The Destination of White Breath | Short Story (#ShirokumaLiteratureClub)

My white breath unraveled under the streetlights of the night. The December air was as sharp as a honed blade, yet somehow unreliable.
At twenty-eight, I was staring at my smartphone screen as usual on my way home from a monotonous job. The scrolling social media timeline, marriage announcements from acquaintances, advertisements—they all slipped through my fingertips, never finding a place to land.
That was when it happened.
Suddenly, I felt as if my fingertips had frozen. A notification I didn't recognize appeared in the center of the screen.

"There is an undelivered memory."

The sender was listed as "Unknown." Was it spam? Or perhaps an advertisement for one of those trendy location-based escape games?
"…How ridiculous."
I muttered to myself and tried to swipe it away. At that moment, my fingertips turned unnaturally cold, and deep in my ears—no, deep in my chest—a small bell chimed. My heart began to beat in a strange rhythm.
I stopped walking and stared at the breath I had just exhaled.
—It was white.
It was indeed winter. But had it been this bone-chillingly cold until just a moment ago? The bustle of the city faded, and I was gripped by the illusion that I alone had been left behind by the world.
The notification opened on its own, without waiting for me to touch it.

"Pickup Location: Your way home"

Then, a map app launched. It pointed to an intricate alleyway, one I had never stepped into before, just off my usual commute.
"What on earth is this..."
It was creepy. Naturally, I should have ignored it and gone home. But my feet, as if pulled by invisible threads, had already started walking toward that alley.

The back alley was so dark that the light from the streetlamps couldn't reach it. Frozen weeds poked out from cracks in the asphalt, and the faint scent of someone's curry drifted from the gaps in an old wooden apartment building.
As I moved forward, struck by a sense of nostalgia, I arrived at a shop. A faded green sunshade. A rusted shutter. On the sign, I could just barely make out the words "Flower Shop: Hanabusa."
In front of that shutter sat a stark white delivery box, looking completely out of place.
It wasn't locked. When I opened the lid with trembling hands, there was an envelope inside. Thick, slightly yellowed Japanese paper.
I stopped breathing when I saw the address. My name was written there, without a doubt. In that round, somewhat clumsy handwriting. It was my own, from over a decade ago, when I wasn't yet used to holding a pen.
"Did I... write this to myself?"
I had no such memory.
The moment I put my finger to the edge of the envelope to break the seal—
—It hurt.
A fierce, splitting headache struck me. My vision warped, and I fell to my knees on the asphalt. Images flooded into my head like a dam breaking.
It was a park at dusk. The orange light stretched the shadows of the rusted jungle gym long across the ground.
I was facing someone there. Someone a little shorter than me. Only that person's face was dissolved in the backlight, and I couldn't remember it no matter how hard I tried.
"Don't forget, okay?"
The child said. A clear voice, like a rolling bell.
"Even when you grow up, right here. It's a pinky promise."
We linked our little fingers.
—Chime.
That was the sound of the bell. A small silver bell swaying at the child's neck.
"Ugh... ah..."
As the headache subsided, I heard a sound behind me. A heavy metallic rattle. When I turned around, the shutter of "Flower Shop: Hanabusa," which should have been closed, had risen. It was pitch black inside. A bottomless silence, deeper than the darkness of the winter night, spread out.
Someone was definitely in there. Someone was waiting for me.
—If I go in there, something I lost will return.
An intuition bordering on certainty pushed me forward. At the same time, my cold, rational mind issued a warning.
—If I go in there, I might never be able to return to my normal life again.
I might no longer be the "me" who rides the crowded train tomorrow morning, sits at a desk, and chases after inorganic numbers.
My phone buzzed, and the notification on the screen vanished. The map, the unknown sender—as if they had never existed in the first place.
All that remained was the old envelope in my hand and the darkness before me.

I took a deep breath. The coldness of the alley filled my lungs, and my head cleared.
I tucked the envelope into my coat pocket and took a step into the darkness, and the shutter closed quietly behind me.
Total darkness. Yet, strangely, I wasn't afraid.
What tickled my nostrils was the scent of winter flowers. Narcissus, cyclamen, and a hint of soil.
"Welcome back, Satoshi."
A voice came from the darkness. A faint light began to glow from beneath my feet. It wasn't electric light, but countless tiny particles of light like fireflies.
Illuminated by the light was a woman sitting behind the flower shop counter. She had a gentle gaze, as if she were the adult version of the "child" I couldn't remember.
"Who... are you?"
"I am the proprietor of the 'Memory Depository.' And the guardian of the promise you left behind."
That silver bell swayed at her fingertips.
"Go ahead, open that envelope."
As told, I took the envelope from my pocket and pulled out the contents. Inside was a single letter and a pressed statice flower.
The letter contained only one line, written as follows:

"May you never give up on being happy."

The person I had made a pinky promise with in the park that day—it wasn't a childhood friend who had moved away, nor was it my first love.
It was a promise I had made with my future self, one so pure and, therefore, so painful.
Entering middle school, graduating high school, and being tossed about by the rough waves of society, I had somehow started putting "being happy" on the back burner.
Meeting expectations. Not making waves. Living efficiently. In the process, I had slowly whittled away my ability to love myself. Unable to bear that pain, I had sealed away my most important memory as "undelivered" in the depths of my heart that day.
"I've been waiting here the whole time," the woman—the projection of my memory—smiled sadly.
"Until you were ready to find yourself again."
Tears overflowed and wouldn't stop.
I had been pretending to be an adult, acting like I understood everything, but in reality, it was I who had been shivering all alone.
I hugged the letter to my chest.
The flower language of statice is...
—Unchanging heart.
"Thank you. I remembered."
When I said that, her figure dissolved into particles of light.
As the flowers in the shop all shone at once, the darkness turned into a warm light, and I quietly closed my eyes.
When I opened my eyes next, I was standing in front of the flower shop with the shutter down. Not much time had passed. Looking at my phone screen, there were no suspicious notifications or maps left. But in my pocket, that old envelope was definitely there.

I started walking again. The night road was still cold, but it wasn't the lonely cold from before.
The light of the streetlamps felt soft, as if they were blessing me.

I could no longer hear the sound of the bell in my chest. But it remained in my heart as a certain weight.
I put my phone in my pocket and looked ahead.
Tomorrow, before going to the office, I'll stop by the flower shop in front of the station. I wonder if they still sell statice. To complete the "delivery" to myself, in the true sense of the word.

I exhale white breath into the night city once more.
This time, instead of unraveling and disappearing, it rose into the night sky like a signpost leading to the future.

(End)

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