Just away from the confusion, which didn’t work, because the confusion came with me.
As I kept running... I immediately stopped when I spotted the bench.
The sunlight was hitting it at an angle that caught the worn grain of the wood and made it look almost golden, and I stood there in the middle of the courtyard staring at it with my wet face and my running heart and thought: Ahjussi. Noona. I... I... who?