four years later

"YOU KNOW YOU can't stay here forever, Kaede."

Seated on his bed, Kaede looks back at his therapist, gaze cold. He fiddles with the phone in his lap, counting down seconds to keep himself from losing his temper.

He'd been calm. Very calm throughout the session, although sulking at times. But that statement is simply infuriating to hear. Not because of the words itself, but that it dredges up thoughts he doesn't want to care about. Said thoughts that don't end as thoughts, but are then spoken aloud by his therapist.

"If you took your last year, you could get a scholarship," the man continues. "Move out. Study elsewhere. I've seen your old grades. You're very smart. You can do it."

"I'm not smart," Kaede says, tone clipped as he frowns.

"You are. You're a smart boy."

"How can you say that?"

"Because I think so."

Kaede narrows his stare at the man, doubtful. He sighs, looking down. "It doesn't matter. I don't even know what to study."

"How about Literature? You love to write, that could work."

"I love to write but I wouldn't take a whole course for it."

His therapist pauses at that. "Are there other things you would like to study instead then?"

Kaede whips his head back to the man, who's perched on the chair across from him. The chair where he'd usually sit, spending all day in front of his laptop. And if not, sleeping on his bed. He frowns deeply. "These questions aren't helping. They're just stressing me out."

"Why?"

"Because I have no dreams. Not ones that involve the outside world, at least." He huffs. "It feels like you're trying to force ones that do involve the outside world on me."

"Or you find that the dreams involving the big outside world are too hard to reach and it feels easier to live within a world of 3 metres length, 2 metres of width and 3 metres of height," he says sharply.

Kaede sucks in a breath. "It doesn't feel easier. It is easier."

"Yes, it doesn't feel easier."

He has no comeback to that.

Noticing the lack of response, the man asks, "So if it doesn't feel easier, then how does it feel?"

Kaede drills his eyes into the bed, answering with great difficulty, "It...it..." His voice fades, a sigh released. "It feels boring."

"And what does 'boring' feel like?"

"Suffocating."

"Then," the man says, "where is it that you want to go?"

Kaede closes his eyes, biting his lip, slightly distressed at the questioning, yet admitting nonetheless, "Somewhere that is not here. Not this..." His voice fades, unable to maintain volume. "Not this town."

His therapist nods, going silent for a moment to let Kaede recompose himself. 

After a while, he says, "Have you remembered anything? It can be any sort of memory."

Seeing as he's changed the subject, Kaede gazes at his phone, at the pitch-black screen. "No."

Kaede can sense him nod. "But have you noticed anything that feels familiar to you? Yet you cannot recall why?"

He shakes his head.

"Okay," he concludes. "How do you feel right now?"

The boy opens his eyes at the question, lifting them to look at his therapist once again. Years ago, way before his amnesia, he'd also met once every week with him. He doesn't fully remember why he went to therapy back then, only that it was because he struggled with depressive episodes. A difference of nearly a decade, his therapist had been younger then and now he has wrinkles.

The sight makes Kaede realise that he, too, looks nothing like the babyfaced youth he was back then. Not a naive, innocent youth, no. But right now, it hits him, that he's in a place no better than where he was years ago.

The realisation makes his heart grow heavy, and with it, his eyelids.

"I feel tired," he answers, sighing. "I just feel tired."

The man checks his phone. He sucks in a breath. "Well, since it appears our session's already ended..." He puts his phone away, smiling gently. "Get some rest." Patting his shoulders, he takes his leave.

The moment the door closes. Kaede hears Edith's voice, followed by his therapist. An exchange of greetings before suddenly their voices recede, as though they've left to talk a bit farther away from his room. Kaede knows it's about him.

Really, he isn't sure what these sessions are worth. After all, it's not like he's unreasonably paranoid and fearful of others. His unwillingness to go out isn't an issue that utterly stems from him, but is also derived from this wretched town he lives in. He wants to go out, he truly does, but if it means to step out this door and subject his unwanted presence on others, then he won't.

He does, however, know one way to solve this 'problem' of his.

If he could just move away, far, far away from here, then all would be solved.

What's worse, is that the only reason he can have therapy is because of the money his stepfather sends every month. Money enough for them to live under a roof and to put food on the table. Money enough to pay the electricity and water bills. Money enough for them to survive and for Kaede to entertain himself in seclusion.

Yet he's never, ever given enough money for them to move and live elsewhere.

And it has nothing to do with his stepfather's own lack of money.

Because he is rich. His whole family, his background, is wealthy.

The man has never believed he could have a future. That he can study again and enter college. That he has any chance to move forward. That's why he's never pulled them out from the bottom of the well, only throw food and water down for four years straight.

Kaede himself hasn't talked to the man in years.

As more and more indignant complains pile onto his chest, combined with the remembrance of his shitty stepfather,  the boy huffs several times, exasperated. He wants to kick something, to break something, but he can only suppress his emotions within these four walls. Like he has done for the past four years.

Tears prick his eyes, teeth clenching so harshly that they may break.

What dreams? What diploma? What future? He glares at the floor, feeling his breathing quicken as his anger intensifies. What a joke.

He hears his door open. Then, a woman sits beside him. Kaede doesn't look at her, silencing his cries as tears continue to fall.

Right then, her arms fold around him, pulling him to her. He starts to tremble at the firm hold, but then gradually, his breathing calms, uncontrollable shaking ceasing. The turmoil in his mind continues to roar, but at this point, no longer mutes him.

"If we could just leave this place, I'd be fine."

Edith rubs his head. "I know."

Kaede closes his eyes. "I want to sleep."

She breathes in deeply. "Then sleep."

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Sunlight filters through the curtains.

It bathes them both in an ethereal glow, dustmotes gleaming in the air around them; almost like a bubble, a world for only him and her. They sit cross-legged opposite each other. He gazes at her silently, captivated by the fingers that stream through her hair like a river, twisting and braiding it into a pattern of midnight and speckles of stars that hover near her unwary being, as though realising that their brilliance will not outmatch hers, so they come closer, but not enough to touch and vanish within her own sun.

Kaede enjoys this, enjoys her—to just simply watch her.

Sensing his stare, she lifts her eyes, brows creasing as her head cocks, stray strands falling across her face. His hand is tempted to reach out and tuck aside the hair shielding her face, so that he can brush the pads of his fingers across her skin. And not because it's a gorgeous tone of porcelain or as soft as a rose petal, but simply because he wants to touch her.

He wants to tell her. He wants to tell her so bad that he adores her.

Her eyes relax, the slight worry in her gaze diminishing. Then, with a shift of the clouds, the sunrays withdraw from him, casting him in the shadows as she continues to soak in the light. She goes back to braiding her hair. A couple of strands untangle and he notices them drift to the floor.

"Your braid looks tight," he mentions softly, almost as if he's scared that any louder, and he'll disturb her—this girl, this goddess, this moment he's so scared of losing. Now and forever.

She sighs.

"I know."

Kaede sucks in a breath.

It's with her answer, that her voice can truly flow, in a way that makes his heart race. It's the feeling of seeing sunshine upon snow. The sensation of hearing music in a world blanketed too long by silence. It's a relief and a solace, a rush through his bones and a cushion beneath, a melting embrace upon a chaotic, frosted soul.

"Your hair is falling out," he adds, throat tight.

"I know," she says again.

"Then why tie your hair in a braid?" the boy questions, sighting her shoulder-length locks. "Doesn't it hurt, and isn't it hard to braid short hair?"

"It does and it is."

She meets his stare, momentarily—though, to him, it feels like an eternity has bored into them. Something swirls in her eyes, but it's soft; too faint to understand.

"But I can still braid it, can't I?"

Then, as before, the sky reshapes once again. The light moves from her to him, just as he mumbles randomly, "Weirdo."

Her eyes flit to his, brightening to a glimmer.

Moments later, her hands drop, revealing her braid in its finished, yet haphazard form. Threads of hair jut out, some crosses on the verge of coming loose. Kaede can't help but snort at the sight of the messy, rough-looking handiwork.

Seeing his reaction, she frowns in embarrassment. "I should take it off."

Tiny guilt pokes him in the chest at her self-consciousness. "I should help you. It'll hurt if you do it on your own."

A nod and she crawls over to him, crossing over to the path of light. His body tenses as her back leans into him, but relaxes greatly once he feels the lack of disturbance in their proximity, the comforting scent of lilacs filling his air. With quick and careful hands, he unravels her hair and watches as it all tumbles free, flowing through his fingers like rivers of midnight, the darkness a fitting contrast against the moonlight-shade of his hands. He caresses her roots, breathing in the scent of lilacs entwined. She shifts a bit then cranes her neck behind her, and suddenly, he's gazing deep into her eyes.

His breath is caught in his throat.

Lashes fluttering, a million secrets and a million whispers, captured in the span of seconds, all within the oceans in her eyes. It almost makes his heart stop, to see the way the pools of azure in her eyes shine brighter in the light, before sinking outwards into the darker, ceaseless sea, ending in a ring of night. Speaking with unspoken words.

I adore you.

The words linger on the tip of his tongue. But he can't say it, he can't push the words from his heart's core, with his straining lungs, into the air that suddenly seems too far between them. And it appears then, that she too wants to say something but can't.

Instead, as the light moves once more, drifting from her now-shadowed face as it seizes his within its warmth, she leans up and closes the space between them, imprinting the softness of her lips into his head. Kaede tastes it, the saltiness of tears upon them.

But before he can ask her why she's crying, he wakes up.

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The moment he wakes up, his body and mind are instantly awake and fully alert. Shaken by the dream, he gets up and goes out of his room to get a glass of water.

He rarely ever leaves the house, true. But he still does leave his room. 

But then he stops, his body frozen.

Because there, at the bottom of the stairs, Edith lays limp, blood pooling around her head.