Requiem

A Slightly Distorted Image

Once upon a time, I fell in love with a delusion.

I believed in it back then, but it turned out to be nothing but a result of my wishful thinking.

At the fall of order and the economy, my parents' jobs required that we move into the secluded city of Rimona, a lively yet near-lawless place run by whoever had the most followers. I would later find that you could kill someone and get away with it quite easily, but anyway. Everything about it felt like a movie, from the lush green fields at day to the glimmering stars overhead at night. Of course, they kept all the mess underground. The fightings, the killings and anything to do with the city's inner workings were well hidden from the public eye, and for well-founded reasons too. However, I hadn't been told back then, nor had I been told what business my parents had there. I was a naïve sixteen year old who believed that there were no crocodiles when the water was calm...

No, no, no. Narrating the tedious details of my pathetic teenage life is not only cliché, but also does no justice to what happened at Rimona. To hell with all that — What matters to me is Akito. Akito Cross, the black-haired green-eyed boy who somehow ended up solving the city's greatest mystery of the decade despite being a mystery himself. So let us skip past the trivial events leading up to my arrival at Rimona, and adjust the clock's hands to the next afternoon when I hung out with the other kids after school.

We were still clad in our black and red uniforms, loitering by an abandoned bridge that connected one section of Rimona to an overgrown island of sorts on the other side of the wide, fast-flowing river. Ruins as far as the eye could see. That was the only way I found myself able to describe the areas surrounding the bridge, the water peeling off a bit of black and yellow tape every time it lapped at the rocky banks. Danger. Do not enter. Those were the very words scrawled all over the plastic, but apparently no one gave a damn. Standing by the bridge's crumbling railings, a blonde boy with the name of Hizumi turned to me, pointing into the pile of rocks only a few meters away from where we were.

“Few years back, a girl from class 9-A climbed over the railings and jumped. They say this place is haunted,” he paused for a moment, pressing his hands against my shoulders and making me flinch unwillingly, “by Anneke's ghost. That day, a boy saw her body and called the cops, but they found nothing when they arrived. Not a strand of hair, not a drop of blood. They never saw Anneke again either, and the boy transferred out of Rimona in fear.”

“Then why are we here?”

Why was I being told this? For what reason was I given a tour of someone's site of suicide? It sounded like a reasonable question in my head.

“Because even years later, people want to solve the mystery behind her body's disappearance. Some say she was murdered and the body was dealt with, and others say she was spirited away by a curse. And we're just here to prove that it isn't haunted.” He shrugged nonchalantly.

“Oh...” I looked down at the water far below, and the rocks that could be seen under the clear surface. To be completely honest, I half expected myself to face something occult, something on the rocks that would scream death.

A few years ago, Sage. She died a few years ago and there'd hardly be any evidence of it now, even if there ever was any to start with.

“It's alright, I won't let you get killed by some psychotic murderer,” he added in a teasing manner, though it sent a sharp chill down my spine nonetheless. I shook myself free of Hizumi's grip and looked at him oddly, turning towards the far side of the bridge where the small wasteland lay.

“Sage! Hey, Sage!” A girl waved at me, standing on the hood of a disfigured car as if she were a pirate conquering new land. Her ashen hair was done up in high twintails, long bangs blowing into her face as she smiled warmly at me. Kirihana. I remember when she first introduced herself with the sole letter 'K', and that was how it remained for a long time. The remaining seven letters took a while for me to wheedle out, but even then it was an alias. Why she called herself that was barely my business at all — Only a minuscule fraction of people were content with the name their parents picked out, and even then only a handful of those went by the full title.