9

I don’t think I was unconscious for long. My foggy memory tells me I must have been there for about half a day, but it had happened right in the middle of town, and I have a hard time imagining a healthy-looking university student being left on the ground for that long. The town I was doing my studies in wasn’t that heartless. In fact, I had been quickly taken care of following the motorcycle accident that occurred after I became an author.

By the time I had gotten up and regained my bearings, the girl was gone. Actually, to be more accurate, I was in such a confused state that by the time I woke up, I had already forgotten about the girl. I wasn’t even sure if I had hallucinated her or not given my shocked and dazed state when I had seen her. Whether she was real or not wasn’t even something that crossed my mind.

I was more focused on my embarrassment over falling over in public as a grown adult in the middle of such a busy area.

The motorcycle accident is a different issue, but taking a tumble as an adult is incredibly embarrassing, and I’m sure there are many who can sympathize with my plight. Generally speaking, it’s already unusual for an adult to feel the ground on their entire body. Now, when I say adult, I am referring to ten years ago, when I was a young adult, but that’s perspective for you.

If you ever have the spare time, I urge you to try laying down fully on asphalt somewhere safe (don’t use a main road for goodness sake, unless you want to get torn apart). You don’t have to fall down or anything, just lie down slowly. I recommend lying down on your back. It’ll really take you back to your childhood. You’ll be suffused with all the unpleasant memories of being young before you know it.

Anyways, just falling over is embarrassing in itself. That said, I was trying to rectify and escape the situation as quickly as possible, so I didn’t concern myself over the existence of a girl who may or may not have been looking down at me as I lost consciousness.

Of course, if I could have connected that girl to the one I had seen a week before, then embarrassment would have been the last thing on my mind. But, I was held back by my inability to identify faces. It might make me sound noble to say I don’t judge from appearances, but that takes on a different meaning in this case. It could even be insulting to the degree that it removes individuality from everyone… well, moving on.

After making sure I wasn’t bleeding and checking for broken bones, I walked back towards my bike. I felt like I’d been launched across a whole football field, but really I had only gone a few feet forward.

Now, you might call me a simpleton for not questioning the soprano recorder stuck in my wheel, and I guess I’d have to take that on the chin, but what do you expect from me? I think it’s fair that my first thought wasn’t the image of an elementary student hurling their recorder directly at my bike wheels on purpose. That premise is beyond laughable. It approaches delusion. I don’t even think such a depiction would be accepted in the world of fiction. Since it really happened, I can talk about it, but even now I’m not sure how many people will believe me.

I came to what I believe is the extremely logical conclusion that an elementary schooler dropped their recorder on the sidewalk and it got tangled into my bike wheel. That was the best I could do with what I found at the scene, and I think such a realistic conclusion is praiseworthy. It was especially rational given how I was feeling following the destruction of my beloved, not to mention expensive, road racer.

Or you could say that my emotions were dead.

Either way, I stood my bike up and plucked the recorder from the ground. I figured that leaving it there would only doom future bicyclists to my fate, so it had to be moved. Besides, it was damaged beyond all use, so there wasn’t much point in leaving it to be found.

I actually felt sorry for the elementary schooler who had dropped it. A bit of misguided sympathy I can’t help but snicker at now.

Regardless, I pushed on to university, moving my bike right alongside me with its busted back wheel. All the while completely unaware that my student ID had been stolen from my wallet.