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Once the first photo had made its way through his hands, then the next, and the following stacks of photos that he shifted through one by one, he was met by a new texture. Rough paper, bumpy and hard from years of its solitary confinement behind the other photos. Eiji straightened out the creases that decorated the once beautiful photo of the two of them, hair and clothes dishevelled from the wind as they stood beneath a large oak tree. The photo now only plagued Eiji with memories that he didn’t want, memories that he could have changed. His eyes glossed over the smile decorating Ash’s light-olive face, the face he had missed so dearly.
Suddenly, Eiji was that same teenager again. It was the summer of 1985, in Cape Cod. The home they’d made in New York City was bustling with life but Ash and Eiji had taken leave from the crowded city and created their own, completely new world in the countryside. The summer was spent with Eiji’s camera in hand, the two boys constantly messing around but capturing photos that Eiji would treasure those seven years later. They meant nothing to him at the time, pieces of memories immortalised in the form of fading polaroids but could never live up to the joy he had felt in those moments.
During that summer, Eiji was just a boy with his best friend, the warm summer breeze pulling at their ankles and luring them to the edge of the cliff face where Ash had liked to sit for hours at a time, staring out into the horizon line that was painted with beautiful reds and oranges and pinks. Through fields of rye, their shirts came loose as they ran and the sun left light pink kisses on their shoulders.
On one evening, they’d collapsed in the middle of a field of rye, pressing their bodies close to the dirt in an attempt to hide from the voices calling them back to the house for dinner. Despite the two boys having met only a few short months ago, New York had been an incredibly unfamiliar and daunting place to Eiji after having resided in the quietest cities of Japan for his entire life. Drawn by the red string of fate, Ash had felt obligated to keep him safe. Eiji was Ash’s saving grace, an anchor to happiness that Ash had never experienced until that summer. Unknowing if it was lucky or unlucky for Eiji to have befriended such a troublesome person, regardless, he found comfort in Ash’s presence and vice versa.
Eiji’s fingers ran over the once-glossy square, colour now dulled from years, seven exactly, spent sitting untouched, gathering dust along with the other photos he had refused to acknowledge even after so much time. The photos that held his fondest memories, of a boy who had once meant the world to him but he now kept locked away, a painful memory that tore long red stripes down his already aching heart. The photo that his heart called for, Eiji and Ash standing beneath a giant oak tree, hair and clothes dishevelled from the warm summer’s wind. Ash was staring right at the camera, his mouth stretched into the widest grin Eiji had ever seen. Eiji, however, had his smile directed straight at Ash and paid no mind to the camera pointed at the two of them. Eiji remembered that moment clearly. It was the one time the two boys could be caught standing still, and they raced off again the second the photo had begun printing from Eiji’s old polaroid camera.
He felt numb. Suddenly void of the overwhelming sadness that had plagued the last seven years of his life until this moment. The brightest, happiest moments of his life in Cape Cod with Ash, the summer where he forgot all else and simply allowed himself to live. To be with Ash. To be close to the person he loved the most. It contrasted so harshly against the darkest parts of his life, the moments he was living through now that, at that moment, he became void of any emotion. The hot, searing pain that had torn through him the night he received the news had only dulled into a prominent ache in his chest in the days to come. It had become too much for even him to bear. Navigating his life without Ash. Even the most mundane tasks felt wrong without his’s voice in the background, yelling at Eiji for his sloppy work. The lack of the cheery American boy in his life plagued Eiji. It had begun as a tight, sickening feeling but now he was numb to it. It felt so wrong that he came to no longer register it as a feeling.
Forever, he had wanted to say. I’ll stay with you forever. Eiji didn’t know why the words had lingered at the back of his throat, refusing to make an appearance even when Ash’s broken state had made Eiji want to abandon everything he’d ever known and hold Ash for as long as it would take. Just the two of them, until Eiji found a way to mend together the remnants of Ash’s heart that were shattered beyond repair. Because it could never be forever, now that Ash was gone. Eiji knew that now.