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For Inui Seishu, it was a widely accepted universal truth that time does not pass the same way at the motels that stand on the side of the most forgotten roads.
In his personal opinion, there were a wide variety of places in which time seemed more of a social construct than anything: waiting rooms in airports, the hallways of school at night, his grandmother’s house in the summer. It was almost as if the seconds ticked by slower than usual, melting away on the clock and blurring the thoughts on his mind, a non-alcoholic high that left him languid and unpreoccupied, his thoughts pleasantly quiet. Seishu never thought he would get to experience the sensation in a motel, of all places — his family was not rich, but they were well-off enough that he never had to stay in crappy inns when they traveled.
That is, until now.
The badly lit hallways smell like a mix of lemon-scented cleaning products, cigarettes bought in gas station's convenience stores, and cheap, strong liquor. Seishu wrinkles his nose as he passes, warily inspecting the navy carpet on the floor — stained, covered by a layer of dust — that stretches as far as they can see, leading to the cold night that waits outside the double doors.
Seishu sees the vending machine first. In the corner close to the parking lot, next to a wooden bench that seems like it hasn't been used for a while. The incandescent lights glowing make him feel dizzy for a moment, tracing shadows on his face and on the concrete floor underneath. He warily eyes the snacks displayed inside and goes for a package of gummy bears, getting a chuckle out of Koko, who stands next to Seishu with his hands in his pockets. He sticks his tongue out. “You're such a baby sometimes,” he says, voice dripping with laughter, moving closer to check the contents of the machine and pressing their shoulders together. “I can't believe I'm driving with a little kid.”
“God, shut up,” Seishu retorts, throwing a gummy bear in his mouth. There's no bite to it. He sits on the bench with a thump, pressing his legs against his chest. From where they are, there is a view to the entirety of the parking lot, with its white dividers on the floor on the verge of fading away. There aren’t many cars parked, and Seishu briefly considers that the motel is mostly empty. Since they checked in, they haven’t seen anyone but the receptionist at the main desk and the cleaning lady and her cart while on the way to their room. It feels like a different dimension, somehow. As if it’s a time out of the one he knows, dripping slowly through his fingers and pouring onto the ground in front of him. As if words and actions are inconsequential, not really following the laws of the universe. A memory on the verge of fading, like waking up from a dream: fingertips brushing against something Seishu does not have a name for, and it’s gone before he opens his eyes. The night stretches with possibilities, pushing and pulling something inside him — a line wrapping around his ribs and tying him to the unknown, stubbornly forward.
They drove all day long, and tiredness weighs heavy on their bones. Summer pushes the trees’ branches towards the earth, gravity a blessing as it is a curse. Just like the fruits go bad on the heat, rotting from the insides and drying it out and losing their sweetness, Seishu thinks that growing up is just another way of decaying, slowly morphing into something that borders on childhood but not quite and borders on adulthood but not quite. It feels like growing out of his bones, like trying to put on a shirt that he had outgrown but kept hidden in his wardrobe just because he couldn’t help but to hang on tight to the familiarity of it. It feels, more than anything, like trying to exist in a world where he doesn’t know how to be, as a painfully growing and ever-lasting wound he is always reopening with his hands.
(But then, when the first black spots appeared on their skins, they got into a car and drove. Because that’s what kids do. They run without looking back.)
Koko sits next to him, a chocolate bar in his hand. He rips it open and eats a piece of it, chewing thoughtfully. “So,” he starts, grinning. Seishu thinks he smells like coconut soap. “Where are we going tomorrow?”
“Anywhere. Somewhere. I don’t care.” And the thing is, he really doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, as far as he gets away from the town. He drives fast, both hands with a tight grip on the steering wheel, before the city can get to him again, tie him up and let him stay stuck in that place forever with no way out. It’s a curse to know that the city didn’t come apart without Seishu on it. It still exists, somewhere far behind him, breathing and moving and buzzing, and the sun still sets and rises the same above the too plain houses sitting on the road, invading the forgotten cracks on the asphalt.
(Seishu hates that. He wanted it to come crumbling down as soon as he left, memories be damned.)
“We can check the map later. I’m driving in the morning, anyway, so I get to pick.” Koko sighs, poking Seishu’s sides. “Hey, c’mon. You’re quiet today.” And then Koko tilts his head as if he is trying to discover what is wrong just by looking at Seishu’s expression, and the whole ordeal is so familiar to Seishu — his mind fuzzy with thoughts and Koko offering a way out, trying to gain Seishu’s attention back to the real world; pressing a cold soda against his skin just to see Seishu startle, dropping himself dramatically on the couch and side-eyeing him in a way that says that’s the moment when you ask what’s wrong, idiot, making a show of saying Seishu’s surname, dragging the syllables for longer than necessary in a way Koko has mastered since they were kids: I-nu-pi, rolling out of his tongue easily, the sound rhythmic and more familiar than Seishu would like to admit.
He smiles despite himself, a tiny and fleeting thing that could easily be hidden in the dim lightning of the machines. Koko tilts his head a little more, squints at his expression, then smiles a little bit back, like they just figured out all the secrets to the universe.
Maybe they have. Maybe they will.
“I’m fine. Just tired,” he mutters, closing his eyes and resting his head on the wall. They should sleep soon — the morning is not far away, and they need to decide on a destination, and it’s so late. For Seishu, dark skies make it tempting to scream in the middle of nowhere for the stars to hear, raw and desperate and small, and ask where does he go now. What now, if childhood is over, and he is no longer allowed to dream of where he is headed? Life was so much easier when it was something far away, but things are now en route to the destination, and he is accelerating in case anything goes wrong. It’s easier to blame the moment, and Seishu doesn’t like complicated things.
Seishu doesn’t know what he wants, only that he is desperate for it. His mouth has gone dry.
Koko hums in agreement, but Seishu still hears disbelief all over the place. The matter is not pressed any further, though. It’s silent for a while, until Koko says, more softly than Seishu has thought it was even possible, “I will give you a thought if you give me one of yours.” It’s barely a sound under the weight of the night. It sounds muffled around the edges — as if the words were stuck for too long, like sugar lingering on the back of a mouth. Sweet, until it isn’t. Until it’s sour.
Seishu considers the statement for a long moment. He thinks about saying, I’m not thinking of anything at all, silently begging that Koko doesn’t see through his barely constructed lie, just this once. He thinks about the cities on the map, faceless towns that he will forget as soon as they leave them, buildings smashed together and so many people walking and walking, stories that will never get to hear and places he will never get to see. He thinks about the fact that the term growing pains makes him think that perhaps we have to cherish our grief and give it water and turn it to the sun until it becomes something else all together. Until it blooms.
He doesn’t voice out any of this. Instead, he says, voice low, “I’m thinking that we should stop in a better motel next time.”
(What Seishu also doesn’t say is this: he thinks something about the presence of another person sitting next to him makes him feel warm. He wants to save this moment in a bottle so he could get drunk on it every once in a while; he wants a picture, so he can hold it with wrinkled hands and see with wrinkled eyes, many, many years down the road, and think Oh. I was not alone. Because despite the mind, the forgetfulness, the loneliness of the human eye, the other universal truth that Seishu deeply believes in is that our bodies — raw, fragile, his — always remember. )
“Yeah, right. I thought I was going to get something deeper than that,” Koko puffs, tilting his head back, and there is a hint of disappointment in his voice that makes Seishu turn his gaze away from him. He takes another piece of chocolate. “My turn.”
Seishu snorts, puffs air out. It’s warm, like the prelude of a summer thunderstorm. The air is a dry, electric-fueled atmosphere that seeps under his skin and flares up in Seishu the desire to run. Aimlessly. Youthfully. “Well, I gave you a thought. I’d better get one, too.”
“Okay, so,” Koko begins, and pauses dramatically when a droplet of water falls in front of them. He giggles and sticks his tongue out, in that way of his that Seishu has memorized under his eyelids. “I’m thinking there is a storm coming.”
The rain starts slowly, and then it’s all at once. Fast, and cold, and merciless. The droplets happily hit the ground, sliding through their faces, the bench, the machine, but they don't move from their seats. The city can't get to them, here. Not under a pouring sky, not tonight, maybe not even tomorrow — they can stay under the rain, for now. They are young. It’s a nice thought to cherish, that there is time to grow up later. Not now, Seishu begs. Not now.
They laugh, and it runs wild all the way across the parking lot, a beaten motel, and the stars. It runs under Seishu’s skin, between the skin and the blood, a rush of laughter that goes all the way down from his head to his fingertips, back to his chest, to his heart, to his eyes, back, back, back.
“It doesn't normally rain this time of the year, though,” Koko mumbles once he catches his breath, turning his head up to look at the heavy clouds. “Weird.”
“Yeah,” Seishu says, biting off the head of the last gummy bear. He grins. “Weird.”
The radio sings. Driving down the road, I get a feeling that I should've been home yesterday, yesterday…
Seishu moves on the passenger seat to turn the volume down and gets a pointed look from Koko — who is on driving duty today — but he doesn’t say anything. Seishu just tilts his head and leans against the window, eyelids heavy. The sound of tires against asphalt is an odd lullaby, but it has always worked just fine for him.
The sky is dazzling blue, white blurs of cotton candy doting the infinite ocean that seems to go on and on forever. The high noon sun creates mirages on the road, heat flowing like water through the static air and washing over the fields, grass covering the land like a carpet. They drove past grasslands, corn plantations, and small farms that seemed to be run by white houses far above the hills. The images are blurred, like a feverish dream, and Seishu thinks that he has seen so much of the world today — memories that will be gone and buried deep in his bones when he lays down on earth to never return. It’s a sad thing to think about. Maybe leaving time to consume itself is the reason we are angry all the time; we try to hold onto the seconds we can grasp with curious hands, but it’s gone before we can love them hard enough, and the grief—
He often thinks about a moment and thinks, this is mine. This is what his life is made of. It will be gone with him and no one will remember it and Seishu won’t be here to remind anyone about it.
Seishu wishes he could lay down and drown on the green. Be a raw body under the burning sun, waiting to be filled with something that he doesn’t have a name for, something that could memorize him and tie him to the earth forever. It seems that the secret is to swallow without expecting hunger to disappear, but a child born hungry is always begging the world to present itself to them, to nurture them, to fulfill, and Seishu doesn’t remember the last time he felt full.
But a boy is driving next to him, both of his hands on the steering wheel. Koko is still quietly singing along to the radio, posture relaxed against the seat, eyes focused on the path ahead of them. The blue outside the window contrasts with his frame, and he warily eyes the curve of his nose, the eyelashes brushing the skin under his eyes, and a smile tugging at the corner of his lips when he notices he still remembers the lyrics of an old pop song.
(And Seishu thinks: I want to remember this. I want to remember him.)
Isn’t looking at someone also an act of love? The eyes try to secure moments, but it doesn’t last long enough — to see someone is to give them something infinite. So he looks, looks, and looks, because there isn’t anyone to stop him, and there is time for it, to memorize the sight of a boy made of rain under his eyelids to remember there is no one else that Seishu would find himself driving away with.
There is no other river he wishes to be baptized in. To feel the water above his head, to drown in calm waters — Seishu could come clean to, come good to. He could stand by the margin and taste honey, spiraling on his tongue, sticking on the back of his mouth, his throat, and it could stay there for as long as he wanted. He could taste the citrus sweetness of oranges, purple grapes to color his mouth and wounded desires, apples to collect the cyanide seeds as trophies, just on the right edge of danger, on the right edge of want, under the sky and above the land that seems to find nothing wrong with him.
(—and grief is not a nameless entity. It lives on the other side of the hallway; on the back of his mind, on his nervous habit of pressing his fingernails on the palm of his hands, on his own reflection in the mirror. And grief is very kind. It claims the space in a house emptied by anger. Perhaps it’s just another form of emptiness, but then again: our bodies always remember.)
He opens the window, and the breeze carries something sweet, raw under the May sun, careful fingers washing away the heat. It does nothing for the shame creeping red over his neck, threatening to burst his open as a pomegranate. It has always been there, for as long as he remembers; this gravity pull, this sizzling blood, this buried ache. To boys, to boys like him, all is an interminable chain of longing created by roads not taken. Everything is a ledge to jump from, a love that falls as fast as a body from the balcony, his chest colliding with the ground without a sound.
“Hey,” Koko mutters, turning to Seishu for a brief moment. “Let’s play a game.” He has that expression adorning his features, playful grin stretching slowly on his face, like he just had the best idea of his life and now it’s trying to figure out a way to drag Seishu with him. As usual. Seishu rolls his eyes and makes the familiar choice to indulge him in his antics. As usual.
One day, Seishu thinks he has to stop this — he has to stop throwing himself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling his name, following Koko to the depths of the earth without a second thought. But he doesn’t find it in him the will to do so. So he doesn’t. Instead, he closes his eyes and hums, “What kind of game?”
Koko seems to consider this, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. His window is wide open, too, and a few strands of his black hair float away in the car, as if the Earth decided to tune out gravity just for him. His lips are pressed, thinking, and there is another song playing, now, and the ride is still long. So perhaps they will talk enough and listen to enough music. Maybe they will stop — once to eat, once to see the view — until they fall in a rhythm of silence, swinging back and forth between them like a rope over a lake, and maybe, Seishu thinks, it’s what they don’t say that saves them.
“A question one,” Koko replies, breezily. “Five questions to each of us, and we need to answer them honestly. No bullshitting, no changing the subject. Just the plain truth,” he states, the corner of his lips slowly turning into a smirk. Seishu considers this. There aren't many things that they don't know about the other, so it’s not going to be easy finding a question worth asking — but then again, there is no such thing as a question that isn’t worth asking.
“Any questions?” Seishu asks, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“Any questions,” Koko says, a winning smile blooming, growing on his features. The one that has been saying I’m right here since they first took the car, or maybe it has been there longer. Maybe, Seishu thinks, he has breathed and lived and walked just so his eyes could come this way — a road taken, a mesmerizing boy, to be drunk on the sight of him, to be addicted to it, to ask questions that will be lost in the air, to gather the courage to ask can I remember you?
“You go first,” Seishu mumbles, leaning on the window frame. Something is growing roots on his lungs. There is a niche on his chest that would fit a heart perfectly and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place — well then, game over.
“Fine. Are you hungry?” And it doesn’t really sound like the personal questions he has been expecting. It doesn’t sound like anything else he has ever heard, at all. Seishu thinks he hears something else, too. An offer. Hands itching to hold out to open a peach with his bare fingers.
Seishu laughs, and he turns his head just in time to see Koko staring at him, the road momentarily forgotten. He thinks about tearing his gaze away — it would be so, so easy to focus on his window again, to run away, to hide his answer in a muted silence or half-hearted response, but his eyes stay focused on the boy driving. Not so lonely, this time.
He answers, after catching his breath, voice still shaky from laughter. “To be honest, I’m starving.”