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Somewhere, fate must be having a great time.
Kuon has long gotten over pretending that he doesn’t dwell in the past. It’s his favorite pastime. These days, his thoughts have been filled less with the sins of his adolescence, and instead, he’s found himself stuck on the forlorn memories of his twenties. Specifically, Kuon thinks of everything he let slip through his fingers.
His therapist says his habits are unhealthy, but he’s never been the poster child for healthy coping mechanisms anyhow.
He’s thirty now and everybody he knows is getting married or having children. To be honest, he had thought he would have been in that group of people, by now. Disgustingly in love, making everyone jealous with their wedding or birth announcements.
Instead, he has this letter.
It had landed in his mail almost two full months ago and haunted him with its pretty handwritten calligraphy ever since. He considered throwing it away. He couldn’t. Tried hiding it. Ignoring it. On a particularly dark night, he had even contemplated burning it. Still, the damned cardstock remains in pristine condition and now he sits at his kitchen table with a pen in hand and wonders if he stares at it long enough that he can make it disappear.
The RSVP card is arguably worse than the invitation itself. Kyoko had written on the back of the card, and he swears he can hear her voice as he reads her inscription. ‘Kuon! Thank you so much for years of friendship and support! I hope you’re able to come, but please don’t fret if you’re too busy! xoxo Kyoko’
Kuon now has two days to send back this RSVP card that he cannot get rid of no matter how desperately he tries. It should have been so easy to ignore this invitation. He and Kyoko are clearly not involved anymore. They barely even talk.
And yet all he can think about is what could have been.
He and Kyoko had tried.
Fuck.
They had tried to make their relationship work.
All their secrets had been laid bare, and they thought they survived the tallest hurdles that they’d placed around their hearts. Turns out their enemy had been waiting for the perfect time to be together. There’s no such thing as perfect timing. Kuon knows that now.
Coming off the Route project, Kuon had been offered a chance to stay in the US. A chance to work beside his father and establish himself as an actor on the global stage. Offers like these were once in a lifetime.
Kyoko, too, had been plucked from the success of Lotus and thrust into her graduation from the Love Me! Department. President Takarada produced a film designed specifically for Kyoko. A fairytale-esque film that allowed best captured all of Kyoko’s facets: pretty, ethereal, with a tinge of a dark side.
Kuon had been offered the leading role opposite Kyoko. But he turned it down in favor of the US project. Kyoko encouraged his decision, too. Their relationship had already survived years of waiting. They could survive a few more months apart.
They didn’t need to cling to each other to prove their relationship was worth something.
One project turned into two. Three. Five.
Their schedules were filled with missed connections and filming delays that kept them apart. They talked as frequently as their schedules allowed, but it was the same as it was before their relationship. Cordial. Distant.
Kyoko and Kuon’s first meeting in a year had barely left room for any privacy or alone time. They spent a week together during award season, busy with interviews and fittings, with brief moments together stolen between ceremonies and after parties. They had wanted to prove to themselves that they had figured out this whole relationship thing.
Except they hadn’t.
It was clear that their dynamic and knowledge of each other had changed.
They had changed.
It had been inevitable. Their relationship had remained frozen at nineteen and twenty-three as they grew up. The whole week felt off.
Wrong, even though it pains Kuon to use that word with these memories. They were simply play-acting what they thought a relationship should be. And there was no time to remedy the situation.
Kyoko had been flown out to America for an audition that she could barely talk about before she was boarded onto her flight. The audition process led to her casting in a Disney movie that left her with more engagements and NDAs than she knew how to keep up with. Suddenly, anything and everything could be a spoiler.
Kuon watched her blossoming career with pride, waiting for her return so that they might have a fair shot at a relationship on their own terms. No play-acting. No dancing around busy schedules.
But the longer she stayed in the US, the more distant she became. The space between their calls and emails stretched days. Weeks. Before long, months passed between their conversations.
He couldn’t blame her. Even then, he only blamed himself for the choices he made all those years ago. The day Kyoko’s manager regretfully told him that Kyoko would have no time for him on her Japanese press tour, Kuon had considered letting Kyoko go for the first time. President Takarada had once said something about loving and letting go. True love, he said, would always find its way back home.
Which was encouragement enough for Kuon. Whatever he and Kyoko had at the time couldn’t be qualified as a relationship. It could hardly be qualified as a friendship anymore. Maybe not now, but later.
He had managed to squirrel away time to see Kyoko on her press tour, almost two years since their last rendezvous. This time there was no make-believe. No pretending.
Kuon broke up with the girl he’d been in love with since he was about ten years old. They had parted ways in what had to have been the most neutral breakup to exist in history. Neither of them cried. Turns out that it was easy to accept the relationship they had wanted in their youths wasn’t in the cards when your almost four-year relationship had been also the most time you’d spent apart.
Kyoko went on to win Actress of the Year and moved on to bigger and better things.
Kuon had gone home to nurse the wounds he pretended didn’t exist. He never gave up hope that one day everything would work itself out. One day they would be able to come back together and have the relationship that they had fought so hard to deserve.
But that hope had only led him down a road of loneliness.
He dated. Kind of. No relationship lasted longer than a year. The whispers started in earnest again, about him being a heartbreaker. The truth was that he couldn’t stop thinking about Kyoko, determined to contrive his way back to her.
He could give up acting. He could move back to Tokyo. He was going to do all of that after breaking off a six-month relationship with a model that was nice enough but held no flame to Kyoko. Then the headlines broke and the Google Alert he forgot to turn off after the breakup left him with a Kyoko-shaped hole in his heart.
Kyoko Mogami and Seito Furusho Announce their Relationship and We Ship It!
It was a short gossip article, and the journalist had written about how Kyoko and Seito had met years ago on a set where their co-stars whispered about their chemistry that ultimately led nowhere. It wasn’t until they reunited for their newest project, a romantic comedy where the two played opposite each other in a second-chance romance, that sparks flew and held steady this time.
Kuon almost had to laugh when he read that. Of course, the flirting hadn’t gone anywhere the first time. She was technically dating Kuon at that time, even though she hadn’t mentioned this Seito once.
The headline broke two years ago. He’d thrown himself full force back into acting and modeling and tried not to think about Kyoko anymore. Which only means he thinks about her all the time.
Now...
She’s asking him to put aside their history and celebrate her union with someone else. All the while, he can’t help turning over the ‘what ifs’ in his head as he stares at the invitation currently mocking him.
What if he had prioritized Kyoko from the beginning of their relationship? What if he had stayed in Japan and played her prince charming? What if he had begged her not to audition for Disney, and to stay by his side?
Their lives would be different, then.
He aches to know that difference.
This could have been an invitation to his own wedding.
Or in all the instances where he had tried to fix his wrongs...would he have still found a way to fuck it up?
Shaking his head, Kuon pushes the thought away. This is why his therapist tells him to stop dwelling. It’s hard, though, on days like today when he must decide once and for all if he can be a guest at Kyoko’s wedding ceremony without embarrassing himself in front of their mutual friends. Friends that definitely know about his past with Kyoko.
Kuon’s pen hovers over the options underneath his name. This can be the clean break he’s always needed. Let the past lie, and let Kyoko be happy without him.
Unfortunately, he’s never been a fan of taking the easy way out.
Taking a deep breath, Kuon crosses out the “and guest” next to his name, and checks the space next to ‘accept.’