On Nights I Couldn't Say I Was Tired | Even in Places Where Voices Don't Reach, I Was Receiving

"Are you pushing yourself too hard?"

The moment I was asked that in the hallway,
I felt a slight flutter around my Adam's apple.

It wasn't quite like swallowing.
The words arrived, and something inside my body touched them.
But they didn't come to the surface.

"I'm fine," I replied, and immediately started walking.
I didn't look back.

It wasn't that I wasn't tired.

Perhaps I felt that if I put it into words, something would collapse.
Or maybe I didn't want to worry them.
Or perhaps I thought I wouldn't be able to convey it anyway.

Each of those was true in its own way,
which is why only "I'm fine" could come out.

On the train, that voice from earlier was still in my ears.

I had seen the worried look on their face.
I knew they had stopped even though they were on their way home.

Even though I knew, I couldn't return anything.

That fact remained,
faintly,
behind my sternum.
More like a temperature than a weight.

When that voice reached me,
perhaps something inside me was vibrating.

It didn't become words.
I couldn't return it.
But it had touched me.

While answering "I'm fine," I had already received it.

Perhaps receiving is not just about speaking out loud.

Once, after a meeting, someone told me, "I'm glad I came."

That person had hardly said anything.
I hadn't been able to say much either.
Even so, they said that as they were leaving.

I still don't know what it was that was good.

The only thing I could think,
little by little, later on, was that something had reached me.

I think a night when you couldn't speak
is different from a night when you couldn't give anything.

If your throat felt tight,
and a warmth remained behind your breastbone.

That means that voice
truly reached inside you.

The night you ended up saying, "I'm fine."

In the hallway where that person walked away,
in the air that became a little quieter.

What was it
that was still moving deep in your throat?

Tonight, that is all you need to know.

Even if you don't bloom, you are beautiful.

Yukino
　

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