_Author's Note: Japanese names are written with surnames first._

DARKNESS, so black it made his eyes water. The boy tried to keep his head above the impenetrable shadow, craning his neck to see even a faint ember of light. But the darkness was interminable and it made no difference where he looked; up, down, left, right, the darkness followed him like a parasite feeding off his every thought, his every movement, and every panicked breath.

At first, for what seemed like decades, he walked cautiously, carefully measuring every step before making the conscious decision to proceed forward, but then as he grew accustomed to the perpetual night, he stumbled forward at a steady pace.

The ground in that shadow realm was relatively even with small ridges and ruts every so often. But there were no wide canyons, steep cliffs, or deep crevices that the boy had stumbled upon–at least he didn't think so.

As the darkness wore on the boy's mind, he began to wonder if he might simply be dead... or whether he really existed at all. So intense were these occasional existential quandaries that he would have to stop and sit on the ground, breathing heavily and clutching at the endless night before him. He used to close his eyes and remember home, specifically the winters at home when he used to sit by the warm kotatsu with a steaming cup of tea and a plate of his mother's curry before him. How he had missed the light.

But now the boy could not remember the light, nor the warmth, nor that Kyoto homestead which seemed to exist only in his subconscious now. Now, instead of closing his eyes, he would feel his arms, his legs, his face to remind him he still was.

But the face had changed, no longer was it the plump, smooth face of an adolescent, but the hard, emaciated, prickly visage of a man; hungry, forgotten by warmth and light.

Forsaken.

He let the word play through his mind for a moment while he folded his hands and sighed. He could still feel emotion, he thought, but never joy.

***

Kawaguchi Genki sprang up in bed. His eyes burned with the sudden exposure to the sunlight streaming in through the window of his small, barren Tokyo flat.

Sunlight.

He rubbed his eyes, praying it wouldn't be a trick of the mind and as he pulled his hands away from his eyes, the light remained.

He stood up groggily and wandered over to the tall window of the flat. The street below him was a distant line crowded with small, antlike figures and automobiles the size of beetles. He stared down for a long moment as if trying to recollect some small shred of information about this strange world of light he had woken into.

And yet the memory of the darkness lingered so strongly that he feared even blinking would erase him from this fragile light-realm.

There was a knock at the door and a young woman's voice, "Genki-Kun!"

Genki... Kawaguchi Genki. That was his name. He uttered the words softly to himself, committing them to memory. It had been years since he had known that name. He unconsciously stumbled over to the door and opened it. There stood a beautiful young woman. She looked to be no older than her early twenties and her hands were on her hips. She wore a slightly perturbed expression on her face, "Kawaguchi Genki!" She exclaimed, possibly louder than she should have in the narrow apartment corridor, "Where have you been?"

"Um," Genki began, but then paused. He had no idea where he had been and he also had no idea who this woman standing in front of him was. He frowned and looked down at his feet.

"You weren't in class this morning. I've been so worried. You could have at least texted or called. But this is so unlike you. Genki, is everything alright?" Her eyes were filled with genuine compassion and they stared directly at him, waiting earnestly for a response.

Who was this woman? She seemed to know him and yet he had no recollection of her. He searched his mind for an answer, but only found the pervasive darkness. He looked at her; her deep, brown, compassionate eyes, the full lips drawn tightly into a concerned frown, her straight, dark hair, which had an almost reflective sheen against the pale, artificial light of the corridor. She was beautiful and Genki wanted desperately to remember her, but try as he might he could not penetrate whatever bulwark within his subconscious prohibited him from recalling her.

As if sensing his inward struggle, the woman moved forward and placed her hand on Genki's arm. Her touch was gentle and comforting, but her eyes showed fear, "Something is wrong, isn't it? Please tell me what it is."

In response to her touch, Genki blurted out, "I don't know what this is? I don't know who you are. I don't know where I am and I hardly know who I am!" He dropped to his knees, but before he even felt himself make contact with the ground, the darkness swallowed him whole.

***

He awoke again in that place and the darkness greeted him like an old acquaintance. His mind flashed back to a second ago when he had been in the light with the woman. The woman, whose imprint still lay in his memory, spread out across the eternal expanse of darkness, a canvas.

A dream? Genki thought. Yes, he must have fallen asleep. But it was a vivid dream, and of the world of light for which he had no real recollection. It was strange, yes, but the darkness was his reality, he assured himself. He could not fall for some illusion of that distant world of light and give up here, in this world, the one which he had known for so long. The light was but a strange and eerie phantasm of a prior life now oozing up to the surface of his long-dormant subconscious.

“And the woman, who is she?” A doubtful voice in the back of his mind asked him, as if to challenge his resolve.

“She is no one, perhaps the product of my inevitable loneliness in this bitter world. She is nothing but a manifestation of my desire for companionship.” He said, dismissively.

But the voice continued and Genki swore he could almost hear it in his ear and feel the breath of every word it uttered upon his neck, “Do you really believe that?”

“No.” His confession felt like a punch in the gut and he reached into the darkness aimlessly, grasping and clawing in a desperate attempt to find something, anything that could bring him back to that world of light and to the serene and gentle presence of that woman.

But the darkness was empty and the voice in the back of his mind began to laugh. At first it was a low chuckle, but it soon erupted into an earsplitting belly-laugh. It was laughing at him, “You fool, you gullible fool!” It howled, “I have turned your life into a living hell. May you grasp at figments on this shadow plane forever and find nothing. You are but a rat in a cage, wandering through this darkness endlessly, hoping blindly for light, for life, for love. But there is no life, even the trees have died!”

He ran. There was no immediate purpose to his run, but the more and the faster he ran, the more he realized he was not at all running toward something, but away from himself. But he could not escape and the darkness around him laughed as he continued his futile plunge into the eternal void.

His foot struck a small ridge on the ground below and he tripped.

***

Genki gasped as his knees hit the ground. Immediately he felt her delicate arms reach down to steady him. The woman. He looked up at her with fear in his eyes.

“You need to see a doctor. I’m taking you now!” She took his hand and attempted to pull him to his feet.

He did not resist and stood up willingly, “Who are you?” He said weakly, “I can’t remember…”

“Genki-Kun, it’s me, Hana,” She took his face in her hands and looked as if she was about to cry, “Please, won’t you remember me?”

“I want to. I need to. But I can’t.” He looked at her pleadingly, “Please help me. I don’t want to go back there… to the darkness.”

She looked at him with a mixture of fear and confusion in her eyes and dialed emergency services.

It was not too long after that an ambulance showed up. Two paramedics rushed to Genki and told him to lay on the stretcher. He did so and they wheeled him into the ambulance. Hana followed.

“What darkness?” Her words echoed in his mind as the ambulance sped into the night.

“I can’t describe it. It’s… everywhere, unrelenting, reaching into the deepest recesses of my mind, even now. Who are you?” He asked again, “Or rather, what are you to me?”

“I’m your girlfriend,” She said this wistfully as if remembering some time long forgotten.

“Oh,” Was Genki’s dull reply. Then, placing his hand on her arm he said, “I’m sorry.”

Hana clutched his hand in hers and began to sob while he stared vacantly into space.

The darkness took hold once more.

***

This time when he awoke, however, something was different. He felt something straight and trunk-like against his back. He tried to stand, but his head rammed into a similar object. He reached to his right and made contact with another such object. Its surface was rough and had the texture of wood.

“Trees?” He thought aloud, “Since when was I in a forest?”

“You are a forest.” The voice in the back of his mind reappeared. “You are a prison. You are the darkness. You are a tiger in a cage, but also the cage. You are a man hung by a noose and you are the noose. You are an antelope running from a lion and you are also the lion. I am the lion.”

Genki stared into the darkness silently.

“You understand, don’t you?”

“No.”

“What if the trees were your life? Your hopes, your dreams, aspirations, relationships, your sense of self? I already told you they were dead, Genki. The trees are dead in our little existence here, in this world of your making. It’s too late when you wake in the world where the trees all died. What are you running from?”

“You.”

“Me? But I am you.” The voice taunted, “I am your fear, your anxiety, your doubt. You. Self is the nemesis to progress. We know this better than anyone. How many times have you wanted to die, Genki? How many times have you wanted to shuffle off this mortal coil? Life is too hard, too mundane! Escape to the darkness, but don’t wake in the world where the trees all died. Keep an ember close to your chest. Hana, is she your ember? Is it your will to live? But look around, my dear Genki, there is no ember left, no spark, no desire to continue being, is there?”

The words settled into the blackness like a gong striking a final, dissonant chord. But they had also stirred up a memory within Genki’s mind. He was now aware of how he had come to this terrible place.

He had wanted to lose himself, so he did. He had once dreamed of many things; life, love, his family, his career. But all of it had paled in comparison to the overwhelming sense of emptiness he had felt. Even with Hana, he had felt lonely and depressed and it had consumed him. So he would flee to worlds of his imagination. He became a young child again, unconstrained by the responsibilities and duties required of him. But the worlds of his devising became gradually darker until one day he woke in the world of darkness, stripped bare of life and aspiration by his lingering doubt. Stagnant. In that forest of death he had lost himself.

“So find me again!”

***

Genki opened his eyes and light shone down from above him. He was in a hospital bed. He lay there for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the light, listening to the faint, pulsating ringing from the EKG beside him.

He was alive. And for once he was relieved.

He heard Hana’s voice on the opposite side of the bed and he turned to face her, “You’re awake.”

He nodded.

“Is it true that you’ve forgotten me?”

He turned away from her and mumbled, “I want to try to remember you.”

He expected her to fall sullen and silent, but instead she laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder and smiled kindly, “It’s okay. We can just get to know each other over again. I really don’t mind.”

_Surely she does mind_, Genki thought. But did she truly love him that much to sacrifice all that time she had put into their previous relationship and all of those memories to just start over again? And then there was the fact that he may not fall for her the same way again. After all, amnesia–if that was what was wrong with him–could change someone’s tastes and personality drastically.

He looked up at her with moist eyes and said softly, “Thank you.”

She smiled sadly at him, “I don’t exactly know what you’re going through, but I’m sorry.”

“No,” He said, “I’m sorry. I think I did this to myself. I’m not exactly sure what has been happening to me, but it feels like there’s a war within me. A war between a world of darkness and this world of light.” His eyes looked into hers pleadingly, “I need you to help me, please…”

“With what? Anything, Genki-Kun.”

“I think there’s something missing–inside of me.”

“Huh?”

He hesitated, “Like… love or something. I just have this feeling for most of my life I’ve just kind of been inside of my head. But I’ve always been kind of empty too. I don’t know if I know how to love. It’s like I’ve just been sort of selfish for my whole life without realizing it. Is that something you can go through your life and not really realize?”

Hana thought for a moment, “I guess it is. I’d never thought about that.” Then she smiled wide and a couple tears cascaded down her cheek, “Yes, Genki-Kun. I’ll do my best to help you find what you’re looking for. But I don’t think that love is really something a person can teach someone else. It’s more like a gift. I mean, everyone can go through the motions and all that, but is that actually love?”

Genki gave her a wan smile, “I guess it’s an interesting thought, but I think I’m a little too tired for philosophy right now.”

“Right,” Hana blushed slightly, “I guess I should let you rest a little more. By the way, the doctor told me he didn’t find anything immediately wrong with you. Isn’t that odd? I think they’ll keep you overnight and run a few more tests, but they’re not expecting to find anything.”

_That’s odd_, Genki mused, but that was all he thought of it. And as he fell asleep for the first time in a long time, the darkness did not consume his dreams.