WHEN THE FIREWORKS END: A story about two teenagers' last summer together in an idyllic Japanese fishing town by ALEX LUND

Author:ALEX LUND [LUND, ALEX]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

When I woke up the next time, everything was silent. The first thing that entered my vision was a white ceiling. Looking around, I saw a light green curtain around the bed I was lying on, and a gray table at my side, on top of which there was a basket full of snacks and a few bottles of juice neatly lined up.

I could hear my mother speaking with someone, whose voice I didn’t know, outside of the curtain. I sat up, and as the bed squeaked, she immediately came inside and embraced me. I could tell that she had been crying.

There was an empty expression on her face, but she tried to force herself to smile. She pulled up a chair next to my bed, and sat down, as she asked me to lie down again.

“How do you feel?” she said, making another failed attempt at smiling.

“Fine. Rested,” I replied.

“Good. You’ve slept for a long time,” she said.

Memories of what had happened were coming back to me, as I was lying in silence, looking up at the ceiling. My mother was watching me quietly. I wished to remain in the respite of not knowing for a little longer. I felt my vision getting blurry, and soon tears started to roll down the side of my face. In the corner of my eye, I saw how my mother buried her face in her hands.

I couldn’t bear it any longer, and asked her, “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

My mother started sobbing, nodding her head. “I’m so sorry, Tomo-chan. They still haven’t found him.”

She took my hand and pressed it hard, as I kept crying. When I had calmed down a bit, I said, “It’s all my fault. I could have stopped him. I almost managed to reach him, then the water took us again. The waves just kept coming, again and again…” My mother sat me straight up in the bed and firmly embraced me for a long time, making me feel like I was a little kid again, while hushing me to be quiet, repeating the words, “It’s not your fault, Tomo-chan. It was an accident.”

A bit later, a doctor came in to check on me, and since there was nothing physically wrong with me, I was able to leave the hospital the same afternoon. I had some bruises on the side of my head and on my back, apparently from when my board had hit me in the waves, which I hadn’t even noticed. I hardly felt any pain, and I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

I was later told by my mother that after she and Mika saw that we were not at Ryoushiya studying, they had noticed that our boards were gone, and immediately realized what was going on. They had run down to the little beach where they figured we were, seen our sneakers, and straightaway called for rescuers, when they couldn’t see us out there. They had found me quite

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