The Drawer

I stare at the drawer as if it might answer me. The wood is smooth from years of habit, the tiny brass knob polished by my own nervous fingers. Inside, neatly folded, sits the black eyepatch that Rikka once called the “Wicked Eye.” It looks exactly as it always has—plain, unassuming, a little too flat for a thing that once claimed to be a portal to otherworlds.

Three weeks have passed since Rikka last wore it. I count the days the way I used to count the minutes before a class presentation: with a nervous tally that never quite feels accurate. I can’t remember the exact moment she slipped it off for good, but I’m sure it was sometime in early October, when the school’s autumn festival had already begun and her “Eternal Night” costume was retired to a closet.

I pull the eyepatch out and hold it up to the light. The fabric is still black, the elastic still a little frayed at the corner where she once tugged it with a theatrical sigh. The label sewn into the inner seam reads, in her own handwriting, “Wicked Eye – Do not remove unless you seek truth.” The irony of that note, written by a teenager who took herself seriously enough to think she could summon eldritch forces with a piece of cloth, makes me smile despite the ache in my chest.

Rikka is sitting at the kitchen table, her textbooks open, a highlighter clicking away like a metronome. She’s not the girl who once whispered to the moon about “the final battle of destiny.” She’s the girl who can recite the chemical equation for photosynthesis without blinking, who can argue the merits of a Marxist reading of “The Little Prince” with a confidence that would make her former self blush.

She doesn’t look up when I place the eyepatch on the table. She’s too busy underlining the phrase “quantum entanglement” in a physics worksheet that she’s turned into a love poem in her margins. I watch her write, the way her pen moves in quick, decisive strokes, as if she’s already decided the outcome of a battle before it even begins.

“It’s…,” she says, without looking up, “the only thing that’s still wrong with my life, apparently.” She snorts, a sound that could be a laugh or a sigh. I want to ask her what she means, but I’m not sure I’m ready to hear the answer.

The drawer feels heavier now that it’s open. I close it slowly, as if sealing a secret. The wood clicks shut, a sound that echoes louder than the clatter of dishes in the sink. My mind is a loop of thoughts, each one trying to fit the shape of a feeling I can’t quite grasp.

I walk over to Rikka’s desk and lean against it, arms crossed. “You’ve been… doing well,” I say, because I don’t know how else to say it. “Grades, clubs, the whole… normal thing.”

She pauses, the highlighter still poised, and looks at me with the kind of smile that seems to be a practiced act, but the edges are soft. “I guess I’m just trying not to be a disaster,” she replies, her voice a mix of sarcasm and sincerity. “You know, like a normal person.”

“Normal,” I repeat, tasting the word. It feels like a brand name we both wear without realizing we’ve bought it. “Do you miss it? The… the eye? The whole… thing?”

She sighs, a sound that could be a wind through autumn leaves. “I miss it sometimes, when I’m alone. It’s… like a favorite book you can’t finish because you have to go to work.” She laughs, a short, bright burst that makes the sunlight on the kitchen floor dance. “But I also think it was a way to keep the darkness from swallowing me.”

I nod, even though she can’t see it. “It’s weird,” I say, “how you can keep something so big inside you and then… put it away. Like… like you’re trying to keep the room from getting too bright.”

Rikka looks at me, eyes suddenly sharp, like a hawk that has just noticed a mouse. “Yuuta, do you think I’m… pretending? That I’m just acting like I’m fine?”

I stare at her, at the way her hair catches the light, at the way the highlighter marks the page. “I think you’re doing the most honest thing you’ve ever done. And I’m scared that if I try to see the darkness, I might… lose the light.” My words feel clumsy, like trying to describe a color to someone who has never seen it.

She sets the highlighter down, and for a moment the silence is full of things we both pretend not to hear. “The eye,” she says, “was never really a thing that could see. It was a promise. A promise that I could always find a reason to keep fighting, even if the world told me otherwise.”

I glance at the drawer again, the way my mind keeps returning to it as if it might spill its secrets. “Did you ever think about… not using it at all? Like, just… forgetting it?”

She chuckles, a low sound that seems to come from a place where seriousness and jokes blend. “For a second, when the festival started. I thought maybe I could be a regular student, attend clubs, have a part-time job, and not have to worry about cursed artifacts. But then I realized that the cursed artifact is just a piece of cloth, and the real curse is… not having a story to tell.”

I smile, because the absurdity of it feels like a rope we can both hold onto. “So the drawer,” I say, “is still there. The eyepatch is still there. And the thing we can’t name is still there, too.”

She tilts her head, considering me as if I were a puzzle she’s trying to solve. “What is it, Yuuta? What’s the thing you can’t name?”

I stare at the kitchen clock, at the seconds ticking away, at the way the light shifts across the table. “It’s… a feeling. Like a missing chapter in a book that’s already finished. I can’t read it because it’s not there, but I know the story is incomplete.”

Rikka’s expression softens, and she reaches for my hand, the one I kept hidden under the sleeve of my shirt. Her fingers are warm, a reminder that she’s still the same person who once whispered “the world is a stage” in a hallway that smelled like cafeteria pizza. “Maybe we don’t need to name it,” she says, “because naming it would make it real. And maybe it’s okay for some things to stay… mysterious.”

I pull my hand back, not because I don’t want to touch her, but because the thought of holding onto something too tightly feels like trying to keep a candle flame under water. “Maybe,” I agree, “but I still want to keep the drawer. I want to know when the eyepatch will be needed again. Even if it’s just… to remind us that we once believed in something bigger than ourselves.”

She picks up the eyepatch, rolls it gently between her fingers, and looks at it as if it were a relic from an ancient civilization. “It’s funny,” she says, “how a piece of cloth can feel like a weapon, a shield, and a promise all at once.”

I laugh, a dry sound that cracks the silence. “And how we both think we’ve outgrown it, but we keep it in a drawer, like a secret we’re not ready to admit we need.”

She slides the eyepatch into her backpack, the zip closing with a soft click. “I’ll keep it for you,” she says, “in case the world ever needs a little darkness again.”

I watch her turn back to her textbooks, her focus sharp as a blade, the highlighter clicking away. The kitchen fills with the scent of boiled rice and the faint hum of an old refrigerator, ordinary sounds that feel like a lullaby after a storm.

The drawer remains closed. The eyepatch is no longer on the table, but it’s not gone. It’s tucked away in a place that’s both safe and vulnerable, waiting for a moment when the world might need its “Wicked Eye” again. I stand there, feeling the emptiness settle into a shape that’s not quite a hole, not quite a presence.

In the back of my mind, a line from a song I used to listen to in middle school drifts up: “All the stars we chase end up in the same sky.” I smile, because the absurdity of chasing stars with a piece of cloth is exactly what we used to do, and maybe, just maybe, it’s exactly what we’ll keep doing.

I turn off the kitchen light, let the soft glow of the streetlamps seep through the window, and head upstairs. The night outside feels less like a void and more like a canvas waiting for a brushstroke. I don’t know what the next day will bring, but I know the drawer will be there, the eyepatch will be there, and somewhere in the middle of our ordinary lives, the unnamed feeling will keep humming, a quiet reminder that we never truly leave behind the things that saved us.

I lay down, pull the blanket up to my chin, and listen to the distant hum of the city. In the quiet, I hear a faint, almost imperceptible rustle—like a page turning in an unseen book. I close my eyes, not sure if I’m ready for the next chapter, but I’m willing to keep the drawer open, just in case.