The Memory of Sound
scritch… scratch… scratch…
Your fingertips crawl across the white paper. That faint friction the instant the pen’s tip touches the surface.
scritch… scratch… scratch…
Kitagawa Mio bends over a patient’s record, carving out characters in the same rhythm as every other day. The hospital’s counseling room is filled with afternoon sunlight, yet inside her a cold stillness reigns.
“Tanaka Masahiko, thirty-two, recurrent nightmare syndrome…”
scritch… scratch…
Each time the pen’s tip meets the paper, a faint vibration travels to Mio’s eardrums. As an HSP—a Highly Sensitive Person—she feels every sound through her skin. A colleague’s footsteps, the groan of the air conditioning, a patient’s breathing. All of it stimulates her nervous system directly.
tick… tick… tick…
The second hand of the wall clock shaves away at Mio’s consciousness, one second at a time.
Two in the afternoon. Tanaka Masahiko’s appointment.
The sound of the door opening softly—click—travels up Mio’s spine to her brainstem.
“Excuse me.”
Tanaka’s voice is lower than she expected, and damp. Mio lifts her face and looks at him.
A man in his early thirties. Thin. Deep shadows under his eyes. And—Mio’s intuition sounds an alarm—something is wrong.
“Please, have a seat.”
Mio’s voice feigns professional calm, but her sensory organs are already reacting with painful acuity to the presence that is Tanaka. The rhythm of his breathing, the frequency of his blinks, the rustle of cloth as he sits.
rustle… rustle…
hiss… huff… hiss… huff…
Tanaka’s breathing is irregular. Mio feels her own breath falling into sync with it. This is one of the traits of an HSP—the phenomenon of resonating with another’s physiological rhythm.
“Tell me about the dream,” Mio says, opening a fresh page. scritch… scratch…
“Every night, I have the same dream,” Tanaka’s voice rasps. “A dream of walking down a hospital corridor. But the corridor goes on without end…”
clack… clack… clack…
Footsteps begin to echo within Mio’s mind. Is this her imagination, or is Tanaka’s memory propagating into her?
“What did the corridor sound like?” Mio asked before she could stop herself.
Tanaka’s eyes go wide. “How did you know that…?”
clack… clack… clack…
The sound grows distinct. Hard soles striking cold linoleum, ringing directly in Mio’s inner ear. Is this an auditory hallucination, synesthesia, or—
zzt… zzt… zzt…
Suddenly a sound like white noise fills Mio’s skull. The static of a television. The hiss of a decrepit radio. Or electrical noise generated within her own brain?
“I’m sorry, just a moment…” Mio presses a hand to her forehead.
Tanaka leans forward. “Are you all right?”
Mio caught a strange note of satisfaction mixed into his voice. As though he had foreseen this very situation.
zzt… zzt… zzt…
The noise grows stronger. White particles begin to dance across Mio’s vision. Is this a symptom of her hypersensitivity, or—
“Doctor.”
Tanaka’s voice comes from far away.
“We met inside your dream, didn’t we.”
…silence…
Complete stillness.
Sound vanishes from Mio’s world. The second hand, the air conditioning, Tanaka’s breathing—everything falls silent, as if frozen.
She stares at Tanaka. Tanaka stares back at her.
Something flows between the two of them. Something like an invisible thread. A soundless vibration.
“In the hospital in the dream,” Tanaka’s lips move, but no sound comes. And yet Mio understands his words. “You were wearing a white coat, walking down a long corridor.”
clack… clack… clack…
The footsteps return. Clearly, this time. Mio’s footsteps. The sound of herself walking in the dream.
“I… I don’t dream…”
Mio’s words of denial are cut off by her own memory. Last night, she did dream. A dream of a white corridor. Walking down an endless hospital corridor, searching for someone.
clack… clack… clack…
“That’s where we met, isn’t it,” Tanaka’s lips move. Still no sound, yet his words intrude directly into Mio’s interior. “In the dream, for the first time.”
ba… dump… ba… dump…
Mio’s heartbeat rings in her eardrums. The sound of blood coursing through her vessels is abnormally loud. Is this real, or a hallucination?
Tanaka reaches out. He touches Mio’s wrist.
At the moment of contact—
zzzzzzzzzt……
A flood of information pours into Mio’s consciousness. Tanaka’s memories, his emotions, and his dreams. Fragments of reality layered upon one another reach her brain through her nervous system.
A hospital corridor. A white ceiling. The smell of disinfectant. And the sound of walking.
clack… clack… clack…
Mio feels herself stand. No—she feels the self in the dream stand. Even though the real Mio should still be sitting in her chair.
“Tonight as well,” Tanaka’s voice comes from both inside and outside Mio. “Let’s meet again.”
blink… blink… blink…
Each time Mio blinks, the world changes a little. The walls of the counseling room turn white, the window disappears, the ceiling rises high.
blink…
A hospital corridor.
blink…
An endless white passage.
blink…
And, from far away, the sound of footsteps.
clack… clack… clack…
“Please wake up, Doctor.”
Tanaka’s voice rings out from the border between dream and reality.
“I’ll be waiting for you, in the real world.”
Mio opens her eyes.
The counseling room. Afternoon sunlight. The patient’s record on the desk.
There is no sign of Tanaka Masahiko.
She looks at the clock: 2:05 p.m. Only five minutes have passed since the session began.
She phones the reception desk.
“Tanaka Masahiko—?”
“He hasn’t come in today, though…”
The hand setting down the receiver is trembling.
When she looks at the patient record on the desk, Tanaka Masahiko’s file is still blank.
And yet, in Mio’s memory, his voice certainly remains.
clack… clack… clack…
And the footsteps, too.
That night, Mio was afraid to sleep.
But at two in the morning, her consciousness sinks into darkness.
clack… clack… clack…
A white corridor.
An endless passage.
And far away, the receding figure of Tanaka Masahiko.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
The face of the Tanaka who turns around is a face Mio does not know.
scritch… scratch… scritch… scratch…
Even in the dream, Mio is gripping a pen.
She goes on writing something on the white paper.
When she looks, characters she does not recognize are lined up there.
“The empath loses all boundaries.”
“There are those who can exist only within dreams.”
“They make their dwelling in the dreams of the living.”
Mio’s hand moves on its own, going on writing.
scritch… scratch… scritch… scratch…
Only the sound of the pen fills the silence of the dream.