「Oblivion: Chapter 3

“I don’t want you to forget.”

These words sometimes haunt me. It had already been over a year since I heard him mutter that, but I could not forget him in the slightest, surely because these words had cast a spell over me.

I wanted to forget that memory.

The beautiful face I could still see vividly in my mind, the moist lips, those black twinkling eyes, those long fingers, and white throat. The moment I close my eyes, I am seized with that image of him.

But I don’t only see his image. I continue to feel his erect c.o.c.k pierce through me and continue to feel his fingers, hands, and legs wrap around my body. Remembering those slender fingers squeezing my outstretched hands, those red lips covering my lips, the sweat on our bodies mixing together, gives me an overpowering pleasure. That man had violated my body persistently for several days. That man had taught my body a pleasure I hadn’t even known existed. When I remember that man, the ecstasy he had given me rushes through my entire body and without even knowing why, I am attacked by a sense of guilt.

That sense of guilt; what was I feeling guilty over? Perhaps I felt guilty towards G.o.d who forbids adultery between men? Fortunately, I’m an atheist. Besides, it’s not like I had wanted to commit adultery with him.

“I don’t want you to forget.”

I wanted to forget. I wanted to forget that memory! If I could erase the memory of those several days he had abused me from my head, I would be able to live a quiet life again.

I wanted to forget that memory.

“Do you want to forget?”

Red phantom lips whisper to me. I want to forget.

“So, you decided you want to forget, hmm?” Red lips whisper again, sneering at me as I shake my head yes.

“Really?”

I want to forget, I’m about to answer, but red lips cover mine.

“You don’t want to forget.”

I want to forget, I want to forget, I think, struggling as his slender arms pin my arms and legs, and as his image violates me, that is the only feeling I have in my heart.

“I don’t want you to forget.”

It remains in my ears. His spell.

And his black eyes capture me.

The office easily accepted my leave of work notice, which stated that I wasn’t feeling well. It seemed that my manager was worried about me acting strange ever since I had returned after being missing.

“No worries. Take it easy,” he said, patting my shoulder. But ‘taking it easy’ was not guaranteed to happen. There was a rumor that according to the regulations at the firm, n.o.body had their position reinstated after leaving work for half a year. Being an S.E. is most likely a serious profession, one you should not easily quit from, so I had great doubts that I’d be able to find another job with my current level of experience. Nevertheless, I was at my limit and didn’t think I could continue my everyday life, so there was no choice other than to take a leave of absence.

Commuting to work everyday was very hard. Working at the office was harder. When I worked at my computer, I became more and more depressed. Just thinking that day after day I had to do this, made me sink into a terrible depression. Somehow, I was making it to work, but at work, my mind was in a daze and I was working so inefficiently that it was terrifying. When I found out that everyone was not happy with me, it only gave me more of an incentive to be depressed, until finally, I could not stand to face this vicious cycle of being inefficient at work any longer. My coworker hinting if I knew about the ‘leave of absence program’ was the last straw which made me decide to confront my manager today in order to get his approval for leaving the office.

“I think it’s best you seek medical help,” my manager said, stretching out a sheet of paper towards me.

“….?”

Wondering what it was, I looked down to see the name of a large hospital in Kanagawa and the words “Department of Psychotherapy”.

“I did think that this was perhaps unnecessary, but our local clinic strongly approved of this. If you’d like, you can obtain a letter of introduction from the department. Why don’t you give it a try, alright?”

Perhaps because it was difficult for him to say this, my manager averted his eyes from me and stretched out the paper closer towards me.

“I’m not forcing you, but rather than bearing all of the burden yourself, I think you’d recover faster if you received doctor’s help,” he said, stood up, and patted me on the shoulder again, telling me, “Hang in there”.

“Okay” I said.

Psychotherapy, huh? Although I realized I was ‘depressed’, I didn’t think I had reached the state of seeking medical help for it, but my manager was probably right. I thought I should at least go there once to hear what the doctor has to say about my condition instead of pointlessly missing work.

I rarely thought such positive things. Perhaps I was thinking this because I knew I didn’t have to come to work anymore starting tomorrow. I will do as my manager had told me and obtain a letter of introduction from the clinic. I will probably never return to the office again. It wasn’t like I had been praying for this to happen, it’s just that being discharged was something that was inevitable for me. I left the company I had worked at for three years, probably never to return again. 　

After that, I spent two or three days just doing nothing. It was the cherry blossom season, and all day long, I just lay around and absent-mindedly looked out the window at the flower petals blowing in the air. But on the third day, I grew tired of doing nothing. I grew scared that I was going to spend my six months off from work like this, so I finally got my heavy legs to move and went down to Chigasaki Hospital to obtain the introduction letter. Although I got there quite early, the hospital was pretty crowded. Even the Department of Psychotherapy was bustling. Finally, it was my turn, but it was practically noon already, and I was the last medical examinee for the morning appointments. All of the people sitting on the sofa in the corridor were supposedly waiting in line for the psychotherapy session like me, but n.o.body, n.o.body looked like they needed help from a psychiatrist.

When my turn finally came, I was exhausted because I had been waiting in that dim corridor for three hours. Although I now had to face the doctor, as I headed towards the designated room I thought, should I really do this? When I reached the room, I gave a light knock on the door and opened it.

“Come in.”

I heard a calm voice say from within the room. At that moment, I suddenly had a feeling of deja-vu but I didn’t know what to a.s.sociate the feeling with.

“Excuse me.”

I bowed, thinking, perhaps it’s funny to say ‘excuse me’ to a doctor. When I raised my head and looked inside the room, I…

“Ah…”

I was so shocked I remained standing where I was.

“How may I help you?”

Illuminated by the dazzling light of the sun falling from the window was that beautiful face I had not forgotten for even a day since then.

“Please have a seat.”

Those black eyes that narrowed at me with a smile. Those fine-shaped red lips. That beauty mark by the mouth.

“Ah……”

As if I had become an aphasic, I could not get any words to come out from my throat. That image had chased me and had invaded my mind for one year and now it simply let me knock on the door of this psychotherapy room. I had not forgotten him for even a day since then – this man who called himself Suzuki. This man stretched out his right hand towards me.

“How may I help you?”

It was unmistakably him. That well featured white face, that beautiful, low but ringing, voice, and that smell of cologne on his body. All of these things proved that it was him, but why was this man acting like he didn’t know me?

“You look pale…are you feeling light headed?”

The moment he pressed his cold palm to my forehead, I felt that I was blacking out. Collapsing into his strong arms, the last thing I saw before losing consciousness was the fine-shaped red lips, looking almost as if upturned into a slight smile.

How much time had pa.s.sed? When I abruptly opened my eyes, I was surprised to see an unfamiliar ceiling. Finally, I noticed and was surprised again to find that I was in a hospital bed and covered with a white hospital blanket. Because I had just awoken, I was feeling dazed.

Somehow, I had a feeling that I was in a doctor’s office. Wondering why I was resting here, I sat up and was startled to see a s.p.a.cious room I didn’t recognize. Now I was completely awake. That’s right. I came to the hospital and after that…

As I looked around the room I was in, it looked like an inpatient ward to me. On top of that, it was a one-patient room.

The setting sun outside the window dyed everything red.

How long have I been pa.s.sed out? I thought. But when I searched for the clock, I saw that there wasn’t one in the room, so I looked at my wrist but noticed that I wasn’t wearing my wrist.w.a.tch either! I was in a room with nothing in it, not even a clock. I didn’t know why I was being kept here in this unfamiliar place. I remembered those arms that held me in that room back at that log house villa.

“You look pale…are you feeling light headed?”

That cold palm that had touched my forehead definitely belonged to ‘him’. Why was he here? Why was that image here again in front of me?

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, startling me. I trembled as I watched the door open.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

Standing there was an elderly nurse. In the nurse’s hand was a blood pressure meter.

“Please let me take your blood pressure.”

She quickly moved towards me, instructed me to lie back down on the bed and began to take my blood pressure.

“Um…”

What on earth had happened? I was just about to ask her, but...

“Please be quiet for a minute, okay…?” She silenced me as she looked at the apparatus with a serious look on her face. She checked the final number displayed on the screen.

“Alright. Looks fine,” she said, smiling.

“Um……”

I didn’t know what was going on. Once she saw how confused I looked, she understood, nodding.

“You suddenly collapsed during the medical exam. For some reason, today the emergency department is busy and all the beds in the emergency room are occupied, so we brought you here to this vacant room to rest…how are you feeling?”

Peering at me, she spoke slowly as if addressing a child.

“I’m alright.”

The nurse was being too considerate of me, perhaps because I had collapsed at the Department of Psychotherapy.

“According to the doctor, you hit your head quite hard when you collapsed. Just to be safe, he instructed that you rest here for one night. Tomorrow, he says he will give you a detailed examination. But you say you seem alright? Do you want to contact your family?”

Doctor. The moment I heard that, those beautiful black eyes flashed into my mind. That strange twinkle inside those kindly, smiling eyes.

“s.h.i.+mizu-san?”

Because I was s.p.a.cing out, she peered at me again, sounding worried. I quickly apologized, saying, “I’m sorry” and then told the nurse that it was not necessary to contact my family.

“Then please rest up. If you’re not feeling well, use this.”

The nurse slipped me an emergency call b.u.t.ton.

“Please call that. You hit your head, so things might seem a little strange to you, but don’t hesitate to call, okay?” she reminded me.

“Okay……”

“Dinner is at six; lights out at nine. There is a toilet in this room and a bath as well, so you don’t have to leave the room. Well then, I will come again later to take your temperature, okay?”

The nurse quickly told me. Then the last thing she said was a see you later, showed me an angelic smile and hurriedly left the room. My head didn’t hurt in the slightest considering I supposedly had hit my head.

What was happening? I thought as I returned the emergency call b.u.t.ton back to its place, lay back down on the bed, and looked at the ceiling.

“I don’t want you to forget.”

As much as one year had pa.s.sed since then. Had I really met him again now?

“What’s wrong?”

It seemed like he hadn’t remembered me at all. I thought that face, that voice, and that cold palm all belonged to him, but perhaps I had simply mistaken him with someone else. Maybe I was convinced that someone who wasn’t him at all was him. I hadn’t realized that my mind had been wounded so much. I couldn’t even say with certainty whether I remembered suddenly collapsing on the spot. Did I want to see him that much? I thought.

“I don’t want you to forget.”

Those words were like a spell. They were still binding me, weren’t they? I myself didn’t think I wanted to see him.

“I don’t want to forget.”

I thought I didn’t think that. The more I thought about this, the more I felt myself be deeper hung up on it. I pulled the blanket over my head, deciding to try to force myself to sleep and not think about anything. When dinner arrived at six o’clock, I declined to eat, because I had no appet.i.te. Tightly shutting my eyes, all I wanted was to escape to the world of sleep.

How much time had pa.s.sed? As I had hoped, it seemed that I had fallen asleep without even realizing it. The door slightly opened with a click, and a thin ray of light flowed into the room through the crack in the doorway. Were they going to take my temperature again? They had taken it just a few hours ago. I turned my back to the light, thinking it was so annoying. Turning in my bed, I tried to slip under my blanket, but at that moment, the blanket was suddenly ripped off of me. Surprised, I opened my eyes, and standing right there was…

“It’s been a while.”

It was the man in a white lab coat who had presented himself as a doctor to me this afternoon. It was him – that beautiful, white man whom I couldn’t forget about this past year even if I tried.