Chapter Text
1988年
“Walk with me,” she says.
He nods.
The Taipei Guest House is not quite the same in Japan’s memories. Through a faded lense, he remembers the imperial splendor in its graceful baroque structures, that time Emperor Showa visited. He reminds himself it is also where he signed the Treaty of Taipei in 1952. The Taipei Guest House is not his anymore. He is the guest.
If Taiwan noticed the reminiscing glint in his wandering eyes, she gives no indication. She strolls with him through the verdant gardens behind the colonial-style mansion. Lazy sunlight filter through green leaves. There is an atmosphere of peace, leisure, reflected in the pond.
She keeps up a stream of chatter about nothing significant. Even if he broke off diplomatic relations with her in 1972, she likes to think they are somewhat friends.
It's so, so good to hear her voice again. Her martial law had just ended last year. This is the first time he has seen her, after.
Her familiarity unnerves him. Suddenly lacking his usual diplomatic finesse, he blurts out,
“Don't you hate me?”
The question does not catch her off guard; heavens know she has had a long time under house arrest to think of an answer. Her smile is serene, a ripple in a still pond.
“You and I are beyond easy questions,” she replies. “Ask me something harder.”
Time drips like rainwater. He says nothing.
She laughs in his face, more freely and unreservedly than she has ever done with him. “If you asked me if I've felt everything for you, I might have said yes.” There is more to the teasing lilt of her voice.
He averts his gaze.
She observes the subtle changes of his face, the hint of pink under his cheeks and the dip of his lips under his smooth-edged teeth. He has changed, too. Maybe even for the better, she believes.
The pause between them is weighed with history—fifty years of it, together, and then some.
“I haven't forgotten,” she says in a low tone, softly, in Japanese.
He closes his eyes, not quite facing the personification bedside him.
Her pronunciation is still correct but without the perfect, standard accent of a Japanese native. It concerns him that he almost finds her imperfect, foreign accent endearing, it suits her, he'd like to hear more of it.
No, this is not allowed. They have a past that should never be repeated. (A past she should hate him for.)
“I see,” he says, after a long breath.
“But I’d rather look forward.”
She smiles and holds out her hand. It is the promise of a new dawn, a new beginning. This time more as equals, more as friends. “Wouldn't you?”
A taboo memory stirs in his subconscious.
He does not want to remember, he wills himself not to remember it all, but the phantom pain is there. It is the same carved bullet through his brain—
He takes her hand.
—Her smile has never been more blinding.
1992年
The doorbell rings abruptly, shrill and rude against the evening.
Twenty years ago, Japan was the one who broke off diplomatic relations with her. Taiwan just lost her last diplomatic ally in Asia.
He opens the door. Apprehension flickers on his face when he sees her standing there. Briefly though. She shouldn't be visiting him alone, at this hour, unexpected—as if they're close—and yet….
He catches the shadows in her eyes, and words of questioning die in his throat. “Come in,” he says, stepping aside.
She walks in unseeingly, just barely remembering to take off her shoes by the door. Then she stops.
He searches her face for some expression, some emotion. There is nothing there for him to say, so he pries her coat off her shoulders to hang it up instead. She is pliant in a way he is not used to, in a way he finds himself uncomfortable with. He coaxes her onto the couch, and she sits down with her hands in her lap. She does not say a word.
“I heard about South Korea,” Japan says, with caution. He sits down beside her with caution, he gazes at her with caution. Normally, Taiwan would have hated him treating her with such caution, he knows. She isn't delicate, she isn't glass.
Yet, her silence is a chilling echo of a China doll he once knew.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He tries again.
The soft hum of the heater greets his question. She might as well be somewhere far away. For all he knows, she is.
He can't tell where she is now. Is she reliving every moment she lost an ally? Is she drowning herself in the isolation of martial law? He doesn't understand her enough to know, and he doesn't want to know if she's—
If she's losing her hard-won hope.
( It's unthinkable , he thinks. It's too soon. )
The air is slick and oozing like an oil spill.
“Would you like some tea?”
Taiwan doesn't respond to his attempt to gauge a reaction. To her, the world is numb—as if she isn't part of it.
Japan waits for a long moment before getting up and making her tea anyways. It's his one of his most expensive. He presses the warm mug into her hands and watches her thumb trace the porcelain rim.
If she would just talk to him...if she would just talk to him, he would know what to say:
“Why does this always happen?”
“You know why.”
“Maybe I should give up.”
“You must keep going, for the sake of your people.”
Yet when Taiwan finally speaks, Japan still doesn't know how to answer her:
“I’m so tired.”
He reaches around to place a tentative, shaking hand on her shoulder, his fingers stroking over the rounded slope in a rhythmic, repeated gesture. It is everything he doesn't know how to say to her.
A long, immeasurable breath later, she rests her head on his shoulder.
For now, this is enough.
1998年
Time doesn’t exist in the karaoke box—or the KTV, as Taiwan calls the clever variation of the original invention. Saturated and smokey, iridescent luminescence, vertigo. Vibrant neon disco lights swirl. The table is decorated with beer cans and empty plates. The TV screen flickers with a colorful music video. White lyrics fill in blue as she finishes the rock ballad with a victorious whoop and collapses next to Japan on the long couch.
She sighs, satisfied.
They've been singing, and drinking, and eating, for at least three hours straight by now. They've gone through the sad songs, the hype songs, songs in her language, songs in his, songs in English, which neither of them can pronounce particularly well when they're this drunk- To hell with it, really. She thinks they’ve earned this one night of enjoying themselves.
Japan is leaning against the back of the couch, his head thrown back, face flushed with one (or was it five?) too many beers. The top two buttons of his once-crisp white shirt are open. It’s his turn. The instrumentals start playing, but he doesn’t get up.
“Amazing stamina,” Taiwan throws the quip at him as she pauses the song. It's dulled with a slight slur—and maybe a bit of fondness too. “Tsk, why did I even invite you to come with me here? You're no fun.”
He looks at her, unimpressed, but the sentiment falls short in his relaxed posture.
“You’re welcome,” he retorts with an air of magnanimity.
She snorts in laughter, then grins, “Well, if I had to thank you, it would be for not saying yes to China’s Three No’s.”
“It wasn't for you.”
She shrugs. “Still.”
His smile is hazy but gentle. Her eyes drift to the warm space between them. Their hands are close enough to touch but not. The distance between their hands is both 2,100 kilometers and 5 millimeters far.
She stills, observing his profile. He looks soft like this, under kaleidoscopic multicolored lights, eyes closed, a natural curve at his lips—alcohol must be fogging her mind. “It's good to see you.”
“You know,” when he finally speaks, each word is deliberate, “now that you can use your passport at my place again, you can see me more often.”
She bites back a jab that she would have gone to his Winter Olympics if he had just been a few months earlier. Instead, Taiwan simply laughs, “You must be really drunk, huh?”
Japan doesn't say anything. There's too much emotion in his features right now—on anyone else, it would look too sincere, too sober—but she knows him.
Their fingers form a tangent.
“Come on,” she pushes herself from the couch, pulling him up with her. “Next round!”
She skips to the song she wants. The buoyant first notes of the music blare from the speakers. The smile he gives her isn't quite a reflection of hers, but it makes her grin wider nonetheless.
The next song is one they both know. It’s called “Tomorrow.”
2001年
921 Earthquake Museum is open.
Taiwan had told him a few months ago that she went to the opening ceremony. She had said she didn't have time to look at the exhibitions themselves, she had another appointment around the same time.
He had known without her saying: she must've left the ceremony as soon as she could, turned away before the old scars give away to phantom pain and she relives the disaster all over again.
Of course Japan agreed to spend this Golden Week with her. He was there for her in the aftermath—he still is.
They walk along the grass. He remembers nearly two years ago at the scene of disaster. The ravaged earth had manifested as scars on her skin. It was painful to look at, both of them were, he remembers.
It has been two years now.
So much has changed for her since: rebuilding, the new millennium, her first peaceful transfer of power to another party, a new president aggravating her neighbor to the west, a new premier sworn in…. The maturity to her isn't new, but the way her physical appearance reflects it is.
His vision glosses over the nearly imperceptible changes, but he takes in every detail. The lines on her forehead are faint, as if carved by the tip of a knife. Japan frowns in response.
It's quite different, now that he's the one thinking of how to alleviate the solemnity weighing on her slight but sturdy frame.
He wants to tell her that he finally met her former president, Lee Teng-hui, on the flight. A calculated coincidence, of course. Japan liked him in person as much as in articles, television reports, encounters his legislators recounted.
(He did not, however, anticipate the level of personal interest Lee had in his and Taiwan’s…relationship.)
Yet, against the grey rain, Taiwan is so quiet he does not even how to bring up the incident. She would have been amused by it though.
“How are you?” he asks instead.
She has a few answers.
“I'm good,” is what she settles for. The grotesque remnants of Guangfu Junior High School stare at her, hard. Her fingers grip the umbrella handle firmly, but her hand shakes.
The pitter patter of rain sounds like urgent footsteps on stairs of a silent house, a gentle hum of anxiety.
Briefly, his hand brushes over hers when he takes the umbrella from her to shelter them both from the rainwater. They've stopped. He is close enough for her to lean on, but she doesn't.
Thunder bellows. She hides a cracked sound (a laugh? a sob?) behind a hand, wipes the stray raindrops off her cheeks.
“I'm sorry it rains so much here.”
“I don't mind,” he replies, soft. “After the rain...there's always the possibility of a rainbow, no?”
Time halts as she regards him carefully. The smile on his face is terribly quiet, a murmur lost in a monsoon—but she hears him.
“Hm.”
They walk on. The rain is already lightening.
2005年
Two reflections are inked onto tinted glass. One of his, one of hers. In his, he sees change, change in times, in landscape, in a city that used to be his. In hers, he sees clarity, clarity you find only in hoping, in moving forward, in soaring above it all.
“It's impressive.”
“It's the tallest building in the world! ” She laughs.
Up here, she feels immortal. No, she feels like a god. Like she can swallow the sun and rattle the mountains and tear down empires in a breath. (Almost as if she can declare independence and be herself at last.)
There's a wild energy coursing through her veins: the chaotic, the beautiful, the untamed. Lyrical like a savage song mauling through the human essence. He can feel it. If she kisses him now, he can probably taste it on her lips. But she doesn't, and he doesn't need to.
「盛者必衰、実者必虚。」
The words sound sharp to her ears— Those who prosper must decline.
“Speaking from experience?”
He flinches. To him, her voice always sounds like honey, smooth and golden and sweet. He forgets she's all sharp barbs underneath; he isn't used to not being exempt from her acerbic tongue.
“I am simply concerned.” It isn’t quite a glare she gives him, but a shrewd look. Despite the trouble it causes sometimes, he admires that she has never been one to fully believe what he says. He clarifies hastily, “On your behalf as well.”
“I know,” her response is immediate, impatient. “But I also know what I'm doing and what the consequences are,” she paces by the observatory window, urbanite frustration catching up with her like the ant-cars below. Then she stops abruptly. “I must speak up for myself. It's not as if I can count on you, or anyone, to support me.”
They both know she is thinking of the SARS epidemic. She refused to speak to him for months after.
He bows his head as she expected, but he doesn't refute her. (She is disappointed, almost.) Her eyes are overcast, and her sigh is a lonely wind knocking on skyscraper glass to be let in. She turns away before her emotions pour; he reads her like a fluent second language.
“I'm not here to lecture you,” he touches her elbow, tentatively placating the turbulence in her emotions. Her bottom lip juts out in a pout, her shoulders tense before she exhales into his gesture.
She keeps her eyes on the mountainous horizon, keeps her silence with pride, but she lets him stand close. She doesn’t have to compromise herself for their intimacy. She refuses to, and he knows.
“I,” his tone softens, a shade of sunlight through leaves, “have a gift.” He dangles it from his index finger.
It's a small object, a small gesture, but its meaning is colossal. The decades catch in her throat. Cautious optimism burns in her earth-brown eyes when she looks at him for confirmation. “Really?”
“Really.”
He hands her keys to his apartment.
2009年
She leaves bare footprints on a clean white beach. Footprints that disappear in every tide. Taiwan likes to think she’d rather leave something more permanent, like a scar on a boulder, a mark in the landscape. But she knows nature ends up shaping the world in its will, and there, too, is something poetic about things that don't last forever.
There are two sets of footprints. Side by side, on a beach in Hengchun, her southernmost point—the setting of her recent, highest-grossing film.
It is only when he visits her south that he comprehends how different they are. Sometimes, it is easy to project his influence on her in the relics of buildings and the wide, straight roads of Taipei, but the south is the essence of who she is.
The serene atmosphere mimics the calm of the ocean, and Japan understands there is depth beneath the surface—she is just waiting for him to seek it.
“Why did you bring me here?”
She laughs, a deceptively light melody, and answers, “You wanted to come.”
“You asked me,” he reminds her and pauses, watching the way dusk catches on the gentle slope of her nose before meeting her dark-golden gaze. “Why?”
She doesn't answer him, not exactly. Instead, she gestures for him to look:
The sunset paints the sea nostalgic gold, deep and vast. Winds carry sea salt, bitter as unshed tears. Waves lap at the white sand in unfulfilled yearning, yearning and churning and learning how threads tangle and connect through time.
“I wanted to show you,” her voice is low, every word pronounced like shells on sand after the waves recede, “what it looks like—beyond the southern border.”
“Ah.” He looks down at the pearl sand sinking in between his toes. A second, a silence later, he faces the sunset, takes out his camera, and snaps a photograph, like the slap of a wave breaking against the shore. “It's a beautiful view.”
The ocean beats on.
Click.
“We should start heading back or we’ll be late for our reservation.”
“Just a few more moments.” Click. “I'll catch up.” Click. The camera steadies his trembling fingers. He knows she noticed.
But she doesn't say anything, just strolls back to the pavement where their shoes are seated on, looking back between moments. A gnarled old man sitting under an equally wrinkled banyan tree fans offers her some tea. (Perhaps she knew him, sixty years ago.) She accepts with a smile and sits down beside him to watch Japan.
He moves around the sand and sea like a misplaced glass bottle. He looks like he belongs here but at the same time, not. She cannot quite place him. He is an anachronism only she understands.
“What are you here for, young one?”
Taiwan looks at the old man.
“Bringing a friend to see your family, your old home?” As she shakes her head, laughter lines crinkle and crease, sag and smooth. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for our Cape No. 7.”
2012年
There is a sense of déjà vu when he sees her standing by the banks against the dying glow of twilight. Among the fireworks of mortals passing by, she is a singularly shining star. The cut, the fabric, the color of the yukata he bought her, though exquisite in itself, is nothing salient; yet his gaze is drawn to her first. Her, clutching his handwritten invitation in her hand.
Japan feels the space between his ribs keenly—too empty, too full at the same time.
She feels the fine criss-cross texture of the small invitation card on her
fingers, his handwriting inscribing her skin. Her teeth sink into her glossy lip as she searches for his visage in the crowd. Her heart holds its breath.
She knows it’s him when someone touches her elbow: firm, but not intruding. Tender as a trickle of streamwater. Familiar as the centuries written in her palms.
“Took you long enough,” Taiwan says, with a dissonant smile meant for mid-summer midday suns.
“I sincerely apologize,” he bows, too formal to be serious, but the festive spirit of summer seeps into the corner of his lips.
By chance (a little) and his punctuality (a lot), they manage to get a good viewing spot of the vermillion Otorii, despite a few detours to buy them (her, mostly) some snacks. The Miyajima Fireworks Festival weaves a patchwork crowd of locals and tourists, on the island and on the banks. The waves rise in anticipation. The line between spirit world and mortal world blurs into the night. The flow of time seems to freeze as the hour of exploding lights near.
He calls her name and tells her quietly, “I should have said this publicly a year ago—this year too—but...thank you.”
Her eyes widen. “What?” she asks, but not in confusion.
Her humility is endearingly artless. He smiles and turns her around to face him.
“Thank you,” he says, earnestness illuminating his liquid eyes. “Truly, thank you.”
“Stop…. You’re making me self-conscious,” she averts her gaze, lantern light staining her cheeks red. Her voice dips to a simple murmur, “It’s not as if you didn’t help me a lot, too, with 921.”
He is a little breathless as he laughs, a hand sliding down to her open palm. “I won’t forget,” he promises.
At that, she looks up, eyebrows rising in skepticism. Yet, she leans in when he does.
With their foreheads against each other’s, she slowly smiles.
“Ah, look!”
Fireworks streak across the sky like meteors, like epiphanies, like past human lives they’ve never lived.
The metro is overcrowded afterwards. The distance between them has shortened from 2,100 kilometers to 0 in the metro car. They are anonymous, even normal , in the buzzing crowd. The thought makes her chuckle into his shoulder. The door opens to let people get off at their stop, night air countering the hum of body heat. And even as humans come, and go, and live, and die, their fingers remain entwined.
2015年
The balcony is wide enough for their world, even if the world isn't wide enough for them.
Taiwan rests her elbows the railing, watching as Tokyo glitters in the night, full of tomorrow promises. Neon signs in the distance animate glass windows and brick tiles. Energized and dynamic as Manhattan, yet distinctly him. The autumn breeze elicits an involuntary shiver from her spine like a tall glass of iced water down her throat.
She is waiting. For something, someone. (Someday.)
His cigarette smoke dilutes in the open air. On the balcony, Japan can indulge in his bad habit without suffocating her. Nations, they do that to each other: inhibit and limit, but also strengthen and develop. The world has to be wide enough for that. The balcony is.
He is admiring the view. Of Tokyo, too, of course, but mainly her. Her spine spells the ridges of her Central Mountain Chain, strands of her hair artfully arranged like whiskers of a banyan tree. Contrasting the meticulous makeup he is accustomed to seeing, she has an endearingly careless charm; there is nothing artificial in the curves that constitute her form, her features. Emotion bubbles up in his chest, glittering champagne overflowing a glass.
He takes another drag.
She smiles when she catches him staring. He toasts her with a tilt of his beer. She drops her gaze to the chu-hi in her hand. The sparkling sweet alcohol simmers into something a little sour in her contemplation. She tastes peaches,
“Sometimes I wonder if this is all in my head.”
Japan snuffs the cigarette and washes down the bitter taste with cold beer. Alcohol and smoke twine in his throat, a charming, harming sensation. He walks behind her to encircle his arms around her waist, his chin perched on her shoulder.
“What's wrong?” The soft timbre of his voice caresses the shell of her ear.
She maneuvers her face towards him, just centimeters apart. “Nothing,” she says, “nothing's wrong.” Her smile resembles city lights in smoke: melancholic lovely, melancholic lonely. She turns around and leans into him, a physical reassurance that he is here. “I was just thinking.”
His silence speaks more of resignation than guilt. There is never a right answer when it comes to her.
“...you know I can't help the nature of our relationship.”
It has always been different in official contexts. Sometimes he has to play the indifferent stranger, sometimes he even has to pretend she doesn't exist. Whatever they have in private is only allowed to exist in the spaces between words, the pauses between conversations. (In the eyes of their neighbors, maybe they shouldn't even be allowed at all.)
“I know,” her understanding is glaringly calm, a headlight cutting through an empty midnight street. Her hand covers his, fingers linking, squeezing lightly. “I don't blame you.”
He presses a firm kiss onto her shoulder. It's the closest to an apology she will get from him. She takes it anyways.
Nations must always put their self-interests first.
2017年
The plum blossoms are in full bloom all across the grounds of Atami Baien (熱海梅園). Some are fragrant snow caught on ink branches, others are embroidered embellishments of a saturated spring. From the purest white to the brightest pink, plum blossoms are everywhere, flourishing without apology.
Taiwan walks a few steps ahead of Japan, each step vivid, with the spring wind in her wake. Pale petals speckle her hair and the cream-colored cashmere scarf he gave her years ago. Her blue winter coat is particularly distinctive against the variegated pinks, weaving in and out and in between the flowering trees.
She is searching for the cherry blossoms of early February, he knows— She has a special fondness for them, a fact that pleases him more than she ever has to know.
She glances back to catch the curious expression on his face as he watches her. It takes her a second to decipher, and she smiles in understanding. He bites his lip. It's not that he shows too much, it's that she understands too well. She doesn't need him to speak to know what he's saying. So she twirls around and leads on with a new vivacity in her footsteps.
They do not talk, do not hold hands. Their intimacy is not so easily articulated in the language of the conventional. He is content at a distance. She takes pictures of flowers, and he takes pictures of her. His camera roll always sees a sharp increase of photographs whenever their paths cross. Strange.
In this photo, she looks like heaven. No wind, no rain. Not her usual sunlit, springlike smile, but one that reminds you: she is not a vernal existence, but a hiemal one, of flowers that persevere and thrive in the unforgiving frost.
A fallen petal breaks his fixation. He favorites the photo and looks up, but she has already disappeared from his vision.
Biting back a smile of amusement, he searches for her in their surroundings. His gait is meticulous, as if not wanting to disturb the earth. The hand he keeps on the wrinkled bark is gentle, reverent. It is only when he goes back to the beginning that he sees her waiting for him already, a small flower in her hand and a playful smile on her lips.
Taiwan steps forward and tucks a plum blossom in his breast pocket, almost crimson against his heavy gray coat. Her voice has the lilt of a songbird freed, upsetting leaves and teasing clouds when she asks:
「日台友好？」
Japan reaches out and plucks a cherry blossom, a tender shade of pale pink, to place behind her ear. His reply is a confident one:
「日台友好｡」
This is what defines them, no matter what colonial history they shared then, no matter what strategic motivations they have now: the unmistakable warmth she sees in the depth of his loud gaze. It is there, and it is real.
( As tangible as the red string that binds them. )
She reciprocates with a smile.
今
Cicadas are singing.
Rather noisily, like the sounds in her night markets. But it is in good cheer: it wards off the creeping loneliness of the mountains. Taiwan drove them up here in the middle of the night for a spontaneous stargazing trip. (It is difficult now, to see the stars in Taipei.)
Fireflies flicker, playing hide and seek in the bushes. Japan prays the mosquitoes will have mercy on him. (They usually don’t.) Her summer nights are always so humid. A thin sheen of sweat is already glistening on the back of his neck, but she doesn't seem as bothered, swinging her legs as they sit on the car hood.
Over their heads are the stars—bright silver specks dappling an ink-indigo canvas. No cloudy veils obscure the sight, only the occasional plane passing by, leaving tracks that disappear. Celestial light is spilling from the pores as if the night cannot contain the heavens. It touches the earth. Mortal eyes fill with wonder. Science dictates they are simply luminous spheres of plasma, burning bright from billions of light years far.
“In a billion light years, what do you think will become of Japan and Taiwan?”
The question permeates through the silence. She keeps her eyes on the impishly winking stars. Eternity to them must mean so little to the stars. That light from dead stars still exists here on Earth—how strange and wonderful is that?
Strands of her unbound hair sway in the summer breeze. He glances at her from his peripherals. She is very still, a breathing work of art, a living testament to her history.
“I suppose,” he says, slow and solemn and serene as death, “we would no longer exist.”
She chuckles. Her eyes glitter in starlight. Her voice dances with mischief, humor, and a bit of challenge, “You don’t think the world will finally be at peace?”
In spite of everything, she still has an unusual capacity to hope, a luminous resilience. He admires that about her: how beautiful, rose-colored flowers—wild lilies, sunflowers—grow in her most sorrowful cracks.
“Destruction has always come more easily to us than peace,” he replies, thinking of mistakes they have made, again and again and again. “It will always come first.”
She holds his gaze evenly, finding only calm acceptance in the bottomless dark. History thrums in their blood, singing for a tomorrow. A tomorrow that will someday come and pass and end. A corner of her lips twitches upwards, curved like a comet.
“Then, may we meet in a peaceful world.”
They understand each other’s smiles.
Leaning back on the car hood, Taiwan stares at the stars, wondering if they stare back, how many of them have already perished, and how many will live to see them perish. Next to her, Japan observes her profile, memorizing in detail that small, unknowable yet knowing smile on her lips, then follows her gaze across the eternal night sky.
Under starlight from a billion light years far, his tectonic fingers shift over hers.