Track 1 - Fragments of Memory, Fragments of Brick

“Just as I thought, it’s still turned over like how I left it the other day.”

I let out a small sigh.

From its hiding place under a dirty outdoor unit¹ in a back alley, I pull out an old cookie tin spotted with rust. Inside the tin is a square piece of brick, the side with—‘Kiba’s sun’—facing upward, just as I had flipped it a few weeks ago.

”Kiba…I guess you’re not coming back after all.”

This old, cramped back alley where it seemed as if the buildings were close enough to touch.

It was a secret place just for us, me and Kiba.

Did I screw up somewhere?

Is it because everyone knows I’m a hopeless mess beneath my celebrity persona?

If that’s it, then what should I do? …No, it’s alright if it’s just because I’m an idiot.

What if Kiba couldn’t come because he was caught up in some sort of trouble, or he got hurt?

My heart hurts as if it’s being squeezed.

“…I miss you, Kiba. Are you safe? Where the hell are you—“

My murmurs are swallowed up by the gloominess of the back alley.

Maybe my voice isn’t enough to reach Kiba.

Just the thought of that makes an indescribable anxiety well up inside me.

I put the brick piece back in its hiding spot and slip my hand into my jacket pocket.

A cold sensation meets my fingertips. I take out an old, slightly scratched-up medal. Despite this, it still shines golden.

The medal has the same ‘Kiba’s sun’ drawn on it as on the piece of brick.

The permanent marker lines have rubbed off and are faded in some places.

But how Kiba—no, the real Renga, drew the sun that day.

How he smiled and gave me this sun.

Those memories will never disappear.

I feel so stupid for crying this much when I’m already eleven.

I’m sure “Renga” is also disappointed in me.

Still, I can’t stop crying.

To my tiny self in this tiny world, he was the only thing that I could call beautiful, dazzling even. Someone so precious to me that if I were to lose him, I wouldn’t know what to live for from tomorrow onwards.

“I didn’t think we’d meet again….”

A skinny, malnourished body draped in tattered clothes.

No matter how often he told the eleven-year-old me, ‘We look exactly alike.’, I always found it hard to believe him with how shabby I looked.

Seeing me like that, he would always have a conflicted smile.

It’s already been a month since Renga last came to see me in the back alley near the red brick warehouse. It was the only place where someone like me who lived on the streets could exist without being punished.

For as long as I’d known him, he had always come to visit me before I got too anxious. The fact he hadn’t come in a month meant I’d never see him again and all our time spent together was just a dream…  Or so I thought.

That’s why, when Renga showed his face after so long—calling out ‘Ren!’ with his usual dazzling smile—I couldn’t stop crying.

“Sorry, Ren. I wanted to visit, but Grandma has been keeping me under close watch lately. I think she found out that I was sneaking out.”

He gently strokes my head to calm me down.

It made me happy, but hearing that his grandma caught him sneaking out made me cry even harder.

“I-If they found out you were out playing with someone like me… would you get in trouble?”

“It’s okay, don’t worry. I already made a deal with Grandma, so as long as I keep to my curfew, she’ll let me go on field trips to HAMA.”

“...”

Really?

But his grandma doesn’t know he’s meeting a dirty kid like me, right?

If she finds out, won’t she tell him he can’t anymore?

Just the thought makes me feel like I'm being doused in cold water.

As if he could tell what I was thinking from the expression on my face, Renga's hand stills in my hair.

“Are you worried?” he asks, tilting his head.

Yeah, I’m worried.

Because there’d be nothing I could do if I suddenly couldn’t meet with you.

It’s a selfish thought, one I’m not sure is okay to say out loud.

It goes without saying. Renga is all I have, but to him, I’m just a small part of a bigger world.

Renga, who has money and always wears nice clothes.

Renga, whose hands, feet, face, and hair are unblemished, his existence shining down to his fingernails.

Renga, who has a family, goes to school, and has friends.

All I have are tattered clothes that don’t fit me, dry hair, filthy hands and feet, a face caked with dirt, a scrawny body, and a square piece of brick I picked up from the corner of a warehouse.

That’s it.

It’s probably selfish of me to say that I want to meet him when he has everything, and I have nothing.

I don’t know what to say, so I just look down and fidget with my fingers. Renga peers at my face and says, “Then, how about this?”

“Let’s think of a secret signal just for the two of us! Even if we can’t meet, we can let each other know we’re okay. That way, we can both be reassured, right?”

One of his sun-like eyes sparkled as it reflected my lowered eyebrows.

“We can do that?”

“Mhm, can I use your special square brick? The treasure you showed me before.”

“O-oh, sure.”

I had picked up the square brick from the corner of the warehouse a while ago.

The reddish-brown stone had grains of sand mixed in with it that sometimes shone when the sun hit it just right.

I knew it was just a piece of junk, but I’d found it beautiful, and I wanted to have something of my own, like everyone else.

When I took the only thing I owned out of my pocket and handed it to him, Renga smiled at me kindly.

“Okay, we can use this. Next is the location. There’s a good place nearby, so let’s head over there!”

Like always, he took my hand in his and pulled me along.

We found ourselves huddling in a gap between the old buildings that surrounded us. With the cookie tin I’d found beside a dirty outdoor unit and the piece of brick I’d given to him, we had everything we needed.

”Perfect, I brought some chalk, so let’s draw a mark on each side of this brick to use as a secret signal.”

“A secret…signal?”

“Yeah, then we hide the brick under this outdoor unit. When I come here, I’ll flip the brick over so your mark is on top, and when you come, you’ll flip it back so my mark is on top. That way, even if we can’t see each other we’ll both know we’re okay, right? It’ll be a signal that only we know.”

Renga once said that I sometimes pass by him when I collect trash. Even though we’re so close, I never notice, and he can’t come say hi either. But now…

“...You’re a genius, Renga! I’d never have thought of such an amazing idea.”

I thought his idea was cool. Even if we couldn’t see each other, we would still have a way to keep in contact. It was a secret that belonged to just the two of us, a guarantee that he would think about me even when we couldn’t meet each other. Just thinking about it made me so happy that my tears vanished.

Smiling, he said, “Because it’s you, Ren.”

“The only one I want to always know that I’m alive is you, Ren…and I mean it.”

It happened like that, the beginning of our promise.