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VLADIMIR: Suppose we repented.
ESTRAGON: Repented what?
VLADIMIR: Oh . . . (He reflects.) We wouldn't have to go into the details.
ESTRAGON: Our being born?
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
My body trembles, and I throw up. Unable to hold it in, I cough up a mass of blood. Ahh, Wataru’s graceful, perfect, beautiful face is dirtied with blood. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
I’m sorry for being born.
― Eichi, Daydream
A tasteful high-rise. A bed.
Evening.
The scene opens with your very own Hibiki Wataru. Eichi, too, is there, on the bed, but it’s clear that he’s somewhere else. Wataru thinks: there will never be a time Eichi traverses a path that he does not want to follow. (Save, perhaps, for when he’s with Keito, but that’s never been Wataru’s fault.) The far-away look in Eichi’s eyes reminds him of something, and so he asks:
“And where are we traveling tonight, my Emperor?”
Eichi looks over, a sweet furrow in his brow. “Hm?”
“I was hoping you might enlighten me as to where your brilliant mind has taken you this evening!” Wataru continues. “Unless you’d prefer it to be a solo voyage, in which case—“
“Ah,” Eichi says, amused, clearly having caught on. “I’m reminiscing. And I’m not particularly sure it’s a path you’d like to accompany me on.”
“On the contrary,” Wataru says, turning to face Eichi directly. They’re both sitting up, leaning against the headboard of a slightly ostentatious king-sized bed. The script Wataru had been reading slips off his lap as he turns; no matter, as something far more interesting has caught his attention. “There will never be a time you traverse a path that I do not want to follow!” It’s always nice to share his thoughts with Eichi exactly as they are. They’ve worked hard to get to this point, after all.
“Even when Keito’s there?” Eichi asks.
“Eichi, I fear we may know each other too well,” Wataru laments, “unless you have suddenly gained telepathic abilities and thought to keep it a secret…?”
Eichi laughs. “Would you like to me to guess what you’re thinking?”
“I very much would!”
“Hm,” Eichi starts, putting his tablet down and facing Wataru as well. “It surely can’t still be of Keito.”
“Surely not,” Wataru says. “If I’m being honest, I’d like this room to be a Keito-free zone, even in the nebulous realm of the psyche.”
“He just sent me an e-mail,” Eichi says, looking down at the tablet between them. “Does that count?”
“I believe it may have to,” Wataru says. He picks up the tablet and disappears it, sleight of hand. “At least for tonight!”
“Bye, Keito,” Eichi says. He even waves. It’s absolutely too cute. Wataru sometimes can’t believe his luck.
“Indeed,” Wataru says. And good riddance! “Anyways, no, you were right, I was not thinking of Mr. Right Hand. You have two more tries.”
“Hmm,” Eichi says, again, longer this time. He tilts his head to lean against the padded headboard, coy. “Is it perhaps…me?”
“I fear that you are always occupying my thoughts,” Wataru says, “so I don’t believe that is fair. You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Could it be a particular attribute?” Eichi asks. “Physical, perhaps?” Somehow he’s gotten even more coy.
Wataru has to hold back a delighted laugh, face reddening. “Not this time!” he says. “But feel free to ask me again later and you may get a different answer.”
“I’ll do that,” Eichi says, eyes lingering somewhere around Wataru’s collarbone. There’s a certain rush he gets whenever Eichi is forward, even after all this time. “So, do I have one more try?”
Wataru nods.
“Perhaps it’s a mental attribute, then?” Eichi says, finally. “You were clearly commenting on the fact that my thoughts were elsewhere earlier, to which I will fully admit…and if you’re thinking it’s a place you wouldn’t want to linger, based on my comment, well, you have any number of my negative attributes from the past to lay your thoughts upon. Am I close?”
“I wouldn’t call them negative, my Emperor!” Wataru says. “That was the version of you that you had to be at the time. I would be a hypocrite if I faulted anyone for the need to play a role, or to wear a mask.”
“You’ve called me Emperor twice tonight,” Eichi says, a non sequitur. “I can’t remember the last time you did that.”
“We’re speaking of the past, are we not?” Wataru says, instead of that far away look in your eyes reminded me of high school. Something of a strange thing to say. A bit depressing.
“I suppose we are,” Eichi says. “You didn’t answer me. Was I close?”
Wataru notices Eichi didn’t respond to his reflection about masks, and delicately decides not to comment. Nothing to be done. “In a way,” he says. “Yes. But it’s as I said—I don’t think it’s something negative. The past is the past. It cannot be anything else…!”
“Yes,” Eichi says, going far-away again. “Which is why it might be something of a useless endeavor…”
“It could never be useless to me,” Wataru replies, touching Eichi’s chin to make sure he’s looking at him, feeling a need to be serious so as to bring Eichi back down to earth. They’re always doing this for each other; it’s one of the many reasons they work so well. “Not if it’s something that matters to you.”
“Ah,” Eichi says, closing his eyes and turning his pink face into the headboard. “You’d think I would be used to your sincerity by now.”
“The day that happens is the day I have failed as your fated court jester!” Wataru says.
“And now he’s a jester again,” Eichi says, amused. “It seems we’ve both reverted back to the past.”
“I don’t think our past is that bad,” Wataru says. “Do you really?”
“I’m the one who killed you,” Eichi says, wry, “am I not?”
He was. It’s not like Wataru doesn’t remember. But– “And it was my choice to be killed,” Wataru says. “You do know that, yes?”
“Well,” Eichi says, “to some extent—”
“It was my role,” Wataru says, trying to stress the point. “That was the version of me that I had to be at the time.”
Eichi looks like he’s considering this. Wataru watches the line of his throat as he swallows.
After a moment: “And it wasn’t so bad,” Wataru adds, “to die by your hand.”
Eichi makes an aborted sound, like a gasp that he was trying to hide. He swallows again. “I see.”
Eichi’s fruitless attempts to draw a veil over his stronger emotions is something that hasn’t changed. Wataru, selfishly, hopes it never will.
“So,” Wataru continues, soft, “is there anything in particular that is troubling you, Eichi?”
“When I killed you,” Eichi starts, “or shall I say when you let yourself be killed…?” He pauses to laugh, without humor. “Afterwards, when I…”
“Collapsed?”
“That may be putting it kindly,” Eichi says. “I truly felt that I was going to die. Or that in a way I already had. Or was it just that I wanted to…?”
“Eichi,” Wataru says.
“Sorry,” Eichi says, “I know you don’t like when I talk like that.”
“I would never wish for you to censor yourself for my sake,” Wataru says. And it’s the truth. But there is something to be said about being cognizant of another’s feelings while you’re speaking to them, though he knows that has never been one of Eichi’s strengths. Wataru is the one with the masks, after all. Wataru considers saying this aloud, or at least an abridged, kinder version, but ultimately thinks better of it.
Eichi looks like he knows Wataru has more to say on the subject, but he drops it, clears his throat instead. “Regardless of my highly unstable mental state at the time,” he says, like he considers it funny, the fact that he worked so hard and still wanted to die at the end of it all. “You were there. You caught me.”
“That I did,” Wataru says. “I remember the—“
“Blood,” Eichi says,
“Way you looked at me,” Wataru says, at the same time.
“Oh,” Eichi says. His eyes are so wide.
“Well,” Wataru says, unsure why his heart is quickening. He supposes he wasn’t prepared for this level of honesty tonight, and if he’s honest, that particular memory has haunted more than one of his nights alone. “I’d be lying if I said the blood didn’t stick in the memory as well…! But that was—merely the setting of the stage. A prop, if we’re thinking about it in that way. But you, Eichi, you were…”
The feeling of Eichi’s enraptured gaze is one that will never grow stale, Wataru is sure of it, feels that he has never been more sure of anything.
“You were the star. The hero. My partner on the stage. No, better yet—my rival. And then off-stage, you looked at me like…”
“Like I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Eichi says, quiet. “Like I couldn’t believe my luck?”
“Yes,” Wataru says, unbearably fond. “I know the feeling.”
"I thought that I would be waiting for you forever," Eichi says, the sides of his mouth twitching, the pleasure of the current moment warring with the shame of the past.
"Would that have made me your Godot?" Wataru asks.
"God might be closer," Eichi says, somehow sounding out of breath. "But that's the metaphor in the end of that play, no?"
“Some think so,” Wataru says. He shifts so that he’s looking away, needing a break from the weight of Eichi’s stare and everything that it means, just for a moment. “But in the end, the titular character never arrives. A shame, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t that the point?” Eichi asks.
“Hm?”
“The shame,” Eichi says. “To wait for someone who was never going to come.”
-
(An aside.)
Backstage. The memory to which Eichi retreats when he goes far away.
After the execution, Eichi didn’t think: it’s done. Rather, he thought: I’m done. And his body agreed.
There isn’t really a good way to describe a victory that feels like defeat. Or perhaps he’s being dramatic, in that it didn’t quite feel like defeat—no. It felt fantastic. That’s the problem with strong emotions, Eichi’s found: once they reach a certain point the sensation is all the same. So Eichi couldn’t tell you exactly how he was feeling.
And then he collapsed. And then he was caught in the arms of his enemy, his idol, his—Wataru. (Eichi remembers thinking it was Tsumugi at first, come back to hold him after all. When he thinks back, he laughs at his naïveté. Tsumugi was never going to be that for him, and like most things, that was Eichi’s fault, too.)
Regardless he was caught, and then he was sick, and then it was over—the blood everywhere, and Hibiki Wataru still there, slaughtered and warm, not once looking away.
-
“But I did come!” Wataru says. “In fact, if you’ll recall, I kept coming to you again and again—“
“In that godforsaken hospital?” Eichi asks, blinking as if emerging from a fog.
“Simply your place of residence at the time,” Wataru says, waving a hand. “And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy finding ever more exciting ways to break in each time…!”
“The nurses definitely didn’t enjoy that,” Eichi says. He smiles, cutely vindictive, as if Wataru being a pain in the nurses’ ass somehow made up for all the times he got poked and prodded as a child.
“Perhaps not,” Wataru says, thinking of one particularly memorable occasion where he got chased out of the room by a nurse with four(!) syringes in hand. Really, what he remembers most is the way Eichi laughed and laughed. “But surely you know I would have visited even if you found yourself in a jail cell.”
“It’s possible that’s what I deserved,” Eichi says, a false lightness in his voice. “It’s likely what your friends would have wanted.”
Wataru thinks for a moment: Ah. Even after all this time, he still manages to twist my words into their least charitable meaning. At the end of the day, that’s just who Eichi is, and likely who he always will be. Nothing to be done. Instead, a joke:
“I’ve never thought through the logistics of a jailbreak,” Wataru says, “but I trust that we could do it together.” He pauses. “Regardless of anyone who might have a differing opinion of your innocence!”
A huff. “Thank you,” Eichi says. When Wataru turns back to look at him directly, Eichi is smiling, small, eyes trained on his imperceptibly shaking hands. He’s always tried to hold onto himself through sheer force of will, but his frailty will always slip through the cracks. Wataru, since the beginning, has always understood his role in being strong for the both of them. He’s filled worse roles, of course, but sometimes he’s still…
Wataru asks, “Is that what you’re worried about, then? That I won’t come back?” He smiles through a vague sense of hurt. “Ah. Back to your Mephistopheles business?”
Eichi is quiet.
“That trope is a bit tired at this point, no?” Wataru continues, the words sprouting from someplace raw inside him. “Maybe we can decide on another character archetype for me. You know I’m always willing to be your doting housewife, Eichi. What about Desdemona? Ah, though I wouldn’t want to imply anything about you and Othello—”
“Wataru, please,” Eichi says. “There’s no need for such a gruesome comparison.”
“And if being compared to Mephistopheles is just as gruesome for me?” Wataru asks. An attempt at delicacy. “At this point in our relationship?”
“That’s…” Eichi starts, but seemingly does not know how to finish. Wataru moves his gaze from Eichi’s hands to his face once more. He looks stricken. Truly, in the most literal sense of the word: as if he’s been struck.
Wataru naturally feels the urge to fill the silence. To lighten the mood, even if just for Eichi’s sake, while Wataru stews over it and turns his own stomach into knots. Instead he sits and waits.
“Wataru, I’m not sure—” Eichi stops abruptly, makes a pained noise. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”
“I would like you to be forthright,” Wataru says. “That has always been the truth.”
“Well,” Eichi says, finally. “It’s a question of deserving, then. In a way…” He laughs. “In a way I deserve to be compared to Othello, with his jealousy and his cruelty. Or Faust with his…what would you like to call it? Twisted, naïve greed? Stupidity? Blindness?
“But Mephistopheles…” A sigh. “They say he only collects the souls of those who are already damned, don’t they? So he was just. Well. Doing his job, I suppose. I wouldn’t fault him for trying to make the best of his situation. To enjoy it, to some degree.”
Unable to begin unpacking the second half of Eichi’s answer, Wataru starts with: “You called it a gruesome comparison. You and Othello.”
“I was referring to you and Desdemona,” Eichi says. “I think myself and Othello may be quite fair, all things considered.”
“Eichi,” Wataru says.
“Mm?” Eichi replies. He looks like he feels better after his little speech. Wataru can’t say the same, especially as he trails his eyes down and sees Eichi’s hands still shaking.
“What do you think my most despicable trait is?” Wataru asks. “And please be honest.”
Eichi’s eyebrows furrow. “I don’t…”
“There is surely at least one,” Wataru says. “Considering the fact that you just laid it out plainly for me to see…!”
“Are you attempting something of a Socratic dialogue?” Eichi asks. He smiles faintly. “Where we go around in a circle and I end up realizing the fatal flaw in my logic?”
“If Eichi thinks his Wataru is deceiving him then that makes Wataru a bad person,” Wataru says, “if you’ll forgive the oversimplification. But Eichi doesn’t think Wataru is a bad person! Therein lies the fault in your reasoning.”
“But—“
“Ah, please hold another moment. I think I can predict what you’re going to say, Emperor. There’s one way that your logic remains sound. Pardon the tongue twister: Is a person who does bad things to bad people a bad person? Most would say no. I think you would agree.”
“I would,” Eichi says, with that same sad smile. Every expression of one’s beloved is precious, of course, but Wataru would be lying if he said he wasn’t growing weary of this particular look. “So you understand. It has nothing to do with your despicable traits.” A laugh. “As if. It’s absurd to even say aloud.”
“What if we flipped it?” Wataru asks, an idea suddenly coming to him. “Hibiki Wataru is a good person. Yes or no?”
“Yes,” Eichi says, quick and firm.
“And so this would make Wataru betraying Eichi a good thing, if we are still assuming Eichi is bad…?”
“Yes,” Eichi says. Just as firm.
“Then, imagine a scenario for me—one in which Wataru never betrays Eichi. If we’re following our same train of logic, what would this mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Eichi says, though the resigned line of his jaw implies that he understands exactly what Wataru is getting at. “You may have to spell it out for me.”
“It would mean that Eichi is not bad at all…!” Wataru exclaims, trying to sound sincere, even through the showmanship. “As I have it on pretty good authority that Wataru has no betrayals planned!”
Eichi looks like he wants to say something. Possibly a comment on Wataru’s circular logic, as it definitely is—just the same as Eichi’s. Possibly something like, I understand, but that doesn’t change how I feel. Which would be fair. But—
“I understand,” Eichi starts. “But surely you also understand that doesn’t change how I—
“Eichi,” Wataru says.
Eichi takes a deep breath, visibly steeling himself. “Yes?”
“I love you,” Wataru says. “Beyond all logic—despite it.” He takes a breath and looks at the hurt awe on Eichi’s face. “Do you remember what I said, those years ago? When I caught you?”
“How unsightly,” Eichi says, no pause in his recollection. “How could I forget that? And don’t fault yourself, it’s not as if it was an inaccurate assessment—“
“I was speaking of myself,” Wataru says. “I had been killed. My role at the time—that is to say, my very life at the time—had reached its end. And yet I was selfish. I wanted to continue on…! Can you discern why?”
“I suppose not everyone has had to make the same peace with death as others have,” Eichi says, doing that sweetly infuriating thing where he makes a broad, verbose statement that is clearly meant to refer to himself. “Especially those who are worthy of life. It’s only natural to fear its inverse.”
Wataru thinks of saying: Humans, maybe! Do you really think a being born for the stage such as myself would have such worldly fears?
But Wataru is many things—a performer, yes, to the bone, and to the grave, but also: human. And he does have fears. Monstrous ones. Eichi’s shaking hands. His burdened lungs. The unyielding roots of his grief. The pain. All of that pain. He sees them all each day. And how nice it would be: to be strong enough to change any of it.
“Sorry,” Eichi says, smiling, noticing Wataru’s reticence. “I’m being difficult again.”
“I have never in my life backed down from a challenge,” Wataru replies. “You likely know that better than most! But as I was saying…”
A pause. “As you were saying?”
“I myself am grappling with,” Wataru says, slowly, “matching my feelings with my words. Giving them their proper weight. I am cognizant of how much…meaning words carry for the both of us. So I’m feeling a certain reluctance.”
“Honesty, Wataru,” Eichi says. “It goes both ways, you know.”
“It seems that I have a difficult time,” Wataru says, “when it becomes clear that my care for you does not match the care you have for yourself. And I know! There’s nothing to be done. But when you speak of the past, I can’t help but think…how myopic it all seems.”
Eichi purses his lips, the same expression he makes whenever a conversation veers towards critique. “Mhm.”
“My love,” Wataru says, “please don’t pout. I simply mean—ah. I know the future may not seem boundless to you. And you may be right in thinking so. But despite our past…perhaps even because of it…! You were the hero of my story. Truly. It made me happy to think that I could continue forward with you. That our story wasn’t over after you killed me.” He hesitates. “I’ve never much cared for Othello, in all honesty.”
Wataru watches Eichi’s lips tremble. “Mm,” he says. He clears his throat, but it turns into a whimper, the same sad noise he always makes before he begins to cry.
“My apologies,” Wataru says, opening his arms. “I didn’t think you felt so strongly about that particular work—”
“Please be quiet,” Eichi says, scooting over so that he can rest his head on Wataru’s chest, enveloped in his arms. Voice wobbling, he says, “I don’t give a shit about Othello.”
Always such a thrill when he swears! “Scandalous!” Wataru says. “But fair. I think our story is much more interesting.”
“Maybe someone can write it one day,” Eichi says, into the fabric of Wataru’s shirt. Wataru shivers at the feeling of his warm breath. “When it’s all over.”
“We have to live it first,” Wataru says, running a hand up and down Eichi’s side.
“That we do,” Eichi says.
Finally, Wataru thinks, finally—something to be done!