It was already 7 PM by the time I arrived at Yokohama station, and while the days are starting to get colder once again after a whole week’s streak of warmer weather, I was still sweating in my padded jacket despite it still being the middle of winter. I wiped the sweat off my brow with a gloved hand, and went back to tapping my fingers on the escalator’s handrail. The music from the cheap earphones I just recently bought filled my ears, drowning out the noise of the city’s hustle and bustle.
There was an older woman in front of me who stood immobile in her spot. It’s been months since I’ve arrived and it was quite noticeable that more often than not, everyone around here had their heads bent down and were checking whatever it was on their phone screen or speed-walking (sometimes even actually sprinting) to get to their destinations. So it struck me as odd that she just stood there with her back to me, spine set straight and eyes only focused straight ahead, armed with nothing but a bulky handbag.
Strange, I thought.
I glanced at the bottom of the escalator, suddenly feeling conscious of how slower the escalator ride feels like than usual. It would still quite some time to reach the bottom.
I glanced back at her. There were stitches from where her hair was parted, running from the top up until the nape of her neck. Most of the hair from the top of her head were gone, and the skin looked pinkish, like it had just healed pretty recently and she’s taken out the scabs, revealing the thin skin now covering the spot where her wounds used to be.
I couldn’t see her face because she had her back to me the entire time, and before I could catch a glimpse of what she looked like, we’ve already reached the bottom of the escalator. In less than a second, she’s already gone, swallowed by the sea of people running and walking from different directions.
I walked down my usual route, past boutiques and cosmetic shops and bakeries. I didn’t know her and it was obvious that she had no idea who I was, but I still kept thinking about what could have happened to her.
I liked to imagine that the people we pass by were more than what meets the eye. That everyone had some extraordinary story to tell, just that they didn’t have someone else to tell those stories to.
My mom always told me that it was a good thing to be curious about people; she also told me that it was she hoped I got to grow up to see the good in everyone. “But maybe you should lower your expectations from people a bit. So it’d hurt less.” She said, touching my cheek gently. I asked her what she meant by that, but she only smiled in response.
But it didn’t hurt less when dad left, or when I found out that he already had a kid with his mistress even before the split. It didn’t hurt less when, despite the multiple invitations I’ve sent, he never came to my college graduation.
It didn’t hurt less when my mom stopped calling me after I moved out of the house, or when she stopped returning my calls. It didn’t hurt less after I got my injury and I had to stop dancing, or when I started to feel the distance between me and my friends growing, either.
Oddly enough, it hurt a bit less when I unloaded my baggage at the airport by myself. Somehow, when I sat on the plane and watched the clouds fill up my view from the window as the city I once grew up in grew smaller and smaller, it started to hurt even less.
Instead of turning left and immediately boarding my usual train line, I made a detour to the Donki branch I frequently went to when I was bored and looked through some items. There was a notice up front that the store’s face masks were all sold out.
“Probably because it’s the flu season,” I thought to myself. The guy who just entered the store sighed when he saw the sign and went back the way he came in.
I hobbled in and looked at some food for a while, contemplating whether I should buy some instant cup ramen again because I was too lazy to cook a decent meal or buy takeout. Next to me, I noticed a girl in my peripheral vision looking hesitant. Even outside of a school uniform, she couldn’t have been older than me — head trapped in the same bowl cut that I also used to have when I was younger.
Sensing her hesitation, I moved away a bit. She looked surprised that I sensed her beside me, but nevertheless bowed her head and whispered, “shitsureishimasu” in a quiet voice before reaching out to get two bowls of instant cup ramen.
I didn’t mean to, but from my peripheral, I saw some scars on her wrists. Fully healed now, but the lines where still there, disappearing into the sleeve of her sweater. I quickly looked away, afraid that I may have intruded on something.
I remembered fresher looking ones — ones that were etched along my own skin, the light making the scarlet droplets look like elegant beads.
I blinked hard, and tucked that memory away, pushing it at the very back of my mind. I moved away and stared at some chocolate brands, contemplating which chocolates to get for my coworkers for Valentine’s day to keep my mind busy.
When I was in college, I made friends with someone who I worked with in the university library. I never knew her full name but everyone called her Lex, so I just called her that too. She was older than me, but she was cool with me calling her on first name basis.
She was on baggage counter duty most of the time while I was stuck with scanning bar codes and marking returned books. Sometimes we exchanged work and sometimes we got assigned to work on shelving and cleaning duty, but whenever we were on break, we’d both make up stories about some of the people we encountered that day.
Some of those people, we encountered in class. A lot of them we never talked to even after we graduated. But some of them brought a certain uniqueness with them that I could still vividly recall the stories we made up for them in my head.
There was Gamer Pete, who mostly checked out books on Math. He had several acrylic key chains and can badges pinned to his bag of games I never heard of. There was Tammy Tams, who once was scolded by the head librarian when she was making rounds and found food wrappers on the table. I didn’t know who was the most memorable for Lex, but for me it’d always be Crusader Ronaldo, who tried to make small talk with me while I was scanning the Biology and Chemistry books he wanted to re-borrow and somehow ended up preaching to me and implying I’ll go to hell because I didn’t look interested enough with the “words of enlightenment” that he tried sharing.
When I told Lex about him, she was quiet for a moment. We ate our lunch in awkward silence, until she told me she knew him from her Philosophy class. In one of their classes, he opened up about how he used to live in an abusive home, but got out of there and found a safety net and comfort in religion. “You can’t see his scars, but we all got different stories. We all have things we’ve been too scared to talk about. Wounds that have cut so deep into our flesh, but we’ve recovered from. Will recover from.”
Suddenly, I felt very guilty of the game we played. It felt like passing judgment on people just because we were bored. I told her that, of course. So we stopped our little game.
Thankfully we didn’t stop talking after that, but we didn’t really spend much time with each other anymore — things got busy with classes, we both joined interest clubs, and we had to work in the library. When she finally graduated, we didn’t really get in touch.
It was only after a few weeks of starting work back in the library that I realized that she’s already left a mark on me, and how no matter how many times I tried to scrub it off, it won’t go away.
I used to pick a lot at my scabs.
I gave it time, and let the wounds turn into scars. But before they could fully heal, I’d pick at the scabs again and let myself bleed. And when my blood dripped out of that broken surface of skin, I just let it flow, until everything stopped at once. I try to justify my actions with morbid curiosity, but to be honest, most of the time, I just did it because I felt like it.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, disturbing my thoughts. And again, again, and again, and again, until I was compelled to check what it was about.
It’s the group chat I had set up for me and my friends back home. I checked the notification badge on the right corner, and I seem to have missed about 200 messages since I last checked yesterday.
Everything’s going well there for them, it seems. I just wished they missed me a bit more than usual. Sometimes I don’t even bother to check on there much for a few days since all they did was talk to each other and ignore most of my existence. Maybe they’d forgotten I was still on the damned group chat.
I crossed the pedestrian lane and headed straight for the train station, now armed with a grocery bag filled with instant cup ramen and chocolates. I spotted the girl with the scars from earlier talking to another girl by pillar near the ticket machines. Somehow, she looked genuinely happy.
I wondered about her, and the older woman from earlier, and what the stories about their scars could have been.
I wondered if some people have ever thought of why I had several bandages around my legs and why I walked with a limp. I wondered if they ever made up theories of how I got injured in the first place, or if they thought I was faking it.
I wondered if they ever thought about the girl who practiced for hours every day until her knees gave out, or if they only saw the girl who got rejected at auditions because of the shape of her body instead.
The girl walked with her friend, headed for the direction of the other train line on the opposite of mine. They were animatedly talking, and somehow, I couldn’t help but smile to myself. Maybe one of us could at least get little bits of happiness here and there.
I let myself get swallowed by the swarm of people hurrying to board the train, walking as fast as I can with my limp.
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