Episode 2: Not enough

The tears came in waves, choking her. Akira curled tighter, her mom's faint calls through the door muffled.

"Akira, open up..." A whispered blow into the air.

But she didn't open the door. Couldn't. Because if she opened that door, she'd have to explain the bruises on her palms, the cut in her heart. The disappointment in her mom's eyes would be the final blow. Akira's fingers found the sketchbook, opened to the girl on the train track.

She'd drawn it months ago, after a similar day. The girl's eyes seemed to plead, Why aren't you enough? The question swirled with her mom's struggles, Kana's words, the loneliness. Akira's chest felt like it was splitting open. She pressed her face into the pillow and screamed, a sound that no one could hear.

The hours blurred. Akira lay there, numb, until the room darkened. Her mom's voice was a faint whisper now. "Akira... I'm sorry... Forgive me." The words trailed off into sobs.

Akira’s eyes snapped open. Her mom was crying for the first time, Akira realized. Her mom wasn’t just distant she was drowning. Drowning in her own pain, her own demons. And Akira was just another weight pulling her under.

The thought cut deeper than Kana’s words, than the asphalt scrape She’s hurting too. The understanding brought no comfort just a sketchbook slipping open. The girl on the train track stared back, her eyes now Akira’s own. Was I ever enough? The question echoed, suffocating and in that darkness, Akira let go.

In the darkness, Akira’s silence was the only sound mumbling. Her mom’s sobs faded to quiet gasps, then nothing. The apartment swallowed them whole. Hours passed, the sketchbook lay open, the girl’s eyes mocking her “not enough, not enough, not enough.” Akira’s throat tightened. Her chest constricted. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t cry. The pain was a living thing, clawing its way out. And then blackness. The kind that swallows you whole. The kind you don’t come back from.

Akira blinked. The world snapped back fluorescent lights, chalkboard scrambling her vision. She was in class. How did she get here? The teacher’s voice was a distant hum. Her sketchbook lay open on the desk, the girl on the train track staring up. But something was off.

The drawing was… different. The girl’s eyes were black as coal now. Her black eyes seeming to bore into Akira’s soul. What’s happening? Why does everything turning upside down? Where is she? She shut her sketchbook, and rubbed her blurring vision.

The class had finished, she started walking on the hallway, all the students staring at her and laughing. As she walked through them, she saw her mother at the school gate, smiling wickedly. As she saw her, once she stepped a gunshot. Her mother, so loud, so intense, so dark.