It was an early spring morning in Kanagawa. As I mechanically fed myself mouthfuls of rice, the babbling of the morning news from the TV across me served as a distant backdrop. The forecast was about to pop up any second. I poised myself.
Up until that moment, everything was peaceful. Just like that gentle breeze whispering the coming of spring or that soft sunlight radiating joy and warmth. I had high hopes for my second spring in Kanagawa to turn out just right. Except for one thing: where my eyes darted on the weather map was Hiroshima: 22 ℃, when more than a year had passed since I left there.
After some time, still half-confused and half-shocked, far from finished processing what happened that morning, I was reminded of one of my Hiroshima classmates. We were on our way home when she told me out of the blue, “I have this feeling you might fly away one day.” It was early summer, in no way near the graduation season. Plus, it struck me as odd because we were still halfway through our high school years back then. I remember her crossing the level crossing slightly ahead of me. Her face is already blurry, but the sky behind her is, even now, a vivid salmon pink. She added, “I don’t know why, though.”
Now, from this distance, I think I know why. Wherever I was in Hiroshima, whether at that compact, tranquil beach in Ujina near my house or that Starbucks in Hiroshima station I sometimes went to with my friends after school, I was trapped. My physical presence in Hiroshima meant that I was still a high school student, and what was awaiting me were the university entrance exams. With no real safety net at all if I failed, my frustrations only piled up. And although I didn’t know how to process my stress, I did know how to blame myself, and spotting my weaknesses and vulnerabilities was easy. So, I denied myself making any mistakes, I denied myself having any pleasure, and I denied myself relying on others. I thought to myself that because I was indecisive, lazy, and dependent, I was asking for an insecure position. It had never come to my mind that sometimes, in life, I just had to wait.
The weeks and even months following that morning were quite disturbing. Quite a few times on my train to Tokyo, for instance, I saw the Tama River overlapping with the Ōta River from Hiroshima, which I had glanced over a million times through the train window on my way to school. I did push myself further to keep staring at the Tama River, but nothing came to mind. So, I crossed that out.
Next, I tried writing down some memorable moments from Hiroshima whenever I had time on weekends. But again, it ended up with just one or two, like the beautiful full moon I saw from my living room window or the sunset coloring the crossroads in blood orange—which both had nothing to do with Hiroshima specifically. So, I crossed that out again.
However, by the time I was running my head to produce a reasonable explanation of this uncomfortable experience, I knew it would get me nowhere. So, instead, I slid it away for a while, hoping that by focusing on the new semester, I could perhaps forget about this, about Hiroshima, for a long time…
It is now midsummer, and although subtly, things are starting to change. For instance, right in front of the ticket gates in the train station nearest my house, I see pop-up shops selling different foods every day. One of them sells Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki, and it was also there during the first few months after my move a year ago. But now I see it in a different light. The word Hiroshima no longer catches my attention for long. It strikes into my eyes, then soon retracts.
Hiroshima is quietly, yet steadily, becoming the past. I guess that morning was the final flash of my memories there. The memories that were repressed from telling past stories were signaling their last signs, their last words, before entering the dark. Yes, Hiroshima still connects with me in no way other words can. But it’s losing its power day by day. I am becoming neutral, reacting less and less to that morning and the bewilderment that followed.
I don’t know why, though—my classmate’s words echo. Maybe she had hidden her intentions so as not to hurt my feelings. Maybe she knew I was acting a bit. While I was pretending to be cool, I wasn’t at all ready to become an adult. Just like Hiroshima, though, her real intentions—and that vivid evening sky behind her, that shocking morning, that Okonomiyaki shop—will become harder and harder to tell whether they existed. And I’ll eventually forget that I forgot and step into oblivion. Somewhere in a poetry collection, I believe, there was this phrase: The Pleasure of Oblivion. I guess forgetting something is like forgiving someone. My fading memories may be pushing my back for me to reach somewhere higher, farther, and unknown—to fly away one day.
Angles 