A deep wound is inflicted on every soul who witnesses a tragedy. He was the one who fallen into a lightless world. Atama, looking back, Students were screaming, their voices rising in waves of panic. Everyone was screaming, screeching, but in some way that scream became a melody, a melancholy, disheartening, every pitch had a sharp tune, almost like the shriek trumpet of an angel. Their hand stretching widely and their body leaning and bowing toward the sun, it feels the way of ritual dancing to the sun.
He looks back at his friend, Amias. Lying in his blood, Atama kneeled, looking at his friend profusely bleeding. He reached his hand to Amias, and the textured skin was cold.
"Why… why?" he repeated, again and again, the word losing meaning with murmuring those words. For the longest time, Atama hadn't cared about anything. But now, after this... something had shifted. His vision began to blur, and so much sadness has built in. He can't take it for long, seeing his friend just died in front of him.
He made a choice—to run out of the school to the forest, to nowhere. Anywhere but here, so he ran, running as fast as he could. Down the hall, past empty classrooms, toward the gate like a ghost fleeing its own shadow. But just as he reached the final steps, his foot caught.
He stumbled.
Fell hard. Everything turned black.
* * *
"Hey, Atama wanna go to the forest?" a cheerful boy's voice echoes.
Atama's eyes fluttered open. Sitting on a fallen log, the rough bark pressed against his back. Beneath him was soft with moss, just above his feet, and a serene lake. A thin mist hung on the surface, and the far-off sound of leaves suggested life deeper into the forest. The sun was rising to his left, casting his eye a golden shine bright.
"Hey—hello? Atama! How long are you gonna sit there?" The voice was teasing, impatient. It was Amias when he was a kid, "I'm bored! Let's go get some ice cream already."
"Huh? Thought you wanted to go to the forest," confused, Atama looked at Amias' face, frowning. And Atama continued, "ok, then let's go buy an ice-cream, I'm too hungry to sit here."
* * *
The memories faded
His senses came back gently. Atama stayed at the window, still staring down the long line of trees that bordered the playground. There had been no change down there. However, now everything felt different.
He sigh
"If he just landed on that tree. He might've been safe. Atama's eyes lingered on the tall, spreading branches below, just beneath the left side broken window.
He turned around, began walking toward his class, and each step echoed softly, beginning to fade as he left the place.
Atama came back, and the hall was quiet under his feet. He stopped at the door when he arrived at the classroom and peered inside. Still no teacher. But still, those things had not changed. They were still at it; those two were constantly debating. He slipped quietly to the back of the class, sitting with a longing face.
* * *
The sun was slowly descending in the west, casting a hazy golden glow over the streets, and a faint smell of after-rain lingered in the air. In the street where it was empty, there was Atama walked after school. Now he stood at the cemetery. He was here to visit someone, since today marked the anniversary of his friend's death, June 21st.
The ironness gate corroded by time, rusted, and became gritty, dark orange. A worn sign hung crooked on the rusted fence, its letters faded but still legible; the name of the place was Cemetery Loka Carama. The Graveyard was neither big nor small, but within it, many tombs crowded each other.
Atama walked slowly, looking at the faded headstones, some chipped, some almost engulfed in moss. It was none too he found. Though in the stranded tombstone, huge trees were growing in the center of the cemetery, under the tree, there was a small, palm-leaf basket offering. Humble and untouched, but still, it wasn't the one. So he continued his search, quiet and deliberate, weaving through the rows until he reached the northeast
The tombstone read: Amias Rosani. It stood in stillness, untouched by years. The stone was clean, the engraving sharp, as it was.
Atama crouched down in front of the grave. He slipped off his backpack and unzipped it. He pulled out his plastic bottles, and it was sealed, still full.
He looked at the tombstone. His eyes were filled with a silent sadness. Something in his gaze conveyed not only sorrow but also the weight of all that was unsaid. That he was never really ready to confront his friend in this way—not as a voice, or as a memory, but as a name etched in stone.
And yet here he was.
Still hoping, wishing he can talk to Amias.
Atama gently tipped it so that the water poured over the tombstone in a continuous stream. It swept away the thin layer of dust that had accumulated as it moved down the carved letters, silently shimmering as it traced each groove.
He poured until the bottle was nearly empty, watching the water soak into the earth below—simple, silent, and reverent.
It wasn't anything fancy. Atama had never visited someone's grave before. He didn't know what he was supposed to say or do, but there's something he always asks for. Why.
Gazing upward to the sky, the land of the ceiling. Still makes him ask himself why he is the only one to see. Atama prepared to go back home and said goodbye to Amias.
On the way back home, he kept thinking about the school fees. He stared at the sidewalk as thoughts churned in his mind. Can my father even repay it?
And the house... what about the house?
The contract's too expensive. We can't keep paying that.
Each step going home slowly shifted to the forest. Atama was distracted, his mind convoluted. Trees loomed above him, tall and quiet.
The afternoon's warm hues had subsided, giving way to a bluish tint that covered the forest like a veil. Soon, he realized something was odd.
"wait… Ohh… no, am I lost?" Atama sighs, stressing out. And continued, "I shouldn't have overthought it."
Atama gazing everywhere, Fear gripped him at first. The path seemed too uncertain, the silence too profound, and the trees too tall. Then, however, something changed. His step loosened, and there was a slight release of the weight in his chest. And while the terror still hovered on the periphery of his mind, a subtle, almost imperceptible sensation grew within him.
A sense of freedom
Like a breeze through leaves, it stirred softly in his heart. It's the kind of freedom you stumble into when no one is looking, not the kind you asked for. And he didn't mind being by himself for the first time in a long time. A release from the shackles that he had been through.
His steps grew faster, lighter.
Every step felt more like a release than a retreat. Atama started to hop without noticing. Small, bouncy steps, like a rabbit leaping through open woods, but neither a run nor a sprint. Only the pounding of his feet and the untamed, unknowable road ahead.
Quicker. And more quickly. Until—He came to a halt. The forest gave way to a wide valley in front of him. The Earth sank into a wide open space. Though the slope wasn't steep, it stretched far down, long enough to kill people if they were not careful.
Atama stood there for a while looking at the horizon, where in front of him, right in his left, a massive root that was as thick as a tower and twisted upward. It was alive and ancient, then witnessing the sun hiding in hills, falling toward a new day, to another land.
Night had fallen. Above, the sky grew deep and endless, with a few dim stars showing through the ceiling world, it's like a fake sky. Atama stood motionless, his eyes narrowed. He eventually pulled his knees to his chest and sat down. The ground was cool beneath him. He turned his attention to the enormous root in the distance, its outline barely discernible in the darkness, still extending into the invisible ceiling above. He was unsure of how to respond to the question that loomed. He sat like that, thinking, for a long time.
Torn.
He had no desire to return home. Not to the questions, the silence, or the burden of unresolved matters, but neither could stay in the wilderness, where he wandered around clueless about what he wanted to do.
In the quiet moments when crickets are loudly chirping and the wind is blowing through the trees, something inside him had shifted. Without a word, without a clear reason, he turned. And began walking back home.