If you shut yourself away in your room, the world beyond the walls becomes filled with countless places you know nothing about. This rule worked both ways. As long as your eyes remained closed, something was always happening somewhere. Even the familiar street outside the window changed with every passing moment. People laughed, people cried—some were born, others died.
Though I couldn't see it—or perhaps simply didn't want to—the world went on existing.
But what about me? Could I say that I existed? How precisely could one even define that word? I didn't know. I wasn't sure I had the right to say: I was here.
"Where are we going now?"
"Hmm… let me think."
She pressed her index finger to the corner of her mouth and looked up. "There's one interesting place."
"Hm? Interesting?" I tilted my head.
It was always hard to understand what she had in mind. Where exactly was the line between interesting and not so much?
I could agree with her when we climbed mountains, crossed forests and rivers. But once, she stopped… by an ordinary bench.
I thought she was joking. Yet there wasn't even a hint of a smile on her face. She sat down, invited me to join her — and we simply sat there. I even peeked under the bench, as if something interesting might be hidden there. Of course, there was nothing.
"Is that it?" I asked her silently with my eyes.
"Friends are important," she said. "Everyone needs someone they can trust. And someone who can trust them."
I couldn't deny that, in a way, her words carried weight. But I didn't immediately understand where she was going with it.
I looked around once more. A sudden gust of wind hit my face, making me squint. When it died down, a faint outline of the landscape revealed itself to my eyes. The lines were thin, barely visible, as if someone were sketching them in pencil.
Stroke by stroke, as if guided by an unseen hand, the lines grew thicker, clearer. Then came the colors — spilling down like soda poured into a glass bottle, fizzing to the top, gradually breathing life into the scene.
It was something I remembered — something I understood. The landscape before me made it clear: this wasn't just an ordinary bench.
It stood where we used to say goodbye after school — at the edge of a small park, between a camphor tree and an electric pole wrapped in torn insulation. A single streetlamp — always flickering a little — cast a long shadow across it, as if the bench were quietly watching everyone who passed by. By day, it seemed ordinary; but by evening, a gentle kind of detachment settled over it.
That's where we used to sit with friends: talking about nothing, arguing about even less, and laughing far too loudly. I knew those conversations meant nothing. And at the same time — they meant everything. Like children's drawings: uneven, but sincere.
It had been so long that it felt more like a dream than a memory. So why were we here? Did that mean…
"So, we're friends, right?" I asked, half teasing.
"Who knows," she replied with a careless shrug.
"Eh? What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, suspiciously.
"Hee-hee."
What's with that 'hee-hee'?
Grinning, she patted my shoulder, to which I responded with an irritated mutter. In a sense, I had already grown used to it. She was always like that… always herself.
It might sound cliché, but she became like air to me. And since there was no real air in this place, she was its perfect substitute. With every moment spent together, it grew harder and harder to imagine life without her presence.
For a while, we simply watched in silence. Strange shadows, shaped like human figures, drifted across the asphalt in different directions, mimicking a routine day-to-day life. But there was no one alive they could belong to. Only us — if we could even be called alive.
Then we talked. I must admit, surprisingly constructively. As if I had met an old friend at the same spot, only years later. Or at least, that's how it felt.
Well, not that it really mattered.
That's why I was curious to know what she found "interesting" this time. A playground? Some lonely stump in the forest? Or that old oak tree?
I remembered someone once telling me it had stood there for hundreds of years. I can't recall why, but every time I went there, I'd run to hug it — as if to thank it for its long years of service. And then — to say goodbye.
And now, years later? Would I still hug that tree the way I did as a child?
I doubt it. Not only because it would seem foolish now.
I couldn't even remember what it looked like — or where it stood.
Perhaps I'd seen too many trees since then to notice any single one.
"Hey, you."
Something soft brushed against my cheek — not painful, but insistent.
I blinked, and her finger appeared before my eyes, swirling lazily as if underwater.
"You think too much," she said.
I brushed her hand away and rubbed my cheek.
"What are you doing?" I muttered. "Counting my teeth or something?"
"Seems like it…"
From her tone, she wasn't apologizing.
It sounded more like she was simply voicing an observation.
If you looked closely, you could even catch the hint of a smile on her lips.
Nothing about her expression suggested guilt or embarrassment.
"It's rude to zone out in the middle of a conversation," she continued, crossing her arms.
Oh, so now it's my fault, huh? I thought — but decided to take another route.
"You're telling me that?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Don't you recognize my voice anymore?" she replied, mirroring the gesture.
She turned sideways and waved a hand dismissively — as if brushing me off again.
Seriously?
Sometimes it felt like I was just background noise to her.
Like a voice assistant: useful as long as you stick to the script — but once you hesitate, you're swiped away.
Maybe I just wanted her to look at me a little more seriously… even for a moment.
"All right," she suddenly said. "Look around. What do you see?"
"Hm?" I blinked, drawing out the sound. "What do you mean?"
Little by little, shapes began to emerge before my eyes.
Walls, scarred by time, rose from the ground — as though someone were pulling them up by invisible cables.
They weren't being built — rather, resurfacing from beneath layers of dust, like ruins awakening.
Some were covered in writing; others, cracked and crumbling, exposed the brick beneath the plaster.
Words began to appear — some smudged, as if someone had tried to wipe them away by hand;
others, clear and sharp, as though freshly written in chalk.
I turned around.
The entire space had narrowed down to these walls.
"Before I die, I want to…" — the phrase repeated hundreds of times across each one.
And behind each — just as many confessions.
Street lamps, grown into the very architecture, cast a dim light, scattering a milky haze in the air.
Their beams fell at uneven angles, stretching into fragile, broken shadows.
Sometimes they crossed over someone's words, as if refusing to let them be read.
I stepped closer.
When I touched the stone, I felt the chill of the walls —
the sense that everything written here had already been lost forever.
As though the hopes and wishes of these people had never been heard.
The irony was that the promises you make to yourself are the most fragile of all.
This place was exactly that — a graveyard of promises.
I walked along the wall, tracing my fingertips gently over the faded inscriptions,
as if trying to erase them.
Even if they had been created artificially — somewhere beyond the boundaries of this universe — they still felt real.
Most of them were unreadable now.
Maybe I just hadn't remembered them.
I usually paid attention only to the ones that seemed cheerful — or truly important.
Like this one:
"I want to see space."
I wondered what the person who wrote that meant.
In our time, it wasn't difficult to look through a telescope, or visit a planetarium.
Of course, it couldn't replace the real feeling of flight —
but they hadn't said which kind of "seeing" they desired.
A little further on, I came across another:
「勇敢になりたい」 — I want to be brave.
To be honest, those words stayed with me the most.
I often wondered: how brave does one have to become to satisfy themselves?
And where did courage end — and recklessness begin?
And yet, even among true desires, there were those that seemed vague.
They were sincere, yet indistinct.
And therefore — fleeting.
The less clearly your desires take shape, the harder they are to fulfill —
and even harder to be content with,
even if, somehow, they do come true.
Then, as now, the whole topic felt far too philosophical.
So I decided not to think about it too much.
I turned to the girl.
She was crouched by one of the walls, staring intently at something.
The bright, almost childlike gleam in her eyes was disarming.
Supporting her chin with one hand, she kept rereading the same line again and again.
Even in the dim light, I could see her eyes darting across the words.
What on earth had she found there?
"What did you find?" I asked.
"What do you think?" She winked and straightened up, as if inviting me to come closer.
It was hard to deny my curiosity, given how mysteriously she was acting.
When I stepped closer, I saw it:
'I want to always be…'
Without a moment's hesitation, I started frantically wiping the words away.
The girl burst into laughter.
"Oh, come on… Are you serious right now?"
The louder and more melodic her laughter became,
the more I could feel the heat creeping from my neck up to my ears.
Still, I stubbornly kept erasing each word until not a single trace remained.
When it was finally done, I collapsed to the ground.
A faint tingling spread through my body —
the gravel beneath me pressing into my skin like tiny spears.
"Do you really think that by erasing the words from the wall,
they'll disappear from my memory too?" she asked at last, her laughter subsiding.
"That's exactly what I think. In fact, I strongly suggest we stick to that version,"
I said, nodding — which stirred a small cloud of dust.
"Oh, really?" She looked genuinely intrigued.
"Because I actually thought it was kind of cute."
She giggled softly, covering her mouth with her hand.
"I have no idea what you're talking about. That's all in the past. Or… wait.
You saw something, didn't you? How curious. I didn't notice a thing."
I kept joking and rambling until her cheeks puffed up with laughter,
like a little hamster's. Then, as if swallowing it down,
her shoulders lowered and she nodded.
"I see, I see." After a brief pause, she went on:
"Then tell me — what's real?"
"Real?"
That was the last thing I said before her words truly sank in.
Feeling a faint confusion, I straightened up and sat cross-legged on the floor.
My wish was clear.
Not that it differed much in essence from the one before —
but I couldn't bring myself to say it aloud.
I lacked the courage.
Before lowering my head, I glanced at her once more and smiled faintly.
Spending these moments with her,
I began to understand why people were so afraid of dying.
It wasn't death itself they feared —
but the thought of missing out.
Of losing the chance to see, to meet, to feel.
"Does that mean the present isn't about longing for what's gone… but simply being in it?"
The question wasn't directed at anyone in particular.
It was more like I was thinking aloud.
Naturally, there was no answer.
It was something I would have to figure out on my own.
Life could seem bleak —
while memory preserved only the sunny days.
It's hard to say that the adult me smiled when recalling yesterday,
but childhood… perhaps.
In truth, the gray shades never completely drowned out the bright ones.
They were always side by side.
It was up to you which of them to notice.
She reminded me that even the silliest places could become beautiful
if you only paid attention to them.
That an ordinary bench could become interesting
if you just lifted your head and looked around.
That sometimes, you simply need to find someone
you can forgive — even for betrayal.
My wish was clear.
It didn't end with death — it reached beyond it, into eternity.
And yet, I still couldn't say it aloud.
So, I chose another way.
Rising from the ground, I brushed the gravel from my clothes
and held out my hand.
"Give me the chalk, please."
She nodded with a gentle smile.
There was no surprise or question in her eyes —
she had understood everything long before I spoke.
She raised her hand.
The chalk appeared between her fingers, forming as if from billions of tiny grains of sand.
Then she offered it to me.
I took the chalk and nodded — a silent gesture of thanks.
Standing before the wall, I scratched my chin once more before beginning to write.
My inscription spread across the entire surface, as though dozens of unspoken words had all led to one single desire — my desire.
"Before I die I want to... see everything again. And even more…"
With a satisfied expression, I clapped the chalk dust from my hands and turned to her.
"I think it looks pretty good, don't you?"
"Mmm," she hummed. "How selfish of you. And what's that supposed to mean?"
"What do you mean, what does it mean?"
She let out a long sigh — or something close to one.
In moments like this, it was hard to tell whether she was joking or serious.
"What about those who haven't had a chance to leave their message yet?"
"But there's no one else here. What's the problem?" I said, surprised.
I was almost certain there was no one but us.
No — I knew it.
So why did her question make me feel like I was missing something?
"Oh, I see how it is," she said, turning her back to me.
"So there's no space left for me, huh?"
My stomach muscles tightened as if I'd been punched.
A light spasm ran through my jaw; my lips moved on their own,
but no sound came out.
If I'd been thinking about her all this time,
why hadn't I thought of her then?
The thought tangled itself into knots,
but it still captured the storm of emotion swelling inside me.
"Wait, no, I…"
My first instinct was to explain myself, but I quickly let it go.
"Sorry… I got carried away."
She glanced back at me through half-closed eyes.
Then, seeming finally to relent, she turned around and smiled faintly.
"It's fine. Anyway, I've already written what I wanted to."
"Huh? When? Where? What did you write?"
"Secret."
She pressed a finger to her lips.
"You were too busy with yourself to notice anyone else."
She giggled, as if it didn't matter at all.
I knew I had no right to push her.
But I couldn't help it — I desperately wanted to know.
What would someone like her wish for?
Reason whispered that I should wait,
but I took a step toward impatience.
I glanced around again, my eyes sifting greedily through the lines,
searching for her handwriting — though I had no idea what it looked like.
The longer I stared, the clearer it became —
nothing new had appeared.
My shoulders dropped, heavy as if weighed down by stone.
I wanted to keep my eyes open,
but it felt as if a second pair of eyelids had fallen —
thick, unyielding, like wet sand.
Outwardly I was frozen,
but the "me" inside was expanding, swelling like a universe before a star is born.
I looked once more at my inscription.
Its size felt like an offense — to the wall,
and to anyone who might have come here.
The louder the words, the emptier the space around them.
I wanted to erase everything I'd written.
It felt as though my words no longer had the right to be seen.
I raised my hand, as if claws might grow from my fingers
to scratch out that ugly scar.
But before I could, the walls collapsed.
As if touching a single point had been enough to topple a chain of dominoes.
They fell with a thunderous crash,
like the roar of breaking stone —
and for a moment, it seemed as if the earth itself had jumped.
Buried beneath a swirl of dust,
the walls vanished — without a trace.
Just as they had appeared.
.
It was a dream I had that night.
More and more, I began to doubt the claim
that dreams are nothing but illusions of the mind.
Why?
Because they had started opening windows to the past.
There was something real in what I saw, night after night —
so real that I was no longer sure where the present truly lay.
My room was still dark.
A rare thing for someone who had once known only daylight.
But since then, I had met not only the moon —
but also the sunrise and the twilight between.
I rolled onto my side and found my pillow damp beneath my cheek.
So were my cheeks themselves.
It had stopped being a rare occurrence.
Perhaps it was simply my body's way
of releasing the weight that had been building somewhere deep inside.
Or something like that.
Anyway.
Sniffling, I wiped my nose. Grabbing the hem of my pajamas, I pressed it to my face to dry it off.
The strange thing about my dreams was that I never took part in them directly.
It was as if I were merely watching — moving alongside the protagonist, but never steering him myself.
I wonder… would that count as full immersion, or only partial?
A good question.
I rolled back onto my back. It was too hot under the blanket,
so I pulled my arms and legs free, sprawling across the bed like a snow angel.
Outside, the blizzard howled — long and drawn-out,
with a scratching undertone, as if someone were clawing at the walls.
The windows trembled with each gust, and thin frost gathered in the cracks of the frame.
At other times I would have hidden beneath the covers, but now…
The house was surprisingly warm.
Too warm — the air wrapped around me like the heat of a July noon,
when there's nowhere left to hide from the sun.
Unlike the green stone, the red one worked too well.
It felt as though dozens of invisible heaters were hiding in the room.
I turned onto my side again.
My knees pressed painfully against each other — the bones felt too sharp,
as if nothing were cushioning them.
I slid a corner of the blanket between them, just to make it a little softer.
An itch bloomed somewhere under my shoulder blade,
then on my neck, then on my calf —
as if my body itself couldn't decide where exactly it was uncomfortable.
I scratched absentmindedly.
My heartbeat was uneven.
None of it really mattered — and yet, together, it somehow made it hard to breathe calmly.
What did she write on that wall?
That question wouldn't let me go.
If her wish even indirectly involved me —
then I failed to fulfill it, didn't I?
It was a bold assumption, of course, but… what if?
Through our journeys, she taught me how to live.
She tried to show me that a world existed beyond these walls —
and that it was worth looking at.
All I needed was to find the strength within myself.
But people don't always need a reason to throw stones.
If someone stronger hurt them,
they'd hurt someone weaker in return.
They could smile, yes — but their only honest laughter was born from spite.
Maybe that's why back then I thought isolation
was the safest way to protect myself from pain.
Cowardice isn't weakness.
But only by overcoming it do you become truly strong.
…At least, that's how it seems to me.
But behind all her lessons, I never saw the most important thing —
her own desires.
In her teachings — there was a plea.
In her jokes — sincerity.
She showed me how to see the world in wider colors.
I wanted to believe she'd become part of it, too.
But that was a lie.
I accepted her as something self-evident —
something that would always be there.
And when she left… I felt betrayed.
Without noticing that I had been betraying her again and again, all along.
One doesn't cry out for help — one whispers for it.
Even if someone seems important to you,
that doesn't guarantee you actually hear them.
Love and attention — are not the same thing.
Love is blind.
And I wasn't just blind.
I was deaf.