What We Hide

Chapter 1: My name is Kazan Itsuki

My feet shuffle along the dampened stamped concrete. I kept my eyes lowered to the ground, listening to the dragging of my cold feet. I can feel my legs growing tired and sore as I continue walking along the long damp stamped concrete path. I want to stop walking but I can't. He is behind me, it seemed like almost everywhere I went in public he was around me. He never talked to me since he hated my guts and I don't have the courage to start a conversation with him because he always has some earbuds or headphones.

Everyday I walk home and Enyo walks a few feet behind me listening to his quiet music as always, sometimes I wonder if he's ever listening to anything at all, if I ever stop walking he just walks around me and it's almost like I don't exist to him. But then again his general mannerisms were as if nobody existed to him. Enyo never talked to anybody and no one ever tried to reach out to him either. We've always had all of our classes together and I don't even think that he's ever even been called on by a teacher or turned in a single piece of homework.

As I turned the corner onto my ghost-town looking street I could hear a raven cawing to another raven across the wire. They flew off together and all I could think about was how nice it would be to not be alone. I made soft fists, my palms were warm but my fingers protruded like icicles that grew on your roof overnight like an invasive frost that stuck into my palms.

I reached the dusty old gate in front of my house, unraveling my soft cold fists and placing my left hand on the top of the lightly rusted gate. Pushing it open slightly and listening to it's deep whine, I took one last glance at Enyo who had crossed the street but to my surprise he wasn't walking with his earbuds in like normal. He was holding his right ear bud in his hand and staring directly at my gate which had now swung almost all the way open. His facial expression told me that he had heard the gate but it was almost like the noise surprised him, like I wasn't even there and the gate had opened by itself.

He only stood there staring for a moment before slowly putting his ear bud back in and continuing on his routine of a walk. I walked along the grassy cobblestone path to my door without dragging or shuffling my feet in fear I might trip.

The grass was long and dying but nobody ever bothered to mow it and no one really cared either so it was almost always long and drenched in wildflowers and weeds. The windows were always immaculate because my mom says that a house with dirty windows is miserable and dreary.

When I was young I used to sit on the window seat with my mom and she would teach me how to read while I sat in her lap. She would spend hours sitting there just reading or staring out the window. I wonder if she ever thought she would be saved from this hellscape of a life, or maybe she was even more delusional and thought she was a character from one of her books.

The lady who used to take care of me may be in the same body as my mother but they're not the same person. Sometimes I wish she was still the delusional young adult with hope and life.