Chapter 4: Lies

                The abyss is a dark place, distant, yet real, and it's actually not far from our homes. Whether we gaze at a starry night sky or the vast, seemingly endless ocean, the abyss is there. We often speak of it as if it were a location, much like we speak of a country. And right now, Yamori was in that place we call the abyss. Literally, he was holding his breath, trying to swim back to the surface.

                Yamori was underwater, deep in a seemingly endless ocean, meters below the surface, holding his breath as if clinging to life itself. Slowly, painfully, under the weight of overwhelming fatigue, he began to swim upward. Every muscle in his body burned. He longed to breathe, but doing so would mean death.

Yamori had never taken risks while swimming. He never challenged the water, always respected nature, just as he would never dare confront the force of a river's current. And now, for the first time in his life, he began to realize he might actually drown, right here, right now. Wrapped in darkness, even the surface was not visible. Only his inner ear told him he was rising.

After a long and painful struggle to hold his breath, Yamori finally glimpsed what looked like the ceiling above. Clinging to the fragile hope of survival, he kicked harder, stretched his arm upward as if the air were a tree and he could catch hold of a branch.

The boy recognized the strange room he had entered with the stranger, but when he thought he had reached the surface, his hand hit the ceiling. In other words, Yamori was trapped. Whatever occurred between the moment he realized he had been deceived by the man he followed and the instant his fingers touched the ceiling no longer mattered, he was undeniably trapped.

For reasons obscure to both you and me, Yamori was trapped in an immeasurably vast tank, a flooded room that stretched endlessly, with no way out. He was on the verge of succumbing to the desperate urge to breathe, and perish in a terrible way.

When suddenly, something torn from a nightmare appeared, just within reach: that thing, that unidentifiable beast. Yamori nearly lost control of his breathing; he was face to face with it. Only seconds remained before his body would betray him and drown. He had no strength left, no energy to fight.

The creature seemed completely unfazed by the water or the gaping void of darkness, just a single leap away from annihilating Yamori, or doing something worse. As the beast prepared to lunge - or so it seemed, Yamori closed his eyes, almost as if he had given up, too exhausted to do anything at all. What a shame… not so long ago, he was surrounded by friends, carefree, not questioning what the future held. Now, none of that seemed to matter anymore. His heart pounded like war drums. He was trembling, only seconds away from death.

When, out of nowhere, in a sudden rush, Yamori was pulled by a current, a whirlpool.

The boy got drained. He closed his eyes, and when he opened it again, to his great surprise, he was no longer in the house. Actually, he hadn’t ended up very far, maybe a hundred meters away from it. It was a dark night, but he clearly recognized the local riverbank. He was sitting in shallow water; the riverbed was made of large, slippery pebbles, and he struggled to reach the shore. When he finally managed, he grabbed hold of some reeds and pulled himself out. Wracked with aches, he fought to stay on his feet, every step on the cobblestones threatened to bring him down.

“Finally, out,” thought Yamori, too exhausted to actually say it aloud. He rubbed his face with his hands over and over again.

The first thing he intended to do was head to the station, board a train, and ride straight to his parents' home, even if it was twelve hours away. He was prepared to abandon all his belongings, and if necessary for whatever reasons, he would simply call his remaining friends at the share-house. Needless to say, it felt like waking up from a nightmare. Except this time, he had not been asleep at all. Drenched in foul water, sticky with sweat, grime beneath his nails, covered in aches and bruises: it was far too real to be a dream. Whatever had happened in that house, Yamori did not want to know. He had seen enough to never even consider entering someone's room again without a proper invitation.

And so, Yamori fought his way through the bushes, rocks, and puddles. His slippers were torn to shreds, his socks full of holes. Fortunately, the train station was only about a twenty-minute walk away. He no longer cared if passersby would throw him looks of disdain. He still had enough cash in his pockets to pay for a ticket, and if, by any means, it was not enough, he would walk the entire length of Honshu, as long as it led him back to the banality of his family home.

As he (sort of) walked through the bushes, he kept thinking, "Fuck that sharehouse, and whoever lived in Room 323 can go fuck himself." Driven by the energy of despair, he went on cursing in his head. Yamori was about to reach the park above the riverbanks when he stopped. He did not say a word, did not think a thought; he simply breathed. Pure breathing, alone in the thick darkness. No, it was not about thinking or seeing. It was about feeling. And what he felt, he felt it with absolute certainty.

He lifted his head, and there she was, face to face with him. That woman. That ghost he thought he had fled for good. How far must one go to no longer be followed by a ghost or some vile creature? Can such things even be escaped?

"So, this is what it feels like to be mad? In the end, one remains perfectly lucid when mad, and what others see as madness are merely our lucid reactions to senseless things?" Yamori kept thinking, again and again.

The girl he called a ghost stood before him, dressed in a pitch-dark blue kimono, her hair drifting with the wind. Her eyes were ringed by the deepest black he had ever seen. It felt as though the entire world around him had been devoured by darkness.
                With a sudden surge, in the blink of an eye, she soared toward Yamori. Like an arrow piercing through flesh, she glided through the air; a shadow, a thunderbolt: and passed right through him. In a violent rush, like an explosion, everything went black and silent.

Once more, Yamori opened his eyes. Everything that had reassured him for a few minutes had just collapsed. He was back in the share-house, standing exactly where he had been before falling and getting trapped in the abyss.

He was on the verge of letting sanity slip through his fingers, convinced he was about to fall once more into that endless, water-filled abyss, and he would be chased again by the loathsome creature. And right in front of him, exactly where he had left "him," stood the man he had saved from drowning.

The man, his eyes obscured by the shadow cast by the neon light, remained silent. He simply stood there, as if concealing his intentions. “He is hiding something from me”, Yamori began to think. The boy clenched his fists, adrenaline rising. Then he said to him:

-           Why did you lie to me about the water drain? I don’t see one in this room. And how did I end up trapped underwater? What did you...

-          What are you talking about? answered the man.

-           Are you kidding me? Yamori snapped.

-          I don’t understand what you’re talking about, I told you there was a drain here, maybe they took it away.

-          Either I am crazy, or you are lying to me! Yelled Yamori.

-          Well, maybe you’re crazy because I never said anything about a water drain.

Yamori lost his temper. He grabbed the man’s collar. It was the first time in his entire life that Yamori had ever done that. He yelled at him, he was about to punch him, but struck by a feeling of pity, or something like that - maybe he was disgusted, he pushed him as hard as he could.

Like a magic spell, or saying the magic word, as Yamori threw all his anger into pushing the man he had helped earlier, the latter backed up and fell. When all of a sudden, he burst into ashes. Nothing was left of the man. And soon the ashes were floating over the dirty, stagnant water, among the other things that were already floating there.

Yamori was shocked. “Did I really do that?” and he stepped back slowly, until his back was pressed against the wall, breathing in terror as he had just seen a man vanish into ashes right before him. Heavy drops of sweat rolled down his forehead, choking him, twisting his throat, he couldn’t comprehend or make sense of it all - as if he could already unravel the ghost or monster from before, as if all of that became the least of his concern now that he saw someone disappear right in front of him.

The man left nothing but ashes. Not a single belonging, not even his clothes. Yamori, still leaning against the wall, watched what remained of that person drift beneath the flickering neon light. And now, the room seemed to finally be draining of its water. Was it evaporation? Was there really a drain somewhere? The dark, filthy water slowly vanished, leaving behind a disgusting mush of scraps and fragments, each one filthier than the last.

                The air was thick with humidity, sticky and foul. A salty miasma, similar to rotting fish, hung in the room, the same kind that lingers in a poorly refrigerated morgue with questionable ductwork. The grime had left marks on the tiled walls: abstract shapes that looked like they were screaming in pain, crying out for help, with no one to hear, no one to listen.

Yamori stood there, overwhelmed by exhaustion, breathless, in shock, covered in grime. And he thought,

"This morning, I woke up, and everything was normal. The house was full of more or less living people. Everything went wrong so quickly… what even happened to that guy? And where is everyone? Where are the others?"

The others... but who were the others, really?

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