Published at 18th of December 2021 10:02 am

Volume 6: To Memories of Other Lives, Prologue

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Tada Banri was disappointed.

Was disappointed... could those few letters describe the scene before his eyes? In the middle of his own room... that form kneeling on the floor sopping wet and completely naked, white foam dripping from its mouth, head hanging down... even in the eyes of this ghost degenerated to the point of being a vengeful spirit, he has turned out quite pitiful.

The present time: 11:30 in the morning.

His schedule had him getting up before 11am, but Banri had overslept. Finally opening his eyes a few minutes earlier, he had jumped up to check the time on his cell-phone. He was supposed to meet up with his friends on thirty minutes, but it would take thirty minutes to get to the café they’d promised to meet at. It was Banri himself who asked for the meeting, and it wouldn’t be good for the person who spoke up first to be late in showing. He kicked off his towel-blanket, quickly crawled out of bed and stumbled to the shower.

Relieving himself, moving on to pull off his shirt and shorts, then snatching his toothbrush and toothpaste, he got in the bathtub and twisted the shower knob. The guy opened his mouth wide in the shower and brushed his teeth with the shower water. ...No matter how many times I see it, I cannot understand his behavior. I never did this kind of thing while I was alive. I think that releasing that saliva-like substance, the foam from cleaning your mouth, contaminated by micro-organisms, denies the very meaning of a clean shower! Passing water through your sweaty scalp and into your mouth first thing in the morning is digusting. Did he learn to behave like this from the limited shower time and hassle of the communal bathroom arrangements of the long time he spent living in a hospital?

Under the tepid shower that wasn’t turning into a festering wound, Banri, unaware of the gaze of the appalled ghost behind him, was spitting out foam while vigorously brushing his teeth when he suddenly froze. Over the sound of the falling water, he noticed a vibration transmitted through the flooring. His mobile phone was ringing over in the room.

As soon as he noticed, Banri tossed his toothbrush to the edge of the sink and without rinsing his mouth, leaving the shower as it was, jumped out of the bath unit. Sopping wet, dripping and stark naked, leaving the floor a shambles, he grabbed his phone as if embracing it.

And then he saw the name on the display. He slumped. Disappointed.

His was the pitiful figure of a kappa having barely escaped a life of captivity. From that hair, from his body, clear drops of water drew lines on his body, falling to the flooring at his feet and forming puddles.

The person who called him was not the one he’d hoped for, but rather Yanagisawa Mitsuo, whom he had promised to meet in thirty minutes.

It was so he wouldn’t forget to bring a CD he’d borrowed earlier, and he could have done that with a text message, but he’d suspected that Banri would oversleep, so he called instead. As expected of a good friend, he had that much insight.

"...What is it? I thought you might be Kouko..."

Speaking bluntly, not even trying to cover up his disappointment, Banri, as the foam dripped from the corner of his mouth growled in a low voice. 'Don't sound so disappointed, let's talk about it later,' said Mitsuo, then hung up the phone.

Banri stayed as he was, disappointed, his cell-phone gripped in one hand. On his knees, dripping wet and nude, unmoving, he hung his head. Water dripped from his hair.

As for me, I watched Banri's exceedingly pathetic form from where I was in the kitchen, seated on one of the stools.

Outside the window, it was sunny again today. The contrast between the deep blue sky and the white clouds was telling me to expect scorching heat under a blazing sun.

And then this me, as yet unchanged... getting suddenly called back home by the burnings of Obon for an awkward meeting with my ancestors, well, that didn't happen, so I continue my life as a wandering spirit.

I was once Tada Banri.

Precisely a year and a half ago, I fell off a bridge the day after I graduated from high school, and the "inner me" fell out from my body from the shock. Since then, what lived on as Tada Banri had no memories from before then, and I have become a lonely ghost, unrecognized by anyone, floating alongside the new Tada Banri.

Crying and screaming didn't change the situation. Once I understood that, it felt like being a guardian spirit. His body fully grown, but mentally a newborn, I meant to watch over his perilous life like a family member.

But Banri when began to adjust to his new life, I began to feel like I was in denial.

The eighteen years he'd lived, the time I was in charge, it seemed like the new Banri wanted to pretend it had never happened. Having a past he did not know was inconvenient, if he knew it he wanted to forget it, from the start he wanted to treat it as something that had never happened... it was like he wanted to erase my very existence.

That was sad.

Frustrated, revolted, I could not forgive Banri. I wanted him to recognize, in some way or other, those feelings and my mournful existence. I wanted him to understand.

For that reason, I decided I would put my existence on the line and fight. Acknowledge my existence! Or I will go rogue! I am going to cause you trouble! ...With such feelings, I cursed Banri.

While I evolved of my own free will from an ordinary ghost into a vengeful spirit, my gloomy and poisonous aura seems to have worked quite well.

But I never had any intention of killing him.

Really.

That day, with the danger of death closing in on the body of the sleeping Banri, I tried for the first time to somehow wake him up. But my voice failed to reach him, and I could not touch his body. In any case, I could not interfere with Banri as a separate and independent entity. There was nothing I could do to that guy who was living. I had no choice but to get through to him. Was there not a way to rescue him from this dilemma? Did I have the means to save this guy somehow? I searched desperately within Banri. Was there nothing within those few days this guy had lived that could be used to save his life? In a headlong, selfless rush, I relived the past year and a half of Banri's life from within Banri's eyes.

As I expected I would, I found it. "Salvation" did indeed exist within this guy.

And seeing through my eyes, Banri was able to realize it too. He survived that dangerous situation... and I have felt strangely exhausted since then.

A week has passed already since that life crisis.

While gazing at the still dejected Banri's naked body, I was unable to move from the stool. What am I going to do about this fatigue? It's like my whole body is heavy... and I agree with it, sort of. It's like having a feeling of "I've done it. Is that enough?" I'd spent a year and a half of reliving inside Banri, and I was truly exhausted.

I understand that what provides this guy with his will to live dwells within him. Even if he doesn't rely on this outside device called "me", this guy seems to be able to live normally.

It may be that I am no longer useful.

Far from it, as far as the now living Banri is concerned, me becoming a vengeful ghost giving off a poisonous aura is clearly something he could do without.

But of course, how to leave this world is something I don't know how to do. If I had known how, it is something I would have done from the start... or not?

I don't know. I wonder if I would want to. If I could do something about it, I wonder what I would choose to do?

His wet hair still stuck to his cheeks, Banri finally stood up. "That's right, go a move on, hurry up and get moving. You'll be late." Not looking back at my voice, water dripped down his hunched back. Bare butt.

It was perhaps the first time I'd ever seen calves on the verge of crying.

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