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The air conditioning is bad here, is the first thing I notice as I enter your apartment. It's also messy. It nearly reminds me of my old house.
But I scoff at that, nothing is as bad as that place. Nights never seem to pass fast enough, words are tangled in the walls while the ceiling takes a new shape every time I look at it. It's enough to remind me that it was just a house—not home. That's because home, through clouded memories, became wherever you were.
Home was catching hard-headed beetles writhing on trees with legs those of spiders, cicadas singing on the leaves as my knees swam in the boggy dirt. Home was hiding under thin bedsheets and whispering about stories past curfew, snorting and giggling as we hoped the clock would stop moving. Home was where you warmly smile at me without a care in the world.
This, however, is just an apartment. Empty and barren where the restless cry. Throwing my head back, swallowing the last drops of beer, and humming away to a faint melody in my mind. Years it has taken me to finally notice how empty this apartment truly was. A creak that sounds from a floorboard is a screech that hollows throughout the walls of the white paper, forever ignored by the next one that echoes.
I pass by and see a flash of red and snap my head to it. It's your shirt laying on top of my sofa, almost like a gentle reminder that you are trapped behind ceramic bars where no one but I can find. There's a trail of blood that starts at my doorstep and right to your cell and, for today, I won't take it. Though when I look at the shirt again, I don't blink twice before bringing it to bed with me, dreaming of hiding under covers with you once more.
I recall you saying something in Serena one day, retelling the events of Kuze's endless endeavors, "There are no K.O's in Yakuza. The one who wins the fight is not the winner, the one who can't tough it out at the end is the one who loses." Or something along those lines. But you smile, like the thought of an inside joke, and I don't understand why but you're smiling so I go along with it for now.
But he wishes for something more, though it is not said with words it is said with sense, he wishes to be growing in a grand forest along with the other lavenders and I cannot blame him. For who am I, a simple autumn leaf drained of life, going to blame when asked to be trampled by the stars? Light your heart ablaze, I tell him, as to what I have given up is nothing compared to what your endeavors have treated you—you are meant for so much more.
It's always about you.
My face almost feels swollen with how wide I'm smiling. Kashiwagi looks at me back and can't fight against the little jostle his lips make, he's finally proud. Lastly, for all I have worked for, I will be given back. I will be the nest that wraps around your growing body and build you back together. Finally will I be able to be equal.
In these echoing halls of mine, my mind will not rest. Loneliness plays my friend until the children have gone to sleep and I am in the corner of the room, huddled by myself. Your words echo through my head as I ponder the meaning in itself to live. You are amongst the main reasons I struggle forward, flinching at the light ahead of me but not giving up just quite yet. I ask, though hanging my head in shame as I utter these words, that you not leave me just yet. I still have more hurricanes ahead and I fear that these shells that I dare call legs won't take me that much further.
I can't breathe is the first thing I notice when I wake up. The night is blinding and my arms, for all that they are numb and cold, are unable to move. It is because—
"—you're worried about Yuko?" Kiryu finishes the thought for me and I can suddenly move. Everything is back to normal like it never happened. But my body will not move to my will.
"...Kiryu?" My voice is hoarse and I realize at that moment where I am—I remember this moment like the back of my hand. "I'm scared." We're 13, Yuko has been taken to the hospital again and I can't sleep without having nightmares. Each night, you have to put me back together.
"I know." Is all you offer before hugging me, the only time you do hug me and I welcome it by sobbing into your shoulder and tugging you even closer.
Why is it always you?
My mind is bleeding. My thoughts chase me through these lifeless corridors so I try to drown them but they know how to swim. My bleeding only attracts the sharks.
"It gets sad at some point, doesn't it?" My reflection asks me in the mirror. "This loneliness that can't be quelled nor satiated, a state of congruity that will never be reached—isn't it just dreadful?"
Slowly, I nod my head. "Yeah," I state sullenly. "It does."
"When will it end? I want to be ridden of this forlorn hope," He says. "I am sick of being on this post of honor, feeling as if I am on the eve of something far much more sinister." He stops to sigh. "Will there be more?"
"I..." That's all my voice musters up, voice cracked as I choke back these sobs of uncertainty. "...don't know."
"Jealousy is a bitter look on you, dear friend," My reflection spits at me in the mirror as I slide down to the tiles in the bathroom. The sharp ends of the razors only look more appetizing in the dim lights hanging off the ceiling. It should be burned behind the hollow leaves and crumbled to ashes. I would agree with a melancholy sob.
The 30 million in my hand feels so much heavier, knees weak from walking, my house is no longer a place I want to go so I make way to your abandoned apartment. It isn't much but it's home, I think as I sleep on the molding futon.
"This isn't the start." My voice echoes in my head past the pitch-black night. "It was always there." It's the last thing I hear before falling into a deep slumber.
I dream of a fantasy one night. You drag me around the city as I play coy, a mask of ignorance but you know the truth so it crumbles with each growing second. But a storm would dampen our mood and the sun shines no longer. But you take the rain and turn it into a blessing. Locking your hand in mine, we dance in the drops of the night and take, what once seemed to be, a ruined night into a goddess' shrine. Like an angel who rests in the midst of the night, he is an altar, a tangle of vines that coils around my shivering body to make it whole.
I wrap my hand around the wooden stick, licking the popsicle hesitantly, ignoring the scoff Matsushige gives me. The popsicle brings back a memory of you all too well. The way you used to eat too much at once then scrunch up and complain a second later. You would brush your fingers through my hair and whine about it being too soft after I slap your hand away. Our hands would get sticky and the dirt would stick onto our palms but it didn't matter much at the time.
I think of nothing but an angel seeing you in this light. 15, summer day, silver ribbon falling from your short threads of hair, laced in the roots somewhere I will never have the privilege to feel. The very tips of your ears burn bright like magma as you speak to me a lullaby and it's enough for me to believe that there are only two of us in the world, for all my worries are varnished in the flimsy breeze.
"What's wrong?" I ask you after a long period of silence, gazing into your eyes. Your eyes glimmer like in the sunlight, enough to create a faux image of the seaside. It reminds me of the beach, the brink of the tide recedes around my ankles, the smell of saltwater invades my senses, you're behind me, the water is warm, we never seem to ask where we're going. You'd dip your feet in and look back at me with a grin, grasping my hand and asking me to sink in with you. Your hair would fly in the wind like gossamer threads curling about, a sun-kissed hand would snag me once more and I could tell at that point it was far too deep to get out now. If you are the ocean, vast and wide with backed-up cliffs, then what am I? Perhaps the seaweed that clings onto the very ends of it? I laugh merrily at the thought.
I look back at you, you look back at me without a care in the world while the breeze curls around your hair. A sudden rush of air flies by us but our gaze doesn't falter. Can I follow you? You don't respond.
"What do you think will happen in the future?" I was brought back to reality. These are the only memories of seeing you vulnerable; the great Dragon of Dojima turning into a whimpering mess at the thoughts of his future. But you are no dragon as I am no koi about to amend, we are mere boys in the well. "Nishiki?"
I recall you asking me something similar to this before when we were 12, huddled behind the fences with plates in our hands. You had looked at me through my core and asked me with such innocence, the smell of barbeque flying past our noses as we gaze at each other's eyes. "Do you think we can make it in the future?"
Such tranquility, I have no room for it in my heart. I have no answers for your restless thoughts because I know that they will hinder me in the dark, once all the kids have settled and the twilight in the moon is young. It will leave me into a crying mess under the pillows as I try to cease my mind about thoughts of my parents and most of all—Yuko.
My childhood wasn't much, very few shed their eyelashes at me in the orphanage, refusing to leave a drop, a sample, anything, of their glances my way. Pity is an acquired taste, one that not many can accept. I wonder what made me so different, or perhaps I should be asking what made you so different.
"Don't ask me such dark questions, Kiryu," I say at the beach. "Just don't think about it, huh?" I suggest as I grab ahold of your warm shoulder. "Today, let's just have some fun." I throw a wink in there and it's enough to make the both of us forget about the hole we've sunk ourselves deeper into.
For me, you are like the name of life, casting your gaze on me like I am the moon is a post of honor that kills me in the harshest of ways. It gives me a sudden moonlight syndrome and there is no other route for me but you say it as if there isn't rain in the park.
He creates a forest for me to sink into, grand and warm, practically inviting me for more. He falls into a certain routine I can't wrap my head around. I've never really held any significant adoration for making friends, it was always a hassle. The notion to be everything and nothing at once, to fawn over one another's entire existence only to tear it down when noting to others. The action to speak of something, anything at this point, is enough to create a development of ripples, never-ending that fall into a current of some sorts. I hop from feeling to feeling like I'm playing hopscotch in the backyard.
You were a crevice in my life I had quickly grown accustomed to. For all my talk, nonsensical and critical, the wall I had perfectly crafted was destroyed in the blink of an eye. Feathers paint the sky, the roaring tide screams at me to plunder into the deep. I take one step forward as you tell me to take two steps back. It works, it isn't even a fight when I'm with you. Maybe I am scared? Not just a weakling afraid to admit the truth, cowering behind stuttering words and scarlet brushed cheeks, but something far worse?
"Tell me, Kiryu, what you have done to me," I beg. "Is it a magic trick? The wind carries your hair in a gliding torrent, glossy and stripped to perfection. Your smile is as bright as the sun all the way up in the sky. Show me, with your capable and superior hands, what little lie you have been hiding from me all this time. I refuse to believe—I am most likely not capable of it anyway—that you are all but perfection. It must be me," I assume with a quivering voice. "Perhaps, in such a cruel way of the truth, that I am just a lonely spirit that wanders these halls in hopes that someone will see my lie?"
You, yet again, do not reply, leading to my continual. "For now, however, you are the only one that is enabling me to move and you have nothing but my greatest condolences. It pains me to sink in these thoughts of all the hours I have taken away from you, where you could have been doing anything but naught. I am the sand that dries you up, I am the dirt that is not fertilized enough to keep you from growing, I am everything I said I could be but could not—a liar."
I am nothing but blurring images that wish to be erased from the nooks in time while you are the present that I wish to be. You're my oath brother, everything I could ask for but not everything I have wanted. A being of perfection and even then I am not satisfied. What is this want in my heart? I ask you but you don't even blink, a simple shrug, and back to the drinks you go. I let out an ignored laugh as I throw my head back, the raindrops you have created won't come out that way.
In these dusky plains of mine, the shimmering of a rose lodged between the growing canes of sugar, you run around and look back at me, forever leaving me in the dust but I am fine the way I am. I am content with being the sand you kick away to stand on the next one. For now, I can only dream you come back to slow dance with me in this disguise of acts in nostalgia. For now, that is enough.