Trapped by the Ocean Scent

One of your underclassmen was absent from school for a few months, and when they returned, they were missing an eye. A date gone awry, they’d told you. An occupational hazard when going on dates with the Ultimate Luckster of Class 77-B. That makes sense. What a harrowing thing. You wondered what happened to the manhole cover. Did they still use it? Or was it thrown away for its crimes? You wondered if it still had a stain on it—an artifact of what transpired that day. You wish you could find it.

You loved artifacts.

Little bits of memory, little bits of life. You liked to collect them. Anything that spoke to the testament of humanity, be it information, or hobbies, or random little knick knacks that might have meant something to someone once, you would collect them. Your room was full of half-read books and half-finished projects, and half-baked arrangements. It was odd, you knew. The Ultimate Hoarder, they called you.

One of the first years in the hall was scolding another student for their untucked shirt. Against school policy, he’d said. Not so. Technically speaking, school policy is that all base components of the uniform must be present, but Main Course students are free to customize to the specifications of their Talent as they desire. You walked by without comment. You didn't want to stir up even more of an argument.

You had an approximate knowledge of many things.

Misunderstandings led to disagreement, and so you tucked information away to understand what the truth was. One person might cite a source, but misremember it in favor of aligning it with what they would like to think to be true. It was another little bit of humanity, the way information warped, and so you kept track of it. People got tired of you butting in to correct them, though. The Ultimate “Um, Actually,” they called you.

Another underclassman started talking about a friend from the Reserve Course going missing. No one else really mentioned it much besides her. They played video games together sometimes, but just stopped showing up one day, she’d told you. That he was talking about Talent and wanting to be something more.

You wondered what he was like. What it felt like to not be Talented. You weren’t sure if it would be much different than how you felt now. What did he like? What hobbies did he have? Did anyone besides your underclassman miss him?

What was it like to be missed? Was there even a way to know how something like that felt?

Then one of the first years went missing one day. He was a major cultural icon even outside of Talent—or rather, his Talent was because he was a cultural icon. Or was that just how his Talent worked? You weren’t sure. It was another one of those things you wondered about—the chicken or egg of Talent.

You digress.

The point was that he was an icon, and so it was a very big deal when he disappeared. Everyone was talking about it—what the family would do, if there was a ransom, all the juiciest gossip. You wondered about it, too, but differently.

You wondered where he was, what he was doing. His classmates all seemed very distraught, so the likelihood it was a willing disappearance was slim to none. You wondered if he was scared. You wondered what being kidnapped felt like—another one of those experiences that will always sit just out of your reach of full understanding. People found that odd, too. The Ultimate Morbidly Curious, they called you.

Then there was an incident, and suddenly your class was half the size that it was before. You weren’t in the Student Council, so you didn’t really have any idea what happened. You wanted to know. You wanted to know so badly. It was an unfortunate accident, the school had said. That didn’t make sense at all.

You wondered about the Reserve Course boy who disappeared.

You wondered about the first year boy who also disappeared.

You wondered just how much was going unknown to you. Undocumented. Lost.

It itched at you.

The year came and went like this, watching all these things unfold in your periphery. Picking them up along the way. Carrying them with you. You want to know. You want to understand. You don’t know why. It just felt necessary. Someone had to record it all. Someone had to remember. You wanted to remember everything. Be everything. Collect it all and—