Archive of Our Own

I

With the sun rays pouring through the blinds, too bright for Shoko to even sit in them, they search for the answer in something that, with ease, hurts their eyes and makes them see the distortion in the world, and of course, it doesn’t work out. Utahime isn’t so sure she hadn’t expected this at all, as it was merely something she was aware would happen from the moment she felt it— the touches that branched away from her skin simply because it was hers, the laughter that fell on deaf ears simply because it was hers — Utahime, though, doesn’t think she would’ve ever gotten the chance to speak of it. 

Even so, like a dream that has not yet been embedded as a memory, she still lifts her head from the vanity that has now gone barren of her various cosmetics, and turns around. And like a question, though Utahime knows it is because she still seeks Shoko out, she asks, “is this,” and this, she is unsure of what it really means. Their relationship, their memories and all that has and has not happened between them, is that — “it?”

There’s a silence that stills between them that seems impregnable, the tension pulled thin until Utahime is sure just a breath, just a move of one of Shoko’s fingers— would cut the string that binds them both together, the one of the nostalgia; that has yet to stop brewing, since the string that Utahime did not realize was only held by her, the one of their love— had been let go off. Just as it had, they both realize that there is not one of them that would go back to pick it up. 

Shoko, on the bed staring at Utahime with tired eyes, sighs. They decided, after a talk that they could both consider boring in some 50 years that was actually full of frustration and untied strings, to spend one last night together. They had ended things, and yet, Shoko thinks about just why she still held Utahime like she would do every night before the last, why she still covered their toes with one blanket despite them sharing too, why they still dried each other’s hair before bed. Why? This was the end, so just why does Utahime still need answers? 

“I don’t see how this could be anything else.” Says Shoko, and tears her eyes from the back of Utahime that she has seen in one too many ways— from behind, from the bathroom every morning, from the bed every night when Shoko knew Utahime was trying to hide what was, perhaps, a tear-stained face, from her— to her face that stained the reflection of the vanity. They had work today, of course, but makeup can only do so much for a scar like hers. 

Truly, this couldn’t be anything else. But speaking, from a standpoint in which Utahime has to rethink what the last decades of her life have been spent on, whether they were a mistake or just something that had happened. Just something, something like that. Just maybe, if they could be something like that. 

“Perhaps,” Utahime has sat for a long while, in this room and at work, about what she should say when time finally came and the way they held each other had actually felt like the last, instead of a chance of it being the last, “a pause in things.”

A pause in things, and Shoko nearly laughs out of that. She contains a laugh so hard, so loud that she curls over herself and crushes the cigarettes that still rest in her pockets. Shoko knows Utahime would’ve, when she had the obligation to care, scolded her for them. And for now, she’ll keep them there and tell everyone who asks that she just likes the weight of a lighter in her pocket. She'll tell them she’s just pausing things, and she knows that they will howl with hot breath and sarcasm right back into her face because how laughable is it to have not have had the courage to let go—

“Perhaps,” Shoko replies, staring at the contents of Utahime’s face, though in the mirror, to Shoko, looks as if she is staring at the scum of the Earth, whilst holding back tears of what could’ve been sadness, could’ve been anger— Shoko doesn’t bother to ask which of the two it is, she is sure that it is a feeling that could not be described with such simple words, especially ones that were never specifically created to describe them, “though I can see that you don’t take interest in this anymore.”

It’s true, in a way that Utahime is not so sure if she should say. It is mere exhaustion, of watching somebody who could not leave you to get better— watching somebody accept the love that they had no intention of reciprocating simply because it came to them. Watching somebody tell you something along the lines of I love you, simply, because it was said to them. Watching, watching but never getting the starring role—

But, that immature way of tantruming over a factor she could not control, over something that Utahime knows is not a choice because really— if we all had the chance to be reborn, to have chosen the people who had loved us and who we had to love, would you or would you not have taken the offer? Is that, to have your anger outlive your love, childish? Utahime has gone beyond answering that, only now responding by leaving to get better— something, she knew would not have happened if left to Shoko. 

Utahime smiles, pulling a bow that had been shoved into her own pockets. “That’s why I like you, Shoko.” Tying her hair up, she glances at Shoko, who sits blankly behind a few stray pieces of hairs that come from the side of her head. Her face seems pained for a moment, until it washes over with what may be relief— from what, Utahime thinks, is the woman’s chance to finally go to bed, putting her issues under her pillow rather than sleep next to them. Looking away when the awkward bout of eye-contact comes, “or liked, however you’d like to look at it.”

This time, she lets a laugh slip. Shoko is relieved, when her eyes fall back into place and her fingers adjust from clenches to free, that Utahime also lets a fond small appear on her face. It isn’t quite so funny, but Shoko thinks that it is hilarious that Utahime, even after all this time and everything that has happened, still considers Shoko’s thoughts before her own. How lovely is it, to be so forgiving. 

“That’s funny,” says Shoko, hands fumbling with the lighter through her woolen-pockets that are much too thick to grasp the true weight of the lighter, the true weight of the words they spoke and screamed at each other in the late hours of the last night they would probably ever spend together, “are you going to pack your things?”

Although that is the only thing Utahime has been doing since she had woken, early in the morning, too stressed and too emotional to sleep comfortably— Shoko still asks, because she had not slept at all despite calling a day off in order to preserve her work ethics after all of this had tided over. Yet, in the morning and in the bed of where everything would be sedated to have never existed, it still hasn’t. And so, Shoko will ask, will try to make time go a little faster. And time, will not listen. It never does.

“Nevermind,” laughs Utahime, fixing the bow that ties her strands together but was never quite strong enough to draw Shoko and her together like magnets, “I said that because you see things well enough to read.” 

Turning around, Utahime’s eyes, Shoko only now realizes, are pained in a way that are much too old to be dealing with this— Shoko thinks by this age, it would only be right for Utahime to have married another, to have settled down and return every night to someone who would be home— and her smile, although laced with the same forced happiness that Shoko cannot stand, is still genuine. Still kind, to the her that is forever unchanging. Utahime’s smile, with brown eyes drawn to them, only moves when she speaks, “can’t you see I’m packing right now?”

Shoko finds it, somehow, annoying. She knows it is this way because they are somewhere around 15 years older than they were before, it is this way because Utahime cannot bear for it to be any other way— and yet, it makes her eyebrows furrow and her lips curl. What Shoko does not admit, though, is the way her anger has been curated is the relief that had come with this entire thing happening. How this, of leaving and what would most likely be Utahime’s first heartbreak, felt more like a gift than a punishment. It shouldn’t be this way— no, it really, really, shouldn’t.

“How can you speak to me so casually?” Asks Shoko, ignoring and face remaining passive even after the click of her lighter that is born from her thumb opening and closing the cover. It shouldn’t be this way— not ever should a break up end up this way. But it does, and neither of them are so sure of where it is going; it could even end up with them crawling back to each other because they are two old to be without love, even if it had been planted and faked. It could end up with this really, really being the last. And Shoko— Shoko, conflicts with herself over that. “Even after.. all that.”

Standing, Utahime sighs. There isn’t anything that comes to mind when she ponders, even for a moment, about what she would do to Shoko. This didn’t come out of the blue, in fact, Utahime guilts over having known this would occur in the near future. This relationship was not something Shoko had carried alone, it might as well have been not hers at all if that was all that had mattered, it was Shoko and her— and she, too righteous and much too kind, as Shoko thinks, bears the fault of the aftermath as well.

“There isn’t anything else I can do,” Utahime says, returning to neatly fold her clothing into a suitcase. Her fingers are nimble, and Shoko watches on as her fingers quickly work around the items of clothing that may or may not be hers. She doesn’t say anything, not one at all, when Utahime mistakes a shirt as hers. It’s not— but she won’t say anything. 

Noticing Shoko’s stare, Utahime looks up from the small mess of everything that had piled up in their room. With no one to tend to it, to the plants on the window-sill that have since died, the incense that has grown dusted and unused, Utahime sighs with question. She— she has always hated messes. “Should I hit and scream at you?”

Should she? Shoko thinks that it may have been better, if Utahime had rather told her exactly what went wrong instead of saying sorry, that it would’ve been better if Utahime had just left a remnant of her touch anywhere— rather than her words. That touch, that tingly feeling that crawls along her shoulders, is something that Shoko has learned was temporary. Eventually, it would be forgotten and Shoko’s desire for it would grow— but it was forgotten. Words, however, she found would stick around like a cold. Some words were useless, some words she may not have remembered— but hers, ones that were unwillingly important to Shoko simply because they were from Utahime, had always stuck around. 

“If you wanted to,” says Shoko, lighter slipping from her fingers that have begun to grow increasingly more and more sweaty. She isn’t so sure if she would accept it— but Shoko thinks, just for once, maybe she would allow Utahime this one thing. Give her this one thing that could seal their rough love instead of it having never existed. The clock ticks behind them, and it only signals Shoko to continue speaking rather than awaiting a response that soon, would never come again. This conversation, from the way they breathe, the way they speak and the words said; would never happen again. Not between anyone else, and that in a way, makes it more special than the entirety of the past decades. “I wouldn’t say anything if you did.”

And Utahime doesn't say anything at all. Instead, she promptly leaves the room, but not before throwing her chin behind her shoulder in a way that tells Shoko, come. It takes a second of thinking— because really, Utahime could do anything to her right now. Shoko isn’t so afraid of what Utahime, with her smaller frame and smaller fists will do to her— but the words. As expected, words outside of the bedroom were not ones to stay within the bedroom, within the home that had since been burnt. 

Oddly, it’s comforting, and very different from what Shoko had expected. The scene plays out as such; Utahime reaches for the instant cover rather than the teabags, reaches for two mugs of different colour and shape rather than the matching-mugs that Shoko only now realizes are no longer matching— a singular mug missing its pair. And yet, Utahime grabs everything that Shoko likes— only a cube of sugar because that brand was cheaper, yet tasted like dirt, and no creamer. For herself, as Shoko begins to watch her every move and savour what she had let go— does the exact same, despite Shoko knowing her preference of more creamer than sugar. 

Now this— makes Shoko, in the slightest, just a bit nervous. The sharp cut of the words that are wishing to be said— always wishing but never happening— hang in the air, and Utahime watches as they swing over her shoulders, saying, to say, whispering, or to leave? Neither of them are quite what she wants to do, but both she knows are things she will have to do. 

“.. Have you ever hit a woman?” Says Utahime, leaning against the counter that is still covered in bottles of emptied alcohol bottles, sipping coffee that has yet to cool. Shoko watches on, drawing a long and satisfactory gulp of the coffee— she flinches at it, just slightly, thinking the coffee had come down to a cooler temperature, but that obviously was not the case. Her tongue burns, and yet, those words burn into her skin with far more violence than Shoko had expected.

Certainly, it’s a question that Shoko had never thought Utahime would ask her. It’s almost, to Shoko who looks at Utahime and thinks of love, love in a way she could not accept, accusatory. Shoko can barely think— though she comes up with two situations. Utahime, will get her first taste of the constant violence that has followed Shoko since high-school. Utahime, will finally realize that Shoko was the reason this constant stream of there simply being one answer to every issue— the misfortune of it all.

“Plenty,” casually, Shoko chooses to ignore the true intent of whatever Utahime is trying to ask, trying to cryptically say. She knows Utahime will not mind— she had never said much when Shoko had done something other than smoking, and Shoko will selfishly take advantage of that. “You know that violence is not uncommon in our field.”

That to Utahime is not surprising, but everytime she does hear something along those lines, she cannot help but be saddened. Isn’t it only normal, to feel that way about something so utterly life-ruining? Or is it simply the obligation to feel bad once it has happened to you? She isn’t sure— but the desensitization to it all, the lack of care that comes with handling it pains Utahime. For it to be so common that neither of them have ever thought too deeply about it, causes an indescribable feeling to swell up in her chest. Perhaps, that feeling is only her ever bleeding heart that had always had too many spare rooms to offer; until it didn’t. House-keeping, here, is a necessity. 

But Utahime— doesn’t want to think about it. Doesn’t want to think of those rooms that have been filled by the dead and housed the cursed, doesn’t want to think of the people like her who had lived there, never returned and never kept their room tidy— and now all she and they are left with is a dirty room, a full bill and not enough to give. 

“I am aware,” everything that is crystal clear— the reason why those two had turned out that way, the reason why they themselves had turned out this way, was clear enough to make Utahime squirm her fingers around her mug once more, adjusting her hold that had gone soft. Uncomfortably, she clears her throat, unknowingly about where to take her statement. Surely, these words have been thought out in the most sincere way possible, but the overpopulation combined with the sudden revelation of what had actually ruined them, together, had made them go still. “Though I am not quite sure I ever want to hit a woman.”

“Specifically,” asks Shoko, quirking an eyebrow that has long since been uncovered from her thick bangs— it’s oddly nostalgic, in a way that cannot be explicitly said as nostalgia. Soon enough, maybe in a couple of years and maybe after a couple of drinks, it can be said in that way, with those words. There cannot be a synonym for everything, Shoko thinks, and for now, she will use the words of this being a reminder of what the past was. “A woman?”

Utahime nods, setting her glass that is not yet empty down onto the couple with a quiet click. Shoko watches on as she rolls her fingers around the rim of the cup, rubbing into the light-shade of lipstick that Shoko knows— from the late moments that were born to become merely memories, to touches that were never meant to be repeated even years later— looks good on both of them whilst being worn at the same time. “A woman like you.” 

With Shoko staying silent, Utahime takes it as a notice, a small hint that she chooses to acknowledge whole-heartedly for the first time, to continue. “Who knows what a woman getting hit feels like.”

There is a pause between the two, and neither of them are quite sure of what to say next. This conversation is not going in the direction that Utahime had originally wanted to lead it, and perhaps this would’ve been better to say in a fit of anger last night rather in the time that she was too tired, too worn to explain it simply because it had sounded better in her head than it did out loud. In fact, Utahime cannot place her finger on where she had actually wanted to take this conversation. If anything, the only place where she could take any of their conversations with each other, from the ones in bed to the ones filled with tears and apologies that were not sincere, was to the grave. And to the grave, eventually, they will go. And the grave, eventually, will accept. 

“I am sure you know what that feels like as well.” Says Shoko, chugging down the remnants of her coffee despite the undissolved grains of it sticking onto her throat like a parasite.

“Of course,” and Utahime sure does know; getting dressed up as a sorcerer everyday and coming home to reveal a human who bruises, a human who stares into the mirror, looking at the face she bears that has been loved by someone, only to wonder if there would ever be just one more copy of herself, and dresses wounds accordingly to restart her system— with a glass of coffee, with a glass of not-coffee, she recharges and is expected to be well enough for the next day— and the next— and the next— “but why should I make you a woman who knows what getting hit twice feels like?”

For a moment, a moment that is regrettably filled with seconds that the Earth has no time to waste, Shoko thinks that she is more than a woman who has known what getting punished for what was wrong in her eyes, right in her eyes and vice versa to the perpetrator. Thinks for a moment that Utahime, just by their profession and what has followed them, whether it be their child selves or their child selves that would push and push and push, has already aided in the act of becoming not a woman, not quite dead, but a sorcerer. They didn’t let you be just either. 

“.. Because I am plenty sure,” and for where that certainty comes from Shoko cannot be, it doesn’t feel like the heart and it doesn’t feel like the brain, but the past, and in its most pure form, is vile and has an ever-lasting warranty. “That I know how it feels to hit a woman twice.”

“I am sure you do,” laughs Utahime, but the tone and the understanding that Shoko still has yet to comprehend when she thinks back in time and realizes that it sounds familiar— and the situation does not align to this one. To why Utahime, just after they have decided that things have not been anything, had used this voice when things were , Shoko finds she will understand after giving it some more thought. More thinking, just more time, more thoughts and more— “do it thrice?”

Clink . She hates the way the textured glass hits her teeth, it’s warm and it’s cold and it’s a thought. Shoko will never love more than twice, and even the latest if not last had been amiss; so why should she have to hit thrice? 

“Never.”

Tossing her cup into the sink, Utahime hides her shaking hands just in front of her stomach. Holding her clammy palms close together, “I told you, Shoko.” 

She’s told Shoko everything— and yet it seems the favour is never returned. Is that a bad thing? To expect, to long, to yearn— Utahime wonders why being human is so astronomically shameful. “I liked you because you could read things,” and whether or not Shoko read that they were not happy, not in love like how they thought and not living but working, “like how many hits is just enough to win.” 

Blow after blow—  Utahime knows that Shoko knows that one hit will take her out, and if that hit is losing Utahime; she’d rather it be in romance than in life and death. Until death do them part, but until tomorrow does love let them part. “.. I know you have spent your life trying to win what life has taken from you,” everything — Shoko’s smile and her kisses that had been warm and yet have grown chapped and cold from the self neglect; it is almost similar to the dust collected photographs of 3 and 4, “haven’t you?”

“Are you going to keep pretending that we weren’t just talking about you now?”

“I liked you,” I like you, but there are times to speak and times to die. This time, however, is the time to run. And that is what she does, Utahime takes her weight and carries it towards the door, grasping at her things and shakes her head when she remembers the dirty mug of hers she’s let stain the inside of Shoko’s place. “But I wasn’t ever sure that you liked me just that much.”

Shoko will try to tell her that yes, she liked you that much. But was she deserving? Was Shoko deserving of having her truth known when that truth in itself may have been fabricated in a humane, desperate attempt of survival? 

“I tried, Utahime.” To try— was that human enough for the people they cannot try, but have to and are obligated to save? “I really wanted to.”

“Can you be honest with me, even just this once?” Being honest— Shoko will procrastinate. They have always been saying to her, even from the grave or from 6-walls that should not exist within a 4 dimensional world— how about tomorrow? Tomorrow comes and tomorrow you will be truthful, tomorrow you will testify and tomorrow you will tell the truth and the next day you will— how about it? Tomorrow, until tomorrow is nearly 4000 tomorrows later, and she is still neither. Utahime, Shoko is sure, could tell her that over and over and the past will still dictate whether or not she chooses to speak the truth. Some say telling the truth will lift a weight off of you— but what happens when the truth is much too heavy to be carried? What happens when lying just happens to be so much easier, so much more weightless? 

“You know,” Utahime continues, “you know that I’ll believe anything you say because I want to.” 

To delude herself with another— sometimes, it is just so much easier. To be someone’s thoughts, to be someone else; because really, they are just people who are born to someone’s needs, their thoughts and their love. 

Shoko’s stare begins to drift off, swirling and swishing the coffee that had since gone lukewarm and separated from the water. “I wanted to want to, I mean.” Carefully pulling the coffee up the sides of the cup in a useless attempt to rekindle the mixture that were supposed to bind and stick together forever, Shoko continues, “and you know how the rest of that goes.”

Usually calm and collected around Shoko, a side that Shoko has not seen since October pops out in anger and Shoko cannot help but flush— be it at the outrage, or at the sight that sends her back into routine and familiarity, they both are not quite sure. “.. I sure do. You may have hit a woman before, but I never have. And I hope you know that, so don’t keep cowering away from me thinking I’d leave you alone! I care, Shoko. Just because I have to leave you before you kill us both doesn’t mean I hate you. Just because we don’t sleep in the same bed together anymore, doesn’t mean that this is over.”

“Then what is it? Stop hanging on, Utahime. This is going to kill you before it does me. But if you die, I am sure I would too.” 

They pause— Utahime nearly got her hands on the door knob, hands pausing just above as Shoko’s tone does not falter from the mundane intent she has been using for years on end. It was more like instinct at this point, unable to be turned off— a need. To survive, she must. And even if Shoko does not mean to do so, she nearly laughs in pain, “ah, wouldn’t that put us in a situation where I am yet again, your first woman to have been killed?”

Finally, her fingers take the doorknob. It is the first step— the first step they have taken in a while. She’s crawling after running, chasing after something that had never existed; feet gone numb, but there’s a step. There’s a drop of her, of water. That water, however, is found in the shape of tears and tastes of salt and snot.

“You're always my first, yet I am always your second.” Says Utahime, sucking in a breath that chokes her up with the amount of pressure built within her throat and her own fluids, “that in itself kills me, don’t you know that? I am the seconds, maybe thirds, of all things and you— at least, I’ll die with the only woman I’ve killed being myself.”

It kills me too, and while Shoko is much too selfless to say that, she cannot help but admit she does not like the image of Utahime doing so. She can only hope it’s an exaggeration, that it is a joke and that everything is okay and that everything is there and that everything is everything that it has always ever been—

“.. You’re a funny one, Utahime,” Shoko says, “I liked that.” 

“Give me a call,” and whether or not Shoko chooses too or not— it’s a hard call to make, and it is certainly not Utahime to make. Even so, she’ll try, just once more. That is what they have always told themselves, be it when going for a drink they should not be having, be it when kissing one another simply to have someone to kiss, be it anything — just one more time. Once more, it couldn't be so bad. “Or don’t. It matters to me, but it’s up to you.”

“I’ll try,” trying once more does not mean that it has to succeed. Is it the journey, or the outcome that you seek? And maybe, it is the shower that Shoko will take just after this ending-encounter that she seeks. The water, despite everything, will keep flowing. The water will run warm, will make her feel as coated, like icing on a birthday cake with no candles to be blown out, with warmth once again— and for the water, with no exception, will give her the warmth blue fingertips want, but not quite ever, absolutely never, is it the warmth she needs. 

Utahime will tell her she is everything more than cold, but she’ll disagree only to have disagreed. “I really want to.”

II

“Oh god,” says the woman, who looks so unbelievably smaller— so much more vulnerable while she lays under Shoko’s cursed technique, covered in then unmelted ice, frost-bitten down to her fingers and toes attempting a struggling wiggle; Utahime is a mess in her hands, like always, and Shibuya, the city in which has been shown no respect for the ongoing war, shows them just how badly they will take the lives within. 

And while her cursed energy dwindles from the sheer amount of casualties, near-deaths and soon-to-be-dead deaths, it takes a little while longer, especially when Shoko can only purse her lips and stare down at Utahime with cold eyes. It isn’t because she is too petty, too selfish to heal her, but more in a sense that Shoko hurts. Looking at her through the blood, tears that have yet to cry on eyes that do not want to cry, that look in which Shoko recognizes as an extremely heart-wrenching cognizance that no matter what she does, no matter where she goes and no matter what the woman who only prayed to have love to give prays for, the violence will follow. Unshakeable, like a bur on her shoelaces that now stick to the bottom of a heeled shoe, the violence will.

Shoko knows this— and that is why, that is the only , as she tells herself, the reason why her chest burns in a way that even as a doctor, cannot be explained by the likes of her words.

“Shoko, Shoko,” Utahime calls— and her name, though familiar on her tongue and on Shoko’s ears that have been desensitized to the ever-so continuous screams and cries of her name on this day and the next, tastes and sound like the cigarettes Shoko has smoked from the side of the road. Utahime doesn’t, unlike the numerous others who Shoko has had to watch exhale just one last time today, cry her name. It’s only a repetitive noise, and Shoko silently begs her to stop. “It hurts.”

It hurts, and Shoko nearly scoffs. She knows it does, and while she does try to attempt to give a box of empathy, of words that she knows that Utahime needs in order to sniff her nose and quiet down, the wrapping paper crinkles and Shoko finds herself frustrated all over. I’m trying, she thinks, working her energy harder as her back and whatever feeling still lingers in her heart, screams in ache. 

“I know, Utahime.” Shoko, who has always been hiding under the false image that was made by her own two hands, securing its spot at the top of her throat and face instead of the words of it hurts me just as much as it hurts you, knows. Knows too much, knows too little and yet has never known quite enough. “I know.”

What Shoko does not understand is the pain that is revolting to even the one who experiences it, twitching and unmoving from the sheer pain of the cold. Utahime thinks she’s lived in the cold weather for a long time coming, thinks she’s known what it was like to be a woman left in the cold with only love in her pockets and nothing else, but she best believes it is the dream that she gets every night of her loving Shoko. It’s a love without words reciprocated between either people, and Utahime finds that even the pain of her fingers nearly coming off bears the same pain of those dreams. And that, in itself, is something incomparable. 

The difference between these two are little— Utahime wants neither of them to stop. To be here, to experience the physical pain in which disguises the pain that comes when she reaches for Shoko’s arm, fingers darkened and reddening at the seam in which connects them to a body that has been loved, and the realization that comes with existing, the woman is real. She’s there and Shoko is here, something that Utahime knows she has had to tell herself over and over and over, was false. Those dreams are to never stop, and every time she proves herself that those times have been falsified and therefore should be false, this happens again and Utahime has mentally scheduled yet another time on her calendar that is always on the same month of a late-leaving Winter, to a time where she can spend her days separating those very two things. 

And because real recognizes what is real, the pain comes and shouts that it is real. It will always be real, no matter how many drinks and how many cigarettes they will use in order to tell themselves a completely different, altered and hated story. 

“Make it stop, Shoko,” and although Shoko believes she has done nothing for Utahime other than further the heart-break that has been changing her from inside out, has done nothing but teach her how to cover that pain and what percentage of nothing makes it go away for just one night— but the trust that Utahime displays, the desperation— Shoko cannot help but gain the same feeling of rush, of adrenaline to fix, because what is there to do after shattering something if not someone, other than brush up the pieces that have begun to sparkled with tears that may or may not be your own? “Make it—”

She’s trying— and she keeps on trying, trying until her cursed energy begins to fall flat, to fall short of the power it needs. Keeps trying, until her head bobbles in anger, from the failure of the reversing, from the way Shoko is failing at doing this one last thing for her; failing at giving her just this after everything she has done. Keeps trying, until Utahime cries once more and the string that holds them together snaps and Shoko can no longer handle such thing as guilt—

“I’m trying!” Shoko says, not nearly yelling so as to not inconvenience Utahime’s state of mind and the people who are actively dying around them, but not speaking in the soft and monotonous voice she has used for the past couple of years. To be unable to do this, even while she cries and after everything that Utahime has taught her, had done for her— breaks her beyond something called love, and more of a debt that Shoko feels the need to pay back. They, who have lived through that moment together, know that Shoko cannot pay it all back with what Utahime seeks; love, and so her acts of service, Shoko thinks, are the only thing going on for her. “I’ve got this to do, you, to do and you —”

It's just work. That's all it is- it's just work. 

Appearing suddenly, a voice interrupts. It holds less substance to it than before, purified from the excessive pain of burns gone cold and the ringing Shoko has become sure of is happening within Utahime’s head, and is smaller. Shoko nearly strains her ears in order to hear it over the crowd of pain that scream, will always scream, for help.

“Make it stop, please.”

It doesn’t stop there— Shoko can only furrow her brow, technique falling and falling until her anger tides over them and they’re and they aren’t— “what’re you even doing here?” 

“You should’ve stayed home, should’ve stayed in Kyoto.” Continues Shoko, not bothering to enter a moment of silence for the deaths of many thoughts, many people and many loves. 

Her voice, Shoko knows, is angry. She can only hope that even in Utahime’s near delirious state, that she knows her anger is not anger. Anger, in a way, is an umbrella term for things that carry enough weight to anchor out emotions that in society are kept safe in the pits of our acid-filled stomachs. Like boiling and hot water— simply, anger is when the basis of grief simply becomes unrepressed. Anger does not always mean violence: she hopes, with all that she’s got, that Utahime turns to that when she’s got nothing left. 

“You know— you know that I can’t do that to the students, to the people—”

“You’re weak.” Says Shoko, shaking between every word yet carrying them like a queen, unsaid of the words kill me, kill me with your hands only to take my body and yours to a place no where else can see us, that linger on her tongue. “Just what could you have done?”

Utahime knows that she couldn’t have done much, has not been able to do much other than being, and she had thought— had only thought that to be again, to be thankful and to be loving, would be enough of a reason for her to exist. Sometimes, that is true. She just— she needs Shoko to tell her that, fully knowing that she won’t. It is either Shoko has had enough, had too little—

Realizing, that she has been all of that— too much to handle yet too little to hold properly unlike the weight of maybe one, maybe two men— to be the something that was unwillingly unwanted in an otherwise empty life, was to be the something bound to be unwanted by the world. The world, that has become empty from the respect that is due from humans, the love, tells a story that they realize is the fact that it is only so soon that it will begin to take everything from the first person who finds that out. And without thought, Utahime, who had seen that look in Shoko’s eyes and when the voyeurist of a love she holds had also seen, had stumbled into that realm.

What Utahime can just barely see through the fog of the grey area of what they are and are not allowed to talk about, is that Shoko is only awkwardly and ferociously speaking like this because she has spent more time grieving the love that cannot be shared, that Shoko cannot give, longer than she has the time spent with Utahime, only to realize that she did not love her in the way that both of them wished Shoko had. 

“Be here,” and here she is. Utahime’s been everywhere— Shoko thinks. She’s been down in the cracks of the sidewalks that Shoko had avoided for so long, she’s been down in the ditches with her legs and her heart, she’s been down in Shoko’s home that was not hers at all. In her own head, in another’s mind, down on her pillow because she’s always in bed; always. She’s been, she was and she is. “I am here.” 

And what Utahime has not been, if anything at all, “is, that not enough?”

While Shoko does not want to be the one to have had the last word, a word that may or may not be a sharp cut to anything, since Utahime is visibly in great pain; it is hard not to, it is hard as a human to be uncruel when all that you feel is given to you, by another who they cannot be so sure is human or non-human and the experience that had built up and led them to lay it down like plaque on yellowed-teeth, is cruelty. 

“And so what you can do, what you consider to be adequate in the cruellest manner possible, enough, is to die here too?” 

Even when Shoko knows that every kiss Utahime has given her has been only physically on the lips, an imprint of her ever-loving self running so incredibly deep into her soul that it is sometimes hard to remember anything else but, she will still speak with shaky words— for cruelty, for Shoko, appears when loss hangs within the air with a weight that cannot be measured. “Is that enough to satisfy your hunger for love?”

No, Utahime can barely make out of her thoughts. It is by now that Shoko has been, in a rage with its unknown nature, unfocused on her wounds and the careful articulation of her cursed technique; her thoughts, jumbled and stirred, can only make out a few thoughts. No , because what has been brought upon the soil, like a grave undug only to find unsavoury bones, is that Utahime has only been fed pills that have been lied to, buried in spoonful's of love. It reminds her of being a child, disguising grape-flavoured medicine in orange juice— while that was unpleasant, it was for the greater good of both parties, even unknowingly, and that in itself is rather comforting. That is why, Utahime still cannot bring herself to follow the stream of violence.

“Then, if the only thing I can do is die,” Utahime, though strained and silently screaming to the shrine back at home, says with clarity in order to speak multitudes of sincerity to Shoko, “so be it.”

“You should’ve stayed back,” Shoko thinks she too, should’ve stayed back. Should have stayed on the other end of the phone for hours upon years if not lifetimes, to tell everybody— fall back, this a war that even with our efforts, cannot win. This is an act of violence that no amount of love will fix. This is, with brute power and brute love, what will be a massacre unreserved for the dead. And although she thinks she would do that, Shoko and Utahime both know she’d not be sober enough to speak coherently: knows that she’d simply sigh deeply and say, do what you will — with no regrets. “I’ll tell you that over and over and over. ”

“I should’ve made sure you stayed home.” She'll say she dies in the near future, with no regrets and a few firsts and a lot of seconds, but this: this is a regret. 

III

When the time comes around to the point she visits more hospitals, more graves with nobodies and more places that are liquor-bound than she visits friends, and everything seems to halt when time stops at the moment that loving Shoko begins to feel like an everyday part of Utahime’s life— a routine centred around what she had and what she now could never have, it’s then that she learns that perhaps, just perhaps, she’s loved a little too far. Gone far too deep, and had finally, finally, bitten off more than yellowed teeth and crimson gums could chew. They call it a smoker’s mouth, sick, bitter and disgusting. Utahime, however, with all the strange qualities she’s picked up claiming, hypothesizing of how those niches were born; calls it the best dish she’s ever had. 

And somehow, when time falters, at last tripping whilst continuing its mocking prance, landing them in a situation where Utahime’s mouth won't stop running, fleeting without thought— she comes to a realization that the routine, nurtured by two people, had finally been orphaned and put to rest. Sleeping under the small rice farm they had started, long since gone rotten and unloved by the hungry spring animals, is the small feeling that resonates within her chest at that sudden awareness. 

In that farm, where the on-going windy weather does thrive like mold in their hearts, and Utahime is still loved by everything that she had wanted to be, to become and to undo, this would’ve been much the easier. However, now that they stand in something similar to that of a river, a continuous flow of hypothermic-water, stained by the eutrophication of the past and the people it holds. It seems that, through the unutrious algae, Shoko can no longer see the reflection of herself in the water— only them, always them.

Perhaps, in another way— it was a different path that the world had taken to tell her that, yes, things will always be this way. You’re, who has been left and dug up from the grave that has already been dug for you, unloved by the world. And Shoko will try to continue walking, kick a green-leaf to the side and hope her feet are strong enough to remove the baggage that is more than what she carries— to find that, ultimately, it fails. Whatever Shoko carries, they both realize, has followed her like the stench of cigarettes, all the way to this moment. They speak, the baggage follows. They land, the baggage follows. They die, and the baggage; they find, will follow. 

"So," says Shoko, voice trailing along the lines of solemn and disappointment. To Utahime, this tone of voice, this area in which her voice is echoed throughout the bar, filling the spaces of loving sound that the jazz-band playing somehow misses, is not unusual. And when her lips, coloured in rouge that had once seen itself on Utahime’s own, continue to move; the older woman can only watch. "You're saying you love me?"

It has been a long while since they have last spoken, and it seems that although their last conversation had satiated them for a while— they always crawl back, on hands and knees, on prayers and in funeral homes, to each other and seek anything but them. What Shoko believes Utahime is here for, spilling drunken regrets and invocations, is to hide her unexpressed grief; if not love, in the words that are molded into ‘love.’ And that is exactly why she asks that question, exactly why Shoko remains silent and waits for a reply that she knows is not what she wants— but what she needs. 

For Utahime, really, it’s a clueless decision that was foundationed on impulsive actions of a lonely woman. She still believes, to whatever is out there to listen to her as she has had faith in since she was born and raised, that eventually; these decisions of a woman so cold, would fade. 

"That's.." Utahime trails off— for a moment, she loses her stream of thoughts to another train-wreck that results from her own loving. "I’d say that, it is something along those lines, perhaps."

And Shoko thinks, just for a moment, so what ? There is something so unimportant yet so heart-wrenching about such words, that she isn’t so sure she is able to hear them. What is the use of those words, what comes out of those emotions and how do we use them? Should she, Utahime with all of her endless everything, be using those words to her? Is there any meaning behind those when all that’s done and left is a person— is there any meaning to those words, when Shoko has begun to question her resolve; has begun to question the religion of people saving people? Is that not when they begin to crackle and break off like human dolls?

Yet still, Shoko cocks her head in a sarcastic form of curiosity, “only, just maybe?”

Yes— just maybe. There, somehow, lays a string of confusion that lingers within Utahime’s head. It is herself, or maybe not— that’s how it has always been. Truly, in the purest sense of whatever the world has declared as pure — Utahime wishes her the best. Wishes her the best ways to break, wishes her the happiest moments and wishes her the worst. If there is one thing that Utahime would have to tell her if ever asked, what is it that you need to hear? It will be, and only will be because certainty is not guaranteed with a fickle and mutated substance they call love, someone will love you as much as you love everything.  

“Shoko,” her voice, cracking at the syllable and recollecting itself within one breath, shakes with gratitude because this chance to explain, to explain and try to justify the aftermath of the violence, is something Utahime is nothing short of thankful for. And what she won’t admit, is that she is sure that she will never hear those words from Shoko— what does she know? “I am not going to say what we really both, don’t need to hear.”

In her head, there seems to be a tumour of something that will continuously ask questions— continuously try to blanket Utahime with the truth in which birthed the lies that were so much easier to nurture and grow into a falsified version of her emotions, what does she know if you don’t tell her?  

“I didn’t expect for you to tell me yes, so,” says Shoko, ignoring the lull of the past to fall right back into it. It pains her in a way, because really, she adores Utahime. She praises Utahime. What she had not known for so long was that this feeling of longing, this unshakable crave for someone from a specific time period— may not be love. And now that Shoko has grown into a woman and not dead, these emotions become more and more and more prominent that they begin to hurt. When these emotions finally turn and speak, knowing the answer without even having to ask— they know that this love is being cared for alone. For all that she has learnt— love, alone, never is raised quite as well. "Good for you."

Good for you. Good for you. Good for you to have died twice and wondered why you did not die the first. Good for you to have loved and been left wondering why you were not. Good for you to have loved me, unrealizing the fact that I will soon have to be apologizing to you despite the fact that I had told you, I love you. Good for you, to have used those words so easily— I really liked that about you. Good for you. Good for you, and good for you to move on so quickly despite it has been years, if I remember correctly, since then, and good for you to have forgotten, and good for you to have not been, in the most physical sense— good for you— 

".. Is that really all you have to say?"

And because Shoko will try to pretend that her liquor has not taken up every shelf of her home, still undecorated and left for the dead to fill the couches and the double bed that was bought without questions, she will look off to the side— to see themselves in the reflection of their addiction, whether it be the walls lined with alcohol and invisible splattered-blood, or it themselves who seemingly always run back to something that will never be there, makes Shoko sigh and leave a heavy breath in the sorrow of a cold day. 

"No," finally, like an agonizing hour-long interrogation of reading body language that had come so close to staring at each other’s eyes and holding a hand that was untouchable, Shoko finally admits— it’s been years, and she wonders just how long Utahime has been holding onto a case gone cold. "I just don't know if I could ever accept the love someone gives me."

Under her hands, calloused with the universe and it’s stars’ colours scattered along her knuckles, sweaty from her palms to the tips of her fingertips that gently trace over photo-frames and old scars that the girl from the time who received them cannot heal; feel as if holding the tears, the time and the effort of another love will crumble, shattering until Shoko is left bandaging up her own, in the silence of the hospital that tells Shoko, you’re home, no matter how many times she comes in an appalling mess, apologizing an endless amount of times. 

What Utahime has to give— truly, is timeless. An endless spout of cursed energy; not from technique, but from the curse that had attached itself to everybody who has ever lived to walk this Earth, to everyone who has lived and eventually, died— love. Shoko finds Utahime the type to give the world for a dime of love, to give herself to someone like her — she was thankful, in the slightest, to ever be on the receiving end of that love. But now, and after all these years, Shoko had thought this had ended. Thought, that Utahime would let up on this loving that has since been kept unsafely within her heart.

".. We only accept the love we think we deserve," and what they don’t teach you in school, what those like Utahime will not tell their students to keep them as close to an unloved substance as possible; is that the love we are able to accept depends on the love we have already accepted. "And you deserve everything."

"I deserve what I need to die," and what that consists of; Shoko doesn’t know. She’s thought about it quite a lot, more than she should have. Perhaps, she had spent more time pondering on just when— how and who was going to finally put her to rest— more than she did thinking of those who had created this image of unforeseeable death. Shoko had always thought it would be love, of some kind— of pain and consumption, of nostalgia and alcohol, that would kill her— after all, had it done the same to the same people who she’d spent those years with? 

Could this— mean she will never be able to take a breath that feels just as calm as the last, seeing as she is burning from the inside and every breath becomes just a little more strained than the last, that she will never be able to live just knowing; there is a small chance of this feeling coming back? 

But, that means it existed, right? That means, there is something willing to come back. 

Will it , the grief and loss in which had finally loosened its grips on the past Shoko’s who are stored safely inside the altered version of her, who has begun to scar over with keloids and hive-itches, come back and bring her to the same fate? Will it, her words, "nothing will change what love has turned me into—"

Finally, bring her and Utahime to the end of this particular unloved loved fate? 

"And what has it turned you into?" Asks Utahime, swinging back more of whatever drink is in front of her while making sure not to look into her reflection that is sure to be in ruins. 

There is no true, honest and real answer to this. Both of them know it, and because they have always been pretending as would a circus clown for the longest time, perhaps much too long that they have forgotten who they were and where they had come from— they keep believing that one day, they’ll be able to sleep like they did in the past. One day, if hopeful enough when hope has given up on you, they’ll be able to walk and eat and breathe like themselves again. One day, they will turn back into the person they were. And when that time differs for both of them— and that may be the most painful part of it all. 

Dying, just so happens to be one of the many unreliably painful forms of art; she, the canvas. Though, under thick oil paints, brushed and laid alongside a hasty attempt to hide, with fumes that are intoxicating to such a state, Shoko isn’t entirely sure who she is. 

"Good question," Shoko tells her, even if it is a fabrication of a truth that is awfully opinionated; a good question, in Shoko’s mind at least, is one that is carefully crafted in order to hide the hurt, to the hide the violence that will be inflicted, regardless of who was going to lay it down on her skin. A good question, something along the lines of a smaller, kinder version of Shoko that she wishes to be: how are you? Have you eaten yet, and did you eat with silver or wooden chopsticks, because I know you preferred metal but I hated the sound of it on your teeth? 

But it seems like Utahime hates the sounds of lies on her teeth when they come out with a strained, monotonous yet mellow hue in every butcher of a word Shoko speaks. "If I had loved you all that much, I think you would know."

Utahime, with her jacket that smells of laundry detergent that Shoko sniffles her nose at because it smells of her clothes in the past; before cigarettes had covered everything , knows. With a small smirk, forced behind the curtain of their housed-memories, Utahime gives her the words that can only tell her: do you realize that this is merely fun for me? 

Or so she thinks. Truthfully, there may not be a concept of such fun for them; there are only so many things a woman in their world, enjoyably with a gracious smile on her face that vibrates another’s world in the afterglow, can do after their age. Love is, and will most likely be for as long as the system of eye for a thanks exists, not one of those things. 

"A cigarette-lovin' bastard."

The clouds above them begin to flutter close in the wind rather than being harshly shut away like blackout curtains, and then so it feels like the air of nervousness that they themselves produce falls away painfully slow— just like lips on a cloud of hushed cigarette smoke, Shoko purses her lips and sends a small smile back at the woman. She finds it, only just a bit if she is so to speak, comforting knowing that Utahime is still able to talk to her like a woman more so than a past lover— something that many were incapable of, and those people were always ruined before they were able to be reborn as anything more. 

".. That's my girl," laughs Shoko. There isn’t much that she can say to that, it is neither false nor something she cares enough to fight for, especially when Shoko begins to dig a hand into her pocket. Fumbling with the box that opens and blindly reveals just one cigarette yet no heavyweight; she must’ve, like most things other than herself and a bag of clinking bottles, left it at home. "You got a lighter?" 

Utahime hesitates for only a second, a moment of shock that goes through her for an unknown reason. A part of her grows over concerned once more, and perhaps that is what she needs. Something to worry about so that she is unable to overthink of the ways to worry about someone; someone that worries her so much that she is unable to overthink of the ways to worry about how to undo the past. That almost always leads to even more thoughts and thinking; ones that get Utahime’s heart beating like no other time. She may be in love with that feeling, no? 

You are — she thinks, but halts there. They have always been trying to die. They have always been, even if so slowly that it is unclear to the eye, unafraid of dying. From their profession, to the progression of their portions of alcohol on a night that is far too cold, to the way time will age them and then suddenly they become 300 days over, 1000 days since then and different — slowly killing yourself. But Utahime, with the fundamentals of time and relativity, cannot bring herself to say it. No one says such things when a woman dies young or dies old; it’s always the same thing; you were too young to die, never too old, a matter of time that people are able to accept. You are too pretty to die, but never you were too ugly to have lived. A prospect of the physical body, Utahime can only question, why? Why is it that beauty killed you young and time killed you old?

Why is it that when love kills, it is always an obsession and not a necessity?

"Not for you." Shaking her head, Utahime ignores the drop of everything that fills her to the brim knowing that indeed, there is a familiar lighter in her pocket that no— she uses it to carry. It feels nice to hold, feels nice to have something to follow when there is the end of time. 

Though, from the way her jacket drops to the side when Utahime’s hands leave from their nestle in her lap, and the other just rests from slowly draping off of her hips— Shoko understands that, and finds it somewhere within herself that is without care, to laugh. The care goes to the irony of it all, they are each other in a sense that they have loved. Why they no longer do so, is a complicated mess that Shoko understands.  

"You're just a half-done mosaic of me," says Shoko, picking and choosing her words with careful ease that disintegrates when Utahime looks at her that way. In the moments of defeat that most likely follow a binge of alcohol and perhaps some plums, Shoko will feel guilt for being Utahime’s first love. She’s always known that in a way, she felt complete in a lonely sense: and now, Shoko knows that Utahime is merely unfinished and unsure of where to find the completion. Shoko can’t help with that— a doctor would stuff it full of gauze and Shoko only stares. "Don't you ever dare forget that."

I won’t — and Utahime will never give that up. Perhaps she will forget the way she thinks, forget Shoko’s name that gets lost in the entirety of a graveyard that is filled with only names— but never, never will Utahime be able to forget the way she likes her coffee in the morning, forget the way she will try to love and how to accept what is given to her; even in the most feasible sizes. The human body is surely amazing when it comes to adapting to love— it is surely amazing when it realizes when it is time to stop. It’ll accept it for what it is, it will never truly forget what it is. A system, a communicator— the body is love, and some people, who realize you can’t have only one,  just do not want such a cumbersome thing. 

"I'll be glad," and grateful that the recognition between tired and finished are still clear, even to their corneas and brains that have simply deplenished over time, "that you have even given your pieces to me."

Shoko wonders if she ever really did that. Willingly, they kissed and done things that have the curtains closed and the moon smiles brightly down at the sight of two lovers— willingly, Shoko has smiled with a genuine thought over the table of home-cooked food. Willingly, Shoko has given it her all. For a chance, for a moment— and with failure, she willingly gives it all up. 

"When will you give me yours?" That’s when Shoko realizes— she gave them up. If it all had gone to dust and falling avalanches of the cold winter, she would be warm with love and a cup of coffee done in her mug. But it’s cold, freezing to the point cigarettes do not heat her insides and fingers turn blue— dead bodies are cold, even in the midst of a roaring summer. She knows.

"When you accept the love you receive," Utahime, though her words are more often than not, true— know that this task of hers may just be closer to heaven than it is to be possible. Shoko, loving with no regrets but a lonesome feeling of spite; Utahime believes there is only one way for her to continue doing so. It is hard to love others when your love is lonely. It is, for a woman who has grown to think love is simply romantic when it is more or less an identity, hard to love. "When you love."

Shoko raises a brow that is short of rejection, “love you?"

There is a part inside of her that brews like coffee in the morning but flows throughout her veins like alcohol on the afternoon shift, that shakes at the thought of that. There has always been a lingering question that both of them are sure the other is too afraid to ask, and that is, when will this all end? Shoko has in fact been questioning that since she was a child, are we there yet? to, will the war end? And the results show less than worthy results. Now that the situation has become dire and Shoko finds herself on trial for it, she can only think; this, typically, ends with death for most people.

As much as Shoko could deny it in some form of harmful denial, she is like most people. They are most people. People know people who are doing well off, people are people who are well off: Utahime and her know each other, and neither of them are doing quite so well. They have been working to save, and along the road, saving becomes work when it is less than successful for those who you truly wish to save. That can’t, no matter how much you will oppose it, be everyone. And therefore their routine ends with the same thing more often than fewer people would hope. Death and eventually die. Rinse, until their cuticles are peeling and bleeding and their hands smell of iron and sting of soap, and repeat. 

"I could wish," says Utahime, an exhale that with its exhaustion tells Shoko, she is tired, tired and walking on heated coal stones yet still pressing on— and somehow, it is caring in the worst way possible. This is over, she thinks, but really, they are always , as two women and as two-not-but-were-lovers, just at the beginning. "But, no. Just love. Anything, anyone, yourself, the past and the future; just love."

But how is it ever going to be possible: to love without demand?

IV

When work ends, and the late hours of the evening begin to creep over the sun that has risen without question— Utahime is the one, surprisingly enough, to be digging with dust-covered fingers through the cabinets. There is one hand, outstretched from the dark corners of the wooden space, holding something Utahime is not sure of; though, she knows that there are a few bites taken out of it, a savoury taste in her mouth and a temporary feeling of content in her heart. And maybe a case of heartburn, but Shoko isn’t there to tell her that, so Utahime can’t say that, or anything, at all. 

With no relief, it turns out the cabinets are empty. Empty enough that there are cobwebs building up in the corners, spiders crawling away with haste as Utahime uses her hands to swat away at everything. In the past, Utahime was sure she was still afraid of spiders: but really, what is there to be afraid of anymore when love no longer exists? It would be clear to anyone just how off expiry she’s gotten, using the same dust-covered hand to wipe the sauce off of her mouth and hope that it doesn’t clobber up on the sides of her lips. 

They— they haven’t been kissed in a while. Utahime isn’t sure if the purity of it all brings her back to her youth, in which kissing with something they did behind the shrine and behind the schools, or if the lack of sensation makes her feel like a lesser woman. She believes it comes down to which one she would rather feel, but everyone knows that it isn’t what she thinks: it’s what society wants her to be. Even so, the feeling of the rough fingers of her own against her lips is worthy of a content sigh. Perhaps it is the imitation of a kiss, or the fact that it holds the vomit under her lips and back into her.

Pushing the bile back, back and back — Utahime sits down, legs rid of pants because of the sheer heat of a summer’s day that is oddly not warm but not cool, and flinches at the contact between shaky legs and cool tiles. There is a moment of vertigo as she grasps fingers over the counter, searching for something until her fingers wrap around the mug. The handle had long broken off, but Utahime cannot bring herself to buy another mug solely for that reason— not when the other mug sat silently within the dishwasher, stored away from sight and dusted from being unused. 

It nearly shatters when her arms bring it down, seemingly weightless as the little droplets of sweet nothings swish ‘round and ‘round. An appearance of disappointment reflects off of the red surface of the mug, and Utahime looks away after catching sight of the empty bottom that still smells of alcohol. It strains her arm slightly, to hold the mug away from her and off of her knees that have since made their way up to her chin, but nothing hurts more than a knock on her door that takes her a second to realize is real.

Be it from work, or the one-day or one-hour withdrawal syndrome, getting up is a struggle. Utahime finds herself huffing angrily, at nothing when she sets the cup down on the counter. Though, it still falls soundlessly, and even more so as her footsteps begin to move from the kitchen to the creaky hardwood floors. Ruffling her shirt down to cover mid-thigh, Utahime decides that though nothing has ever been enough, this will be. Just for tonight, only for tonight. 

Tonight, she’ll once again be in her twenty-somethings. Tonight, she’ll act as if the world came down just yesterday to be dramatic: tonight, she will. 

Briskly, the door swings open and Utahime takes a moment to realize that it was her who had done it. Eyes catch on her fingers, dirtied and covered in sauce and chocolate, wrapped around the doorknob and dart towards whoever stands just outside of her doorway. 

"Shoko?" Says Utahime, voice beginning to raise in a question before it breaks. 

That woman should not be here— no, she cannot be here. Not in the night, under the moon’s wide eye, where Utahime is left vulnerable to her own eyes. Not at the height of the sun’s arisen, where every scar of hers is less prominent than it was yesterday. It takes everything in Utahime’s arm that has deteriorated of young muscles and such in the past years, to not shut the door in her face— simply, to do it. 

Staring at each other for what seems like hours, flowing through memories that have been made years before, it is hard to tell what Shoko is thinking. Her eyes, Utahime notices, still hold the nearly dead look that matches just as well as it does them. Eyebags have begun to drag themselves down to the apples of her cheeks, and Utahime thinks that they are now matching: if you don’t count the weakness on Utahime’s face, the one that she can no longer wear with pride that someone her junior will make up for. 

Utahime knows that they should not be doing this again. In fact, she knows that she cannot allow it— but if she will follow through with that is an entirely different story. They are not young anymore, they grow closer and closer to death with every passing day that they no longer have time to fool around, no longer have the luxury of doing while believing tomorrow will come and everything they have done in the night will be washed away by the sun. The awareness deepens further as her hands fall from the doorknob, rubbing against thighs covered by cellulite and bruises with their 4-dimensional causes unknown, that Utahime cannot help but shiver upon the rough contact. No longer smooth, no longer a person. 

And yet, Utahime still remembers finding hands attached to someone else's body, caressing ever so softly atop the textured skin. Remembers the traces of what had been considered love that still slivered through her mind every so often; remembers that maybe, a change could not be so bad. 

"Can I stay here?" Utahime can’t help but notice that as Shoko speaks those words, despite her own fingers latching onto the hem of her white shirt and pulling down, stares into her eyes and doesn’t even bother to look at the mess of an empty home that is her, and physically merely a couple of meters behind her feet. "Just for tonight?"

No — you cannot advance. And yet, Utahime still stands there, legs barren and joints aching from the rush of standing up and pulling her feet against the floor to open the door to this — it’s tiring, and sometimes she had wished something would’ve noticed that. Only sometimes, she has long since given up on anyone realizing without dying whilst trying. The words she desperately wishes to say, with every fibre of her being, cannot expel themselves from her mouth. Instead, she stands dumbly— stares, because fate has never really offered a choice to do much else. At least not without a hefty cost, and Utahime is not so selfless.

Shoko, like a dog, seems to smell out the hesitation that infuses itself with confusion and sucks in a breath of air. It is almost like a year-long interrogation that finally binds itself together with criminalizing evidence and seals itself as Shoko stands trial. "I'm going to try to kiss you." 

But of course, the dog inspires the rabbit— she jumps, landing onto every stone that Shoko can grasp with calloused feet without being tied over by the storm that Utahime has become. Her words are just as unstable as either of their thoughts, unthought-of yet overthought to the point that they begin to oversaturate themselves into their relationship. "I'm going to try and tell you I missed you," and is that truly a lie? Or is it the body’s instinct to survive that breaches through her skin, because it is all that she is made up of? Organs, blood, vessels— all of them only want to survive. They’ll do anything to get it, no matter how badly Shoko wishes for them not to. "Please don't let me."

To kiss, maybe they will. To kiss with the intention of sharing love, not taking, however, is not what plays out. Shoko believes, though she has been blindly following fate because it was much easier to believe that the universe has decided all of your life’s contents than to believe in your faults and your experience, that loving is comforting. To be unloved, once more, simply because there is nobody there to do so, is so much harder than to be content with the missing piece of prominent loving. And you know what? She realizes, with what Shoko will call superficial anger, that loving a woman as a woman will never get, never will be, quite as much easier as loving 2, nearly, dead men. 

Sighing, Utahime shakes her head in a bout of gathering composure. "I can't tell you that I won't want to kiss you, if you ask me." And that is nothing but the truth— even if she had been the one who had left that morning, so early that their mugs were still wet from the wash that came just a day before, Utahime will not lie and say she did not miss. Surrounded by students, by curses and by her own room— lonely, she has never felt more. Yet, she stands above it, "but I won't let you."

"Are you sure?"

"When have I ever lied? Stay," stay with me, and even if Utahime will wander around the empty home when Shoko leaves and wonder why everything still seems so much bigger, so much emptier, Utahime asks. It hurts— knowing it is just once, but even just this once may just be enough to drive Utahime to the last day of the week. Her space is tidy, she is well kept, and every day she is not ready with dinner when she comes home yet always prepared to die. "We don't even have to eat dinner together."

It’s almost laughable; just knowing that Utahime’s fridge has been scoured of all edible products and stored with booze that are sealed, opened, sampled and emptied— typically, most of them go through that process in chronological order. It turns out that those bottles are nearly just as human as they are.

"But," starts Shoko, "what if I say that I wanted to?"

You want, you want, you want — I want you. 

Looking down at her toes, Utahime shakes her head once more. Her bangs move in and out of her vision, making the sight of Shoko’s shoes that slide off in a familiar fashion. "Then I won't let you."

"I want to kiss you."

I want to too, but they can’t. They can’t.  

"I can make tea," says Utahime, grabbing a stray hand of Shoko's that is rough and cold with a recent wash of blood. The touch, for the first time in a long while, does not spark a feeling within either of them. Dragging themselves through the corridor is similar to walking through a kaleidoscope, it is everything yet so compressed. Everything— everywhere— and nothing at all. It has to be nothing, after all. "We can drink over nothing and sleep."

"Thank you," Shoko nods, and without even glancing at Utahime for longer than a few seconds of rather painful silence, "you look... lovely, tonight."

They are children no longer; so they sit at the dining table, dusted and engraved in mug-shaped stains from too hot coffee cups and scratches from steak knives. They sit in silence, try not to discuss work and try not to spill what is theirs to keep, what thoughts there are to keep to themselves, onto the other’s imaginary plate— because they are children no longer. All that they can do is think of the children, who will soon no longer be. Of the children, that they once were.

She will pour a cup of tea, steeped in silence for minutes on end because it has come to the point where tea is no longer bitter— in fact, it is quite satisfying. The bitter taste, swallowing of the warm comfort that they no longer have to blow before taking a long sip, is just something that they have gotten used to. It is no exception to now, when they wrap cold fingers and stare as their fingertips grow redder at the feeling. Can only stare in the mirror as they grow colder, as they grow older. Utahime cannot tell if she’s being overdramatic, overthinking this simply because the only change in her life now, that had been and is being, is time— but can you?

"You look awfully terrible," though her words may be hurtful, it is the kindest way to lay it down. Utahime bets that Shoko may be grateful that she will give it to her in the most simplest form; the most complex form of it would perhaps lead to death, to which they have been waiting for long, and that— that Utahime knows, is the worst-case scenario. One that has been repeated over and over, one that did not make the director’s cut the first time, so it had to have happened a second time; third times the charm, perhaps. "I want it to get better for you."

"What about you?” 

When Utahime does not answer— it fills her with dread, just slightly. Shoko repeats it, with more urgency than she’s had in the past couple of years spent drinking and forgotten, “what about you?”

".. I think of you," surrendered to the soil, gone, gone, gone and gone. "Less and less."

"That's my girl." And she’ll never be, never equate to just anything. But at least, everybody will have known what went on and what will go on for as long as humans topple atop of each other like raked autumn leaves, exist. 

And you will never be pure again. 

V

THE YOUTH stares at her, eyes just slightly wider than her own. They glisten in the blue and white lights, a glare of colour that is rather dull for its time; and Shoko can only stare back, gaze unchanging as the buzz of lights sound into their heads. It is very clearly a conversation between that of a child and of a non-child, though they can both tell that either is to ask a question— and the first realization that Shoko comes to is that the learning process does not ever end. The dehumanization of being unknowing does not end. 

It is a quiet night, Shoko’s got her hands held coolly against material that traces her fingertips like silk and her hair is brushed through— though, it stinks of shame and pain and blood and the undeniable scent of expired perfume. With her knees to her chin, Shoko watches as the youth vaguely moves whenever she does, only to swiftly look away after nervously wiggling her toes too far outreaching for too much, too far. It is then, without looking at each other, that they start speaking their mind. 

“If you could ask me a question, what would it be?” Says the youth, eyeing curiously as their similar and familiar habits begin to shine through like a 2-way road full of cars, unready for the hit and run— twirling a finger around their shorter locks, the youth opts to shake their fringe out of their face.

“What is it that you are willing to share?” And for that, Shoko sits rather smugly. “I do not take lightly wasting my time.”

A waste of time is all that conversation has always been— too much talking, too many thoughts and not enough action. She is sure that Utahime would have said the same if she had spoken about smoking in such a manner, but Shoko also is aware that she is able to laugh and have the situation be done with, all effortlessly; selfishly, foreshore. Though, what is it not human if not selfish?

Laughing ever so silently, Shoko finds that she is comfortable with the higher-pitch sound of it. The youth is clearly seeking validated answers and hiding the truths behind giggles; yet she sits, and listens, thinking that is what Shoko would’ve done as well. “I am sure that you know I am not so secretive,” and though Shoko sees through the lie, she allows the youth to continue, “maybe a little crude, though.”

“I expect no less from a child.” A child, the youth is; and soon, a child, the youth will have been. Shoko takes into account their mannerisms, just how childish do you ought to be to carry cigarettes within your own school pockets? Where did you learn this? The one who birthed you, or the one who raised you? Neither? 

The youth seems to give Shoko the same tired face, eyes focusing on her mole and squinting in on her eye-bags that she suddenly feels much more conscious of; and instead of backing away, Shoko begins to lean their faces closer and closer, noses nearly pressing their flush sebum against each other. And she asks, quietly, that their breath begins to show, “how are you?”

“Is that how we are starting?” They both smile, and Shoko can’t help but notice the pale beige teeth that appear; she mentally notes that perhaps dentistry has now become expensive, pulling a rotten tooth had been dirt-cheap when all Shoko would have done was reverse the damage. Unfortunately, brains do not work like that— that fact that she knows is not something she wishes to discuss with the youth.

“No,” says Shoko, “the war has long since started. Perhaps it is just that you have not realized it.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Replies the youth, raising an eyebrow at Shoko. She, too, quirks her eyebrow up in confusion— Shoko is unsure of whether or not this youth is dense, though quickly diminishes such thoughts as she is reminded; a youth. Both of them are confused in blood and mind, and to answer the youth with body is all that Shoko wishes to do. Ultimately, you answer to the muses’ call with love and to the universe with your body, they’ve done it not once, not twice but more than she can count. The youth will surely soon have to understand. 

“I will answer you just this once,” only once, because they’ve only got one chance and one body and more than one point of change. “It is not.” 

And truly— it is not. To be oblivious is to live at peace, in contentment because there will always be something that lingers on your shoulders no matter how well you are off. No matter how lavishly you may feel yourself and others up, no matter how much you drink and no matter how many children you attempt to nurture, the act of simply breathing will dwell. To be dead, maybe, is the true oblivion.

“You children,” softly spits Shoko, mouth gone dry as she swallows everything but the never-ending spout of words that she wishes she could always be. In front of the youth, it is all she can be— in front of the elders, in front of her, it is something that is unknown. “You are all simply searching for something within the universe to answer you. Even now I am certain that what that may be is not human, but I will try to help you.”

It is quite funny— fundamentally, Shoko as a doctor cannot tell if they as jujutsu sorcerers could be considered humans. They love as so, or so they think. Shoko nearly laughs at that thought as well— if they could love as humans, tragedy would not have existed. Those two would’ve never ended in crimson, Shoko thinks.

She always used to think. 

“The answer to that is not simple,” the youth thinks out loud, voice full of questions that Shoko finds quite naive to be shown so easily. “If I told you I felt laughable, what would you say?”

“How so?”

“This seems to be a game of toss,” and their fists begin to clench, just above their hearts, with the fabrics of their shirts that differ from a thick school uniform to lingerie that does not belong to Shoko, wrinkling more than the space between Shoko’s eyebrows. “I wonder who will give it up first.” 

Shoko can see that the youth has already crossed one of the lines that separate yet connect all interest, love and obsession— their skin, though quite clear, is tired and sagging like her own skin. Before she is able to register the words she wishes to say, the youth’s lips begin to move once more. “It is quite funny, I believe I am experiencing things that cannot be explained through words.”

“That is pitiful. I know that you are the type to laugh and walk home drunk at the minor inconvenience.” 

To be kind, for just this one time in her life that she chooses to be gentle instead of wishing that her words do so for her, Shoko will not tell the youth the dead giveaways— from the scent that neither she had realized had stunk so badly that late-night animals would stray in fear, from the burnt cuffs of their school uniform that buttons had recently begun to blacken and to the very obvious stench that comes with every word of false, childish wisdom that speaks to her. It does more than speak to her, it is her and Shoko isn’t sure of how she may feel about that.

Coming forth once more, the youth fidgets with a sleeve. They tilt their heads at each other and the discussion continues. Shoko, tired and exhausted from what may be a combination of work and digestion, cannot wait for it to end. “Could I blame this on my youth?”

“You can ask your youth, perhaps,” Shoko replies, thoughts becoming more and more honest as the splitting mirror image of this youth and her own begin to crack at the seams, bursting with reflective material that will certainly claw at her fingertips if she attempts to pick up the pieces. “But if drunk thoughts get you any thoughts at all, what is so bad about it?”

Shoko is concerned for a time that cannot be considered moments, and more like a passing thought, that the youth is actually concerned about the cancer and the addiction that is born from having thoughts that are purely yours and not another’s ideology— though, as it always does, it passes and Shoko sniffles before the youth begins to speak again. 

“I had assumed that you would learn that it leads to nothing.”

“I am still young,” even as Shoko reaches the expiry in which she is no longer able to live, to work and to be seen as something that she is and not will be; because all she will be is dead, and if not, a woman. Even the youth seems to know that you cannot be both at the same time. And for she is still able to walk with confidence, with steady feet and leave when and to wherever she wishes to, Shoko speaks, “I still have time.”

“Do we?” Shoko does not question what we means. It is time for the youth to ask, to speak and build their world from the ground up. And while Shoko wishes to be the silicon that binds people, their thoughts and their dreams together, she knows that she is only a piece of brick within the millions that are to come. It is a pleasure to be part of, but it is never quite so satisfying to be bound and not binding. “I have been feeling as if time is moving incredibly fast,” the days have been; since Shibuya, since December. She’ll go back time and time again, but they never come back— she questions why, but she knows the answer to why. “It has been days since I last felt whole.”

There is an odd feeling that wells up within her stomach. Shoko wishes to embrace the youth, holding them close for only a moment. Not long enough to make an impact, but not so short that it is seen as satire. Just long enough, so that the youth is able to realize youth will never feel whole. 

“Drink until you do, it doesn’t take very long.” Laughs Shoko, only to cover her widening mouth with a hand as the youth does the same, seemingly in an astonishing shade of red and amusement. Coughing, Shoko chooses to straighten up. She does not wish to lose to the youth who have already gained their composure, “that is bad advice, don’t listen to me— or do.”

“I’ll decide that in the moment.”

“Decisions made in the moment are simply always a mistake.” Says Shoko, shaking her head and looking away from the eyes of the youth that though young, seem to be able to read too far into her. 

“I am picking up things as you have, how so?”

“Look at it like this,” and look, the youth will. In fact, Shoko is unsure of why she said that— it is more than obvious that the youth is containing everything yet nothing, as if they will forget about this in a few hours. As if their words had never existed; and that pains her. They have to exist, right? “Her lips look good. She looks good. No, she looks beyond good. She looks more than the sky that you are grateful to be under with her. She looks good enough for you, and you only, that you kiss her.” 

An ache appears within Shoko’s chest, speaking suddenly becomes a chore and the lips that move only to speak and not love to grow tired of being. “And suddenly a kiss is not good enough. Was that a good decision, or not?”

“I don’t see why it is so bad.” The youth says, shrugging their shoulders and adjusting their posture that Shoko is sure burns with a dull pain; or perhaps it is aging that makes it seem as so. “A kiss is a kiss, if it ain’t enough— you make it enough. You drag her out thin until she is no longer. Pull her to her wit's end and realize that your own muscles are aching.” And for a moment, Shoko thinks of her as pastry— a delicious treat through a bakery shop window, and unusually more attractive in the winter; even when her skin is covered with thick, quality fabrics and snow-covered store-front windows. She’s delectable, she’s tart and she’s sweet— she’s hard to master, and Shoko knows she’s cheated and only a human.

“If you regret it, you would not do it again. If you are guilty, all you can do is promise not to do it again. If you are a murderer,” to which Shoko and the youth are lawfully not, “all that you have understood is that you are capable of doing it again.”

“I see,” says Shoko, nodding her head and shaking it when the youth begins to copy her movements. She has heard that this trait could be narcissistic; but, Shoko has also heard the youth’s story within a mere few minutes. She understands now that perhaps, they are just the same as her. Figuring the same things out, fixing the same things and soon to be dying from the same thing. “Cruelty truly never does end.”

“How could it?” Shrugs the youth, as if cruelty is something children like them should be accustomed to— it saddens Shoko to an extent, only to find that regret is something she will die without. If she kills, if she kisses and if she is, she will regret not a single thing. There surely has to be a reason, rational or not; at the moment or bottled from experience that remains unprocessed as an adult, for everything. “Around in circles we humans go. We are only as good as our last.”

“That, you see,” and finally, Shoko finds a fault in the youth. Not a flaw, as they are still growing— but here is where a time of chance, a moment of change is possible allowed to happen. “Is where you are wrong. “There is a reason that a kiss was a bad decision.”

“And what was that?”

What was it? Dig deeper. Push your hands, knives, whatever you can find, into your brain and ask—  what was it that decided what would be your life? 

“It is that it was only a kiss.” 

Shoko reminisces— the nasty habit that was so beautiful on a summer’s day. The her that wore Shoko’s jacket and was carried like a lighter within Shoko’s own pockets, herself who wore the other’s bra from last night, unknowing that there was a difference between them at all. The her, who is not.  

“It wasn’t her whose hair blew in the wind,” or was it? “Or her who held her sandals in one hand and mine in the other. It was,” and this time, she is certain, “it was her telling me that if she could die here; she would.” 

That is truly what had got Shoko. Hooked and forever thinking, it had all started with a youthful question that was full of end-bound ambition; though it may not seem as so. Their visions have long since been distorted throughout their time living as women. Then, it was their time to become a woman in love— and they know women in love are only as good as women buried in the ground. “I asked her that if we died here in the cold water that just barely reached over our knees, what would’ve happened?” 

The youth stares at her, waiting for her breath to even as Shoko finishes off with, “she told me that all she would’ve done is pray.” 

And you will pray, for it is all that you are able to do.

“Isn’t that awful?” The youth sighs, taking in a story that is similar to fairy tales with interpersonal messages— somehow, they are sure they will grow to learn what it means. It is not something that the author, of course, wishes for everything to understand. It is not something that the creator experienced for others to replicate, and yet, it is something that the youth finds will become more and more prominent within their life. Curiously, they speak once more, “wouldn’t you have both swam to shore?”

“Perhaps. But you’ve got to understand that does not mean we both died.” For jujutsu sorcerers will only die saving others but never themselves, for death is accepted along with the mere title, “it could be me, or it could’ve been her— but we now know who it probably would be.” 

It would’ve been her who lived, they all know this by this point in the era; a recurring pattern of sorts that Shoko is sick of seeing.

Shoko stares off, eyes nearly drifting into the bright fluorescent lights and mind beginning to wander off— the youth does not allow this, as they begin to look at each other once more. This time, however, both gazes are filled with understanding and for once— Shoko does not feel alone. While the company is distracting, it is never nearly enough to distract her from the brutal truth, “and so it seems that the cruelty does not end.”

“This, does not end?” Says the youth, and it is almost as if the youth has come to a realization that time is not spent leisurely. While they are laid-back, while they are talking as if they have all the time in the world, Shoko knows it is harder to come to terms with time rather than the events that come with it.

Not wanting to offer a false sense of comfort, for that will only begin to mask the reality that Shoko has already come to terms with— Shoko shakes her head. 

“No, my apologies. It will follow you until you die,” she says, placing her fingers upon the youth’s own and swirling while speaking less than warm words, “though I wish you to have fun with it. Live a little, love less. It only brings you negligence.”

“Does this mean that when you have died, decomposed and given back, the cruelty will end— and that you are the cruelty?”

“We don’t choose that, youth.” Shoko acknowledges the youth, but as they begin to stand and make their way to leave, she raises her voice ever so slightly in order to ensure she is heard. Shoko is sure that she is only ever unheard because of her lack of words, but this time—  this time, even if it is the wrong time, she will make sure her voice is there. “But maybe we are. Who do children grow into?” 

The youth does not answer. It takes Shoko a drunken moment to refocus her eyes, and realizes the figure can no longer be seen, out of sight but not out of mind. It seems that their now invisible presence has taken Shoko back to her own, as she sighs and remembers— “ah, that’s right. Children who have died.”

Shoko hops off of the counter, swaying as her numb feet begin to readjust to the blood rush. Turning off the bathroom fan, the room goes still and the walls suddenly begin to quiet down to a level that Shoko is uncomfortable with. And soon following are the lights, switching with a click and a headspace. The mirror is emptier than she had remembered, and it is then that she knows: she is alone. She has been alone.

She should be used to it, but that doesn’t apply as harshly as she wishes it did when Shoko feels that she isn’t.

VI

It’s been a long time coming since Shoko has known that nothing has ever, and would never go her way. There is no exception, no matter how closely she sticks to her routine and no matter how tightly she closes herself off with the seal of a cigarette butt; it seeps in, through the form of a photograph, the phantom touch of a kiss, and watered-down beer that Shoko will fail to name.  

And somehow, what all failed to name and mention to her, is that before everything had happened, happened, is that it all would eventually happen. Shoko can’t find herself hanging onto the sentiments by her own will, but what she does find, is that the sentiments of youth, of love and of only watching the bond of two from afar yet never quite hoping for anything , to settle in her heart, solidifying and cementing themselves like a thick, matte glaze over a beating heart. It’s stone-cold, unmoving, unbreakable and untouchable to those who do not carefully focus their love on it, yet still continues to pump blood that refuses to carry everything it needs— sentiments, turned sedimentary.  

Yet again, what happens comes like humid rain in the spring— predictable, surprising and an utter disappointment.  

Unlike before, when Shoko has yet again found Utahime sat silently in the bar, fingers ungreased although the massive amounts of izakaya stacked around her— Shoko thinks they would drunkenly devour all of it, if their tabs were together— and wonders why she’s here, though is filled with non-regret. This time, and further in time relative to now, Shoko won’t have to visit multiple bars to ask if they served sweet, dessert-like bar food; and if you could ask both of them, Shoko knows that they would say most of them don’t. Disappointing.  

Silently, from behind, Shoko watches. It seems like watching was something that she had been doing for a long while, perhaps too long— because even now, walking on the balls of her feet and waving down the servers without words is easy enough. Casting her eyes aside away from the bow-haired woman when her back straightens, a sweet hair tucking itself behind a loving ear— is easy. After all the niches that Shoko notices are hers, becoming more and more obvious when a black strand of her wraps around a finger.   

It isn’t until after a few silent sips of her drink, that oddly does not make Shoko feel as gone as she wished it had, that her eyes cannot be torn from Utahime. A sense of protection that Shoko knows she no longer harbours the right to have, a foreshadow that Shoko is aware only comes from a place in her heart that Utahime should’ve never, but has, reached.  

Another woman approaches Utahime, fingers grazing over the shoulders that only Shoko knows feels like when held onto in a burning grasp until they take another lock of hair that Shoko knows feels soft when twirled, feels like the gentle and early months of winter, even when tugged harshly with warm fingers. It shouldn’t bother her— but it does, and Shoko damns herself when her eyes can only observe and think, none of my business.  

Obviously enough, Utahime is flustered under the new woman’s gaze. Like always, there is a blush that is even noticeable from the back of the rather jazz-filled bar, where Shoko watches on with both curious and glaring eyes. When the woman, dressed in revealing clothing that would never be able to mirror Utahime’s modest attire, meets her tired eyes and quickly looks away, Shoko can’t help but let a small smirk fall upon her face.  

Her touch leaves an invisible trail of snake touch on Utahime, who shivers yet bows politely when the woman offers to buy her a drink. One may think it is Utahime’s decency to lean towards the possibility that her students may be watching; always wanting to keep the good image of a teacher, a woman, to protect those children, but Shoko watches on as Utahime jerks, perhaps flinch, when another woman begins to bring her face closer. Silently, Shoko decides something is happening that does not involve this woman. And decides, by now, her knowledge of that has reached the limit of what room she had left for it.  

Standing, Shoko abandons her drinks and makes her way through the fewer people who crowd here on a Tuesday afternoon, after-school hours getting the best of them all— this time, Shoko thinks that her heels are clicking more loudly than they ever had before. Why that was so— she won’t, and cannot admit.  

“Utahime,” says Shoko, finally reaching the well-lit area of the bar in which the bartender, like herself, silently watches on and walks off with glasses when Shoko shoots him an unamused glare. “Who’s this?” 

There is no reason— no reason at all, for Shoko to wrap a stray arm around Utahime’s shoulder, the other woman slowly retracting her own curled hand. Her eyes stare at it, wondering if she would ever have the time and have the day to herself in which she could have such clean-cut, decorated and pretty nails. Wonders if her hands, scarred and dry, will ever look as nice as the other woman’s hands.  

“Ah, Shoko?” Utahime replies, surprise evident with every syllable that Shoko watches leave from her lips. She is sure the older woman has noticed her before she had come here— and Shoko won’t ask why she had not turned around, won’t question why Utahime did not turn to her for help. “What— what’re you doing here?” 

It’s a good question. Shoko, even with every yen she spent on the gas to this specific bar, with the time she spent brushing her hair and smelling her usual attire to make sure the odour of blood was not prominent on her clothing— still doesn’t know, doesn’t understand what exactly had dragged her here. Or so, she tells herself. There is more than just one reason, and Shoko knows at least one and turns a blind eye to it. Perhaps, she thinks, that is why Utahime had not turned around.  

“Am I not allowed to see you anymore?” Shoko asks, fabricating a story that could’ve and would’ve been true, had this happened a few years ago— cocking an eyebrow, her lithe fingers curl tightly around Utahime’s shoulder, nearly digging into the woman’s collarbones that she had seen and felt without the barrier of her clean hakama. “I thought you wanted to meet me.” 

And it seems that with that touch, reassuring and tightly bound without thought, Utahime understands what Shoko is trying to get at. It’s comforting in the slightest sense, that Utahime still feels her intentions without words. Otherwise, it is heart-wrenching because she knows she cannot do this anymore, any longer— it hurts them both, and the last thing Shoko wishes to do but has done is the cruellest sin of them all; hurt Utahime.  

Most likely, that regrettable something, will live upon her shoulders and overtake her posture, and continue to wander like a dandelion pappus on the Earth, even when Shoko is no longer. She doesn’t think it will be much longer until then, either. After all, there had always seemed to be an expiry date for sorcerers like her; like them.  

“Ah, well— did you get my voicemail—” With haste, Utahime tries to continue her sentence. Though, the quick and rapid breaths she takes in between her false words are wasted when Shoko, unwillingly if not unknowingly, promptly cuts her off.  

“And I don’t appreciate having another side company here.” There is nothing, not one thing, that Shoko can do to prevent herself from being known as another woman, the other woman is someone’s, that future person who Utahime will spout the same three words to, eyes— but what Shoko can do, is stop and halt the advances this woman will try to make on what had been hers, and the thoughts that regrettably fills her mind with mellow jealousy that she promises to never act again— the thought, of there ever being another woman. The second lover, the second love— the person who will have to carry the weight and the thought of being Utahime’s second everything, except her second heartbreak. Shoko prides and dwells on that, being her first love and her first heartbreak; at least, Shoko thinks that Utahime will know that the first to ever do those things to her, with her, had loved her unconditionally.   

Narrowing her eyes in a way Shoko has not done since high school, “scram.”  

With that, even just a breath of her words that come off sharply despite her emotions feeling watered down to a soft drink, Shoko and Utahime are left with the quiet words of goodbye from a woman Shoko hoped to never see again.  

“Shoko—” and just like before, when Utahime had told her that maybe, just maybe. right now, this isn’t working out; Shoko cuts her off, even for a heartbeat.   

“Can I sit here?” Says Shoko, pointing down at the seat on Utahime’s right where the other woman had once stood before. She doesn’t exactly want to put herself in that position, the position in which she replaces another and the proposition that Shoko is now obligated to say something because of her impulsive decisions.  

And Utahime, who stumbles over her words and her view on whether or not she should let Shoko sit down beside her— as nothing had happened before, furrows her eyebrows and gives her a soft smile. It’s unforced, but Utahime is still unsure of whether or not this small moment could destroy everything from the hours, weeks and months Utahime has spent burning the ends of their threads to a burnt edge. 

“I don’t know if that’s a great idea,” replies Utahime, a finger finding its way to her hair once again, only this time; Shoko watches as they smooth down the edges of her tied back hair, retucking the fallen sides of her bangs until they rest behind her ears. Shoko regrets it for a moment, for asking and for making Utahime have to think longer than 30 seconds when alcohol makes her incapable of doing so. “But if you— if you wish, I suppose you can.” 

That, in itself, Shoko cannot tell is genuine. Though by now, Shoko takes whatever Utahime gives her— and one of the reasons she does so, without the thought of ever giving something back, is that Utahime does not expect anything back. She learnt this when they had finally ended things off with a break that was neither clean nor rough, there was simply nothing more than Shoko could give to Utahime. Her bad habits, the way she liked her coffee and her favourite brand of cigarettes— she could. The love, the emotional connection and a kiss that they could sleep soundly after without the ever-present fear of unauthorized abandonment— she couldn’t, and doesn’t think will ever be able to give. 

So that’s why Shoko sits down almost immediately, pulling the chair out as quietly as she possibly can— and turns out, that possibility isn’t very quiet at all.  

“Thanks,” the stools are short, and Shoko basks in the way she still stands a few centimetres taller than the other when sitting down. Though, the only thing that has grown shorter and shorter over the years is the patience that the world has for the two of them; eventually, this tension will be forced to leave, like everything always had. That was uncomforting, in a sense— something so permanent yet impermanent, and it makes Shoko sigh and continue, “you’ve always been gracious, Utahime.” 

A series of 5 words that makes the world, even the bar filled with white-noise chatter and drinks over nothing, go quiet— even, for Utahime’s eyes to take a second to widen, for Shoko to stuff some of the fried food that she realizes, with the soggy and uncrisp texture, have been sitting and accompanying Utahime for longer than Shoko had even been there. She chews, and chews— it’s rubbery, it’s tasteless, and she still , still keeps chewing. 

“Did,” and Shoko chews her words out, startling when they come outlined with grease that is still warm, an emotion; a question that has been sitting over the burner for far too long, beyond what one could call simmering. “Did you ever like women?” 

Ultimately— the question doesn’t surprise Utahime at all. Ever since she has felt the familiar glare of watching , laced with the softening exhaustion in the beam, she has known there was a question burning within the woman. In fact, from a year to somewhere around the wintertime, perhaps Christmas if she were to get into wrongful specifics— Utahime has known and ignored the questioning eyes that were always adoring the aftermath of their internal house fire. 

Taking a lonesome draw of her drink, Utahime avoids the woman’s gaze and keeps her focus on her own reflection in the orange-watered-down liquid, ice long gone. “Why do you ask?” 

It seems to Utahime, that she also keeps asking questions to Shoko to which she also does not know the answer to. It is so very obvious, especially so when Shoko’s eyes trail off like her own, and her mouth opens the slightest bit and reveals her teeth that have yellowed— Utahime doesn’t want to think about why that has happened.  

They’re good questions when you look at them like this— true intentions, self-value and preservation, are never so obvious to the naked eye, to the naked brain that does not have one way to experience everything for every person it connects with. And so, they’ll ask a question for a question— and a question for that question, a heart for a heart. But, they’ll never ask each other again: can I kiss you, just one more time? 

“Because you’re so prudish and skittish,” replies Shoko, after taking a second to reimagine what occurred earlier. It is not that she thought, or wished Utahime would never, ever love a woman again; but perhaps a streak of herself that thinks, would you keep yourself chaste for me if I asked you too? And another, completely different from the woman, living inside of her like a love-sucking parasite, who dreams about the skin on skin and lips on lips, would you stay with me if I asked you too? “Did you?” 

“No.” Says Utahime, no ounce of hesitation embedded within her tender voice, and yet— the blunt voice is softer than anything Shoko has heard in the past year. It presses on an imaginary bruise, staying and rubbing against the pain and suddenly, it feels normal— it feels good, almost. 

For a moment, Shoko almost feels guilty. The response is not what she pains over; she suspects there is more to it, but the mellow confession is so much more. It’s somehow similar to the times when they had all gathered around at a sleep-over, huddled around a flashlight and telling stories upon stories of each other’s growth— until it came to a point where someone would speak, and the others would listen, nodding with every word spoken. To a point, where one would go silent and the others would only rest a hand on each other’s backs and wait for it to continue. To a point, where Shoko can only reminisce about what it felt like to be loved as a woman, to love a woman; a feeling that nothing other than exactly that, could ever replicate. 

“Oh,” spilling herself out onto the bar without watchful eyes, Shoko tries not to let those unmoving sediments push their way through, and forcibly rejects them from extracting themselves from the coffin of her heart. “Men?” 

She doesn’t like it— that question, those words. Shoko had always thought, when at work in the latest of the nights where the only source of light was the computer with files on files, the sun is long gone— about Utahime, with another woman. In bed, drinking her coffee in the morning, telling old stories of who she had hated and never who she had loved, brushing her teeth with and kissing— another woman. Not another man, not another person; another woman. Not once had she imagined Utahime with a man. That in itself, Shoko thinks, was a selfish decision. Neither her choice nor business— and yet, she finds herself wanting to know if her love, given by loneliness in the form of a fickle woman, could ever compete with love received from that of a man.  

“No,” Utahime replies, slowly moving her gaze from her scar that becomes a blur in the small tides of alcohol, to Shoko. The other is staring intently, but Utahime doesn’t feel threatened by it. It’s curiosity— and as a teacher, now, she learns that curiosity is not as bad as love, as anything makes it seem to be. “It’s more like...”   

Utahime, in a few shorter words than her brain can shoot out, just loves. She takes what love can give her; she’ll paint that love onto herself, no matter where it comes from at all. And it is not as if Utahime has been trying to squirrel away from that fact, she bears her past on her own face whenever a situation comes too close to who she had been before; she wears her hatred in her words and her love on her lips. Utahime will silently buy another copy of a loved object, loved by a loved one. A loved one, to her— is anything, anyone.  

“How do I say this?” Asks Utahime, eyebrows furrowing further into the centre of her face.  

“Not a mind reader,” Shoko says, a huff of a laugh lowly drawing itself out at the end of her words. Sometimes— it would have been nice, if she could do that. Not to invade others, but perhaps; if she could go inside of her own mind, find out why everything had turned out this way. Find out why things had to happen, find out why she was so hung up on something everyone had moved on from. Weirdly, the end of them was comforting. It boils up inside of her acid-filled stomach, sometimes, that she isn’t the only one of the two thinking about the times and memories they made together. For a trio, however, it was only her in this universe who could ever say; in words that do not exist, will not exist, how it had felt. “I wish I was.” 

And even as one who had not spent most of the time around those inseparable three— Utahime feels for her, and those emotions will be left unsaid for as long as they can be hidden. There is a sense that comes from within Utahime, telling her it isn’t her place to try and fix someone without figuring out who she was first, even if it hurts more than it gives her comfort and relief.  

Cocking her head to the side, Utahime tries to inquire more— perhaps continue the dying conversation, perhaps avoid the questions that Shoko had finally let out of herself. The fire has gone out, but the smoke hangs in the air with a sickening smell; it smells of shaking hands, of the past filled with everything she wanted and could not have. And Utahime, for a moment stuck in the present, cannot breathe. “And what makes you think that?” 

“Don’t avoid the question,” says Shoko, nearly gagging over the words she spouts and disguises it as the izakaya being tough, chewy and swallowed with hesitance. “What are you trying to say?” 

Because I really, Shoko thinks, I really want to know what you’re thinking.  

“I don’t really care.” Utahime, although nearing her mid-thirties by now— sounds older than she has ever before. It is something similar to that of growing much too old to care for things. Things become mellowed; things become something of the past that one no longer has the energy to discuss.  

For Utahime, love is an old-time thing. Loving to give, though continuing to shape her, had grown old and the stamina she had to continue and pour endlessly into those who would not take any of it— due to being closed off in the department of receiving it, or of pride, she didn’t know. But what Utahime did know is that loving will, eventually, get tiring.  

“If I like something,” there are so many things that she likes; and Utahime is not one to spill the word love, to those who were both deserving and undeserving of hearing it, so easily. “I like it. Is it that different from just loving?” 

Taking a second— a second that to Shoko, unknowingly turns into a few minutes of loud thinking, Shoko begins to delve further into those words. To her, there is a clear difference. She likes alcohol— and it’s the first thing that comes to mind when imagining someone asking her, what is it that you like? It’s alcohol, cigarettes, everything that is so very easy to over-consume— everything that makes the past of numerous accounts of what love was when birthed from experience, just that much easier to forget.  

But love; it is just so much more difficult. Shoko, most likely than not, will never admit just what it is she loves. Certainly— she loves the faces of the past. Shoko will love the beach. Shoko will love the war that continues and will continue to love drinking alcohol and will try to stop smoking, trying, always trying and always failing— love is, and will infinitely be, difficult.  

“Yeah,” responds Shoko, agreeing to herself upon an answer that says that yes, liking is so much different from loving. Shoko likes the addiction, likes the fire that continues to burn and burn and burn — Shoko loves, however, the past and hates who it had made her become. “How do you decide whether you like or love something?” 

One thing that she is uncertain of— is if she loves Utahime. The past is subjective; and no matter how hard Shoko will try to deny and defy the love she had been given, she knows that Utahime is a lesser factor of that time. Utahime, with her locks of hair and her lips that Shoko imagines still taste of expensive alcohol, is the only person— thing, that she has left from that time. Shoko, so to speak, is unsure of whether or not it is okay to love, only to leave, the last thing she has.  

And even though the question is strange, Utahime sees right through Shoko’s tired gaze and knows exactly what the younger woman is trying to figure out on her own— she still answers with soft words, words that do not make Shoko feel guilty about what has already happened.   

“Depends on how much there is left of you there is.” Says Utahime, waist-turning until she faces Shoko. There is something more intimate; closer, when they face each other and face the past that has been haunting them for a long time. While it won’t fix it all, Utahime will always hope— just hope and pray to the shrine every night before closing her eyes and dreaming of her prayer, that something connected to the memory of herself could ever be so life-changing, so memorable.  

Continuing on, Shoko listens intently to the woman’s words. Shoko thinks she could do this all day, all year— but both of them know, that sooner than later, the conversation will die and Shoko’s heart and thoughts will trail back to the past, dealing with a bleeding wound that cannot be healed with her technique.  

“You like, there isn’t enough room to love.” Liking something, someone— is just having a branch connected to yourself, an addition to better or worsen yourself; to which of those two would happen is just how far you decide to take the likeness on the spectrum of what is good and what is bad.  

“You love, and there is room for something to be you.” And loving— loving to be reborn, to become new. The way Utahime will prepare her coffee will never be the same, the way she holds the steering wheel and the way she ties off her bow at the back of her head will never be the same— the way she gives and receives love, the way Utahime will ever think again— will never, ever be the same. 

And that’s the thing about love that nobody will mention to you. Nobody, not one person in this universe— above the stars and below the sun, could ever tell her how everything, and everyone, would change into a modified being of their original selves with new niches, as a result of loving; and unloving. 

“Do you love somebody?” For some reason that Shoko cannot fathom a proper explanation for, not with the questions that begin to brew on the back-burner once more, it is simply the only question that she wants to ask. Perhaps, if Utahime had still loved her— loved the her that had been loved before, that had loved others before— that she could be something. That something, however, Shoko did not understand what she wanted it to be. 

“Why are you so adamant on questions?” 

The dam that has been carrying the ever-so-flowing river of her— and everything that she does, as a result of loving, will break.   

It angers her, in a sense— because Shoko, simply, does not know. Or maybe so, refuses to acknowledge. I don’t know, what she wants to say, but wishes that she could tell Utahime. I really don’t know. For why high school, for the youth and for herself, had ended up that way. For Utahime and her, and why things had ended up this way. The indifference in Utahime’s voice is not what she wonders about; what she does wonder about, almost every second of the day and with every short and quiet breath she takes is just why.  

Why is she, who Shoko believes herself to be someone who has done nothing but stand by— stand there, watch as everything and everyone that she had ever loved, burns down to their simplest forms because there was gasoline on her toes, but not her hands. And over the time, that she never liked to work but always had the thoughtless time for, she grew suspicious of herself, as to why everything had ended up the way it did. Was it her? Was it the aftermath of what she had done, in this life and in her past? Or is it, simply, what she had not done at all?  

Simply, is it because she had either loved too much, loved too little; given and received, yet could never fully grasp, in the cups of her hands that would allow sand to run through its cracks mindlessly, which one of those two were truly worse?  

“I think I like you.” I don’t know why I said that, there are a lot of things, it seems to Shoko, that she has yet to know.  

“Are you sober?” Asks Utahime. Truly— Shoko did not have too many drinks here, eye-watchful on another woman; an action that guilts her in a way words cannot describe, but it has been long since Shoko had ever left the house, left work without a shot of something stronger than her own will.   

It was just easier; to live, to wake up every morning, to throwback last night’s bottle and put every last day of her life’s problems to rest, acidly in the bottom of her stomach— they’d always end up clawing at her liver, but Shoko, even as a doctor, pretends to have that thought fall deaf on her ears that are always filled with 2 voices and white-noise, and turn a blind eye to it. Too tired, too confused and too many questions to care about such things, especially when the life Shoko has come to know is a list, a map of a routine that the changed her had curated, unreadable. 

“Probably not,” replies Shoko, a sound that resembles a laugh following the end of her words. It doesn’t fit the scene, at all— but when has anything that Shoko has seen, had done and will ever want to do ever fit in? “But I heard that drunk words are sober thoughts.”  

Often, with Shoko, that is the case. Never is it for a good reason, but it seems with every day that Shoko prays to nobody except the moon, who has never failed at its job to rise every night, she will live more quietly, more kindly and softly. Drunk thoughts are combined with normal comprehension. They grow incredibly more and more unrecognizable to both the patients she speaks with, the higher up who will check that she is alive and not if she is okay, and to herself— they’re the same in the most abstract way possible.   

Utahime takes a strong look at her, and her face morphs into that of when they had both tried the strongest, cheapest alcohol they could get their hands on; and to Shoko, the most beautiful moment of them all, when Utahime had taken a small drag of her cigarette for the first time ever. The first time, the first time ever— “and I have also heard, from a few somebodies, that drunk words are regrettable actions.”  

Shifting in her seat, from the left of her ischium to the right of the bone that works solely for her body, Utahime stares at Shoko— and it is almost like they are the only people who have ever existed. Though, from the way Shoko will still stare off behind Utahime rather than at her, to the way Shoko randomly picks up a lone meringue cookie, placing it on her tongue and a sudden rush of nostalgic emotion creeps onto her face— and finally, to the way Shoko will almost always leave, run from everything— it is very obvious, that Utahime is the last person, but not the first, who had ever existed within that world. “This will affect us, you know that, right?” 

“Don’t let it,” says Shoko. It isn’t that she wants what they have now, whatever they could be labelled as— exes, ex-lovers, past-lovers, there are too many names for what they could be and not enough time or body for Shoko to sift through each one and wonder which one would describe them well enough for a new stranger to understand them, to fit them in the best way two people, ripped apart, could ever be. “Just forget about it.” 

“If I keep trying to forget this,” Utahime doesn’t want to— doesn’t want to forget. “I’ll only end up remembering it.”  

She’s been trying— Shoko, believe me, I have tried. The more she will lay in bed, the more she uses her cursed technique, and the more prominent the memories become. She must forget this, and that thought for Utahime is only a constant reminder of a memory she has to forget. To heal, to let another piece of the unfinished mosaic of herself that contains so many pieces of Shoko— and Utahime, though nearing the point in time where she can no longer change if not physically, don’t know if she is quite ready for that to ever come. 

Hating— even if she wouldn’t call it that, perhaps hauling the weight of the past, was always so much easier in the short-term than healing from it. It is unlike sorcerers to have any sense of long-term-anything in the first place; to have a family, to have a loved one, it was all a blindfold to the death that would all occur at some point.  

“Then remember me.” Shoko knows she is asking the impossible; someday, when Utahime is married off to another one she has found love in herself to give to, or when she is dead and Shoko simply is not there— that Shoko will be the last thing on her mind. And yet still, she will ask, just this once, “remember who I am, or was. I don’t know.”  

And she’ll continue to ask for the impossible. For Utahime to remember who she was and who she will be, was similar to ever asking Utahime to love her just once more. Shoko, who could envision yet never pinpoint exactly who she ended up as if not in the form of personality tests and chronic illnesses, can’t imagine that Utahime could do that for her, in a heartbeat. In a heart attack.   

“Definitely not sober,” and Utahime’s laugh when she says that— gently, angel-like if not deadly, everything that Shoko has hoped time would help her do, simply so that time would no longer be able to hurt her with its perplexities, “don’t worry.”  

“You’ll always be the first I remember.” The words from the older woman don’t comfort her— her brain, filled with sick rot and the memories of those who are rotting deep into the ground in which they had to dig, unreported to any family or funeral homes, if not in a box left unable to be opened, can only ask silently; do you mean that, or are you just saying it?  

“Do you love me?” Do I mean that, or am I just saying it?  

It takes both of them back, and the look on Utahime’s face is unrivalled by anything— but the way Shoko’s face remains calm, unchanging as Utahime’s expression begins to relax and soften into the curves of her growing wrinkles, is something that challenges the older woman, spins her world and scrambles the words that get stuck in her throat.  

“I like you.” Utahime, with honesty prevalent in her voice that Shoko still has a hard time believing, says straight to her face.  

I like you. It is what Shoko needed to hear, it is what Shoko wanted to hear— and still, the words hurt in a way that Shoko has long since grown used to, expression unchanging. It hurts, it’s painful, it’s like everything has fallen onto her shoulders at once and it’s like the deaths that weigh on her and her ability and it is everything — the world, with only one Ieiri Shoko.  

The world, the people; the billions who share the same moon, the same sun and the same atmosphere— just where, where would the woman named Ieiri Shoko , a name with which she could not identify with because it had lost its meaning in translation— where does that woman fit? “Does that mean there is no room for me? Anywhere?”  

“No,” with every word Utahime pours out with her heart, brain unthinking— the present gets diluted into the past, and it feels like everything that had changed them, had changed the future of the universe in which they are unable to love each other— was only a bed-time story from so long ago. A classic one, almost, one that Utahime hopes she could tell to a 9-year-old Shoko because yes, it would be okay. Not now, and not here— but it will be. And for a child, Utahime will not break a promise. “I just think that I can’t love you if you don’t love me back.”  

There is only so much love to give, only so much space between her cracks that have been caused, mended and shelled by the same woman who sits in front of her, sitting prettily yet smelling of blood and appearing in the human form of deceitful grief, that can be filled with more love. Eventually, the space will run out. Eventually, time for them, for healing, will run out.  

“What if I love you?” Leading Utahime on, no— Shoko finds this is hypothetical, a questioning of a reality that they do not live in currently.  

Utahime knows this, and doesn't find offense in those words because simply, she likes Shoko. Loves what they had, what they had been, likes who Shoko is now, likes what they have now.  

“If you do,” she will continue to say if— because if the time comes to it, that Shoko can genuinely look at Utahime in the eyes and tell her that she is thinking of her and her alone for 10 minutes straight, can be drunk on her and not on coping-alcohol, there may be a chance in the prewritten stars, that Utahime will love her again. “You say something.”  

Words have never come so easily to Shoko— and if they did, they could come off sharper and toned differently than her brain was programmed to suggest, and Utahime can only hope that if that happens— only if— that Shoko will find her words, find Utahime’s doorsteps and speak.   

“Loving silently..” Says Utahime, words trailing off to a pathway. That path, takes her down to the memories that have been stored away in a clean room that she will continue to dust and shine within her brain— reminds her of the love she’d done alone, sealed with a kiss that tasted of blood, cigarette and everything from the moment Shoko was born to the day she shattered. “Is the worst thing you could do to yourself.”  

The last thing Utahime would ever want Shoko to feel, and probably the only thing that Shoko would be last on her list, is to ever experience going through a love in which was best to keep in the dark, to hush and silent to keep safely in her heart. “Do you think you could love in silence?”  

Love, in silence— loving, in silence, is all that that will ever be. Going nowhere, going around the Earth and apologizing to that someone, only to realize that the only place you will ever get is back where you were at the beginning of everything, preloved and post-love, is what Utahime had imagined what loving in silence, loving to nobody, loving to the concrete who would never want to, or be able to hug you back even if you laid on it with clothes battered and your guts pouring out, was.  

“.. I don’t have enough energy to love unlike that.” Shoko, for once, will admit that. Too old, yet not old enough to understand— too old to bear with love that took the effort out of her already tired body, already long days, joints disconnected and brain-dead.   

“Then maybe that’s why you’re asking me these things,” and maybe this love made it even more difficult than Shoko had thought it was before, made the love Shoko had learned was to destroy everything that you have loved like a hypocritical paradox— was the cause of it all. And yes, maybe she is asking for the validation that what she was doing was not okay but okay at the same time, maybe yes, she was asking because she’s been walking this new, youth-less path on her own without light, without someone to guide her through its path of unknowns. “I’ll love you when you can love me.” 

That’s when Shoko knows, knows, deep down to her core and to the blacks of her twin-lungs that are soon to be hacking up more than just a few coughs of air, that those words mean I will never love you, because you can never love me either. Shoko wishes to apologize— say one word to the only woman she has ever said those words to before, to be forgiven by the only woman Shoko had loved simply because it was in the past tense. She can’t— she won’t, and they both will never truly get why. 

“When,” when? When will change come? When? “When will I ever be able to do that?” 

Internally— it’s a war that Shoko regrets having started. She knows that what she asks Utahime is once again asking for the impossible, waiting for an answer that Utahime does not know, formulated on the fact that Shoko doesn’t know the answers to them herself. It’s selfish, and yet— and yet, Shoko finds that the weight is lessened and then increased when Utahime finally responds.  

“I don’t know, Shoko.” I don’t know either, Utahime. “I wish I did.” I wish I did, too.  

VII

And in the wake of the nostalgic anguish that had transpired from Utahime’s own conspiracy of the future and all of its tales being absolutely nothing, from the summer air that had disintegrated into the developing season of winter that smells oddly of iron, 3 unknown words of heartbreak; Utahime makes a decision. She decides, with all the knowledge that has since been poured and processed into her bones like cheap cake— to pick up her phone, fumble with its ever-changing buttons, and press call.

It rings for a short while, and there is a moment where her confidence dwindles and her wrist nearly falls from her ears, in thoughts, this was a bad idea. And truly, it is not like that is wrong at all. It is, in most cases like now, a bad idea to ever call up— with any sort of intentions other than asking for your cat back— someone who could now be considered an ‘ex’. Someone, from the past. Someone, from the mould that created you. 

Someone, that would just so happen to leave you on voicemail.

This time, Utahime doesn’t bother with the greeting, with the small talk that would always lead to the falling of silence between them. Right now, and probably will this only happen right at this moment, she will spill everything without filtering it twice— vocal cords throwing up everything that they had practiced, recited and cried to over the mirror, stomach twisting with every word like a criminal been caught. There is no hiding in a world quite like this one for a woman like her, in love, in shambles and in grief.

For a woman like Utahime, though, Shoko is willing to give. 

There is a call back almost immediately, one that Utahime’s eyes widen and stare at with surprise. She isn’t so sure why it comes to her like something she thought would not happen, but it does and she can’t explain the feeling of it— of seeing Shoko, contact name unchanged from what it was when they had been considered, by what the standard of ‘happiness’ was for a sorcerer, at least a bit happier than they are now, ringing up her phone once more. Utahime hasn’t stopped time for a moment, a second, to even think it would ever happen again— but it does. 

Almost a little too eager for Utahime’s own liking, she accepts the call and makes sure there is no one around the corner of the Kyoto School— makes sure that the only one who watches her is the sun that has yet to close its eyes. The metal is still, somehow, cold against her warm ear. 

Even if it had been Utahime who had called Shoko first, it seems that the sudden call-back of the past and the future in a singular phone call has made all of those practiced words escape through the back door, tip-toeing hastily around the fire that refuses to cease, of her unexpressed mind. 

“Utahime,” and Utahime nearly shivers— something about hearing her name over the phone that is not as genuine as hearing in person, facing the other woman and unhearing of the phone static and white noise that comes from the awful phone service at the hospital, yet still hurts Utahime down to the very tips of her reddening ear lobes. “Do you need something?”

Maybe, she thinks, some loving . Maybe some change. Maybe for you to tell me that you still think of me because you’re always on my mind because of this thing of love, of grief, stored in my heart that I have not, and will never let anyone but you, see. And maybe a few words from you, even if you don’t really mean them; just saying them so that I’ll leave you alone when you ask me to, to tell me that I will be fine, that we are fine and that no , everyone is alive and that everyone is fine and that you and I are still, and will always be the same even if we have parted ways and, and, and, and and always and — “ah, not really. Certainly, nothing at all, no.”

It seems like, even without words, that Utahime’s thoughts are as loud as they are in her own head, in Shoko’s thought. The woman sighs, in which the exhaustion is so very prominent in her voice even over the static noise, and it pangs Utahime for calling her up without reason. 

Without reason, and it is just something Utahime will tell herself. She knows what she’s here for, she’s always been a woman with eyes set on the future and those she loves— and she knows, Utahime is sure of why she had called up Shoko, but now that they’re now, is completely new and so utterly frightening. It captures her by the throat, nearly wringing itself until dry when Shoko speaks.

“Spit it out.”

If it were anyone else who had told her that, Utahime is sure her presently clenched fists would’ve had someone by the strands of their, perhaps white, hair; would’ve had them scolded. However, because it is her who says it to in a tone that is much different than she is used to those words sounding, without the love she is seeking and without the level of care, Utahime needs, she straightens herself up— like a teenage girl, who had not yet experienced what it was that had changed them, in love. She’ll perk her ears up and lift her chin whenever the opportunity comes by. 

“I was happy,” Utahime admits, swallowing her pride for just one last time. One last time, she’ll tell herself, because surely this was not supposed to happen again— but what they both know is that neither of them can be quite certain. “I was really happy you were my first love.”

It resounds within the air of them both— in the cool, summer outside of the traditional school building, the squeaks of the engawa reacting to Utahime’s words just as much as she. In the cold, unchanging and sterilized walls of the hospital, the scent of blood that neither Shoko nor Utahime has been able to rid out of Shoko’s hair and hands, sings throughout the air in earnest. There seems to be a dream that connects them both together, to the same world-line in which they are accessible— but a dream is all that it will ever be. 

And in this world, where they both have made this phone call and those words are said— they’ve got no choice but to think, what does that mean?

To Utahime— it means the world. For someone who has since grown older, older than Shoko and older than he could’ve ever been— the first love, the first kiss, was something that had built so much of her. Shoko, truly, was the embodiment of what a first love was to Utahime. Someone she could lean on if not her own mother, someone who would talk to her and reply back to her useless rambles if not the walls of the shrine in which she prayed to every day, someone— just someone, who was capable of gaging the endless love Utahime had to give.

Being someone’s first love, in a way that a now older Utahime can explain it, is to have taught them something. It is and has been to have formed them into a newer shape of who they had been before, in either a positive, negative or neutral way. And for some reason, Utahime finds that tragically romantic. 

How in a few words, in a few years and a few touches; that one is able to be reborn. 

And how, in a few words, in a few years and a few goodbyes— how it can be taken away quicker than she is able to blink. What she’s learnt from that, is that this tragic romance is, named by Utahime herself, as tragic for a very specific reason. To love and to keep, to love and to let go— are all based on the same thing. The love you have will kick you and punch you black and blue; physically changed, the love that you let crawl out of your ribcage, will leave those wounds to heal. 

For Shoko— it is something so entirely hated. To have first loves was to give up who you were, to give up who you will become because it is not you, but it is you who has loved everything that has been loved by the ones you too, also love. A continuous cycle that is a constant reminder; there is no way out of it.

And yet, Shoko wonders, why this love from her youth that she does not regret but cannot accept, can only ignore and forget until it becomes a mess of drunken thoughts and nicotine, had grown so large to the point it had taken up every space and every crack of sewage in her heart— just why the past was so haunting in a way that Shoko would’ve done anything in order to return. She doesn’t think of it as a mistake any longer, doesn’t grieve over it with tears and breakdown but with the change of her body and its condition, but with work and its fleeting moment of justice — because she knows there is no returning. The fundamentals of relativity, of time, will not allow that and neither will she, who has learned to live with the facts, allow herself to let go of everything the future had materialized so loosely. 

“What is that supposed to mean, Utahime,” and for Shoko, who had forced Utahime into the future to sacrifice herself to the chains of the past— of what was to happen in the future when tied to what has already happened. And for Utahime, who regrettably left for the unforeseen bounds of the future in hopes that Shoko, on her own, would be able to let go of the grasp the past has on her— what is it, really, supposed to mean to the two of them? “And what is that supposed to tell me?”

She doesn’t know— doesn’t think she’ll ever know, or perhaps it is something that Shoko should ever know.

“I don’t know, Shoko.” Says Utahime, finger on her chin that slides with the summer sweat on her skin that both of them know tastes salty. Thinking of it more closely, she imagines Shoko’s face; from the eye bags, they’d try to tone down with cucumbers, to the lovely mole under her eye that Utahime would kiss, with gentle lips and whispers, in a superstition that it would be in the same place when they would reincarnate— believing, that all of them could find another in the after, in the nothing. “But there is something so special about being someone’s first love.” 

The power, the limit in which one, with human decency, must follow or be named after absolute human scum, and the overall aspect of having so much, yet so little control over the one thing that is yours; your body, your life and what is set to become you . “Or maybe it’s because as we get older and older,” Utahime, speaking words barely topping the volume of the corpses Shoko stands by everyday, even now, “there is a lesser chance of me being someone’s first love ever again.”

She thinks— with her heart and without her brain, that when she will hopefully meet someone in the future who could be able to squeeze through Utahime’s tightly knitted scarf of a heart; wrapping around her neck so slowly, so heavily, that she will not be their first love. The way they’ll move will mimic another, the way they’ll kiss her will be shaped from the pleasure of another— the way she’ll cry and the way she’ll love will all be derived from the extra pieces Shoko had left of herself to give to Utahime. 

And so, Utahime will not ask, just to never ask and to never to say, I hope I was yours too, because hoping for that has proven throughout the many years she’d fallen asleep next to a woman who was, by heart; not hers, to be a futile effort. “Was I yours?”

“I don’t think it would help you if I told you.” Says Shoko, with hesitance and a bite in her voice that silently says, please don’t ask me: please, don’t come so close to me.

The taps of Utahime’s impatient finger on the back of her phone echoes her own voice, which is oddly sarcastic and has long let go of the Utahime that she shows to her students— it has turned around, ran back with all of its strength, to grab onto the Utahime who was loved, or so she thought, by Shoko wholly. 

“So tell me,” asks Utahime, and Shoko can’t pretend she doesn’t hear the tears that brew up in her throat and release out of her eyes. “I wasn’t trying to help myself in the first place.”

If she were, Utahime believes, she wouldn’t have even thought about calling Shoko. If she were healed, if she had actually fully gotten throughout the months without curling her fingers into a fist, without squeezing her eyes until eyelashes had fallen out and there were white and black orbs clouding her vision— if she, had no love to hold onto, these wounds would’ve scarred overly nicely, similarly to the one on her face— and it seems so, that they are still, still bleeding. 

“.. Don’t make me repeat myself, Utahime.” Shoko knows Utahime will not ask, unless desperate and seeking, twice. Her next words are quick, spat from guilt yet not grief, because everything that comes out is that very thing, in words— in pieces. “I know it never seems like it, and I don’t know if it ever did seem like it, but I—”

But you, Utahime’s own thoughts get squashed by her, sitting with all of its meaning— looking ugly, looking beaten down to its most complex substance, right under her shoe. It’s always you, and what does, from under her feet that will press down as hard as it can, seep out like blood from her head that has hit the ground from falling in and out of love, is— and never me.

“But I want to help you, and I,” she’s been wanting to, for a while— if not forever. And although the ache in her chest that would follow every so often, very often, when Shoko would leave the bed, stand on the balcony; look pretty in the nothing she wore, skin pale, some-what purple and fair under the moon as her lungs would inhale and exhale to feed her addiction— Utahime had always taken pleasure in watching, took the joy in turning around to face the washroom she had cried in no less than a few hours ago because what was sacredly shared felt dirty, and wonder, what can I do for you? And really, without this, there was nothing that Utahime could do for her, for another— to make them understand what it was, down straight to the cause and to the end, that they were missing. “I just want to know this one thing before I can even try to.”

Even if it is the last thing Utahime can ask her— even if it is the last time Utahime would be able to speak to her so casually, so monotonously over the phone; even if it was the last time they would ever speak, if this question could be answered with neither a satisfactory nor a cryptic answer, Utahime thinks she’d be content, once again, with just watching. And like a film much too beautiful for its time, one horribly memorable for those who would never remember anything but, those words would shine like blood under fluorescent bathroom lights in her memories. 

“If you did want to help me,” says Shoko, lacing her voice with a tone that she hopes drives Utahime away from her— Utahime, the woman she had last been in Shoko’s mind, was undeserving of the trail of loss that followed behind her heels without reason. She was too much to be lost. And Shoko knows that the moment Utahime is lost to whatever parasitical being is out there for her, to the world that is unforgiving to heart-broken women with no firsts; only seconds, there is only one person within her universe who has never been able to successfully rescue what would go unreported to the commercial world. “You wouldn’t have said anything.” 

Hitching a break— hitching a hike on Shoko’s mountains that have begun to avalanche over her, the summit of Shoko’s mind is so evident; though the harsh storms of love and whatnot, make her eyebrows furrow, Utahime is desperate. Hands begin to grow clammy, and the turn-back time of the thousands of days she had spent camping out in below-freezing weather grows further and further and further away. 

“So, tell me why, love,” old names and sweet nothings over the deaths of numerous that are just valleying that one step, the one step that Utahime no longer had the strength to push, had the oxygen stolen from her lungs, Shoko continues to speak, rambling if she will. They pour out of her mouth, the prayers in which Utahime had granted the shrine for a safe journey— a slip of permission to have summited the mountain that Shoko is, grow useless as she continues. “Just why, do you keep attempting to help me knowing the percentage of failure, and without getting your pieces together first?”

And she knows— Utahime knows, her strength has been bastardized, ridiculed and her face is no longer what it used to be; and she knows that no one but the ones who are now gone has ever managed to come closer to the very peak of what Shoko was— but she still, to finish what Shoko had left her, a broken and unfinished image of puzzle pieces, she will.

Eventually, Utahime thinks that somewhere, sometime and somehow, her prayers will be heard if the Heaven above allows them to be. The closer to the top, Utahime’ll say to herself as she treks with only ambitions, the closer to heaven.

But Utahime knows that somewhere, sometime and somehow, ambitions are created from grief.

“I didn’t want to think of getting with another woman,” don’t let your voice crack, Utahime leaves unsaid. It is not that she does not want to get with another— to be in love again, to have a second chance at a mutated time period when she considered herself morally and romantically stable—  though really, she can only imagine falling in love again, when there are no longer strings from this particularly messy and unkempt love attached to her back. “And be unable to love her like her.” 

That is one of her greatest fears— to have a new lover who oddly resembles the last. To have a new lover and kiss them the same way she would the save, to have a new lover that is able to love her but she will never look at them as anything but the last— to have a new lover that is not the last. Who is not the first— the second, always, always the second. “We’re always the first in the first relationship, right?”

First— the first ones that come to mind when in need of just a few sips of nothing, the first ones to leave when you realize the first ones you’ve loved are ready to become the first. The firsts, will always only be the first ones.

“I suppose.” And suppose Shoko will. There has always been something Shoko had been first at, and whether that would be the first one of three to make it to 30 within a linear narrative, or Utahime’s first ever love, eventually— when the end of time came, she would merely be the first. 

“But it’s not like we’ve ruined each other for anyone else.” Shoko continues, and really— she is unsure if that is true. Utahime speaks differently now, drinks a different type of alcohol and pours it just like she does; the elder woman cries differently, more loudly and more snot-filled. She loves differently, more careful, less giving and less — of her body, of her heart and of her ability to change. Utahime, who she remembers as just as beautiful as she was when crying uglily over her, just a woman, could never be ruined. “Just,” and she pauses— just what? “A little bent.” 

Utahime, just hovering over a red button that has been calling for her name, “just a little.”

Little by little, she follows the moon that never falters in rising just above the mountains.

VIII

When they do eventually meet again, it’s a recollection of memories within a room of another collection of memories for those who have been built, foundationed and then stationed strictly upon the memories of the love they have accepted in the past. Oddly enough, when the weariness in Utahime fills her beyond her brim; ice drops into her, and the volume of gaps between her memories and the time spent in between, meant to be filled by love; lessen, pooling at her fingertips and her toes and somehow, still somehow, leading her until she stands near Shoko.

Even just standing a few metres apart, even when their gazes of questions like, how have you been? Or, have you? float in the air, surrounding them and eventually managing to wrap themselves around their necks, tightening with every gaze they send over the shoulder of the higher-ups. 

It would’ve been better if this moment had happened years later or perhaps even a few minutes after so that Utahime would’ve had time to compose herself; manually stop her heart that begins to pound out of her own chest, to ignore the click of Shoko’s heels that have always been so present yet muted in the past, to fix her bow in the bathroom because Utahime can’t help but stare, like a teenage girl that she had been perhaps a decade ago, perhaps a few seconds before she walked right up the girl-turned-woman from that time, at her reflection in her own shiny leather boots and ask herself, is my bow crooked?

And Shoko still looks at her, humanly. Her gaze is tired, but it doesn’t surprise Utahime more so than it concerns her beyond what jurisdiction she has over the other woman, who had now always slept alone, who had now begun to drink alone at the bar. Unpleasant eyebags run far deeper than she has ever seen, yet somehow, her lips rest in a small smile that would be unseeable to those who have not known Shoko for very long. And like her, like how Utahime has always been, and like their future; unpredictable. 

“Your hair,” says Utahime, feet turning towards the younger woman, head downcasted to avoid having Shoko stare at her for too long and finding out too much. “It looks perfect on you.”

For a second, Utahime can feel her guts internally twist; curl and damning herself for the stomach and heart combination that has infected her brain, throwing up words that will do what they will— for even wanting to spit those words out. For wanting, for need, for desiring. 

With Shoko— there is really nothing that looks and feels as it does on the surface, the comparison of what is seen and what is felt. The one thing that proceeds the nothing is her hair, chopped into a short bob like before. With no bangs, the exhaustion that is evident in her face and her eye bags that perhaps turned into wrinkles— Utahime knows she is no longer the same, but it doesn’t help that Shoko is still as beautiful. 

“Does it?” Cocking her head, Shoko stares down at the crown of Utahime’s head that reveals her thinning hairline; they’re only getting older, they’re only getting farther and farther from youth and it feels like, and Shoko knows that they are only growing farther and farther apart. 

Somewhere— at some time, her hands begin to shake as Utahime starts to sway on her feet, the loud silence being drowned out as people begin to file out of the room; unquestioning as the two stay behind, faces getting closer and closer— like the sky, painted with the moon, the sun and its stars, untouchable, yet quite a lovely sight. Shoko thinks that there is no reason at all for her anxiousness that bodies herself when Utahime speaks once more.

“It looks,” and there are so many things that Utahime wants to say. She won’t, she can’t— she no longer has the right to do so, she no longer has the motivation to continue dragging on this useless pine, that she knows only keeps hurting them both because their love has not yet healed, wound opened and bleeding for whatever and whoever is there to witness the murder of a first, of the youth— of someone who would never have her focus directed on the mess of hakama, bows and emotions that stand in front of her right now. Perfect, absolutely so, she thinks. Mine, she thinks. “Like it was made for you.” She says.

Before Utahime can stop herself, turn around and run because God, does Shoko look like something she had loved before— that she has loved— her voice uncages itself, ripping itself from the rock in her throat that has always stopped her and failed before. Gulping, the words breach and the world begins to crumble over and over again. “You’ve changed.”

Change— unpreventable. Forever, and always. Utahime knows this and brings it up because it has been the only thing in her life that has been happening. From the moment she was born, from the moment she moved from elementary and ended up at a school for a concept that her brain would cry and somehow yearn for; from the moment she had loved and been loved, from the moment Utahime had left and begun to realize that it was her who had been left, change was the comfort in the everything. Change, was something that Utahime knows will always be in her life; and it is foolishly, joker-ishly, comforting. Since when the time finally completes its immorally abstract art piece of merely existing to only change, and the world, blasted and blasphemed, comes to nothing, change will still be there. Change, change— 

“Is that a bad thing?” Says Shoko, staring right down into Utahime’s eyes that have, though always been looking down and looking at the down in everything and anything that has happened to her, begun to stare straight into hers. Don’t look at me, Shoko presses herself in her head, and though vicious, she knows it is only because Shoko has only wanted Utahime to know her at her peak. And now, that sharp and glib-tongued summit of who she had been before love; gone and present, has been mollified until surpassing recognition. 

“No,” shaking her head, Utahime continues to stare, unable to tear her eyes from that gaze. It’s stupid, it’s longing and it is everything that she has ever wanted— everything, that she could not have. “It makes me happy to look at.”

Shoko had promised— to never admit this, to never admit anything that her brain had discussed silently, that her facial muscles twitch when her lips wish to curl up at that. They have both grown older, more longing and more, and Shoko can only find herself too mellowed out, stepped on and watered— but unlike Utahime, who had always resembled a flower, or an animal, that would grow and flourish from the water, Shoko felt more like a burning house— memories, nostalgia and everything she had built quietly to protect what was hidden inside, burnt. And the burnt will always stare at the fire and love.

And the burnt recollects their memories, barehanded or without either, of the times from then and now, in which they had a revelation to when that fire had begun. “.. You make me happy.”

That, in itself, is a recipe for another night of working to forget what had not worked out. It is a step-by-step instructional for another round, another few months of spending nights at the bar over a glass of something, anything that would all do the same— a forgettable something. 

It’s not like— it’s not like Utahime has never heard those words before, but she thinks that is exactly why she cannot take a step back, only standing and smiling because simply; they are too old for this. Life is too short, as a sorcerer, to spend time loathing for what was never to come. Life was not enough for what they wanted, needed and had to give. Having been told those exact words, from the date today to a decade ago, perhaps even more than that by the time this comes around— Utahime can only gentle lay it down since Shoko is still the sweetness that Utahime is willing to accept, to make sure that their sour-lemons of a non-relationship remain pleasant and not overbearingly simmering.

They are, and will only continue to be, too old for young love.

“I am glad,” says Utahime, eyelids finally drooping down in an action that is not one of avoidance, but more of sentimental forgiveness. Her fingers find themselves laced in her hakama, peeling and fiddling with the pleats. When Utahime finishes what she had started once more, Shoko watches as her fingers never, never stop moving. “But you know how that tips off, don’t you?”

Both of them do— they both know, from experience, from change and the time that has passed by, how their foundation of past love and drunk kisses will play out when they begin to roll the dice again. It’s painful, in a sense that they will never get to live through that experience, of first every things, ever again— but the most prominent thing that they have learnt from the many versions of themselves that they have been shoved in front of, is that love may mean to let go. That love, between two women and a cigarette, is uncertain in the factor of how good are you two for each other? Not good, not good at all. 

Shoko has grown to accept that, to not question her beliefs any further because she knows that the way her heartbeats and cheeks flush is more powerful than her will. Shoko knows that any more inquiries from her to herself will only send them into an unfixable turmoil that none of them have the time, energy, fight and love to win over. 

“I’ve changed in a way that I understand now, Utahime,” Shoko says that with no bitterness, the rolling of the older woman’s first name comes naturally like it had been given silent permission in order to do so. She wants— no, she needs Utahime to know that. Shoko is no longer the girl Utahime had once loved, they know— but what Utahime does not know is that Shoko has also grown far from the woman she was when Utahime had no choice but to unlove her and her pieces. In a whole, she will never be the same, but she’s different. Shoko’s changed, and they’re both much too tired to analyze that small difference that was still something. “You just make me happy.”

Utahime had once told her, no — and Shoko now, chemically modified yet not biologically so, listens. And neither of the two wonders about the other’s priorities and ambitions, to either continue or halt, anymore. 

“I guess that I could say that, you too,” says Utahime, taking an arguable guess that they know enough, they’ve learnt enough, they’ve been enough and they’re enough— “and you know that I have loved you.”

Time begins to unravel itself, revealing under the wraps that it has done its job of eating whatever crumbs and chunks of their love they had left to grow stale. The words, I have loved you, no longer jab Shoko in the side. She doesn’t find that they sting at her eyes anymore, even when she stares in the setting sun that shines from the window, a bright and sour-orange-apple mix of hues, with invisible tears. 

She knows that this is much easier because it had never been so easy getting over the first of what had taught you the basics of everything— love— now that Shoko has the knowledge to make the decision to stop. Shoko knows she’s been a mess of white and black hair, blue and black eyes, and knows she has been there for longer than Shoko hoped she had. The act of staying formed a new era within herself, and is now here.

“I can’t ever be so sure,” says Shoko, ears distracting themselves from words that will begin to have her do the tiring expression of questioning and deviating, with the squeaks of the floor that comes from beneath Utahime’s shifting weight. “But it was good to know that you did.”

It was good to know: that Utahime will begin to think of her less from this day on, and has been thinking of Shoko less. That Shoko will go to work, will go to sleep, will wake up to go to work, will come back home to sleep, and not wonder why there is only one toothbrush— that when she dies, alone, Shoko will only think about the times Utahime would wait for her to return instead of thinking of Utahime, grown older and cratered-skin been wrinkled, waiting for her to come home . That if they kiss, from then, to here and now, that it will be nothing but a kiss. Nothing more, nothing less.

“.. Are you seeing anybody?”

Utahime isn’t quite sure why she asks that— it’s a question that she doesn’t know the answer to, a question in which if she receives an answer, she will neither grieve nor feel the words congratulations creep out of her vocal cords. A question that Utahime wants in a needy way, an answer to.

“No,” bluntly, Shoko feels that she has nothing to hide anymore. Truly, there is nothing but the past to run from anymore, and because the future is here and the reality is now, Shoko will blatantly show her cards. She knows, that no matter how hard they try to hide, your heart will always be worn on your sleeve— because the way you speak, the way you move and the way you think, is your heart speaking without authorization and there is no hiding, in the slightest form of it, from the love you have received, given and lost. “I’m not quite certain that I will be able to again.”

Uncertainty is only human, and Utahime, with her textured skin that Shoko stares at like it is the last time she will ever be able to see it like this, under the muted sun— can only raise her lips into a tighter and higher smile that almost reaches her eyes. Shoko doesn’t question, with her fingers searching for the missing lengths of hair to twirl around, why it doesn’t go that far up, but she knows that the lower they get, the higher. 

“That’s okay,” Utahime whispers, keeping her voice low since at a certain point of her heightened emotions, the older woman is sure her voice will become a pitch too quiet to hear. Is certain, that Shoko will not hear, for the last time, what she has to say. Needs to tell her. “I am sure that one day you and I will find something, again.”

And although Utahime has always been the type to clutch at the white of her hakama, fingers intertwining with the fabric above her heart until her joints turned a purifying shade of white, she means it. One day, even if it is not her, with grey hair and pruny hands— that Shoko smiles at with her yellowed teeth and raw, bloody gums, she hopes it comes. They’ll never have that, and for once, Utahime silently nods to herself that yes, it is okay. It has to be.

“Something?” Asks Shoko, and she’ll tell herself this will be the last question that she ever asks Utahime— even if there is the lingering feeling that in a few months, in a few years, the sound of Utahime’s never-changing ring-tone will blare in the middle of a class with an impulsive voicemail, an invitation to grab plain-coffee and then drink themselves to death— Shoko will tell herself it won’t happen. It can’t.

They tell themselves, to make an oath with their intestines, their blood and the brain, that this will be the last time. The last time is always time wasted; spent cowering cowardly and stretching the time they have left together until it is translucent, tearing at the core. 

“Something, anything.” Anything that goes past Utahime herself, whatever Shoko finds when she leaves Utahime in the past— to which Utahime will only wave goodbye to a back that will not turn, the older woman will make sure that Shoko finds it. Somehow, she will. 

Continuing with her vague response, “.. something that you will love to the point it will rot you like alcohol, from the inside out,” and perhaps she is projecting, knowing that the moment Shoko nods at her and leaves the room silently, Utahime’s feet will take her to the only place she has ever known, to do the only thing that makes her feel like Shoko had— to drink, to drink and to drink. “No longer the person I adore.”

Shoko left with the raw acceptance that has not had the time to polish itself into something she could stare at without going blind, into a piece of herself that both Utahime and herself could touch and caress without being worried about getting the glass of themselves buried into the palms of their hands— can only nod. 

I knew it, Utahime thinks to herself, fingers finally freeing her clothing and mouth relaxing from the smile she could not contain. I knew you would do that.

Turning with silence, the clicks and the clacks of Shoko’s heels and the tears and the rips in the cloth bag that carried every aspect, every tactic and niche of their relationship, fill the room with something even louder than a goodbye. 

Somehow, when Utahime is left with nothing but the memories— she finds it less painful, than loving in silence. 

You’ve got a wonder-way with words, and Shoko promises to the moon, to everyone who may be watching from the corner of where her feet will follow the path love, given from the day she was born already dead and giving from a day Shoko has long since forgotten, has paved especially for her. And she promises to nobody that she will always carry the person whom Utahime had sworn she’d loved, inside of herself like a poor, bad quality yet crafted and carried with love-infested hands, replica of a matryoshka— forever and always.