Can’t Cross
Author: Ukari (translated with author’s permission, please visit their website to see the original Japanese works!)
To say here is far, and to call yonder nearby. Stories on the edge of the every day, strange tales you may or may not be moved by. Strange, curious, fantastic stories told by me, you, him and her. There are many stories but they’re all concluded within a single page, each story around 200 to 1200 characters in length, a short story collection you can easily read. Please enjoy them. Updated every Saturday at 6pm.
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It’s always the same.
I never have any luck.
I get so close, and yet I can’t reach it. Right as I’m almost there, it slips from my fingertips.
If I rush, I fail, but if I try to move slowly and methodically, I never reach it in time either.
The timing is just always bad. The worst of the worst.
Things never go well. No matter what I do, it just doesn’t matter.
And for the entirety of my life, that never changed.
I stood on the riverbank, at a loss.
The river was so wide that I couldn’t see the other side, and it flowed calmly. There was so much fog that I couldn’t see either up or downstream.
There was a wharf.
Yet there was no ferryman. Nor was there a boat.
Perhaps it just left. I must have just missed it again.
How long would I have to wait for the next one?
What should I do until then?
I simply stood there in a daze in the white fog.