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“It is now 21st of June, 12 a.m. exactly in AKDT. I’m in a hotel in Fairbanks. I can see the sun as long as I keep my head up. The gleaming, blazing, golden sun that people can hardly stare directly into. The sky is watered down in the shine of the sunlight, only to act as a dim blue backdrop to the unique star. It is so close to me, the sun, as if I can feel it burn on my fingertips authentically. It seems that it is about to fall any time, looking down at me ruthlessly with its empty orange pupil. It is the Polar Day, the Byakuya , the midnight sun.”
“I’m still jet-lagged. The delayed flight did not give me much time for preparation. I sit on the soft and warm bed of my room all day long, staring at the small corner of the world through the tiny frame of the window. It is cold in Fairbanks, but not to the extent where it snows all year round. The hottest days in June barely reach twenty degree celsius, though. I do not understand Fahrenheit, so every time I read a weather report, I have to pull out my phone to convert instantly. It looks like, now, the higher temperatures are not much different to Yokohama. It’s just the average low temperature here and now sometimes matches to the usual climate of early winter back in that Japanese city. I kind of wanted to see the Polar Day in a snow plain, but I would need to venture further north for that, and I do not want to risk myself in a foreign land, all alone. I flew from Yokohama to Washington, and took another here. I met a pair of mother and daughter travelling. The single mother and high-school-graduate daughter were planning a driving route into the Arctic circle in sheer excitement, and I listened in their back seat, nothing else in my head except for admiration.
“I’m not a traveller per se, nor did I come here for leisure. I’m a full-on escapist. If it’s possible, I’d like to stay in my room until my passport expires. The never-ending daylight in arctic summers creates some illusion to people about forgetting the existence of time. It’s forever the first day that we arrived. People, therefore, shift night activities under the sunlight, bars and nightclubs starting their businesses when the sun is still on one side of the sky. ‘Daydreaming’ has become not an exception but a normality. I haven’t been dining out, instead I survived on room service at non-meal times for two days. I haven’t been sleeping as well, my thirty-minute alarm clock strictly limits the time, making sure that it is too short for a dream. It, admittedly, tortures my body a lot. I keep the television on whenever I take naps. I don't really care about local news. It just leads my subconsciousness into realms that do not belong to me. Anything, but familiar people and things.
“Escapism is the heroism of the weak. But it has a certain limit. The earth is not flat; running around it leads you to where you started. Besides, I cannot be freed from the pull of gravity and fly into outer space. When I feel I’m falling in my half-sleep, I automatically sit up with cold sweat on my back and monotonous news reports on the TV. I did not successfully fight my biological schedule, and fell asleep dead yesterday afternoon. I did have the dream that I wished for the least; Blurred but sharp images floated around in front of my eyes. Black. Red. White. Like an ocean with an oncoming storm. Lightning strikes the mast of ships, blood-coloured foams eerily swirling on the waves of the sea. Like the spits of someone with chronic lung disease.
“I could not find an answer even when I sought it from other people. It seems that people panic at death regardless of their maturity. They evaded my question. I keep feeling that his blood stained my hands, but my sanity tells me otherwise. So I left, all alone. They seem to have predicted my pitiful move by not giving a response. I grew up. But sometimes the inner me still reverts back to the crying child kneeling in the orphanage. Tigers are cats. I want to push the vases down the shelves, and regret when I see it actually breaks. I should have learned how to deal with the world earlier, so that I do not need to indulge in lonely remorse when the damage is done. People ask about me, then him. I could only reply that I did not really know him after a long awkward silence. They would nod in understanding and take their leave. It is usually a good thing to not know your enemy, right? But what if they are not, or not only your enemy? I often wish that we are strangers for life, if possible.
“We are too much different and too much alike, which scares me. Just like some unreasonable conspiracy theories online, I sometimes think that we are artefacts that went wrong in production, since we were sort of made from the same mold but too many accidents happened when we were made . Then who is the preferred child of the Creator who fits in the standards more than the other? For one moment I hope it’s me, and for another I hope it’s him. But most of the time, I feel that we are both abandoned children of fate.
“I, finally, went for dinner outside at around six, and bumped into a long-haired young man in the restaurant. There were too many people so I had to ask if he could sit with me. He answered without hesitation, rather unexpectedly. He had to text someone even when he was dining. It seemed that the person did not reply, so he started to chat with me politely, asking me if I knew anything about divination and prophecy. I said no, and he said he was very interested in those. I stuffed French Fries in my mouth and laughed.
“Stereotypes, but I thought you were a Rock ‘n’ Roll type of guy. You’ve got the hair and tattoos.
“He shook his head, ‘That’s before Gen Z happened.’
“He explained a lot to me, but did not go very professional. I listened as if I was listening to gossip. He talked about Tarot cards and pulled out a complete deck out of his denim jacket pocket. The glazed gold pattern at the back of cards was tarnished more or less, not to mention the dog-ears. He must have loved them.
“Draw one, said him.
“I wiped my hand and followed instructions, taking the card on the top and reading the name out loud.
“The Hanged Man.
“The upright means sacrifice and acceptance. And the reverse means martyrdom and indecisiveness. He chugged his beer and slammed the mug onto the table, reciting and squinting at me. I nodded and took another one.
“The Fool.
“New beginning and adventure, with the reverse meaning naivety and recklessness. Weird, people don’t usually draw Major Arcana with such deep meanings.
“He wanted to give me a proper reading, before someone popped out of the restaurant boiling with noises. That person was a rather nerdy thin guy with a pair of thick glasses, who reached out for the collar of the punk man and scolded him angrily.
“‘You!’ As he called his name out. ‘You are again bothering people with your boring Tarot cards, aren’t you?!
“The punk in front of me just went ‘bleh’ and smiled, apologising. I said, sincerely, that I was interested and that was not boring at all. The nerd frowned, apologised again, and looked at me in harmless curiosity.
“Are you, by any chance, travelling alone?
“Yeah…yeah.
“The moment when he asked if I was by myself, my heart suddenly ached with hollowness. I do not envy them. I wish them well from the bottom of my heart, be them friends or beyond. This might just be the way that they express their love and care. But what about me? What about us ? Are we just the Hanged Man and the Fool?
“I wanted to walk in the descending night sky and appreciate the gorgeous scenery with Fairbanks at dusk. But I almost forgot that for today, the sun would not sink into the horizon. So I strolled in the prolonged twilight, as if lost in a mistake of the cosmos. Time is a man-made concept, after all, and polar days and nights seem to have fallen in between the gaps and boundaries of this concept, precisely, drawing us into the most natural fantasy. I have been like this all the way, wandering in between time and space, all by myself. Then why did I meet you? Is it yet another delusion?
“I sat in the hotel for another few hours, trying to read but had zero input. My mind was occupied by the pair of young men in the restaurant. I know nothing about them or their relationship, but I just kept thinking about them. Will we be somewhere near them? The answer is of course a denial. I can’t help but imagine so, but I am in fact afraid of the moment that it actually happens. I can’t visualise you treating people kindly, just like how I am never able to imagine myself talking to strangers comfortably. We are both sick from the soul. I want to keep everyone far away from me, but no man is an island. You are the worst option, but since you are also a patient, we can hug without worries and fears. Will you, then, approach me? We can never get an answer, but I think we already know it.
“What if it happens all over again? I think I will still make the same choices. I want nothing changed, about you, or me.
“All right, Akutagawa, I guess I miss you a little, as no one else other than the one that you hated and the one you have saved. For you, I have too many questions and no answers. But I know you are the Hanged Man in my Major Arcana. But I’m not the Fool, or at least, not only the Fool. I’m your reverse. I’m a timid and indecisive martyr. And you are, probably, the reverse of the Fool–You are reckless. But are you naïve? I don’t think this word fits. You are stubborn, maybe a little too much. Maybe it’s because you are too suppressed, that I feel this naivety is not as innocent and pure as it should have been, like white but tainted with dark fog. Anyway, all in all, you, or me, are definitely naïve and stupid people.
“So I don’t blame you. We don’t get many choices, so neither was wrong.”
“Ryuunosuke Akutagawa. You are the reverse to the Tarot card of me, the head to the tail of the coin of me, and the negative to the number of me. You are the worst possible and best possible arch nemesis and partner that I can ever meet. You are my Polar Night, and my midnight sun.”
Atsushi Nakajima stood in the graveyard by the sea of Yokohama, dropping a few postcards with stamps on it but never got sent into a pitch of fire. For someone mourning over a deceased person, his face was too expressionless. There were only trails of tears, dried in the sea breeze, and a bitter smile. The blaze engulfed the papers, which were reflected in his dichromatic eyes like glittering dynamic sun rays. It did not take very long for the last post card to burn; the golden red flame brought the dark ink into the wind, from the last few lines, until the very start where he first jotted down the words–
“It is now 21st of June, 12 a.m. exactly in AKDT. I’m in a hotel in Fairbanks. I can see the sun as long as I keep my head up. The gleaming, blazing, golden sun that people can hardly stare directly into.”
FIN.