Silence

In the silence, Kurosaki tosses and turns, sweat gleaming from his body, incoherent phrases escaping from his chapped lips. It is all too quiet. Through thin walls between them, she isn’t shuffling late into the night as usual, flipping through textbooks and notebooks, or tapping her pen against the surface of her wooden desk.

She isn’t mumbling sentences from her handbook, memorizing notes or sounding out difficult English words. That woman, the poor college student living next door, isn’t home to do those things people find irritating tonight. 

No, she’s somewhere else; perhaps spending a lovely night over at Soymilk lover’s mansion, cradled in between his arms in his fluffy king sized bed, touching each other, both whispering sweet nothings all night long.

Kurosaki had become too used to the sounds Yoshida made, to her soft humming while scraping tuna food out into the darn cat’s dish bowl, or the quiet cries she makes when her sick mother calls from the hospital.

Kurosaki knows exactly when she leaves for classes in the morning, with the annoying buzzing sound of her alarm clock going off and waking him up from his slumber of only three hours.

He knows the moment the cat scatters off; somehow making her escape out of his apartment, that Tsurara is walking up the stairs, back from grocery shopping, with plastic bags full of cat food and soymilk.

Of course, the stupid boyfriend is happily skipping closely behind her, grasping her free hand, squeezing it, which releases a giggle from her and an affectionate, “Akira-kun! That hurts.”

Twenty-seven sleepless nights pass by, and she still hasn’t returned, not a phone call—in which he attempted to give her a call or two and ends up in failure—or a day to come pick up all the letters piling up in her mailbox. 

She has two warnings about rent, one yellow letter and a red letter. He knows about that because he was the one that put it there, waiting, expecting her to read each word until the very end, panic and scream before storming over with fire in her eyes, rage, to loudly knock against his door, “Kurosaki-kun!”

Kurosaki is now staring out his window balcony, greeted with only the midnight clouds, the shiny stars and chirping of crickets. It’s the twenty-eighth of October, at 3:17 AM. Her birthday passed almost two weeks ago. 

He remembers the day she was born, because it’s written in fine handwriting on the tenant application she submitted when she first came here two years ago.

The birthday present he got for her, lays poorly wrapped in the corner of his room, on top of the coffee table where his many unused mobile phones are scattered about, dust collecting, being useless as well.

Kurosaki is already on his third cigar when the light from Tsurara’s apartment flickers on. Kurosaki blinks, does a double take to find it off again. He lets out a tired sigh and throws the cigar aside before slumping against his tiny mattress, his sheets in disarray and the blanket laying in a mess on the floor.

He’s already hallucinating.

He doesn’t want to admit it, to anyone, to her, or even the damn cat, but he misses her…her damn shuffling. He doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t ignore her coldly but actually observes her every movement like hawk. Her boyfriend was an Akasagi after all, so one blink and a sneeze and all the money in Tsurara’s bank is drained, or so that’s what Kurosaki liked to believe.

Without her around, he’s going crazy, almost failing to swindle back money on several occasions.

“Stupid chick.”

4:00 AM beeps from his watch, and he turns to his side and finds himself staring straight into glowing yellow eyes, “Meow.”

“Ah, you’re still here. She didn’t take you along? What a bad owner.” He teases, saying that to no one in particular but the cat, purring, laying there playing with a ball of pink yarn.

Seriously, he was going crazy, already talking to himself, and sometimes the cat, like a lonely old fool.

At 4:33 AM while flipping through channels showing boring romantic dramas about that stupid man that went back in time, Kurosaki is interrupted by an echoing crash, and a girlish squeal.

For the first time since the night he witnesses the gruesome death of his entire family, his heart skips a beat.

Kurosaki wants to believe he was hearing things, again.

+++

The loud crash was made by her luggage, in which the lock had busted and all her clothes springs out, along with some ornaments and souvenirs from a foreign country.

And that’s when he remembered, with a smack on the face, what she had told him at the beginning of the month, “I’m going on a three week vacation with Akira-kun to Hawaii…Just in case you decide to pester me about the rent, I’ll leave the money in your mailbox tomorrow morning.”

“You clumsy fool.”

He wants to reach out to her, touch her, and smell her, to feel that she’s here and not just a hallucination like those other times. But of course, his body doesn’t budge an inch from the doorway of his apartment. So he watches her in silence.

The girl is in a mess, her eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, her hair uncombed, and her neck full of pink bruises. It was obvious that she had just returned from a long flight, with Akira wanting a piece of her every hour.

Kurosaki yawns, rubbing his eyes as he watches her rummage through her few broken souvenirs and clothes. Ah, the sweet sound of Yoshida’s annoying shuffling. 

After so long, waiting for the moment she comes home to do her irritable things late into the night, Kurosaki could just go on and pass out in the middle of the walkway.

“Welcome home.” He whispers to himself as he gently closes his front door before passing out at the foot of his bed. He dreams again, of the future.

+++

“What am I supposed to do with this useless thing?” Kurosaki stares at the foreign object in his hand, “Poke you with it?”

Tsurara rolls her eyes and pushes the object back into his hands, “It’s a Hawaiian Tiki statue, made for good luck. Akira-kun and I picked it out for you.”

“Pfft, I don’t need luck, I already got it. And since it’s from your precious boyfriend, I don’t want thisanymore.”

Kurosaki throws it back into her possession, “Now go away and play with what’s his face while I get some beauty sleep, because I really need it.”

And with a slam, he chuckles and crashes into his bed once more, taking pleasure in angering Tsurara, who is now banging at his door, screaming phrases he couldn’t understand in the background.

For a moment, everything becomes silent, just like those many nights before, her knocks and yelling ceases for three minutes, and Kurosaki is scared, his eyes wide open, his breathing heavy. 

After living in silence for another seven minutes, Tsurara muffles a terrified scream as if she was getting kidnapped, causing Kurosaki to jump out of bed and rush back to the door.

He cringes, grinds his teeth when he finds her squealing to the feisty fingers of Akira, tickling her at the bottom of the stairs, “Rara-chan! The soymilk monster has captured you!”

Kurosaki wants to throw something now, at them, at the childish man snaking his arms around Yoshida, planting wet kisses against her lips, and rubbing his cheeks against hers.

Perhaps he was better off not having them around for another few days. It was time for him to get used to the silence.

~owari~