Day 11 - April 11, 2024
Quiet Goodbye
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The alarm buzzed.
I didn't move.
Not from fatigue. Not because I forgot.
But because I was already awake—had been all night. Sleep never came. It didn't dare. My eyes had stayed open in the dark, burning and bloodshot, aching for rest, for mercy.
But how do you close your eyes when the world you bled for is quietly falling apart?
The room was bright now.
The sun had risen with its usual indifference, casting golden rays across pale walls like nothing had changed. As if today were just another morning. As if the last ten days hadn't hollowed me out. As if I hadn't gambled everything—my career, my sanity, their futures—on a dream that no longer felt real. Not even to me.
It mocked me, that sun.
Its warmth touched the untouched sheets, the cold chair, the desk strewn with fragments of my soul—grinning like a cruel god watching mortals crumble under the weight of their own hope.
My fingers were blistered, stiff, stained with graphite and ink. My neck throbbed from the endless hours hunched over that desk, drawing until my hands went numb. My eyes stung—not only from sleeplessness, but from tears that slipped out whenever I forgot to keep pretending I was strong.
Beside me, the USB lay still.
Lifeless. Like a gravestone.
And beside it, the pages—storyboards, scripts, character sheets—each line etched with hope, each stroke screaming for a future that now seemed impossibly out of reach.
It was done. All of it.
The animation clip. The concept. The dream we had poured every heartbeat into.
Finished.
And yet, instead of pride, all I felt was a hollow, aching grief.
Because deep down, I knew.
This wasn't a beginning.
It was an ending.
Not just for me.
But for Airi.
For Hiroshi.
For the dream that once made us laugh like children in that dingy break room, warmed by vending machine coffee and blind ambition. Fools chasing stars with nothing but trembling hands and stupid, beautiful hope.
I had dreamed of proving myself. Of becoming someone who belonged. Someone who could do the impossible. Someone worthy.
For her.
For Airi.
I wanted to stand beside her—not as a colleague, not as a desperate soul clinging to her brilliance—but as an equal. As someone who had earned the right to walk next to her without shame.
But that dream… it demanded a price. And in trying to pay it, I crossed a line I never should have.
And now, the cost wasn't just mine.
They would pay for it too.
I leaned back in the chair, my body folding under the crushing weight pressing against my chest. I trembled—not from exhaustion, but from guilt. From regret. From the slow, sharp realization that I may have dragged us all into the abyss.
"I—I'm sorry," I whispered.
Not to anyone in particular—just to the silence.
To the room.
To the versions of us that once believed.
To the pieces of myself scattered across every sketch, every frame.
To the dream I dared to chase… and destroyed in the process.
My fist clenched as the tears came again—hot, helpless, unrelenting.
This wasn't sacrifice.
This was ruin.
And it wore my name.
I stood up slowly, bones aching, shoulders sagging beneath a weight I couldn't name. Every movement felt like dragging a corpse—mine. I pulled my hoodie over my head, the same one I wore on days I wanted to vanish. The fabric smelled like old rain and regret. It clung to me like a shroud.
I didn't want to be seen.
I didn't want Airi or Hiroshi to see my face.
Not like this.
Not the face of someone who had failed them.
The guilt sat on my chest like a boulder. I couldn't meet their eyes—not after what I'd done. Not when I might've just ended the very thing we fought so hard to build.
My feet moved on their own, stiff and automatic, as if my body knew I'd turn back if I hesitated. I gathered everything—the final product, our last hope—into a folder. Neat. Precise. But my hands trembled as I slid the USB between the sheets, like tucking a child in before a storm.
And then, with a breath I couldn't steady, I stepped out the door.
I went to the company.
But I didn't go to work.
Not really.
I didn't clock in.
I didn't greet anyone.
I didn't speak.
I drifted through the halls like a ghost in familiar ruins—unseen, unheard, unworthy of the life that moved around me.
I remained in the shadows, tucked behind corners, slipping past glass walls where laughter and light still existed. It felt like watching a memory I wasn't allowed to belong to anymore. Their faces… their smiles… they didn't know yet. They didn't know the storm I might have brought crashing down over all of us.
And I—I didn't have the courage to tell them.
Not yet.
Because how do you look someone in the eyes when you know you might've broken everything they believed in?
-----
I saw Hiroshi in the hallway around lunch, pacing in front of the vending machine like he was about to start a fight with it. His voice bounced off the walls—half outrage, half desperation.
"Haruki!" he yelled, knocking on the glass like it was a confessional. "You in there, man? Hiding behind the snacks? Is this... some kind of existential metaphor?! Come out, bro, seriously!"
I swallowed hard, pressing myself deeper behind the stairwell's cold concrete. It was so painfully him—loud, unfiltered, dramatic in a way only he could make feel genuine. For a moment, just a flicker, I almost stepped out. Almost.
But I didn't.
I stayed still. Frozen in shame.
Because if he saw me now—if he really looked—he'd know.
He'd see the cracks. The fear. The failure I couldn't hide.
Airi passed through moments later, quiet as morning mist. Her steps were slower than usual, her eyes scanning the faces around her like each one might offer an answer. Or maybe a trace of someone she'd lost.
Me.
Her phone was clutched in her hand like it was the last thread holding her together. She checked it. Again. And again. Her fingers trembling with each swipe.
A notification lit up my own screen.
Message from Airi.
And then another.
And another.
Voice message.
I tapped play.
"Haruki…" Her voice cracked like thin glass. "Where are you? You said we'd face everything together. Don't do this. Don't… don't disappear on me. I'm scared."
Her words clung to me like fog.
Soft.
But suffocating.
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, desperate to feel something else—anything but this ache clawing through my ribs. I tasted iron.
God, it hurt.
Not just because I missed them.
But because they still believed in me.
And I no longer did.
-----
I saw Sasaki and Nakamura in the conference room. I wasn't close—just a ghost lingering by the doorway, swallowed in shadow—but their voices drifted through the thin glass like echoes from another life.
"He'll show up," Sasaki said, trying too hard to sound casual, like saying it aloud would make it true. "Haruki's... he's weird, sure, but he's a storm. You never see him coming—not until the whole damn sky's trembling."
There was a pause.
A chair creaked.
Then Nakamura, his voice a murmur wrapped in doubt:
"Maybe the storm's passed."
A breath.
"Maybe... the sky's calm now because he's not coming back."
That hit harder than I was ready for.
And then there was Mikami.
He didn't care who was listening. Never did. I heard him scoff when someone mentioned my name, like the idea of me showing my face again was some bad punchline.
"That kid bit off more than he could chew," he said, tone sharp, words heavy with the kind of cynicism that comes from too many years in the grind. "This isn't high school. It's not one of those cheesy manga where the underdog saves the day with guts and friendship."
He let the silence stretch, let it sting.
"This is real life. Deadlines don't care about passion. Consequences don't wait for inspiration."
His footsteps echoed as he walked off, boots tapping out judgment. But just before he rounded the corner, he stopped.
And in a voice low enough that maybe even he didn't mean for anyone to hear, he muttered:
"…Still. Guts like that? You don't see it often. You gotta respect it. Even if it's a damn fool's kind of brave."
Then he was gone.
And I stood there, unseen.
Unheard.
A ghost haunting a dream I once called mine.
Their voices looped in my head, each word slicing deeper than the last.
Sasaki's hope.
Nakamura's quiet grief.
Mikami's reluctant respect.
They believed in me once. Even now, maybe.
But what if they were wrong?
What if I was never the storm—
just the silence that came after it?
-----
I waited.
All day, like a ghost tethered to the edge of a world that no longer wanted me. I lurked in corners, behind glass reflections, beneath the hush of umbrellas and the noise of living—watching them move through the hours like I'd never existed. I didn't speak. Didn't breathe. I just... waited.
Like a coward.
Maybe I was.
Then came the rain.
Not a drizzle, not some gentle whisper from the sky—no, it came crashing down like judgment. Sudden. Merciless. The kind that doesn't just soak you, it devours you. It drenched the streets, the buildings, the faces of strangers too busy to look up. It washed the sunlight from the world, leaving nothing but cold steel and storm-colored silence.
But I didn't run.
I stood there—still, small—letting it consume me.
Letting it punish me.
Letting it try to wash away the things I couldn't.
The guilt.
The shame.
The dream that had become a curse.
By sunset, the world was quiet again.
The city exhaled.
And I moved.
Not with purpose, but with the finality of someone walking a funeral path. My own. I snuck into the office like a thief—not for what I could take, but for what I had to leave behind.
No one was there.
The lights hummed softly overhead. The hum of computers sleeping. The silence of a battlefield after the war is lost.
Shibata's desk waited, just as I remembered it—meticulous, almost painfully so. A heavy paperweight on one corner, anchoring invisible burdens. A photograph on the other, faded at the edges. His daughter. Smiling. Innocent. Untouched by the weight that consumed the rest of us.
I approached slowly, each step louder than my breath.
And then, gently—as if afraid I might break it—I placed the folder at the center of his desk.
Inside: my storyboards. My sketches. My soul, etched in graphite and sleepless nights. The fragments of a dream born from desperation and stitched together with trembling hands and reckless hope.
And on top of it all... a single envelope.
Unmarked.
Except for one word—scrawled in handwriting that barely held itself together:
"Sorry."
Not signed.
Because a name couldn't carry this.
It was more than an apology. It was an epitaph.
Then I turned.
And I walked out.
Not in defiance. Not in peace.
Just... gone.
Because some goodbyes don't need doors to close.
Some are carved in the silence between footsteps.
And I didn't dare look back—
Because I knew if I did...
I'd never find the strength to leave.