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

The next morning, after breakfast, someone knocked on my door.

Not the usual bang-bang-bang from the overnight orderly who hated his job, but a soft, uncertain knock. The kind someone makes when they've got bad news and don't want to get punched delivering it.

I already knew what it was.

I already knew.

The nurse came in, and I was on the floor doing my usual round of pushups. She told me that I had a visitor.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead.

"Is it Fiona Apple?" I asked.

The nurse raised her eyebrow.

"Who the hell is that?" she asked.

I sighed sadly.

"You've never heard of Fiona Apple?"

She shook her head.

"That's criminal."

She rolled her eyes, then she held the door open as the orderlies came to escort me to the visitor's center.

"Hey," I said to the orderlies.

They ignored me, as usual.

"I don't suppose either one of you guys has ever heard the of Fiona Apple have you? Huh? What about Tori Amos?"

They stared blankly ahead as we walked the long, sterile hallway. The floor was so shiny, I swear, it reminded me of the back of my head.

"So, how about it, fellas? Either one of you a Cornflake Girl?"

No response.

"You know what?" I said after a moment. "I know what you guys really are. I mean, you might be dressed up like a normal guy today, but that's bullshit."

The one on the right actually gave me side-eye.

"Damn faceless noppera-bō," I muttered.

And right before we walked into the visitor's center, they both stopped right outside the door.

"What the hell are you being so goddamn weird for, you crazy asshole?" the one on the right asked.

I furrowed my brow, shrugging.

"What even is a… Nappa Bowl? Gah, you belong here," he said, shoving the door open.

Whatever. It didn't matter.

Let him say whatever he wanted. It wasn't like he was real anyway.

The visitor's center had this weird smell, somewhere between antiseptic and vending machine coffee. It hit me like a slap of forgotten dignity. Like, yes, you're allowed visitors, but only in this room. This gray-carpeted purgatory with fold-out chairs and dying ficus plants.

Its acidic medicine smell somehow made the tobacco-scented lobby of Shin'yume-sou feel as wholesome as a Studio Ghibli movie.

The two orderlies stood by the door like the world's dumbest Imperial guards.

And as I walked further into the room, trying to keep the numerous conversations and people around me from becoming over-stimulating, I saw a familiar face sitting by a table along the back wall.

There she was.

Older. Greyer. Still her though.

Mom stood up straight away and threw her arms around me.

I realized, with a sobering sadness, that this was the first hug I'd had in countless days.

Azuki. Natsumi. Murasaki.

Shion.

Yuki.

Their names felt like a bruise when I whispered them inside my chest.

I sighed and hugged my mom.

She didn't say anything while she held me, but I could feel her fingers press against my back like she was trying to make sure I was solid. Like she still wasn't convinced I was really here. Or maybe she just wished I wasn't.

After a second, she pulled away and looked me up and down like I was a clearance rack jacket she wasn't sure about.

"You've lost weight," she said.

"Hard to keep it on when they only feed you drywall and jello," I muttered.

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She pressed her lips together. Disapproval? Concern? Both came in the same shade with her.

I sighed and took a seat across from her at one of the scratchy plastic tables bolted to the floor. The kind of table that doesn't even pretend to be inviting. Just functional.

Impersonal.

Like everything else in here.

Mom didn't even wait for the air to settle.

"So," she said, folding her arms and leaning forward. "What exactly were you doing in the Clarksburg library, Andy?"

I blinked slowly.

This felt like something from another life, and hell, it probably literally was from a certain point of view.

I'd gotten used to just doing things without question or judgement from my mom, and that freedom had felt like oxygen.

And now here I was, suffocating.

"I was reading," I muttered after a moment. "What else do people do at libraries?"

The corner of Mom's mouth frowned.

"Reading what?"

I stared at her blankly.

Was this why she came here?

"Books."

Her jaw tensed.

"Books," she said flatly, as if the word were a stain on the living room rug. "Were you there looking for a job? Or were you—" she raised her hands for air quotes, "—reading your stupid Japanese bullshit titty comics again?"

There it was.

Strike one.

No warmup pitches.

I exhaled through my nose and glanced at the faded linoleum tiles.

"Yeah. What-ever. It's nice to see you too, Mom."

She ignored that.

"Do you have any idea how much your little vacation is costing me?"

She scrunched her face up. Dozens of worry lines crossed her forehead.

"It's not a vacation," I muttered.

She exhaled sharply.

"No? What would you call it? A three-week retreat? A 'mental health sabbatical?' You walk out into traffic at the damn library parking lot! I thought you were dead!"

I winced.

"Yeah! I thought you were dead," she snapped, eyes watery and venomous. "I really did. I was grateful you were alive. I was. Until I found out you'd been committed because when you woke up…" her face shook a little with anger and shame.

My hands tightened into fists.

She continued.

"When you woke up, you were calling yourself 'Ryu.'"

I saw it coming in her eyes. That flicker of discomfort just before someone says something unforgivable but too satisfying to stop themselves.

"Or whatever kind of Kung Fu, Ho Chi Mihn crap came out of your mouth."

Her face turned red.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, accusingly. "I didn't raise you like this!"

She crossed her arms and looked out the window across the parking lot.

It was about forty different shades of neutral grey.

I can't tell you how badly I wanted to grab some spray paint and give it some kind of personality because this place needed it so badly.

Instead, I let my hand drop onto the table.

"You think I wanted this?"

She didn't answer.

"You think I planned this?" I growled. "That I chose to get hit by a car? That I chose to wake up every goddamn day wondering if I'm real, or if all the people I love only exist because my brain's a broken snow globe?"

That made her roll her eyes.

"Oh, for god's own love! Don't start that with me," she hissed, voice low. "You didn't stay up for days wondering if your little boy's going to be okay or not! So, just don't."

I leaned back in the chair and looked at her, really looked at her.

"How the hell are you going to pay for this?" she said, like she hadn't already screamed it into her steering wheel twelve times on the way here. "You don't have a job. You haven't even tried to get one since the accident."

My shoulders slumped.

A job?

I hadn't even considered looking for a job.

"And you haven't even asked if I'm okay," I said.

Silence.

The worst kind.

"You look… well," she said.

I smiled. "I've been working on my pushups. Thinking about getting a Sharpe Hospital calendar shoot together. Men of Ward C. What do you think?"

She didn't laugh.

She never did.

Instead, she leaned forward, and I thought she was going to slap me.

"How're you going to get a job when you get out of here. If you get out of here, since you keep talking like you're some kind of smartass."

I didn't have an answer, so she took that as her winning the argument.

Silence dragged out between us like a body bag.

Her lips pressed into that little line she made when she was holding back the urge to scream.

"You think this is funny?" she asked, voice suddenly cold. "You think any of this is funny, Andy?"

Actually? No. This wasn't funny at all.

It was a damn tragedy.

"I think this is a prison for the unwanted," I said. "And I think I'm doing time for a crime I didn't commit."

Mom snorted out her nose.

Then she pointed a finger at my chest.

"You want to know what Dr. Pierce said about you?" mom asked, but I could tell by her tone that it wasn't a question.

I shrugged. What the hell else could they do to me?

Mom squinted, like she was weighing whether or not it was worth it.

"Yeah, that Dr. Pierce told me that there was something you had that'd explain everything. Like, why you've always been so damn weird."

She said it like I was some kind of alien.

"She said you had some kinda disease or mental impairment that'd make you want to live in a made-up fantasy world. Like, you've always seemed to identify more with characters you read about or saw on your cartoons growing up."

My tongue seemed to stick in my mouth.

I suddenly realized I was breathing faster than normally.

"And when you finally start coming back to reality, just a little bit after the accident, you start making jokes like this has been a punchline, Andy."

Her voice cracked.

"This isn't funny."

I stuttered, trying to think of something, anything, to follow that.

She looked down at her hands.

The silence. Brutal.

"I just want my son back," she said, barely above a whisper.

I stared at her. Watched the way her hands gripped her peeling leather purse like a lifeline.

I took a long, slow breath.

You're doing fine, Ryu.

And I suddenly knew what to say.

"Yuki thinks I'm doing fine," I said defiantly.

Mom's eyes narrowed to slits.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked, practically moaning in anger.

"You mean Andy?" I asked. "Balding. Forty-four. Worked at Walmart and forgets to take his blood pressure meds?"

She looked at me, and I saw her eyes were lined in raw red.

I felt sorry, but I couldn't stop there.

Because I knew, in my heart, someone depended on me. Whether I could see her or not, that suddenly didn't matter.

Hell, it didn't matter in Shin'yume, and sure as hell didn't matter in this hell hole.

I stood up.

No.

I rose, like a dragon.

"That Andy's gone," I said. "He died in that library parking lot. I'm not him. I'm sorry, but I'll never be him."

She blinked fast, like she was trying not to cry, but also trying to make me disappear.

She looked over my shoulder, and I knew by the sound of the footsteps behind me, that the orderlies were already on their way.

I felt them.

"Then who are you?"

I smiled softly. Almost apologetically.

"Watashi wa Kazeyama Ryu desu," I said.

You're right. Don't let them take that from you, Yuki said.

And suddenly, behind my mother, arms crossed as she looked at the frumpy older lady angrily.

I saw her.

For just a second before they grabbed me.

"Do whatever the hell you want," I said. "I've already won."

And my mom couldn't look at me anymore after the orderlies tackled me.

But I saw Yuki.

Our eyes met.

"Oh, Ryu," she said as the world grew dark around her.