Half a Name and Your Echo | [Tanuki's Short Stories]

My voice is broken.
It's not a vocal cord abnormality like the doctor says.
It's a more fundamental deficiency.

Certain sounds dissipate before they can be born from my mouth.

For example, when I try to call his name,
the sound 'Yu' spins idly in the back of my throat,
and only the foolish sound 'Uki' spills from my lips.

It seems that when you experience a profound loss,
some of the sounds tied to your soul
can peel away.

The peeled-away sounds wander around their owner
as echoes.
That is what was written in the book.

The ritual to return them to where they belong,
to the soul,is called 'Sound Tuning of Loss'.

Those echoes are around me, too.
I cannot see them.
But I feel their presence painfully.

When I am silent,
a faint 'Yu' rings in the corner of the room.
When I try to sleep, it whispers 'Yu' by my pillow.

It is a part of my lost voice,
and a ghost that torments me.

The method of Sound Tuning of Loss is extremely simple.
Produce the exact same sound as the echo and make it resonate.
That is all.

Day after day,
I shut myself in my room and attempted the tuning.

'Yu'

In the corner of the room, the echo chirps softly.
I inhale and focus my consciousness on my throat.

'...U'

It's no use. No matter how many times I try,
that sound slips past my lips.

Every time I try, I feel a tightening pain
in the hollow at the center of my chest.

If I don't return this echo,
my voice will remain incomplete forever.
I will never be able to escape this feeling of emptiness.

One day, as my impatience grew, I couldn't bear it anymore and screamed.

"Stop it, please!"

At my voiceless cry, the echo stops chirping abruptly.

Then, as if frightened, it drifts out through the room's window.

"Wait!"

I rush to follow it.

A part of me is leaving me behind. That fear drives me forward.

The echo weaves through the crowd, heading toward a path I should have forgotten.

It is the small park by the river where he and I used to meet.

The park at dusk.
The swing set is making a lonely sound.

The echo stands quietly on that swing. I approach slowly, out of breath.

Why here? In this place where I last saw him?

That day, we fought over something trivial.

Unable to say the word "sorry," I turned my back on him.

Immediately after, at the intersection, there was a shrill screech of brakes and—

Don't remember. The memories I had sealed away are about to be pried open.

"Yu"

At that moment, the echo chirps on the swing. It is a resonance completely different from the sounds I have heard until now.

It is not just a fragment of sound. It is filled with earnest emotion. With the will to call out.

I am startled.

This is not my echo. It is the voice he reached out with, directed at my back, on that final day.

"Yuuki"

That is my name.

The first sound of the last word he tried to call me by.
The final resonance I covered my ears to avoid hearing.

I see.
The echo wasn't trying to return to me all this time.

It was only trying to deliver
his final voice to me.

What I lost wasn't the sound of "Yu".
What I lost was Yuuki himself.

Loss-Sound Tuning.
I finally realized its true meaning.
It is not about returning lost sounds to the soul.

It is about accepting the fact that they are lost,
and living together with that resonance.
That is what soul tuning truly is.

I stand before the swing and part my trembling lips.
The sound of "Yu" still spills from my voice.
But I was no longer afraid.

"...uuki"

My incomplete voice.
Then, the echo that had been wandering around me
resounded softly, as if to nestle against it.

"Yu"

The two joined together, and in the twilight park,
my name was completed just once.

--Yuuki.

The hollow in my chest will not be filled.

But it is precisely because that hollow exists
that his voice can resonate within me.

I shed tears quietly.
From now on, I will live with this hollow resonance.

For that is the music of mourning for him and for me.

I have taken on my first full-length novel. ⬇️

Please check out my other works as well (tap the image) ⬇️

🔻 The Stardust the Wall Saw Last | [Tanuki's Short Stories]

🔻 High Tide Bookshelf | [Tanuki's Short Stories]

🔻 Rain Chronometer | [Tanuki's Short Stories]

Don't miss out anymore. You can read the entire story in one go. ⬇️

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