Manami, a Survivor

The darkest dream I ever had happened when I was just a teenage girl. The scary part about it is that it wasn´t a dream, it was real. How could something like that happen in real life? I don´t think that there´s something worst that could happen than what happened forty five years ago. I had just turned seventeen, and I had a whole life full of dreams ahead of me. My father worked at the Shima Surigical Clinic, and he was a great doctor. My mother was a good cooker, and my two brothers were the funniest little things in the world. My boyfriend, Riku, was a soldier. I remember that when he called me Mana, instead of calling me by me complete name Manami, I felt butterflies in my stomach.

In August 5, Riku came to dinner at my house to celebrate my birthday. It was a beautiful night; the sky was full of stars bright as neon light. We had a great time with my family, but I had to sleep early because the next day I would go to school. I woke up at six in the morning and got ready for school. Mother told me to walk my brothers to their school, so I did. After leaving them, I enjoyed walking to the high school because it was a beautiful day, or so I thought because I didn´t imagine that something terrible was going to happen. When I entered the building, an air alert started, a radio was near me so I went to hear what was happening. Everyone started to go crazy but at the same time everything was really quiet. There were U.S.A planes coming, so we started running to a safety place. About at eight o clock, the air raid alert was lifted because it looked like only three planes were passing by to check the weather. Everyone got back to doing their thing. I was expecting another normal day, going to school, then to my house to eat delicious food, going for a walk with Riku, and at the end of the day reading a story to my favorite two persons, my brothers.

I got to my first class and started to write on my diary. It was just eight fifteen a.m. when I heard the hardest and noisiest sound that could ever be imagined. It was a tremendous noise; it was really loud that everything vibrated. I couldn’t even think about anything because it was really distracting. The vibration didn´t stop and I was trembling because I was scared. How could something be as loud as that? I thought. Then I realized that something was wrong, really wrong. Everybody was screaming because it hurt! The ears hurt! Suddenly my world went black. I thought I was dreaming. I don´t know how but I was below a desk. I didn´t recognize anything, I didn´t even know why smoke was all over the place. It was dark as hell. No one was moving, but at the same time everyone was running and screaming. Inside my head there was only silence. Tears were running down my eyes. Red and orange huge flames were invading everything that I could see. The sky was covered by a huge mushroom cloud. All I could feel was pain, mostly my skin hurt and I was trying to figure out why. The only thing that calmed me down was that I was thinking that my family was fine. No one of my family members was in this building, so I thought that they were fine and that calmed down the pain that I was feeling. All this happened in less than a minute. How could it be possible? When I got the strength to get up to see what had happened and to ask for help, all I saw was hell. I thought I had died in that moment. It was something horrible to look at. Many of my friends were lying dead on the floor. Why was I even walking? I couldn’t help the tears fall of my eyes. I had to find out what had happened, so I kept walking until I don´t know how I got out of hell. I was surprised when I saw that I had just entered into a worst hell. Does that even exist? Everything was burning, everything was black, and the sky was darker than the night. Now I couldn’t support the pain, so I looked for something that wasn´t in flames and sat down just listening to nothing. It was quiet as church, but I could hear sobs. How was I going to find my mother? Where was my father? Was he fine? Were my lovely brothers alive? Did Riku know what had happened? All this questions inside my head gave me the strength to get up and to look for the ones that I care about, my family. Because of the smoke, I couldn’t see a thing, but I kept on going shouting the names of my brothers. Souta! Takumi! Where are you? I just kept shouting, but black rain started falling down. It was full of dirt and dust. I recognized someone and got closer to him. It was Suota. Even if I was hurting, I felt a relief because one of my brothers was okay, and it meant the world to me. Will Takumi be alright? I asked Suota where was Takumi? He didn’t answer me. I started to get nervous when somebody touched my hand. Thanks god it was Takumi. Now we only had to look for the rest of the family. We started to walk to where my house was, but at one point we just gave up and sat on the floor. I didn´t want to say hell anymore so I closed my eyes and fell asleep. Suota woke me up because he was crying and screaming. I didn´t know what to do, he was hurting. I held him tight and sang a song to him. He fell asleep. We stayed there for three days with no water and food. I just remember that I saw a soldier coming toward us, but that´s it, I fainted. When I woke up I saw my brothers, and we were somewhere I didn´t recognize. I quickly stood up and went asking for my parents. I wanted to know if they were okay. Everybody was busy so I decided not to ask anyone and go myself to look for them. It was a tremendous disaster outside. What had happened? I kept walking and saw nothing. More than one half of the buildings I could see were demolished. I went back to the little building where I had woken up. Just when I entered someone was looking for me. Manami? Who is Manami? Someone was asking. I just raised my hand, and then everything stopped. I only heard the sound of a tear hitting the floor. My dad had died. What could be worse than that? Nothing. I didn´t answer, I just went back outside to think. My dad was dead, was my mother also dead?

After four days that we stayed there, my mother appeared. She had all her skin covered by something black. She looked like an old person, but it didn´t matter. She was alive. The three of us went to hug her, and no one could speak. Then a soldier came and told us that the bomb had killed millions of people. Now all my questions were answered. A bomb had caused all this pain. My dad was killed, most of my friends were killed, and even my boyfriend was killed. The nightmare didn´t end that day. Every single day after what had happened, people died because of the radioactive particles that were everywhere. The saddest thing is that my precious Souta died three weeks later.

Now I go to bed every night thinking about that sour day, and I can´t help it but tears start running down my eyes. I just wish it hadn’t had happened.