re:Happiness | Cell Phone Novel

worthless cycle | v - viii

  ・・・ v ・・・

A few minutes after two in the afternoon, the doorbell rang in his apartment.

He flinched as he heard it.

He almost wanted to believe that he was hearing things.

The doorbell rang again.

—It's real.

Reluctantly, he headed towards the door, pausing for a moment.

His hands were inches away from the handle.

He breathed in slowly and sighed out.

Then, he opened the door.

As expected, Leo was standing there with a huge grin on his face.

He was wearing a black overcoat.
There was a red muffler wrapped around his neck.

In his hand was a can of soda.

"Hi, Ao," Leo said. "You're already dressed. Great!"

Ao, however, wasn't paying attention to him.

Because behind Leo,
there was another person that he wasn't expecting to see.

Ah.

.... Hashimoto Rie.

There was that same smile on her face.

She nodded respectfully to him in greeting.

"Oh, I also forgot to tell you on the phone this morning..." Leo said with a wide grin.

"Rie will be coming with us, too."

  ・・・ iv ・・・

Once he had heard that, an uneasy feeling rose inside his chest.

It was already unsettling enough for him to go alone with Leo.

With Rie, it seemed too... unusual.

Uncomfortable.

Uneasy.

His hands felt numb.
His legs felt too weak.

In that second, he was almost tempted to close the door and stay in his apartment.

Yet both of them, however,
still had those happy expressions on their faces.

They had not noticed.

"They never do, do they?"

Leo gestured with his hand. "Well, come on. Let's get going, shall we?"

  ・・・ iv ・・・

Once outside, he called for a cab.

The three of them settled inside.

Leo sat at the shotgun seat.
Ao and Rie stayed at the back.

As they climbed in, he made sure to be as close to the window as possible.

"Where to?" the driver asked mechanically.

Leo replied to him.

Soon, the car began to move,
weaving its way through the midday traffic.

At first, there was nothing but an unsettling silence between them, broken only by the low hum of the engine.

For the entire ride, surprisingly, no one spoke a single word.

It was as if a sudden quietness had settled over them.

Ao did not mind, however.

On the other hand, he was grateful for the silence.

Outside the window,
the world was the same as yesterday.

The same faces,
same places,
same repeating cycles.

As he stared at the scenery, Ao's mind wandered.

  ・・・ iv ・・・

Until now, he still wasn't sure why he had made this decision.

Until now, it still seemed like a continuation of a distant dream.

He was merely waiting for the moment he would wake up and realize that none of this was real.

"But it is."

Ao blinked.

If it was the old me, I would have never agreed to do this.

If it was the old me, I would have already ran away.

If it was the old me, I would have decided not to get involved.

"'If it was the old me', you say...

But tell me, when exactly did the 'old you' disappear in the first place?

When did you decided that the 'you' right now is different from the 'you' from before?"

Slightly, Ao shook his head.

A numb pain throbbed somewhere in his chest.

That's true...

... When did it happen, when I began to think like this?

He thought about it for a long time.

In the end, he didn't have an answer.

- - -

a.n.: thank you for 20k reads!