Wounds and Barriers -傷害と障害 English ver-

Two young men meet in the same care facility.

Yuu was born with a disability.
Koichi lost the use of his legs after an accident.

Their backgrounds are different, their ways of living entirely separate, yet they are placed within the same structure—one built on care, gratitude, and silent expectations.

At first, they struggle to understand one another.

Yuu has long been accustomed to being helped.
Koichi cannot bear the weight of being seen as someone who must be helped.

As they talk, clash, and remain beside one another in silence, both begin to notice the ambiguity hidden inside the word disability.

What lies beneath the structure of “the one who helps” and “the one who is helped”?

How much violence can be concealed inside kindness?

This story is a quiet dialogue about the structures embedded in society itself—
a question directed toward what we call normal, what we call support, and what it means to stand as equals.

In the silence and friction between two wounded lives,
the limits of both people and systems slowly come into view.

Chapter 1: I Was Used to Being Helped

Saying “thank you” had become a habit.

Someone helped me with something.
I thanked them.

That was how my life moved forward.

But one day, a thought suddenly came to me.

Was I really saying thank you because I wanted to?

Or was I saying it because if I didn’t, people would see me as lacking something—as less than a proper person?

Once that thought entered my mind, the words began to feel heavier.

I live in a care facility now.

My parents are still alive, but because of family circumstances, this has become the place I call home.

I move with the help of a lift.
Meals are brought to me by someone else.
Even bathing requires assistance.

And yet… I rarely feel as if I am being helped.

Somewhere inside me, this has simply become normal.

Because of that, when someone does something for me, what I feel is not exactly gratitude.

It is closer to saying, good work.

Does that make me cold?

No.

Perhaps it is because my entire life has been built too heavily upon gratitude.

Today, someone new arrived.

A man in a wheelchair, a little older than me.

But there was something different about him.

Something in the air around him did not feel like the others.

When one of the staff members welcomed him, I caught the brief twist at the corner of his mouth.

Perhaps he had already noticed the surface-level kindness in their voices.

His name, I heard, was Koichi.

At that moment, something caught inside my chest.

A small, sharp feeling.

As if, somehow, this person might become someone who would break apart everything I had once accepted as ordinary.

Chapter 2: I Had Always Been the Outsider

The accident took my legs.

That was what people said.

But the truth was, what changed first was not me.

It was the way the world began to look at me.

Suddenly, I became someone people had to be careful around.

Someone to be helped.

Someone to be considered.

The temperature of people’s voices changed.
The distance between bodies changed.
Even silence changed.

Before the accident, I had always been a little out of step with everyone else.

I was never good at reading the room.

If I had something to say, I said it.
If I wasn’t interested, I never bothered pretending.

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was in middle school.

To be honest, I never really cared about the label itself.

What I understood was simpler than that.

I was different.

But back then, that difference was still something people could laugh with.

I was just that slightly strange guy.

That was enough.

At least, it had been.

Until I became disabled.

After leaving the hospital, there were choices.

I could go back to my parents’ house.

I could live alone with visiting care.

But I chose the facility.

To me, the controlled discomfort of an institution felt easier than the illusion of freedom inside someone else’s home.

I wanted to know how much of myself I could still keep inside a place built on rules.

The facility was called Tsubasa.

Wings.

A name so gentle it almost felt ironic.

On my first day, one of the staff asked me,

“Is there anything you need help with?”

I answered immediately.

“I’m a little allergic to the phrase I want to help you.”

The look on their face was almost funny.

A brief moment of confusion.

A crack in the script.

Good.

That was fine.

I wasn’t here to become accustomed to being supported.

I was here as someone who had not yet learned how to be helped.

And maybe—

I had no intention of learning.

Chapter 3: A Stranger Called a Helper

I have been doing this work for almost ten years.

Care work.

People like to reduce it to three things.

Hard. Dirty. Underpaid.

They are not entirely wrong.

And yet, I chose this.

No one pushed me into it.

When I was a child, my mother raised me alone.

She worked during the day, sometimes through the night, and I often watched her lower her head in front of neighbors, offices, and support organizations.

Application forms for public assistance.
Business cards from welfare groups.
Stacks of papers that seemed to decide whether a life could continue.

Ours was a life that could not survive without relying on someone else.

But my mother never treated that as shame.

She never wore gratitude like a chain.

She simply endured, moved, and kept going.

Without words, she taught me what strength looked like.

Without saying it aloud, she taught me what kindness meant.

Perhaps that is why I chose to become the one who supports others.

But once I entered the field, I learned something quickly.

Ideals do not keep systems running.

Good intentions are swallowed by procedures.

Little by little, touching a person becomes less important than recording what happened to them.

Today, the new resident arrived.

Koichi.

Young.
Recently disabled.
Sharp eyes.

What stayed with me was not his wheelchair.

It was the way he looked directly at people, as if measuring the distance between their words and their intentions.

When I asked if there was anything he needed, he replied at once.

“I’m a little allergic to the phrase I want to help you.”

For a moment, I did not know what to say.

It felt as though something inside me had been quietly accused.

As if the kindness I had built my identity upon had suddenly been placed under a harsh light.

Then he said something else.

“People who approach me with the assumption that I need help always close the distance in exactly the same way.”

That line stayed with me.

Long after the conversation ended.

On my way back to the office, I found myself thinking about my mother.

She never spoke to people as if they were objects of support.

She met them as people living alongside her.

Somewhere along the way, perhaps I had become too comfortable standing on the side of the one who helps.

Too secure in the role.

Too protected by the title.

What is a helper, really?

A qualification?

A role?

Or merely a socially accepted excuse to cross into someone else’s life?

For the first time in years, I wondered whether the line I believed I was protecting was, in fact, a wall I had built myself.

Chapter 4: The Feeling of Being Killed by Kindness

Yuu

“Um… is it okay if I sit here?”

The lounge during the afternoon break.

Sunlight fell softly across the floor, and a small breeze moved through the open window.

I usually spent time here alone, saying nothing.

That day, it was Koichi who spoke first.

“It’s not like I wanted to talk or anything.
The sunlight just looked nice over here.
…Mind if I join you?”

“Sure.”

He sat down beside me and opened a can of coffee.

The metallic click of the lid sounded strangely clear in the quiet.

Natural.

Unforced.

Koichi

Silence isn’t always uncomfortable.

Sometimes it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Yuu never reacts too much.

He doesn’t rush to understand.

But he doesn’t reject what I say either.

There’s something strangely comfortable about that.

Maybe that’s why the words slipped out.

“How long have you been here?”

“About a year and a half.
…What about you?”

“Two weeks.”

“Already getting used to it?”

I let out a short laugh.

“No way.”

Yuu

The way he said it—No way—

was so direct that it hurt a little.

For me, getting used to things had always been a way of surviving.

But perhaps for him, becoming accustomed meant something closer to surrender.

After a moment, I asked the question that had been sitting somewhere inside me for a long time.

“…What do you think about the words thank you?”

Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure why.

Perhaps I had wanted to ask someone for a long time.

Koichi

“Thank you.”

A phrase I’d heard all my life.

And yet, ever since coming here, it had started to feel unbearably heavy.

“If the atmosphere already says you’re supposed to say it, then it’s not gratitude anymore, is it?”

Yuu’s eyes widened slightly.

That was when I realized it.

We were carrying the same discomfort.

Maybe not the same life.

But the same weight.

I looked down at the coffee can in my hand.

Then I said it.

Quietly.

“I think I’ve started to understand what it means to be killed by kindness.”

Yuu

Something inside me shifted.

No—

not broke.

Softened.

As if something rigid that had been holding me together had finally loosened.

The strange thing was, it didn’t feel frightening.

For the first time, being with someone without forcing the words thank you out of my mouth felt like relief.

I had never imagined that simply being able to remain beside someone in silence could feel so much like being saved.

Chapter 5: I Think “Thank You” Is a Curse

The words thank you have a warm sound to them.

At least, that is what people like to believe.

Soft.

Gentle.

Proper.

But ever since that conversation with Koichi, every time the phrase reached my lips, I felt myself becoming smaller.

That night, I could not sleep.

His words stayed with me.

If the atmosphere already says you’re supposed to say it, then it isn’t gratitude anymore.

They clung to the inside of my mind.

I first learned to say thank you when I was in elementary school.

A teacher pressed the elevator button for me.

Before I could say anything, my mother leaned down and whispered,

“Say thank you.”

At first, it was only manners.

A lesson.

A small piece of discipline.

But over time, it changed.

Manners became expectation.

Expectation became obligation.

And obligation became something like a spell.

A word I repeated to preserve the shape of myself.

Koichi had broken that spell with a single sentence.

Strangely, being broken felt close to relief.

And yet, it also terrified me.

As if something inside me that had always been covered was suddenly exposed.

The next day, I found him again.

“About what you said yesterday…
I’ve been thinking about it.”

Koichi looked slightly embarrassed.

“Ah… sorry.
Did I say something weird?”

“No.
The opposite.”

I paused.

“Maybe… maybe I’ve been waiting for someone to say it.”

For a moment, he looked down.

Then he said quietly,

“Sometimes I wonder if we’re saying thank you to the wrong thing.”

“The wrong thing?”

“Yeah.”

He turned toward me.

“Sometimes it feels like we’re thanking the system instead of the person.”

I didn’t answer right away.

Because I understood.

There is a difference between thanking a person and thanking a structure.

One comes from the heart.

The other is demanded by the world around you.

Perhaps I had never once stopped to ask myself who I had been thanking all this time.

Kindness can save people.

But kindness can also create a form of submission without anyone noticing.

Perhaps I had lived inside both.

For the first time, I thought this:

Maybe thank you only becomes real when it exists inside a relationship of equals.

Chapter 6: Beyond Forgiveness, There Is Anger

Perhaps I had been taught gratitude too well.

Every time I said thank you, a small part of what I truly felt seemed to disappear.

Something inside me—something selfish, raw, and human—was slowly worn away.

There were things people had done for me that I had needed.

That was true.

But there were also things I never wanted.

Things done in the name of care.

Things done before I was ever asked.

And yet, there had never been room to say that.

My parents had always supported me.

I know they suffered far more than I ever saw.

Because I knew that, I convinced myself that I had no right to be angry.

No right to complain.

No right to wound the people who had spent so much of themselves keeping me alive.

But now, for the first time, a thought rose clearly inside me.

Why do all of my feelings have to be painted over with gratitude and guilt?

A few days later, I went home for the first time in a while.

My mother greeted me with the same gentle tone she had always used.

“How are things at the facility?
Are they taking good care of you?”

“…Yeah.”

“Are you saying thank you properly?
It’s important to say it right away when someone helps you—”

“Please stop.”

The words left my mouth before I could hold them back.

My voice shook.

My mother froze.

“Thank you isn’t just a word you use to accept whatever people do for you.”

She stared at me.

I could hear my own heartbeat.

“In a world where everyone already assumes I need to be helped,
why is gratitude the only language I’m allowed to use?”

The room became silent.

“Yuu…”

Her voice was small.

I kept going.

Because if I stopped now, I knew I would lose the words again.

“I’ve been angry.”

The words came out quietly.

More quietly than I expected.

“For a long time.”

I looked at her.

“I was always afraid of the way people looked at me.
As if my role was to remain helpless and be grateful for it.”

I swallowed.

“That kindness…
sometimes it frightened me.”

For years, I had forgiven everything before it could become anger.

I had translated every wound into understanding.

Every pain into gratitude.

But beneath all of that, something had remained.

Undigested.

Alive.

Now, for the first time, I could finally name it.

Anger.

Perhaps this was what it meant to begin living as myself.

Chapter 7: What Does It Mean to Help?

Someone once said to me,

“I really want to help people like you.”

The moment I heard it, I almost wanted to ask,

People like who?

Not me.

Not Koichi.

Not a person.

What they meant was a disabled person.

A label.

A category.

Something already defined before I had even opened my mouth.

Words spoken with good intentions can cut more sharply than open hostility.

Sometimes kindness is the sharper blade.

Especially when it is sincere.

Especially when the person saying it truly believes they are doing something good.

I had always been bad at reading the room.

But I never thought that made me special.

I said strange things sometimes.

People laughed.

I laughed too.

That was enough.

But the moment I started using a wheelchair, people stopped laughing.

Now I had become someone to be careful around.

Someone whose presence changed the temperature of a room.

And I hated it.

Yesterday, I spoke with Yuu.

His words stayed with me.

“Sometimes thank you feels heavier than breathing.”

That line had lodged itself somewhere inside my chest.

He had spent his whole life inside support.

And still, he was suffering.

That was when I understood something.

Maybe I am not fundamentally different from him.

Maybe I am simply less accustomed to being helped.

And maybe, one day, if I stay here long enough, I too will begin saying thank you automatically.

The thought terrified me.

Because that would mean something inside me had finally given in.

What does it actually mean to help someone?

Physical assistance?

Support for daily life?

A social role?

No.

That cannot be all.

Maybe helping someone means staying beside them without changing the shape of who they are.

The helper here isn’t a bad person.

He’s careful.

Quiet.

Observant.

But that distance he keeps—

that professional distance—

it suffocates me.

Every word I throw out seems to come back translated into the language of the system.

That’s not what I want.

I don’t need someone to understand me.

I don’t even need agreement.

Sometimes all I need is someone who can simply remain there.

Without turning me into a case.

Without turning me into a project.

I am not something to be fixed.

I am not a rehabilitation plan.

I just want to remain myself.

Chapter 8: For Whom Does Righteousness Exist?

Support begins with what people call righteousness.

A desire to do what is right.

A desire to protect, assist, and sustain.

But when righteousness accumulates layer upon layer, it gradually transforms into something else.

Administration.

Operation.

Management.

When I founded this facility, Tsubasa, I promised myself one thing.

It would never become just another institution.

At the time, I had been volunteering in the community.

Accompanying people on shopping trips.
Listening to them speak.
Writing letters for those who could no longer hold a pen.

Small acts.

Ordinary acts.

Yet within them, I felt something real.

The feeling of touching another person’s life.

But reality arrived quickly.

The number of people needing help continued to grow.

The number of people willing to help did not.

Self-sacrifice alone could not sustain a life.

And kindness, no matter how sincere, was never enough to support someone over the long term.

That was when I made the decision.

I stopped being the one who helped.

Instead, I became the one who moved the system.

It was not an extension of volunteer work.

It was a break from it.

Now my desk is covered with paperwork.

Staff schedules.

Care plans.

Assessment forms.

Funding reports.

Every sheet of paper is supposed to exist for someone’s life.

And yet, there are days when I can no longer see anyone’s face behind them.

Yesterday, one of the staff members submitted a report.

“Koichi has been displaying resistance toward support.”

“He appears to be forming a close relationship with Yuu.”

“His perception of care seems somewhat unusual.”

Unusual.

The word lingered in my mind.

It carried the quiet anxiety of anything that falls outside structure.

I looked away from the documents and stared out the window.

What does it actually mean for this place to be right?

To support daily life?

To provide safety?

To remain within the boundaries of the system?

Or perhaps—

to silence everything that cannot be fully supported by wrapping it in the language of care?

Yuu is someone who was taught gratitude.

Koichi is someone who resists the very structure of gratitude.

And yet both of them are trying, in their own ways, to live beside another human being.

That much is certain.

While I have been focused on keeping everything running, perhaps something essential has been quietly slipping through the cracks.

People who can no longer fully exist as either the one who helps or the one who is helped.

For whom does righteousness exist?

The institution?

The evaluators?

The people inside these walls?

Or the fragile space between them?

Chapter 9: Just Being Beside Someone Is Enough

Reaching out a hand is not always what support means.

Sometimes support is simply remaining beside someone.

When that thought first came to me, I found myself unable to move.

I saw Koichi and Yuu in the courtyard.

They were talking.

No—

it was something quieter than conversation.

Their words did not seem chosen with care, and yet they never collided.

Between them existed a space that could only be called equality.

A place with no assigned roles.

No helper.

No one being helped.

Just two people sharing the same air.

I watched them from a distance.

And for the first time, I did nothing.

If I stepped in, I felt something fragile might break.

If I spoke, the words would inevitably become institutional words.

Words for the record.

Words for evaluation.

Words for continuation of services.

So I remained still.

Watching.

When I was younger, my mother once said something I never fully understood.

“People who are truly struggling sometimes cannot even say thank you.”

I think I finally understand what she meant.

A relationship in which thank you can be spoken so easily often already contains a fixed structure.

One person supports.

The other receives.

But between those two—

Yuu and Koichi—

that division no longer seemed to exist.

I found myself wondering what I had really been doing all these years.

Assistance.

Care.

Support.

Had all of it simply been the language of the system?

Had I spent so much time thinking about how to handle people that I had forgotten how to truly see them?

Today felt different.

Watching the two of them in the fading afternoon light, I felt something I had not felt in years.

Perhaps simply being here—

simply sharing the same place and moment—

is already a form of support.

Support is neither distance nor intrusion.

It is presence.

For the first time, I think I understood that.

Chapter 10: Voices That Cannot Be Recorded

My hand stopped just before I submitted the report.

As always, I was about to type the usual phrases.

Positive social interaction.
Emotionally stable.
No significant concerns.

But something about those words felt wrong.

No—

not wrong.

Empty.

What Yuu and Koichi had been building between them was not support.

It was something far more difficult to name.

A relationship of equals.

A connection that could not be translated into administrative language.

How was I supposed to record that?

Spontaneous interpersonal development?

Natural communication between residents?

None of it came close.

Every phrase felt like a lie.

I took the unfinished report and walked to the owner’s office.

Her desk, as always, was covered in documents.

Schedules.

Funding applications.

Performance evaluations.

Paper upon paper that kept the facility alive.

“Do you have a moment?”

She looked up and nodded.

My voice sounded tighter than usual.

“Can you still see what’s happening on the floor?”

She paused.

“What do you mean?”

I took a breath.

“I understand that our job is to record, report, and keep the system moving.”

I looked down at the report in my hand.

“But what exists between Yuu and Koichi cannot be described within the language of this system.”

She said nothing.

So I continued.

“The system only functions when we divide people into the ones who help and the ones who are helped.”

I heard my own voice grow firmer.

“But because we keep looking at people through that division, we’re losing sight of real connection.”

“There are voices on the floor that cannot be recorded.”

I placed the report on her desk.

“And I think those voices are where support truly begins.”

She let out something close to a sigh.

“I understand what you’re trying to say.”

Her tone was calm.

“But if we do not record what happens, we do not receive evaluations.”

“If we do not receive evaluations, the support ends.”

“The facility cannot survive.”

I knew she was right.

That was the reality.

And yet—

“Then at least listen.”

The words left me before I could soften them.

“Listen to the voices that cannot be evaluated.”

“The conversations that do not count as support.”

“If there is no place for those voices, then welfare will remain a system that exists only to preserve itself.”

I did not raise my voice.

I did not shout.

But what stood inside those words was unmistakable.

Anger.

A quiet anger that felt almost identical to a plea.

Chapter 11: Different, Yet the Same

Yuu

I found myself spending more and more time with Koichi.

It no longer felt like conversation.

It was closer to breathing.

He would say something.

I would answer.

And somehow, without either of us trying, time would continue moving beside us.

My words are small.

Carefully arranged.

His words are rougher.

Direct.

But they feel alive in a way mine often do not.

One afternoon, while we sat in the courtyard, Koichi said quietly,

“You really are kind.”

I looked at him.

“Am I?”

“Yeah.”

He paused.

“But sometimes… that scares me.”

“Scares you?”

He gave a short laugh.

“Kindness can become the only word people allow themselves to use.”

I looked down.

I understood.

Koichi

Yuu is the kind of person people would call proper.

Careful.

Composed.

The kind of person who always seems to know how to make himself smaller for the sake of others.

Sometimes that makes him difficult to look at.

Too bright.

Not because he is perfect.

Because it feels as though he was shaped to become this way.

As if kindness was carved into him before he ever had the chance to choose it.

“I’ve always been off somehow,” I said.

“A little out of rhythm with everyone else.”

I looked over at him.

“Honestly… I envy the way you can say things like thank you so naturally.”

Yuu was silent for a moment.

Then he said something unexpected.

“I always thought the opposite.”

I turned toward him.

“The opposite?”

He nodded.

“I wanted to be able to say when something feels wrong.”

His voice was quiet.

“Like you do.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then we both laughed.

Softly.

Not because anything was funny.

But because something inside that silence felt true.

Yuu

It was a strange feeling.

Somewhere between difference and similarity, there was something that felt almost like belonging.

Perhaps both of us had spent so long existing outside of places meant for other people that we had finally found a space where we could simply remain.

Different.

And yet the same.

As if both things could exist at once.

“We really are…”

I began.

Koichi finished the thought.

“Different, but somehow alike.”

This time, we laughed together.

And for the first time, it felt as though we had reached something beyond support, beyond labels, beyond systems.

Just two people.

Alive in the same moment.

Chapter 12: No One Is Wrong, and Yet It Hurts

Yuu

Spending time with Koichi had quietly become part of my daily life.

And yet, every now and then, a thought would surface.

I do not possess words that know how to become anger the way his do.

When I think, I want to be able to do more, another voice always appears somewhere inside me.

Isn’t that selfish?

Isn’t that asking too much?

Even so, I do not want to let go of that wish.

Koichi

When Yuu says, “I want to be able to do more,” something in me tightens.

His words are straight.

Bright.

But they also frighten me.

I have spent so much time thinking about what I lost.

How things used to be.

How my body once moved without thought.

But Yuu—

he has been standing at a different starting point from the beginning.

And still, here we are, speaking as though we are side by side.

Sometimes that thought makes me uneasy.

Not because it is false.

Because it feels too true.

The Helper

I found myself once again staring at the report sheet.

My hand would not move.

Spontaneous interaction observed.
Emotionally stable.

None of those phrases belonged to what I had witnessed.

What is support?

Helping someone become capable?

Preventing them from suffering?

Reducing risk?

None of those words seem to fit what exists between those two.

For the first time, the language of care felt smaller than the lives in front of me.

The Owner

“The relationship is becoming difficult to predict.”

“Unexpected emotional dependency may be developing.”

Those were the phrases used in the meeting.

I quietly closed the folder.

Unpredictable.

Why is that word always treated as a problem?

Sometimes unpredictability is simply proof that human beings still exist beyond structure.

Yuu’s smile has become slightly more fragile.

Koichi’s words have grown sharper.

The question before me is no longer operational.

Do I see these changes as something to be corrected?

Or as evidence that life itself is moving inside this place?

Yuu

I am tired of kindness.

And yet I still want to remain connected to someone.

That contradiction alone is exhausting.

Sometimes even the relationship that saves you begins to drift out of alignment.

No one is wrong.

No one is trying to hurt anyone.

And yet—

it hurts.

Koichi

There are moments when words like help and support become obstacles.

But we still do not know what words should replace them.

Silence is not escape.

Sometimes silence is the purest way of remaining with someone.

Perhaps it is not the system that is broken.

Perhaps it is the way we have been taught to look.

I want, just a little, to forgive the version of myself that cannot always feel grateful.

I only want one thing.

To remain beside someone.

To keep living.

That is all.

Epilogue: The Question That Will Continue to Support Someone Tomorrow

That day, Yuu did not say thank you.

Koichi did not reject anything.

Neither of them tried to support the other.

They simply remained there.

Carrying the weight of everything that still had no words.

Sitting side by side beneath the same sky.

Not saving one another.

Not fixing one another.

Just being.

The helper did not write a report that evening.

The owner quietly postponed one task scheduled for the next morning.

That night, no one was rescued.

And yet, no one broke.

Between wounds and barriers lies something without a proper name.

Pain that systems cannot classify.

Care that cannot be evaluated.

Distance that cannot be measured.

And yet, in that uncertain space, someone was undeniably there.

The question remained without an answer.

Left quietly inside that ambiguous place called welfare.

In the soft light of the lobby, their shadows stood beside one another.

Between those two shadows existed something no institution could ever fully record.

A relationship.

Later that night, Yuu noticed an envelope resting on the shared shelf near the entrance.

There was no name written on it.

But the slightly uneven handwriting made it obvious who it was from.

To Yuu

He opened it carefully.

I will never forget the day you became angry in front of me.

Perhaps I have been supporting others from the assumption that I would be forgiven.

Perhaps that was never kindness at all.

Perhaps it was only my own need to feel secure.

Now there is only one thing I truly wish for.

That you may continue living in your own words.

Yuu folded the letter quietly.

Then, for a moment, he closed his eyes.

There was no gentle answer waiting beyond the question.

No final resolution.

No salvation.

And yet—

what remained was something perhaps more important.

A relationship in which questions could still be thrown toward one another.

A relationship that endured.

Outside the window, in the quiet light of the night, two shadows moved slightly beside one another.

And in the space between them,

something beyond care,

beyond gratitude,

beyond the system,

continued to exist.