I Fell In Love With A Girl Who Died Before I Was Even Born

I was so tired of this place that I didn't know where to begin.

Sighing, I let my head hang limply as I stared into nothingness.

I heard "Lana" scribbling something on her notepad as she sat at her desk in front of me.

But I didn't care, because I had a friendly face floating at my side. It wasn't Casper. It was someone better.

"What on earth were you expecting, Andy?" she asked.

I didn't bother looking up. Wasn't worth it.

I knew what I'd see anyways.

"Standing up and yelling at your own mother in the visitor center."

The walls were off-white and smelled like old coffee and antiseptic. The desk had one broken drawer. Classic institutional furniture.

"Ugh," I grunted.

The cuffs dug into my wrist as I shifted positions.

"Whatever, Lana," I said with a yawn. "Is this why you dragged me out of my cell?"

She slammed her fist on the desk.

"Damn it, Andy!" she yelled. "What the hell happened to you?"

That made me pick my head up.

Lana was walking around her desk, talking to herself.

"It doesn't make any sense. You were fine before that car hit you. Depressed, maybe, but nothing that would've sent you here."

She picked a manilla folder from her desk and flipped through it.

"You're completely unremarkable," she said.

I snorted.

"Thanks, I can tell."

She shook her head, looking through the folder's contents.

"Average high school grades. You were a bit of an outcast apparently."

She looked up at me and shook her head.

"College dropout," she said.

I shrugged.

"Anything in there about my nine and a half inch wiener?"

Her face flushed red with anger.

She looked up at me, the folder and her desk were the only things between us, and I felt like she was going to jump over and strangle me.

Instead, she just threw the folder across the room, and I grinned when it hit the wall with a soft smack.

"What the hell was that supposed to prove?" I asked.

She spoke between clenched teeth.

"You son-of-a-bitch!" she yelled.

I thought she was on my mom's side.

Guess she was pissed off in every direction.

She pointed at me and took a step forward, bumping a knee into her desk.

"I swear, you're going to tell me what the hell happened to you after the car hit you if it kills me!"

I tilted my head.

Yuki floated to my side.

"You shouldn't do that," she said. "You look too much like Shion."

Lana continued.

"Your CT scan came back normal. You've got no history of mental illness in your family. Your blood test showed no drug use."

I narrowed my eyes at the rambling doctor.

"You told my mom I had some kind of disease," I said.

She stopped abruptly, crossed her arms, and sneered.

"I never said you had a disease," she said stiffly. "Your mother interpreted what I said that way. I was explaining to her that you do have a neurological disorder."

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I tried to shift my position in the chair, but the cuffs wouldn't let me.

"Okay, I'm listening," I said.

She grabbed some sheets of paper from the file.

I could tell they were old, yellowed with age, and held together with a rusted paperclip.

"It's in here," she said. "At least, the beginning of it is. Obviously, you're on the spectrum. Possible schizotypal features. Dissociative elements. But nothing that explains the sudden delusions… That doesn't make sense."

She looked up at me from the papers.

"When you were in high school, you were diagnosed with ADHD," she said as if that explained everything.

I shrugged, unimpressed.

"You think I went nuts because I've got ADHD?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, Andy, no."

She let the silence sit like a spider in the room.

Then she pushed her chair out of the way, then threw her feet on the corner of her desk as she sat down.

I heard the springs creak. Obviously, this was something she did a lot.

"But that should've been a warning. There's a good deal of overlap between what you've got and ADHD."

She took some more papers out of the folder.

"But you graduated from high school in the nineties, and if you weren't like Rainman, then you were likely to slip beneath notice. But here, look at this."

She tossed some slips of paper at me.

They landed on the floor like the world's saddest confetti parade.

"Well, of course," I said, staring at the floor. "By god, Sherlock, you've cracked the case of the asshole lunatic."

Yuki bent over and looked at the papers on the floor.

"They're… oh gods," she said. "I'm so sorry, Ryu. I can't read it."

She looked genuinely frustrated, like a student locked out of her own classroom.

"It's written in English!"

I laughed. Dark. Bitter.

"I know it is, hon," I said, meeting her eyes. "We're in America."

The crushed look on her face was priceless.

Lana turned her head toward the corner of the room, where Yuki crouched over the scattered papers.

"Who are you talking to?" she asked coldly. "Don't start this hallucinating stuff again. And don't you dare act like you can speak Japanese."

Yuki shot her a glare like an ice spear.

"My Ryu can speak Japanese! Wait…"

She gasped. Staggered back like someone slapped her.

"Why… why aren't I speaking Japanese?"

I sighed sadly and simply shook my head.

"Oh," Yuki said. "I guess you don't know either, huh?"

Lana stood back up and walked around to my side of the desk.

I finally looked at the papers scattered on the floor and saw they were W-2s and employment records.

"My… tax documents and places where I've worked?" I asked.

Then Lana's shadow fell over me, and I glanced up.

"Yeah," she said, not bothering to pick the papers where they lie on the floor.

I snorted dismissively.

"I'm so sick of your riddles and stupid damn games."

She pointed at the papers between the two of us.

"It's all right there," she said. "The puzzle pieces are there, but it's infuriating trying to put them all together. The ADHD, your spotty employment, and the fact that you got the same number of friends as you've got working brain cells."

Yuki stood back up.

"You bitch," she shot. "I swear… if we were back in Shin'yume-sou I'd freeze your lips together."

Lana flung herself back into her abused office chair.

"It just doesn't say why now."

Then she turned towards me.

"So, what I want to know, Andy, is why, and I'd like to know—"

I slammed my foot down, interrupting her.

"I've got a question for you, doc," I said. "You ever suck on one long enough for you to enjoy it or does it always end too soon?"

Yuki covered her mouth with her hands, but Lana's face turned from red to purple.

"Get the hell out of here!" she screamed.

I raised my hands, showing her the handcuffs, and shrugged.

"Your move, Sherlock."

I lay on my back in bed, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling like they were trying to whisper secrets. Too bad I didn't speak Plaster.

Yuki hovered beside me, curled up like she was lying in the air itself—soft legs tucked up, her hair flowing out like ink in bathwater. She didn't say anything for a long time. Just watched me. That worried look in her eyes again.

"I don't like you with this face," she finally said, voice like a raindrop on glass. "You look old. Tired. Like you're ready to quit."

"Sorry," I muttered. "I can't help the way I look."

She nodded. "I know."

She smiled at me. Soft. Gentle. That smile that always hit just a little too deep.

"You're still beautiful," I told her.

Her cheeks pinked, just slightly. She looked away. "What was the point of fighting with Lana?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I just... I hate it here."

"I'm worried," she said, brushing her hands together like she didn't know what to do with them. "What if she's right?"

I turned my head slowly, letting it sink into the paper-thin pillow. "About what?"

"About all of it. That I'm not real. That you're just... hallucinating." She paused. "I'm the only one who can see me. And I know I can speak Japanese, Ryu. I've always known it. But I can't anymore. Because you can't."

She swallowed. "That makes sense, doesn't it?"

I didn't say anything.

"What do you think?" I asked.

She smiled at me, but it was the kind that hurts to look at. Like watching someone smile through grief.

"I think I'm real," she said softly. "At least... as real as any pleasant daydream. But I'm afraid of what you think."

"Don't call me Andy," I said. My voice came out sharp. Not angry. Just... certain.

She blinked.

"I'm not giving up," I told her. "I'm going back to Shin'yume. I don't care how far gone I seem. I don't care what they say. We're getting the hell out of here."

She beamed. Light returned to her eyes like a sunrise slipping in under the curtains.

"But," I added, "I have no goddamn idea how to escape a mental hospital. They make it... surprisingly hard."

She giggled. "I'm glad you haven't given up."

I looked at her. "Can you help?"

She floated down and sat cross-legged in midair beside the bed, hands on her lap like a kid doing a magic trick.

"I was barely capable of anything in Shin'yume," she said with a theatrical sigh. "And here? I'm barely a dream. But... there's one thing I can do."

Her grin returned. Mischievous. Familiar. Alive.

"Watch this, honey."

A second passed.

Then the AC unit in the corner of the room—dead since I'd been admitted—kicked on with a sputter and a groan, blasting cold air like a ghost exhaling.

I blinked. Then laughed. Actually laughed.

She appeared sitting beside me like she'd always been there.

"Ta-da," she said, winking.

I looked at her, that same strange ache swelling in my chest.

"You did that?" I asked.

She nodded, still grinning.

"And how's that helpful?"

Her grin didn't falter once as she shrugged.

"I'm so glad I've got you," I whispered.

She gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears. Happy ones.