Memories are like little time capsules. If you bury them but never return to dig them out, they will remain buried.

And there will come a time when you no longer have to put in effort to forget it.

Perhaps I was suffering. I don't remember, but I must've been suffering a lot, to the point that I had no other choice but to lock those memories in a time capsule and bury them in a dark corner of my heart--somewhere I knew I would never look.

Am I sinking, or am I floating? I see my hands in front of me, trying to grasp something intangible. Three bright dots shimmer beyond the surface. How far down am I? 

But I hear that voice again. That familiar voice. That soothing voice, almost motherly, but it's not my mother.

There is a hand reaching out to me, calling my name. I know who it is, but at the same time, I don't. But I'm no longer grasping for something intangible. The hand is strong and firm, like a mother's.

I open my eyes, gasping for air, out of breath. Mr. Taxicat meows at the sky, a call so shrill that it was as though mimicking my inner agony. The herons raise their long beaks from the water surface and fly away in unison, their white silhouettes starkly contrasting the inky blue expanse overhead.

I'm back at the shore. The tide has swollen, all the mudflats now buried under the laps of the water.

My knees feel weak. I sit down on the grass, the spikes of it digging into my palms. Mr. Taxicat remains still, staring straight ahead, tail wagging. The massive marshland sleeping under the night sky, the gentle sound of the swaying waves, the three moons hanging high above — all of it overcomes me with a crushing sense of vulnerability.

Mr. Taxicat then tells me, "You can tell me anythin', but me won't ask."

I look at him. The black fur of his body is blending against the backdrop, while the white stands out with a dazzling contrast.

"They killed my sister," I admit, with a tremble in my voice.

They killed her without really killing her. My parents did. For when I was 10 years old, one day I discovered a photograph slipping out of my father's diary, and the photo showed me a little girl with a beautiful smile standing in between my parents, who are holding her with the same love and affection they used to hold me with. I'd never seen that girl before, yet she looked familiar. She looked familiar because she had the same eyes as me, the eyes I got from my mother.

And when I asked my father about this, he screamed and told me that the little girl in this photo is dead.

It was the first time I'd heard him scream. I was young, and I wanted to hold on to a consistent image of the world around me. So when I saw my soft-spoken, funny, cheerful father snap at me with a thunderous voice, I thought I must have committed a great crime. I began to cry and apologize incessantly, shaking all over, begging for forgiveness despite being unable to understand what wrong I committed. I wanted him to take me in his arms and soothe me. 

But much to my horror, he didn't. It was my mom who did.

I couldn't register her love at that time. All I could make sense of with my childish mind was that my own father hates me now and nothing I do will ever change that.

With that one incident, the relationship between the two of us began to inevitably deteriorate.

And for some reason, neither of us attempted to fix anything.

Eventually, I stopped joining my parents for Saturday night movies. A few weeks later, they went to bed early on Saturday. From then on, the three of us--or the two of them, for that matter--never sat down to watch a movie together again.

As the days went by, I started to realize that everything I wanted to hold on to was slipping from between my fingers like fine sand. My thoughts were growing darker and darker, consuming me whole, shrouding me in a smoky black fog so thick and piercing that I could no longer discern my own existence. I couldn't figure out why something like this was happening to me. And I knew that even if I did, I would make no attempt to come out of it. It just kept happening, as if it was always bound to happen, as if there was simply no other string of fate for Jade to pull.

"I was hurting from things I couldn't even define to myself," I say out loud, in a breaking voice. "I kept asking myself again and again, Just where is all this pain coming from?"

I soon realized that I was so used to the presence of love that I was suffocating without it. So I stood still, as the world passed me by, hoping for things to go back to normal. And then I began to sink.

There was no end to it.

"You know what, Mr. Taxicat?" I laugh a little. "One day- I think I was fourteen, was I?- I suddenly found out that my parents lied to me about my sister. She was, in fact, still alive."

It was only a year before that strange December drizzle. I woke up that night from a dream where I was sinking, my silent screams as raw as the shriek of a crow agonized by thirst. The thirst was so cavernous that I staggered out of bed and limply walked over towards the dining room. It was half past two, but the light was still on. The table was occupied by two people. They were talking in a whisper.

"I saw her today," my mother said, evidently in the verge of tears. "I saw her on the street, down by the intersection near the station." She let out a sob, then muffled the rest behind her palm. "She has grown up so much, our daughter Heron. I-"

"We only wanted what's best for her!" my father snapped, once again in that harsh, cruel voice. "She is the one who left us."

"She was fifteen, Matthew!" my mother snapped back. "She was only fifteen! Did she deserve all that? She deserved a family! We could find some other way to fix this. How can you put the blame on her? This is all your fault, this has always been your fault!"

I stood behind a wall, shocked frozen. Until that moment, I had made several stories in my head about my sister. I more or less turned her into a fictional character residing in my mind. How could she have possibly died? Perhaps she died in an accident while trying to save a stray dog from getting hit by a truck. Maybe she jumped into the Lake Louisa while trying to save a drowning child but got carried away by the current herself. Perhaps it was more heartbreaking: she killed herself because she was getting bullied to no end at school. But she did not die because she gave up; she died because she wanted those bullies to spend the rest of their lives with an irremovable guilt eating them away.

In all my versions of her death, she died somewhat of a hero. That's what I wanted her to be. My heroic older sister.

But then I find out that my hero has been alive all along, and it was my own parents who abandoned her.

The rest of the conversation barely lodged in my mind. But I picked up my father saying something along the lines of, We have Jade now.

Perhaps I should've turned away. I should've gone back to bed and forget what I'd just heard. Instead I walked right into the dining room and satisfyingly watched the look of horror spread across their faces.

You have Jade now, huh? You think children are like shoes, throw away the one you have now because they don't look good on you anymore, because they don't satisfy you anymore, and then just get a new one instead? You think your own children are replaceable. You think it's okay to choose whether or not you will keep or discard the helpless creature you brought to this world.

What crime could be so grave?

"So you see, Mr. Taxicat," I say with a sigh, "I demanded answers. Just like any normal person would. I demanded an explanation. Unfortunately, to my father, the whole world might be wrong, but he can't ever be."

My father shut me down. He didn't explain anything. He didn't let my mother either, and my mother too got carried away with his waves like she always did. I couldn't believe there was a time when I used to think my father was the best father in the whole world. It was all an illusion. It was all a dream.

My living, breathing older sister became a forbidden topic of conversation. He made it very clear that this house wouldn't see a minute of peace if that topic was ever brought up again in front of him.

A few days later, when he wasn't home, my mother told me everything.

"She confessed to being in love with another girl. When we explained to her why it's wrong, she broke into a fit and completely isolated herself. Your father couldn't take it."

That was all I needed to know, really. After all, it's the same old song all over the world, from time immemorial.

But then my mother tried to say, "Your father only wanted what's best for her . . ."

I didn't give her the chance to continue, though. My mother's sole purpose in life was to defend that man.

"Looking back at it now," I say, "I'm certain . . . I'm certain that the reason why he was so vehemently against discussing the topic, is because he didn't want to face his own sins. It's because deep inside, he knew- he always did- that what he had done was wrong, it was unforgivable. But he didn't want to face it. The only way for him to get through life, was by pretending that she's dead."

Abandoning your own child . . . could there be a greater sin out there?

The tide is rising, reaching for the moon. Within moments, it will touch the tip of my bare legs. Mr. Taxicat stands up, takes a few steps backwards, and sits back down. He doesn't say a word, but I know he is listening. I know he brought me here so that he could listen.

So I continue. "And then, well, I became quite rebellious."

My greatest act of rebellion was dating that classmate of mine in the third year of high school. I wanted to fully become another product of what my father hated with so much passion. I wanted to taste how it feels, knowing that if he ever found out, I too would become dead to him.

I was still in love with Eli, and a part of me wanted to wash that away. Me and that classmate, the two of us slept together once, but didn't seem to enjoy the experience, so we never did it again. Sometimes we kissed, but it was bland and lacked passion. Sometimes we held hands, but it felt sticky and out-of-place. The only coupley thing we did, was perhaps pretend to be jealous whenever the other seemed to be too close to someone else.

We kept it a secret, of course. No one except Eli knew.

But deep inside, I wanted my father to find out about it.

"And my wish came true." I smile. "Perhaps that was the first and last time any of my wishes came true."

That day, I won a town-level photography competition. The topic was "Happiness of the present, memory of the past." All I did was take a photo of Eli sitting by the lake, engrossed in a book, the sun peeking behind the hanging bridge in the background. I'm certain, that the judges could truly feel my happiness from that one frame. Because whenever I was with him, that thick black fog engulfing me would disperse, moving far, far away from my periphery.

I was quite happy when I found out about the award. I was honored in front of the whole school. I wanted to tell everyone about it. Including my parents. It was the first time in years I wished to lighten up things among us a little, maybe have one of those "family moments".

So I went home with the certificate, and once again, the image of the world I had crumbled all around me.

There he was, my father, standing with my Nikon D80 camera in hand, where I had taken photos with that classmate I dated. In some of those photos, we were naked. It was to commemorate our first times. It was all an act, a play, a way to pass time, but we were both very committed to it.

"Everything afterwards is a blur," I narrate to the cat. "I remember screams. My mother's screams, most of all, not my own. I remember being pushed to the floor. I remember feeling like my head was gonna be ripped off my neck with how hard my hair was being pulled. I remember feeling like I was going to die. Then I remember running out of the apartment and walking down the flights of stairs and running and running until I was at the exact spot where I took the photo that won me that award."

Lake Louisa looked especially sad that day. I wondered, who was that woman named Louisa anyway? To have a lake, a bridge, and a tower named after her, she must've been someone heroic, just like my sister.

And then I thought, if I jumped in here right now, could the name of the lake be changed to Lake Jade?

I was hurting all over. My entire existence at that moment felt like the sum total of every ounce of pain I had experienced in those 18 years of my life.

I suppose a part of me hoped that though my father rejected his first child, he won't reject his second. I suppose a part of me hoped that he has changed, or I'm too special.

"I didn't even think much before doing it," I clarify. "It felt like such an easy decision at that moment. Somehow. I guess that's how it is to be young? But I do remember . . . I do remember regretting it a little when I began to sink and run out of breath. But I made no attempt to save myself, just like how I made no attempt to fix things with my father."

Neither of those decision do I regret.

"But then, ah," I shake my head and laugh, "I realized, wow, so this is how fate works? So life is really like a movie, eh? Because someone dived in and saved me from drowning."

I thought it must have been that woman named Louisa.

That person called me again and again, shaking me, pressing down on my chest. I remember those words like I heard them a minute ago. "Jade . . . Jade, open your eyes, Jade! Jade, please baby, open your eyes. Oh God."

My eyes were half-open. But I knew still, that the eyes that were looking back at me were just like my mother's eyes.

But it wasn't my mother.

"And then, I woke up at a hospital. And somehow, I had forgotten everything."

I surprised even myself with how carefully I locked away specific parts of my memory. It was as though that was the only option I had in order to go on with my life without jumping into a lake again.

"Ah, looking back at it," I let out a sigh, "I quite pity my younger self."

Then I turn to the cat, who is still looking ahead. I observe him closely. His hair-thin whiskers are lightly bouncing in the undying breeze. The icy blue eyes are unblinkingly absorbing the image of someone else's miserable world.

"Tell me, Mr. Taxicat, why did you make me go through all of that?" I finally ask.

I wonder, what was the purpose of this taxi ride? Did I truly need it, reconnecting with my past memories, and with emotions I had pushed away from my heart? Won't it only make me more and more miserable over time? I wasn't living, but at least I was alive. I believe firmly in the act of being alive being better than simply handing yourself over to death. My life is my right, and who gives away their rights? That is my pride as a human being. And yet, the universe is making things more and more difficult for me.

A moment's silence passes, before Mr. Taxicat suddenly asks, "Tell the me, does you still want to go to The Thrush?"

The question takes me aback for a second. The original destination with which I had hopped into the taxi had completely slipped from my mind.

"I . . . I don't know."

I look up at the tri-mooned sky. All the certainty I had in my mind when I left that apartment has now vanished, replaced by confusion, indecision, the fear that I will once again be missing out on something important. The word 'regret', the word that I kept mindlessly mocking before seems to be mocking me back right now with tenfolds cruelty. I don't know anything anymore, because everything I knew is once again crumbling apart.

"I don't know where I should head to next." My eyes become teary, and the moons begin to shimmer in my vision.

"But me knows," says Mr. Taxicat, licking the back of his paw.

"In that case . . . take me there."

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"Sayonara, Heron" is the name of a very favourite LGBTQ+ manga of mine, written by an author who goes by the name "Ymz".

The line said by the cat, "You can tell me anythin', but me won't ask," is a reference to the recurring quote "You can tell me anything, but I shall not ask," from the manga "Our Dreams At Dusk" by Kamitahni Yuuki, another LGBTQ+ manga. This sentence was often said by the (supposedly) asexual character who everyone called Anonymous, and she would say this to help others open up to her.

I will talk more about these two mangas and why I chose them in the extra chapter discussing various details, metaphors, and references.

Meanwhile, I want to ask whether the reveal of Jade's sister was too abrupt. Actually, the existence of a fourth character except Jade's parents and Elias was hinted multiple times in the previous chapter. I wanted people to wonder who this person might be. Did it register in your mind? I will be really grateful if you could let me know.

Thank you for reading this far.

-- love, Poma