You moved to the sound of a knock, stepping towards your front door as you put in your hearing aids and opened it to find a group of your classmates standing there, each wearing an uncomfortable expression. They were supposed to have been hanging out with Tsumiki.
"What's up?" you asked, your hands for some reason not moving to sign it, your mouth moving confidently.
"Y/N... we're so sorry... Tsumiki's in the hospital."
"What... Why?"
"She jumped off a bridge."
You slowly stepped away from the door. "A bridge...? Not the one that—"
"Yes, that one... I know you said that we shouldn't have, and that it was dangerous, but we didn't think—"
"Exactly," you snapped. "You didn't think. You just did, and this is where we are!"
"Y/N, we—"
"No, I don't— I can't have this conversation right now!"
"We're really sorry, we didn't—"
You yanked out your hearing aids and snapped, "PLEASE. GET. OUT!"
•••
You shot up in bed, your hand going to your face to find that tears had made rivers down your cheeks and dripped down your chin. You wiped them away with the back of your hand and slipped out of bed to wash your face in the washroom.
You touched everything your could, your hand against the wall, your bare feet against the hardwood floor, trying to make sure that the dream was over.
You wet your hands and washed your face, letting out a heavy, shaky sigh as your palms jabbed into your eyes, water dripping down your face and soaking your pyjamas.
When your hands finally left your face, you looked at yourself in the mirror, seeing the light pink remnants of tears at the corners of your eyes.
While clichés bored you, the dream had felt so real, even with the little details like the girls that were in your class that spoke to Tsumiki but not you. Even the house you were in was definitely yours, except the front door was actually the back door that led straight to the living space up above.
You glanced at the clock that hung in the hallway, realizing that its hands were disappointing close to six, when you had to wake up to open the shop.
A bridge, you kept repeating in your head as if that were the sound of a gong that had just been crashed near your ear, except you didn't actually know what a gong sounded like, you just knew that there often was an incessant ringing noise every time one sounded.
There weren't any bridges near the town, except for one that went over a gigantic hole in the middle of a field nearby, but if you jumped from that, the most you'd get is a bruise.
Normally you weren't kept in the dark about your dreams, but not knowing what bridge you were talking about in one occupied your mind. Even if it was just a dream, you were to make sure that Tsumiki would never go near it nonetheless.
As you flipped the open sign and put the stopper in the door to keep it from closing completely, you glanced at the clock once more.
It was taunting, that face, with the twelve numbers going all around it. It reminded you of how quickly time passed, whether you were procrastinating or realizing that eventually your times of joy must end, and yet its face never wavered. It was cruel.
You sat at the counter on your high stool, doodling on an order form, turning checkboxes into little houses and Os into smiley faces and daisies.
A bridge, you repeated again, staring at the little gap where the printer ink didn't print the entire line where the customer's signature would go. You finished the line with your pen and glanced at the door, waiting for Tsumiki to come around 7:00, as she always does every Saturday.
You sighed, dropping your pen.
You hated being human sometimes.
Trying to find meaning seemed to be the only reason for humans to live. Find meaning to life, to death, to pain, to dreams. If they didn't care, textbooks would be shorter, trials would take less time, and life would not be such a difficult thing to live because you're not trying to find any meaning to it. Any reason.
You wished you were a flower, existing to be beautiful and to be nothing else, not caring if they meant death or life, love or hate, healing or pain. They only bloomed then withered.
Tsumiki, on the other hand, liked flowers for their meanings.
"They're much like humans," she said. "They look like one thing on the outside, but can mean something completely different."
You glanced at the door, seeing Tsumiki standing at the entrance, waving to someone you couldn't see, then entering with her usual bright grin.
"Good morning," she signed. "You look tired."
"Gee, thanks."
"Sorry, sorry."
You rolled your eyes as she handed you a cup of coffee from the nearby coffee shop while she had her cinnamon roll. "I have something new to add to the vision board!"
"Oh really?" You took a sip of your coffee with a raised brow.
"This ramen place, right here." She pulled out a newspaper and pointed at an ad. You nodded, sipping your coffee again.
She hummed, tapping her fingers on the counter. "We should go to Kyoto," she added. "I want to try a kimono."
"You'd look nice in one," you signed. "With your hair up as well."
"I didn't just mean me! I meant the both of us!"
You leaned down, picking the vision board off the floor. There was no space on it but Tsumiki took a nearby glue stick and stuck the ad on it anyway.
"We should extend it or something," you suggested, flicking an overhanging piece of paper.
Tsumiki didn't see you say it. Her eyes were glued onto the stuck on papers. The papers were crinkling from the glue, some of them ripped, some yellowing from time. Your names in the bottom right corner were covered completely by a photo of the 3D billboards in Shibuya and an ad for Tokyo Disneyland.
"I want to complete everything on here," she said aloud. You watched her mouth move, your eyes softening.
You remembered a long time ago, back in grade one, when you found her sobbing under the second tree to the right of the first tea shop, when you first met her.
She didn't know any sign at the time, so she was just talking and talking with no one telling her to be quiet. You caught words like "dad" and "miss" but nothing else because of how incoherent she seemed to be.
Eventually, she stopped talking and wiped away her tears. You handed her half of your blueberry muffin, which you had been holding awkwardly as you tried to take in parts of her rambling.
Suddenly, as she spoke, it was as if you could hear every word as her mouth moved with clear confidence for the first time since you saw her.
"It's fine. I don't need him."
A day later, she showed up at the flower shop, fumbling with queue cards that she held up to you, apologizing for the day before. "I just thought you were a really good listener."
You raised your hands to sign, then stopped to find a notepad. You scribbled down some words and held it up to her. "I was listening."
She had begun crying again, so loudly that your parents thought you said something mean to her and came rushing from out back.
You remembered the day so vividly.
You remember that the hands on the clock were broken and eternally at 9:47. The actual time was 7:30 on a Saturday morning, only known because of a flowery watch that you refused to remove when you were small.
She had a stuffed animal that she held by the arm, a stuffed bunny, that she dragged along the floor. She had long, unkept hair, with strands of it in front of her face.
You always wore strange overalls that had little weeds and flowers in its front pocket, and a graphic tee of a show you had never watched, but it had a cat in it, so it didn't matter.
You wondered what your life would be like if you hadn't noticed her on that bench that day, under the second tree to the right of the third tea shop, with a blueberry muffin in hand and a soul to lend.
As the two of you sat on the floor, pointing at parts of the vision board as if it were a photo album.
"I forgot, we need to go on a bullet train one day!"
"Those cheesy pancake things that look like a 10 yen coin look so good!"
"I think he died... I don't know if we can see him in concert anymore."
"Now looking at it, that car's kind of ugly."
You leaned against her shoulder and she stopped signing, placing her hand on your cheek with a soft smile.
The dream you had didn't feel real... it just felt impossible to live with.
Tsumiki had dreams, too many to count, too many to be forgotten.
And you had dreams too.
But they all involved her.