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The man in grey walks as though the weight burdening his shoulders had already broken his spine. The old oak tree bends over towards the earth, under the darkening sky. Hidden behind its branches, a low moon flickers like a distant lantern. Beneath its shadow, a host of sleeping bluebells sway in the east wind drifting in from the sea. The man kneels down and sighs, raising his head to the heavens above him. He looks more like a shadow and less like a human. His form resembling that of an old and bent samurai- finally defeated, his blade broken in two.
Like a pilgrim set in his course, devout and bound by an ancient oath to a long-dead forest god, he returns to the same spot every year as the summer dies. His old, empty home, sitting high on a hill by the edge of the forest, beckons to him soundlessly, but he never heeds its call. A few faces he used to know when he was a boy linger in the village still, but he shows himself to no one.
No one but the boy asleep beneath the old oak tree.
That is all he returns for. The only thing that matters anymore, that sings of home for a man who has never thought of anywhere in the world as his.
If he closes his eyes and shuts out the fading songs of departing summer birds, he can still hear Makoto’s voice, clear as if it’s the first time. When they were both children, and being together was free of conditions, free of the blight of distance, of lives that drifted apart as they grew older.
And doesn’t he have only himself to blame for that?
He remembers summer nights from a past so alien to his present it might as well have been a story he’d read in passing when he was younger. Swimming in the sea for hours, with Makoto watching him longingly, patiently from the shore, trying to build sandcastles and failing miserably. He remembers bringing back seashells and stones polished smooth by the incessant waves, which reflected the green of Makoto’s eyes. To make up for the momentary separation between them. Because Makoto was afraid of the sea, was afraid of the black depths and all the mysteries they hid from his curious eyes.
And in winter, huddled together under the same patchwork blanket his grandmother’s nimble fingers had sewn, watching the fire cast moving shadows on the wall, making up stories about them- but nothing too frightening. That made Makoto close his eyes and hold on to him closer. He remembers the warmth of the small body shivering next to his, remembers the exact motions of his fingers through stray strands of brunet hair soothing Makoto into peaceful slumber. Remembers getting older and feeling the body next to him grow taller, stronger than his own. Remembers later winters, concocting ghost stories to scare Makoto, so he’d cling to him again as though they were still little boys. Remembers the way things changed between them, remembers the warmth of Makoto’s body turning to fire, consuming them both. Remembers being inside Makoto, remembers the sounds of his changing voice sighing with the sea-bound wind knocking against the window, remembers forgetting everything but the way Makoto’s cheeks flushed and shone afterwards, smiling, smiling.
After his grandmother died, and the old house by the sea seemed to be full of nothing but memories and echoes and loneliness- there was always Makoto. Makoto who found new excuses to spend every single night with him, who tried to cook soup for him when he fell sick after swimming during a thunderstorm, who cried by his bedside because he could do nothing to ease his pain, who brought small birds with broken wings to him with all the hope of the world shining in his green eyes, looking at him as though he were the only savior Makoto’s soul would ever need.
And summer nights again. With hosts of fireflies in the forest, foxfires greenly eerie in the mountains, the sand on the beach still hot from the day’s sun, shedding clothes off by the jutting rocks, dragging Makoto into the water with him, laughing and naked. Makoto clinging to him for dear life, easing himself into the water, arms still around his waist, too scared to let go.
Makoto was never the one who wanted to let go.
Was it the hold the sea had over him that led him away? Was it fear of a love that made him forget himself? Was it the lonely house, unbearably empty after his grandmother’s death, when he was inside it without Makoto?
And more often than he liked, he found himself fearing a future in which Makoto stopped coming, stopped sleeping next to him, stopped sitting on the sand to watch him swim, stopped kissing him back…
They could not be together, now that they were growing older. He knew that. Now that other eyes were watching them, counting how many nights of the week Makoto spent at the little house standing right outside the forest, all by itself, looking down onto the rest of the village from its lonely hilltop. The frowns, the whispers, the unspoken curses. He didn’t care what they thought about him. But he could not let their stray words and cutting glances hurt his Makoto.
But there was Makoto, smiling as always, always by his side. Unaware of it all. Or was he just pretending? Did they really know each other, in all those years spent side by side? What was it that he missed? What made him leave without saying a word? What curse ripped them apart so viciously, so irreparably?
He was going to come back, he told himself. In a year, maybe less. He kissed Makoto’s forehead a little before dawn, and left the sleeping boy in his bed in the little house on the hill by the forest, all on its own. If he had known then that he would never see those green eyes shine again, he would have slit his throat open for just one more look.
But he did not glance over his shoulder. Not even once. He sailed away, and thought himself brave for leaving without saying goodbye, without telling Makoto that he was in love, had always been in love.
He was only nineteen then. And he thought he was setting them both free.
And in every port, in every bustling city by the sea he sailed upon for the next four years, he bought trinkets for Makoto. Bits of jade and small glinting emeralds. As if his sea-spent eyes could only see one color.
And every night he clutched himself and prayed for home. For Makoto. And with every sacred, whispered word, he knew it was too late.
It was late summer when he wandered back to the village, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a small trunk full of gaudy treasures for Makoto.
The house on the hill by the forest seemed haunted as he approached it at sunset. In the window of his old room, a small yellow light flickered and his heart skipped a beat.
How he’d run towards it, even as it faded into darkness.
The hinges on the door were rusted.
Dust lay on the floor and the furniture. Thick and heavy.
Everything smelled of decay and abandonment.
In the room that used to be his, cobwebs glinted in the light of the fading sun. Ghosts of memories no longer his to claim stumbled down the stairs and out of the door as night fell.
There was no hint of the green-eyed boy, no sign of him. Save the letters scattered all over the floor, the bed. Half-rotten from the unread years that separated him from Makoto.
And in the darkness, illuminated by candlelight, he read them all one by one. And every word broke off another bit of his heart, claiming it for the darkness of an unlamentable agony.
Haru, I know you’ll come back soon. I hope you bring me something pretty. And something sweet. I’ll wait for you by the harbour. I’ll be there when you come home.
***
I wonder why you didn’t say goodbye, Haru. Was it something I did? Did I upset you? It’s lonely now that it’s winter. I come to your room every night and light a lantern in your window. In case you come home and you can’t find your way back in the snow, in the darkness. Come back soon.
***
I caught so many fireflies last night. I kept them in a jar and left it on your window sill. I thought they’d work as good as a lantern would. They died after two nights. I buried them under the old oak where we used to play. I don’t know why I cried over their shallow grave. I miss you, Haru. Did I never say the words that would have kept you by my side? Did I never tell you I love you? I didn’t think we’d ever need to say these things to each other Haru. Didn’t we always just know?
***
If you come back to me, and we have a child together, I’d like to name her Hotaru. I think you’d like that Haru. Her hair would be raven’s wing black like yours. But I’d want her to have my eyes, I think. So when you looked at her, you’d know. You’d know the words I couldn’t say to you.
***
Please come back Haru. Have I lost you for good now? The more I wait, the more I fall in love with the memory of you, and the more it makes my heart break. Don’t die at sea, Haru. Not so far from me. Please come back to me.
***
I love you. I wish I could wait longer. But I don’t think it’s possible. I’m sorry, Haru. I’ll wait as long as I can. I’m sorry.
He walked down the hill, wondering why his heart was still beating, wondering how he could still be alive with the pain thundering in his chest.
Makoto’s mother cursed his name under her breath as she answered the door.
No he would never know where Makoto slept beneath the ground. Not after he’d killed her boy. Not after she’d watched her son waste away for a worthless man who left him, placed a sea between them, and never sent a word back home.
I never had a home, he told her.
Yes you did. But you don’t anymore. And she cried on his shoulder and gave him the words he sought.
Bluebells grew under the old oak tree where they used to play together, catching fireflies, whispering their childish secrets to the myriad stars in the sky above them. And Makoto smiled at him through the leaves, with the sun shining through their green canopy, and the bluebells dancing in the seawind.
Three years after he’d left home, wandering as a stranger in another land, in the damning heat of a distant city bordering a vast desert, on a crossroad after nightfall, he’d met an old woman who gave him a strange flower. Mauve, with a crimson heart.
For your shadow, she said, smiling sadly.
He looked behind him then, and saw nothing.
He says he followed you. Even across the sea. He says he’s sorry he cannot light your way home anymore. And she wept and wrung her hands as he gaped at her.
And he reached out for the thin air behind him, but he felt nothing at all. And he didn’t understand why the old woman wept. And he didn’t want to know...
And now, in the greying years of his life, he returns to the old oak tree, and the boy sleeping underneath it. He can swear the leaves are greener every year. And when the sun shines through them, it’s as if he’s thirteen again, kissing Makoto for the first time, under the same tree, in the failing light of late summer.
I’m tired now, and old. And I’ve come back home, Makoto. So let me sleep next to you again.
The monks who’d come down from their monastery in the mountains for the summer’s last bluebells, knew to bury him under the same tree where he slept, smiling to himself, as if kissed by his lover for the first time in years.
Every year, as autumn turns the sea deep green and the forest prepares for sleep, on nights without a moon, you can see a lantern shining in the old house by the forest, on top of the hill, standing all by itself. If you are lost by night, you will surely find your way home if you catch a glimpse of its flickering flames.