Monologues That Don't Melt into the Sky | Short Story

My job is to collect the "monologues" that drift through the city. Please don't let this make you imagine something strange, like wiretapping. I simply gently collect the words that have lost their owners and are stagnating in the air.
Monologues carrying strong emotions have the property of taking on a faint light the moment they are exhaled, remaining in that spot for anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Of course, they are invisible to ordinary people.
On a winter night, it was there, on the frozen pedestrian bridge. A pale, slightly trembling light.
—I'm sorry, I don't think I can go on yet.
That monologue of mine was sucked into my fingertips and settled into a small glass bottle. The light swirled inside the bottle. That makes five for today.
I take them to the "Monologue Specimen Room" on the outskirts of the city. It is an old brick basement where thousands of small bottles line shelves covering the walls.
"Welcome back. Did you have a good harvest today?"
The old shopkeeper looks at me over his glasses. I lined up the five bottles on the counter.
"They are all quite heartbreaking. The one on the pedestrian bridge, in particular... it was quite heavy."
The old man picks up the bottles one by one, gazing at the light as if straining to hear them.
"Monologues, you see, are released on the premise that no one will hear them. That is precisely why they are that person's one-hundred-percent pure truth. Words directed at someone else inevitably contain lies and vanity."
I gently touch my own chest. I haven't spoken a monologue myself for a long time. Since I started this job, the thought of my own exhaled words becoming light and drifting through the air makes me terrified, and my throat tightens.

The following night, I was standing on the pedestrian bridge again. I was checking to see if there were any monologues I had forgotten to collect.
Snow had begun to fall. Under the streetlights, mixed in with the fluttering snow, a new light was being born. A woman was standing there. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. She had a worn-out scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, her fingers resting on the railing as she stared into the distance.
"It's okay now, isn't it? You've tried hard enough, haven't you..."
The words that leaked from her mouth became a pale purple light and floated in the air. I reflexively took out a bottle and... then froze. Tears were welling up in her eyes. That light looked like a terribly fragile light, one where she was trying to forgive herself.
After she left, the light remained there, even as it seemed about to vanish into the snow. I couldn't trap that light in a bottle. Instead, I stood where she had been and let words spill out in a voice so small it surprised even me.
"I saw it. Your words. I really did."
The words that left my mouth became a small golden light and touched the purple light she had left behind. The two lights shone brightly for just a moment, then spiraled away and melted into the night sky.
A monologue is a monologue because it reaches no one. But if those words could be accepted as something that "truly existed for someone," perhaps they could finish their role as a monologue and become a "memory."
When I returned to the specimen room, the old man looked at me with a curious expression.
"It seems you are one bottle short today?"
"I'm sorry. I... let it escape into the sky."
The old man's eyes widened in surprise for a moment, then he smiled gently.
"I see. It's alright to have nights like that, too."
That night, for the first time, I made a cup of warm tea for myself.
The silence melting into the steam felt just a little less lonely than usual.

(End)

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