Work Text:
“Tsukishima, you know how to fix these, right?”
He puts his phone face down on the table. His boss places a cardboard box on his desk, pushing off a pile of four stained, yellowed letters. Inside the box are black vertical bars stacked next to each other like piano keys. A few of them have rounded corners, others concave around the edges.
“What are these?”
“VHS tapes,” she says.
He plucks one out and runs a finger over the cassette. The holes on the outer shell have morphed into an irregular shape, its edges covered in a semi-transparent layer akin to dried-up glue. He turns it over. The label renders itself useless.
“Someone came in and said they salvaged this from a—”
“Fire,” he finishes. He takes a deep breath. A whiff of burned plastic piggybacks off of the cold office air.
“So you know how to restore them?”
Through its holes smaller than his cufflinks, he peeks at anything left for him to see. “I can try.”
He carries the box of VHS tapes to the restoration room. He counts seventeen tapes, takes seventeen empty cassettes from the stock cabinet, and rolls up his polo sleeves, his initials carved on the cufflinks.
Breaking apart the first tape, he separates the shells from its core and takes out the reels. He cradles them in his palms like diamonds exhumed from an excavated burial site, and after he transfers them to an empty cassette, he slots the fresh tape into a player for a quick damage check.
Pitch black darkness flashes on the monitor. A low, continuous rumble plays through the speakers. Experience tells him it’s wind noise. He turns up the volume and his ears pick up the familiar sound of leaves swaying with the wind.
‘Camcorders can’t capture the night sky.’
It’s Kei.
‘I know.’
It’s you.
He pauses the video. He grabs the old cassette but the label has melted away. He scans the other tapes, but only three of them have his name scrawled next to a smiley face, or a small doodle of a star or the moon. But three is more than enough—he only needed three words back then.
•
He goes out of the room and walks to his boss’ office, knocking on her door.
“Come in,” she says, so he does. She twirls a retractable pen around her fingers. “What’s up?”
“Would you know who sent those?”
“Which ones? The tapes?”
He nods.
“I don’t know. Some kid.” She clicks the pen on and off. “Why?”
The wall clock ticks time away, simultaneously chasing after the future and pulling him back to the past.
“Nothing,” he says. “It might take some time though. They’re quite damaged.”
“Sure, go ahead. The customer said they can wait.”
•
‘Camcorders can’t capture the night sky.’
‘I know.’
‘Then why bother,’ Kei says, his voice filtered through the speakers. A rattle follows, and for a brief few seconds the screen illuminates. Your shoes come to view with your feet steady on the pavement.
‘Well,’ you say, ‘cameras capture more than what they see.’
The screen turns dark, then bright again, and from the way the light occasionally fades in from the top left corner and drags out to the bottom left, cars seem to pass by next to them.
“Our secret spot,” he whispers, words he hasn’t uttered in the same sentence, in that exact order, in a long time.
It’s on an uphill road, where he would park his car high enough to look over city lights. You would take the picnic blanket you had sewed for your first Valentine’s date and lay it over the hood of his car. He would sit beside you as you shared a single bottle of grape juice swimming with coconut jelly, all unspoken affection wrapped up in one pass of the plastic bottle.
He hasn’t had a sip of it in years. Doctors told him to regulate his sugar intake if he wanted to live longer.
On the monitor, a car passes by again. The camera slides to the left, just enough to capture Kei’s right shoe. His lips twitch. The pitch black darkness reclaims the view, a faint light pulsating on the bottom left corner of the screen every few seconds. His right shoulder spasms.
The reel ends. It doesn’t show signs of surviving a fire.
•
He moves on to the next cassette, giving a new body to an old memory that only one other person recalls, and plays it just like the previous tape.
A glass cover shields a strawberry shortcake placed on a table. There’s an unopened wine bottle to the left and two wine glasses to the right of the cake. The camera trails up. A star map paints the ceiling.
‘It’s one of those star map thingies online,’ you say. ‘Apparently that’s how the stars looked on the day you were born. I had it made in a huge, glow-in-the-dark decal. Isn’t it cute?”
He scoffs. Checking the old cassette, the label reads, KEI’S 26TH BIRTHDAY! ✩
More than a decade ago. Decades ago.
The succeeding frames show a band of streamers crawling along the line where walls and ceiling intersect, as well as the view of the district from the balcony. The camera catches a glimpse of a 7-Eleven where he used to pass the time before he grabbed dinner with you. Some nights, when a storm would pour until there’s zero visibility, he would make a feast out of ready-to-eat rice meals, and you’d say, “Convenience stores offer what Michelin-star restaurants cannot.”
Then he’d say, “Like what?”
“Like these guys,” you’d say, tapping on the store’s table. They never had enough legroom for him. “The wider the table, the further you are away from me.”
A Family Mart has replaced it since then. Still a store, but not the store.
A couple of minutes pass, the camera focuses on a brown leather box. Your fingers unlock the clasp at the front. Inside are three pairs of cufflinks in gold, silver, and bronze, his initials immortalizing themselves on every pair.
‘Since you also got promoted at work,’ you say, pointing your hand at the box, ‘I thought it would be nice to upgrade your wardrobe, too. But I couldn’t decide on a color. I think all of them look good on you though. So I bought all three!’
“So you placed the burden of decision-making on me,” he says, letting the corners of his lips inch closer to his ears. He fiddles with his cufflinks. They’re gold today.
You close the box and roam the apartment once more until the camera stays put. The screen shows the apartment door, streamers hanging by the doorframe.
‘I’ll take a quick nap.’ Your voice is louder on the left side. ‘You’re probably held off at work with a surprise party.’
A low groan. A fabric rustling. Then, silence. He presses down on the fast forward button until Kei opens the door.
How did it feel to wear glasses again?
Kei looks up at the band of streamers before smiling. Kei takes off his scarf and coat, hangs them over the rack, and walks to the left side of the screen until he’s out of frame.
A rustle. Then, ‘Kei, you’re home.’
How did your smile look like again?
Your cheek against his palm, your skin brushing his lips—did they always feel like touching a cup of freshly brewed coffee with his bare hands?
‘Did you have fun?’
‘Yeah.’
A wave of chuckles.
‘Kei, you’re heavy.’
‘Hm.’
A wave of rustles.
‘Are you happy?’
A wave of ripples. In his chest. As the video ends, the afterimage of your shared apartment door lingers behind his eyes, another memory outliving what it once was.
He pulls out his phone. Scrolling through his list of contacts, it doesn’t take half a minute to reach the end. But your number—oh. He had performed a factory reset on his phone before his boss dumped baggage on his desk.
•
There are still fifteen tapes left. Fifteen remains left. Fifteen places left to meet you.
He takes a deep breath.
•
Taking out the third cassette, he’s faster than with the previous two tapes. He’s repeating, remaking, revisiting.
There’s an oval coffee table on the screen, your legs stretching underneath the glass. The socks on your feet are of your favorite color. He had asked Azumane how to sew it, a part of his midterms care kit tailored for you.
‘Why are you suddenly obsessed with camcorders?’ Kei asks.
‘So I can record stuff.’
‘And you can’t use your phone for that?’
The camera swings to the left. On the screen is Kei, his arm extending along the back of the couch, his legs tucked underneath his thighs. Kei rests his head over his outstretched arm. An orange glow radiates from the lens of his glasses and spills all over his face.
Has he always looked that pale?
‘Okay, let’s start with you. Introduce yourself.’
‘Tsukishima—’
‘Wait. Where are you—Kei, look at the camera, not at me!’
With his free hand, Kei takes one of your hands and interlocks his fingers with yours. Kei brings it down, effectively moving it out of frame. ‘But the camera will still be rolling, right? What difference would it make if I’m looking elsewhere?’
‘Fine. Okay,’ you laugh. He laces his fingers with the air. ‘Okay, can you introduce yourself again, please?’
‘Tsukishima Kei.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I major in Museum Studies.’
‘Why did you pick that up?’
Kei turns his head to the side for a second, propping his chin with the heel of his palm. With this angle one of his eyes escapes sunlight, a reflection of the camcorder bouncing off his glasses.
‘Objects live longer inside a museum,’ Kei says and looks beyond the camera. ‘They’re stubborn even in the face of death.’
‘Like you.’
‘I’m persistent.’
‘Tomato, tomato.’
Kei smiles.
His thumb grazes the edge of his index finger.
‘Is there anything else you want to say?’ You ask.
Kei looks down. The camera follows him, capturing his thumb spanning your knuckles, rubbing the back of your hand, back and forth.
‘I don’t understand why you’re doing this,’ Kei says. ‘VHS tapes break easily. You can’t even back it up unless you digitize them. But smartphones eliminate that extra step and automatically upload it to the cloud if you choose to.’
‘But you don’t know who snoops around in the cloud.’
Kei laughs, a sound only two people in the whole world would recognize in a heartbeat. A series of blurry images flood the monitor for a couple of seconds, and when it stops, your bodies crowd the left side of the screen. Kei traps you in his arms, blocking your face from the camera, his legs caging your body.
‘What are you getting paranoid about?’
‘It’s not paranoia,’ you say, your voice filtered twice: once through his shirt, another through the speakers. ‘I just don’t want our memories reduced to mere bytes of data.’
‘And VHS tapes don’t do that?’
‘At least no one else can touch them.’
Kei runs his palm over your back. A minute elapses, then two, but neither of you shifts positions. He presses hard on the seek button, until the video ends without any of the bodies moving. So he rewinds, pulling back a few seconds before the screen turns dark, then hits pause.
Kei’s eyes are closed, his nose buried in your head, your bodies absorbing every light radiating from the left side of the screen. If this frame were a painting, he would claim it in an auction with the highest bid possible in the room; he wouldn’t allow anyone else to touch you.
And so he replies, “He looked happy.”
•
Scanning the remaining cassettes, their shells contain fragmented magnetic tapes beyond repair.
So he places them all back in the box. He counts seventeen tapes, like his old Sendai Frogs jersey, like how many days it took before your first kiss, like how old he was when he first met you.
•
There are still fourteen tapes left. Fourteen remains left. Fourteen places where he left you, for his and your dreams.
He releases a deep breath.
•
“Were you able to fix it?”
“I tried.”
“Really? The client didn’t give any deadline. You sure you don’t wanna try again?”
“The fire was terrible.”
She sighs. “Guess anything that gives life also claims it back.”
•
On the way home, he stops by the convenience store below his building. Along the aisle of coolers, he takes out a bottle of grape juice with coconut jelly, grabbing a random rice meal on the way to the counter.
The rice is dry. He washes it down with juice, the sugar scraping his tongue.
His legs make space under the table.
•
After he undresses, he removes his cufflinks from his polo sleeves and seals them in an airtight box, the contained older than the container.
Sitting on his bed where the window overlooks the rest of the city, he unlocks his phone and opens a maps app, punching in the address for his former university. He toggles the street view, zooming and making turns until he arrives at a dead end. He persists, but he gives in and settles at the foot of the uphill road.
He sets his phone on the windowsill. He pulls out the bottle of leftover grape juice from his bag and takes a sip, coconut bit by coconut bit, all his buried memories rattling in their coffins with each bite.
He welcomes them back, and lets them stay this time.
His house is bigger now.
•
Kei dusts restoration tools in the back room when his boss welcomes back a customer. She explains why most of the tapes are impossible to bring back to their original shape, how he went through every cassette to save what can still be saved, and why fixing them will only further the damage.
The customer thanks her, and experience tells him it’s a young kid, probably in their late teens, voice cracking just enough for yours to slip through.