Clearer Water

Mamimi’s eyes scanned the lake as she stared over the water, a dark glare at her dangling feet. After a few seconds of dangling her feet and sighing she realised he probably wasn’t coming this way.

It was her; she knew it in her heart but didn’t want to accept it. That woman had attacked him, hit him across the head with a guitar countless times, and forced these strange Gods to push through his skull, but he was still pining for her. She’d been so angry, destroyed the town and all that had rejected her, but it was all gone now.

When she’d left, she was so happy, so glad to have gotten rid of her. It was always going to be her, and the woman on the motorbike was just a complication. Haruko acted without a care, heartless and rotten to the core, but Naota forgave her for everything like Haruko was some kind of perfect Goddess. She wasn’t. Mamimi was closer to that; a pure heart and pure personality. She knew that, inside, there was no way to compare. Mamimi was the strongest, that was all there was to it.

***

So flee, and take your bike and your music with you. Leave, and take all the rest of the chaos and destruction with you. Go, and take away your piercing eyes, permanently smug grin and hair that melted into the colours of the dawn.

But please, please, leave his heart with me.

Please, please, why did you have to take it?

***

“Look, Chief,” she said gently, not wanting to anger him again or scare him away. She had pushed him from her into Haruko’s grasp, a stupid mistake, and it had taken her 6 months to retrieve him from his depressed rut. She couldn’t let him go, and she had to keep him.

“What?”

Naota was slumped by the riverbank, scribbling into a red notebook. She knew he was writing about her, or drawing her face to keep the memories vivid. Countless times she’d almost died because he would rather have her, and leave Mamimi a phantom on the riverbank. She knew if she looked, and saw into his mind via the marks of pencil on the page, he’d realise she wasn’t even a substitute for Haruko, and be repulsed, never to return.

She felt like the water was getting clearer, and as it did, so was her mind.

***

Don’t come back, because we’re rebuilding our lives without you. We don’t need you, we’ll never need you, and you just take our souls and destroy them. So don’t come back.

Because if you do, his heart will come back too and there’ll be no way I can trick him into having me.

***

Naota saw Mamimi walking toward him on the bridge, and stopped still. Mamimi stopped too, and smiled sadly, the bat Naota’s brother had left her dangling at her side.

“Where are you going with my brother’s bat?” Naota asked robotically.

“Takkun was never you,” Mamimi said firmly and without emotion. “It was your brother. All this time, I waited for you, and I hated you for making me. But I’ve made up my mind, and I’m going.”

She walked past him, and he stared after her with a confused look of light frustration on his face.

“But I was coming to see you now,” he said, “at the river bank.”

“The water’s clearer now,” she smiled, calling over her shoulder. “And you can play the phantom, because I’m never coming back.”

“Where are you going?”

But Mamimi waved loosely with her free hand, and marched away.

***

I’m going to find my own runaway. Even if I fall, and bleed, I’m going to America some way or another. And I’m going to succeed.

So be a phantom, Naota. Because she’s not coming back.

You find yours. And I’ll find mine.