“Well, of course,” I answer without thinking. “If it’s possible to go back, then I want to… I think.” I’ve never wondered if there could be any other answer. I stopped dwelling on this question a long time ago, and if I’d been asked before I met Alice, I wouldn’t have hesitated.

But what about now? What does it mean to wish for the past, and what could it do to me and Alice? As soon as these questions occur to me, my true feelings become unclear. The hurried answer I just gave her was less certain than I thought.

“Oh… Yeah, of course you would.” Alice smiles softly, her expression an unreadable mixture of what seem to be sorrow and relief. Seeing it fills me with sudden unease, as though I’ve just wounded her deeply with my careless words.

“Hey, Alice, I…”

“It’s okay, Shining. Don’t say anymore.” Alice silences me with another kiss, and thrusts her tongue into my mouth with even greater passion than before. As the sweet softness of her tongue clouds my mind, I begin to feel an urgent need to say what she prevented me from saying – to speak those most important words.

“Alice…” I can’t speak, for some reason, my mind if hazy. My consciousness is slipping away as the euphoria from her kiss spreads to my entire body.

“Sleep well, Shining,” I hear Alice whisper softly from far away. “Don’t worry. When you wake up, it’ll all be over.”

Wait. I have to tell you something before I sleep… just one thing… My efforts are meaningless, however, as oblivion calls me into its embrace.

**********

When I awoke, the first thing that greeted me was a terrible stink. Mr. Cake’s body covered in flies, and I could smell the rotten stench that you would expect from a corpse. The night had ended, but Alice was nowhere to be seen in the morning light.

Aside from the blood-covered floor, the kitchen looked the same as it had before the accident. In the den, however, the colors that had been so soothing the day before now served as a stark reminder of what a distant world I’d been living in.

Despite knowing that it would be futile, I wandered the house searching for Alice. For almost an hour, I tried in vain to deny reality.

Then I called the police. When the operator answered, I couldn’t stop myself from crying. It had been such a long time since I’d heard a human voice other than Alice’s.

**********
As became clear later, Mr. Cake had murdered his family before I killed him. Unable to give the police a satisfactory explanation, I was arrested for all three murders. And when they found the remains of Cherry Blossom in my house, a fourth was added to the charges – along with one count of mutilating a corpse .What it bothered me, was the Cake’s had two children, there should be four in their family. Two of the children, the wife and Mr. Cake himself. What happened to their other child is a mystery to me and the police.

During my interrogation, I told them everything exactly as it had happened, in every detail. The detectives didn’t believe me, of course, but the psychiatrist who came later did. He had me moved from the jail to a much cleaner white room.

That’s right. This room looks just as white to me as it does to everyone else. In the end, they declared me incapable of answering for my actions. Everything that had happened to me was real, but part of a reality incompatible with the rest of the world. So the doctors gave me a tiny space all to myself, a place where I could live in my own reality.

I’m sad that I wasn’t believed, but I know that it couldn’t be helped. In this world, reality is what the majority says it is, and I had the misfortune to step outside of that box. The walls of my room are undeniably white. That, at least, I can be thankful for as I live out the rest of my life here.

Everyone said that there had never been any girl named Alice. Well, so be it. Alice probably was never part of their world. But why shouldn’t I be able to hear Alice’s voice here, in my room? This is my world, after all, a continuation of the very real time that we spent together.

**********
How long did I wait with such thoughts floating through my mind?

One night, I woke to the sound of something crawling down the hallway. The sound would not normally have woken me, but I must have had a premonition that night. Sleeping lighter than usual, I had waited for her arrival – and so I knew instantly that it was her. “Alice?”

*gurgling*

She did not answer, but I could feel her outside my door, struggling with some internal conflict. “Why won’t you let me hear your voice?”

*gurgling*

After a long silence, something small slid through the narrow bars of my peephole. It was a cell phone, the screen already showing a notepad with freshly-entered text.

“My voice will sound strange to you”

I couldn’t suppress a chuckle at Alice’s uncharacteristic display of shyness. I don’t care about that at all,” I said, sending the phone back through the bars. “I just want to hear you – see you.” After a short pause, the phone returned to my side.

“Please, let me stay the Alice you remember.”

“…..Okay.” I’d started to suspect that it might be so. In the hell my eyes had made of the world, Alice alone had looked normal. I’d thought that she was somehow unique. In truth, however, she had probably been a different kind of “unique” that I’d imagined. It wasn’t that my senses hadn’t distorted her appearance, but that she had been so unusual as to seem normal to my twisted mind. Alice’s true form was something other than what I had known. Now, however, I could see her as she really was. But Alice didn’t want that, and it was not for me to question the workings of her heart. I just had to accept that girls need to keep some things private.

“I tried to say something to you that day. Do you remember?” I slid the phone back to her.

“I was hoping you’d forgotten.”

I smiled wryly at the text on the screen, wondering if she really thought me so heartless. “How could I forget?” No one was listening, but still – it would have been embarrassing to speak the rest aloud, so this time I typed it into the phone.

G, H, I

J, k, l

M, n, o

T, u, v

D, e

W, x, y

M, n, o

T, u

I slid the phone back through the slot.

I could sense her trembling outside my door. I couldn’t see her, or hear her – but still, I knew. Alice was crying. “I was ready, you know.” Perhaps my words offered no comfort, spoken so late.

Even so… I was ready. I had wanted to return to my old life, true, but I would have abandoned that wish for Alice. I know that I would have gone with her, hand-in-hand, as far as we could – even to the most forbidden of places.

Alice, too, must have known that I was prepared – and because she knew, she stopped me from saying those words. If I had spoken that oath, there would have been no going back.

“I’m sorry. I was a coward.”

Seeing those words on the screen, I shook my head. “It’s not your fault. I hadn’t hesitated; you would have found the courage.”

“I was afraid of you. Of how you were changing because of me.”

“it’s no one’s fault.” Alice couldn’t bring herself to take everything from me, and I couldn’t bring myself to give up everything for her. We were too weak to find happiness. “What will you do now, Alice?”

“I’ll keep searching for my dad. He’ll know how to send me back where I came from.”

“I see. You do want to go home, don’t you?” A short time passed with no words or messages exchanged. I wonder how many times in that brief silence “yes” and “no” changed places in her mind.

“Yeah”

When the phone finally returned, the characters on the screen seemed strangely uncertain. “Well, I hope you find your father.”

“I’ll do my best.”

The time had come for our parting. She had chosen her path, and I had given my blessing. There was nothing more to be said. “If you change your mind, I’ll always be here. You can come see me whenever you want.”

“I will thank you. Goodbye, Shining Armor.”

I read her final message and returned the phone to the other side. “Goodbye, Alice.”

She gently slapped my door in response, and then I heard the sound of her sliding off down the hallway. And I was left alone in the silence of the night.

**********

Ever since that day, I have been waiting. Perhaps Alice really did return to where she came from. Perhaps she’s still wandering today, looking for her father. It must be hard. She must be lonely. When she can no longer stand being alone, she will surely return to me. I’m the only one who will comfort her, and whisper sweet things in her ear.

And so I wait. Dreaming of her face and her voice, I wait.

Forever, in my white world…