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

I vaguely remembered stopping to drink from what I hoped was a clean stream. I remember once on a walk with my grandfather, he told me a story about hope.

He said that I could take a dump in one hand and hope in the other and see which one filled up first.

This was that second hand.

The water could have been runoff from a farm. Hell, it was probably bleeding out of an abandoned coalmine. It tasted like copper and desperation, like I was gargling pennies in a confession booth.

For the first hour, I kept pretending my stomach wasn't making those wounded-dog noises. By the second hour, the game was over.

Playtime was finished and harsh reality pulled up a chair.

I remembered Hina Suiren-sensei's veiled face, her whispered warnings.

Experience is a good teacher, Andew. Not a kind one.

Time didn't tick; it dripped down the back of my throat, hot, sour, relentless.

When the sidewalk in front of me started bending and waving like a lazy river, I knew I was cooked.

My brain felt like it was literally baking in my skull.

Not metaphorically. Not in some poetic "oh, my life is heating up" way.

I knew what this was.

Fever dream city.

And I knew exactly what I looked like.

Stolen shoes caked in mud.

Clothes soaked and plastered to me.

Grass stains, dried blood, and dirt smeared into my skin like someone had been finger-painting with battlefield shrapnel.

A hospital bracelet still clung to my wrist; a sick little friendship band from the place I'd just crawled out of.

If I saw me coming down the street, I'd cross the damn street.

And I wouldn't be wrong.

Forty-four years old, convinced I was fifteen, oh, and part dragon.

I know how that sounds.

The clinical term is batshit insane.

But the heat crawling under my skin didn't care about a DSM entry. The sharp, black-glass taste climbing my throat didn't give a damn about logic.

At some point, I stopped looking for deer trails and farm paths and my aching feet just took over.

I ended up following I-79 straight back into Clarksburg I think about the time the sun began to rise.

Not dream-Clarksburg.

Not Shin'yume, with its sakura-lined suburbs, flickering streetlights, and neon buzzing like it had a pulse.

No. West. Goddamn. Virginia. Late summer.

It smelled like melting blacktop, cheap gasoline, and impotent rage so thick and soft you could gag on it.

Yuki floated beside me, her glow dimming, her eyes flickering like a dying lightbulb.

"Ryu? Are you okay? You look like you're—"

I laughed, but it was dry and cracked.

"Like what?" I shot. "Like I'm homeless? Fevered? Like I'm burning from the inside out?"

She frowned, real worry cutting into her ghost-glow.

"Crazy?" I asked, low. "Do I look crazy, Yuki?"

She nodded without hesitation. Not just concern, but fear.

My stomach twisted, guilt mixing with coal water.

I'm letting this make me a monster.

A monster scaring the one person left who hadn't given up on me yet.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"I'm sorry, Yuki," I whispered.

My voice was shredded, and I stopped to lean against a street sign.

"I don't feel very good."

She drifted closer, hands like soft, white snow.

"I miss how cool you felt in Shin'yume," I said.

God, how I missed it.

"It'd be easier there," she said. "I'd just keep my hand on your neck and that'd help."

My feet ached in my stolen shoes, and it felt like the sidewalk I was standing on was swaying back and forth.

"My… neck?" I asked. "Not my forehead?"

She shook her head.

"Nope. Your neck's better. More blood flows through your neck, so. It'd cool you down faster. Ask Shion. She's an expert on blood."

No need. I believed her.

The streets started to smear, colors melting like crayons left in a hot car.

People moved past me like shadow puppets, their faces blurred, arms jerking in meaningless gestures.

Or maybe I was the shadow.

The phantom staggering through some fever-smeared parody of a city.

"I know where I am," I whispered to myself.

My voice sounded small and thin.

Maybe it was Shadow Clarksburg, in West Feverginia.

A knot of reality stuck between the world and the wound.

I blinked and an ocean appeared in front of me, waving, shimmering.

Metal waves. Heat shimmer. An ocean of automobiles.

Silent, rippling like waves in a vast sea. The roar of the city around me.

We were in a parking lot.

And I was just about to step forward when I heard Yuki scream.

"Ryu! Watch out!"

Instinctively, I jumped back just enough to see a car whiz by me, missing me by mere fractions of an inch.

REEEEHHHHHHHRRRRRHHHHHHHH.

A car horn ripped the world open. Tires shrieked on asphalt.

I was standing in the middle of the goddamn parking lot.

A silver Toyota flashed past.

The driver, sleek raven hair, sharp, almond eyes, shot me a look like she was already calculating how much of the dent would buff out.

Adrenaline shot though my heart, making my nerves feel like they were on fire.

I looked, but I already knew what I'd see.

In the passenger seat: a girl.

Sixteen, maybe.

Japanese. Piercing green eyes that looked older than time.

Eyes that recognized me before I even remembered myself.

My head swam, my eyes burned with fever, and my body ached, but I knew where I was.

I'd walked all the back to where it all began in the Clarksburg Public Library parking lot.

Yuki's voice was small.

"Ryu… was that Shion? That girl… in the car?"

I nodded, throat dry.

"Yeah, Yuki. It was. And we're going to—"

Everything stopped.

There was no ripple, no veil that was lifted, or anything like that.

One moment I was on fire with fever, baked out of my mind in the Clarksburg Publick Library Parking Lot, and the next I was back in Dr. Pierce's office.

The disgusting scene of fake lavender overwhelmed me.

"Are you sure that's where you want to go with this, Andrew?"

Lana, in her Dr. Pierce skin looked at me from across her desk.

I jumped, feeling my entire body shake in disbelief, only to be jerked back down by the cold, biting steel handcuffs around my wrists.

Dr. Pierce raised a smug eyebrow.

"What the hell is happening?" I yelled.

Beige walls.

Gray carpet.

Fluorescent hum.

A motivational poster about "Persistence" that looked like it was judging me personally.

And in the middle of it all, Dr. Pierce sat across from me, legs crossed, clipboard in her lap, concern painted onto her face like cheap theater makeup.

"After everything you just shared with me," she said softly, "your remorse about the two orderlies you hurt, your fear of abandonment, how we found you wandering the hallways looking for a lost 'ghost'. And you still want to run back into your… insane illusion?"

I swallowed.

"No. You're not real."

Her head tilted. Eyes went cold.

"And to top it off," she continued, ignoring me. "What were you planning to do with that sixteen-year-old girl?"

Her eyes never left mine.

"My name isn't Andrew," I said, fists shaking.

She made a small click with her tongue.

"You were talking about her when we brought you in here," she said.

She crossed her arms, frowning.

"Her name's 'Shion,' you kept repeating like it was your mantra. But she's a girl, Andrew, a child. And her name's not even Shion, you sick—"

"I'm standing in a parking lot in Clarksburg," I said through clenched teeth. "Yuki's right beside me. And you—"

Her smile sharpened.

"Where am I, Andrew?" she asked.

My pulse spiked.

"You can go straight to hell," I sneered.

She slammed her hand on her desk.

"Just who the hell do you think you are?" she asked.

I felt the steel biting into my wrists, drawing blood.

"Damn, you, Lana. I know who I AM! I'm Kazeyama Ryu desu!"

She scoffed, shaking her head.

Then, she saw how tense I was. How strained my muscles were against the Sharpe Hospital's restraining chair.

"What're you doing, Andy?" she asked.

My breath was coming in ragged gasps. I flexed into the steel cuffs, telling myself if Laurence Fishburne could do it, then maybe I could too.

I only had to believe hard enough.

"I'm getting out of here, and I'm going back to Shin'yume!"

Her shoulders fell in disappointment.

She sighed, leaning back in her chair as I struggled to escape mine.

"Do you seriously think that place is real?" she asked.

I heard a soft whine, like metal slowly bending and arching unnaturally.

"Do you really think I give one good goddamn?" I bellowed. "I'm tired of being pushed around this place. Tired of you telling me what you think I am, and I'm sick of having to justify everything I do to you!"

I yanked, hard, with the last ounce of strength I had. And suddenly, there was a grating noise, like the sound of a metal shrieking like a banshee as the restraining handcuffs bend and twisted.

The chair beneath me crumpled as I rose to my feet.

I tore off the straitjacket and flung it triumphantly to the floor below me.

And I watched in amazement as it hit the asphalt and loose gravel of the Clarksburg Public Library Parking lot.

And Lana giggled.

"Good, Ryu," she whispered.

Like I'd just passed her pop quiz.

I felt the hot sun burning down on me as heat waves from the pavement rose to greet me.

I didn't need to put the back of my hand to my forehead to know I was fevered.

But I was back. Standing barefoot on the cracked, sunburned pavement beside me was Lana.

Radiant. Vivid. Real enough to hurt.

Her smile was warm. Relieved.

"I'm so glad you could make it," she said.

Yuki floated to my side.

"Ryu?" she asked. "Where've you been?"

And the world started moving again.