Chapter 1: Lost memory.

The one who is

KIM just lay in bed on that morning. His eyes were wide open but he hadn’t moved an inch from where he had fallen asleep the previous night; he wasn’t the kind to move around in his sleep. The white curtain on the only window in the room danced in the wind and Kim found himself staring at it. It was quiet except for the sound of dripping water in his washroom. He remembered that he had forgotten, yet again, to repair his broken window. Kim at this point was a third year student at the university but he felt like he had been there for way longer.

Kim was never late for any of his classes, but not because he cared about his studies. Kim wanted to disappear, he didn’t want any of the lecturers to know his face or name and the best way of doing that was, according to him, following every rule in the book. This made him lack any good friends in school but that did not bother him. There was a time when it did, but not anymore.

On that morning, he was late for class. It is not that he wasn’t aware of the time, he just didn’t want to interrupt that moment he was having with his curtains. He wished he could stay there, in that moment forever. He then noticed something on his studying table, a horse carving, he looked at it wondering what it was doing there. It was his, but he had left it at HER place and always forgot to get it back. He didn’t remember getting it from her.

Kim had been in a relationship with HER for two years now. He was deep in love. She was one of his classmates. The only one he cared for. It had been two years but it still felt new. To him, she was everything that he was not and that made him feel complete. She made friends easily, she did well in classwork and she was more outgoing than he ever was. Kim felt like she had life, an actual life and he had the honor of watching her live it.

Being in love didn’t mean that they didn’t have any issues. And in that sense, love felt overrated. One year into the relationship, Kim started developing a problem that he kept secret from her, from anyone, even from himself. He didn’t ever want to think about it, or even acknowledge it. He would sometimes feel like a completely different person. An opposite of who he was. He would find himself having contradicting feelings on the same things. Sometimes he would wake up having memory gaps of the previous day and yet he hadn’t been intoxicated. It was as if someone was deleting evidence of a crime from a CCTV video recording since he would wake up the following day with a fading feeling of guilt.

Recently, it was getting worse. It was happening more often and this morning was one of those times when it happened.

There was always a message from HER in the morning. A remnant of the conversations they used to have in the middle of the night. Kim was a clinomaniac. He would always fall asleep and wake up every morning to respond to the leftover texts. His bed was the solution to most of his problems but also the cause of some of his problems. He hated answering the texts in the morning because the feeling they had the previous night had already expired from them and now it felt like forcing the feeling back. He was sure she felt the same just by the way she answered them. And so Kim tried his best not to fall asleep but it seemed like the more he tried the more he slept.

That morning, he did not find the leftover texts and so he checked the conversation. He was surprised to see that there wasn’t any. At this point he had become used to them, maybe he even looked forward to answering them as the first activity of everyday. He was confused. All the conversations had been deleted and so was her number. They always texted each other at night. They even preferred it to being with each other in person. Something about the night made them feel closer to each other or maybe they were just too tired that they let their guard down.

He had already mastered her phone number and so he saved it again and tried to call her but she didn’t pick up the call. He left his bedsitter apartment and attended the class, the only class he had that day but his mind was constantly thinking about her, about what could have happened. She wasn’t in class. He asked her friends about her but they were of no help.

After class, Kim was just there, still in his seat. He had never remained in class after a lecture was done to avoid having to make small talk with his classmates. But now that he was there, it felt quite nice, they weren’t a lot of people around and it was quiet. He was worried about HER, she was all he could think about and yet he just sat there, doing nothing about it. He wanted to walk out and look for her in her apartment. He knew that he could find her there but he didn’t even move his feet to get up from the seat. Deep down he knew what had happened but he couldn’t admit it to himself, he hoped that he was wrong. He knew that there was something else, something that made him stay in that sit. It gave him shivers whenever he thought about it. A truth that was hidden deep inside of him. He eventually had to leave the room as another class was about to have a session there.

As he walked back to his apartment, he got to a cross road. One of the roads led to his apartment and the other to HERs. He kept staring at the one leading to hers. He was still hesitant. He felt that if he could go there he would have to accept the truth, a truth that he did not want to face. As he stood there, something came back to him, a memory, something he hadn’t thought about for a really long time.

It was back when he had just joined campus and was staying with his older brother. His older brother was having a problem with alcohol. The hangovers he got were just too brutal and he had decided to stop partying for some time. But one night, he attended a house party and left Kim in their apartment. Later in the night, Kim was awoken by a phone call, his brother’s friends called him asking him to go and pick his older brother who had just fallen asleep after drinking too much. Kim went to pick him and on their way back, they had a conversation. They walked together, his brother’s right hand over Kim’s shoulders, his brother’s mouth right at Kim’s ear. It was that conversation that came back to him as he stood at the crossroads. ‘Nilidhani ulisare kukata?’ Kim asked his older brother who laughed at the question and replied, ‘Sikuenda kuparty ati juu nilidai,nilijua tu ingeturn out hivi,na najua kesho nitaitana.’ ‘basi mbo..’ ‘nilienda juu…saa zingine msee inabidingi tu…Mwanaume amefanya vitu hataki kufanya,anagive up control,anawacha maisha tu… impeleke… na pia, ningekaa hiyo keja hii weekendi,ningechizi.’ He laughed hard after saying that. Kim just looked at him and then looked away. Kim adored his older brother. To Kim, his brother seemed to live life so effortlessly,as if he had a manual to life.

Kim remained hesitant even after remembering this. His fear exceeded his courage. He continued on to walk toward his apartment for some distance but suddenly stopped. ‘Ah! Fuck it!’ He said out loud without realizing and turned back.

He walked for some time before stopping below a huge apartment building and raised his head while blocking his eyes from the midday sun. He was looking at the balcony to her room. Her apartment did not have much natural light getting in, at first she would turn on the lights during the day but this made her electricity bill end up being too high and so she decided to start opening the door to the balcony to allow more light in. So whenever that door was open it meant that she was in.

The door was open.Kim took out his phone and called her again and it was the same, the phone rung but she didn’t receive the call. Kim just stared at the balcony for some time, debating with himself whether to get in or not, before he decided to walk in. At the entrance he found the caretaker and he approached her slowly since he wasn’t sure if they were still in good terms. She saw him and the wrinkles on her face stretched and came together to form a smile. Kim always liked her. She wasn’t like other old people. She always tried to fit in, to behave like she was the same age as her tenants and this made her approachable. Maybe a part of her envied being young or maybe it was all intentional.

‘Aah! Kim,umekuja kutebelea mrebo wako?’ Kim smiled. ‘Ako ndani?’. ‘Sijui ata,sijamuona leo’ she replied. ‘Kwani haongei na wewe?’ Kim looked away and then back at her without saying anything. ‘Wacha nikupee siri ya kufanya mwanamke awache kukukasirikia,…eda umwabie wewe dio umefanya makosa na umwabie umekuja kumpeleka lunch,kumwabia pole.’ Kim was paying attention. He smiled at her and then walked in.

As Kim walked up the stairs, he realized that he had never had an actual conversation with the caretaker before. This made him happy. He usually just smiled at her. Smiling and walking away was some sort of life hack for when Kim wanted to avoid talking. The caretaker was close to HER and not Kim.

Kim walked up to her room and just stood there. He placed his right hand on the door. His breathing started getting irregular, his heart was beating fast and loud. He could feel the smell of his own blood in his mouth. He thought of leaving, walking back and never going down that road again, but then he thought that that would just be delaying the inevitable. He had to face it, he had to know. He took a deep breath and then knocked at the door.

There was no response. He raised his arm slowly and knocked again. Kim knew that she would never directly open the door. She always first asked who was at the door. He remembered her telling him that she never got the point of locking the door, if she’d just open it when someone knocked. ‘Ni nani!’ .The voice came from inside. After she asked that, Kim would say it back to her, with a high pitch, mocking her and she would open and they would both laugh. It had become a sort of password for them. He was about to say it now, but it felt wrong. ‘Ni nani,' he still said it.

‘Ugh..nini unataka?’ Kim was quiet. ‘Hakuna kitu yako huku,ulizichukua jana’. ‘That explains the horse carving’, he thought to himself. At that moment, for something less than a second, he remembered when he bought the horse.There wasn’t anything special about it, it was a cheap made in China product that just didn’t look like it.He intended to use it as a literal Trojan horse.

‘Kama hakuna kitu umekujia basi toka kwa mlango ’ Kim tried to say something but whenever he begun, anything he was about to say  just felt wrong. He then remembered. ‘Cheki, pole..najua nimefuck up na I want to make up for it…wacha nikupeleke lunch,we talk.’ She was quiet for some time and then she started laughing. ‘Yaani, heh..Kimani,there must be something wrong with you .Jana uliniongelesha nikama I’m nothing to you..I…I am not doing this anymore, nobody has ever talked to me the way you did. You made things clear …ni wewe ulibreak up na mimi,it's you who wanted this….,najua kuna kitu unago through but I am out of your life vile ulitaka ,so, please, just leave me alone…na usinicall tena..nitakublock.’

The moment Kim heard those words, he understood what had happened. The truth that he was so afraid to face was suddenly shoved at his face and he did not know what to do or what to say. He just stood there, his right hand placed on the door. He kept trying to say something, he would even open his mouth and get close to uttering a word but then he would stop. He knew there was nothing that he could say that would convince her or himself. He then moved closer to the door, his forehead on the door. He stayed in that position for some time before turning around at once and leaving.

Kim walked out of the building fast, with his head facing down. It was as if his world had just, in that small amount of time, turned upside down on him and was crushing him with its weight. He felt a lot of things all at once, he wanted to cry. The caretaker was about to speak to him as he walked out but she couldn’t because of how fast he walked. Kim went back to his room, got into bed and covered himself up, his entire body hoping that when he woke up next, this would have been a dream.

A week passed while he was still locked up in his apartment. It had been clear for a while now that none of that was a dream. He only came out for food and went back to the bed. He didn’t want to meet people so he avoided restaurants. All he ate were cakes, soda and fries. The only thing that looked worse than his apartment was himself and his state of mind. Kim had started using marijuana, he wouldn’t even touch weed before, not because he had something against it, but because he didn’t really ever want it, but now, he needed it, he didn’t want to be himself anymore and alcohol was just too bitter and expensive.

Kim remembers waking up after the events of that day. He remembers struggling to open his eyes. He remembers hearing the trickling sound of water from his toilet. He remembers seeing something as his eye lids struggled to open. A humanoid figure walking around in his apartment, getting dressed in front of the mirror. But that wouldn’t have been real since Kim lived alone in his bedsitter apartment. It must have been one of those dreams that one gets in the morning just before waking up. He thought to himself as he lay on the bed, as he continued to sleep.