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KAGEROU DAZE I

My eyes are blinded. In an instant, the world flashes to monochrome. Amid it all, the blue of a clear, cloudless sky, and a red…a red sign, and then…! Those two colors alone, bursting in stark contrast, burning themselves deep into my retinas.

    This sight now spread out before me—what is this?

    The sound of the cicadas’ mindless, frenetic cry stabs into my ears.
    The smell of iron intermingles with your scent.
Every one of my senses pounds directly into my brain, bypassing my consciousness completely.

    A set of tire tracks, burned across the pedestrian crosswalk, along with a line of red, as red as your tiny body. There’s nothing I can do, not now, but when I run to the scene anyway, choking heat sears my eyes, my nose, my head, beating the reality home all the more.
    This isn’t you here.
    This isn’t the girl I was speaking with just now.
    This is just a red lump of something.
    I don’t care what anyone says. This—this isn’t you.

    …Nausea wells up in my throat. My head is killing me. My vision blurs like I’ve opened my eyes underwater, and droplets began to fall, drip by drip, onto the asphalt. They were trickling out, I suppose, from both of my eyes.

    I open my mouth, trying to speak, but I couldn’t hear a single word. Perhaps my voice was drowned out by the cicadas, or perhaps I never made a sound in the first place.

    I have to tell you.
    I had finally just resolved to tell you.
    I have to tell you now.

    The heat haze drifted up from the street, strangely close as it shimmered in the hot air.
    It just hung there, ever present, as if laughing at me, as if trying to come between us. 

    Leave us alone. I’m finally about to tell her.
    You can laugh at me all you want later. Just stay out of my way for now.

    I know I’m pretty late on this. I know this could make things weird. But you…

    your kind of selfish attitude
    the way you get violent when someone makes you blush
    the way your hair smelled in the breeze
    everything

    —I loved all of it, and you.


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