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When I look back like this I don’t know at all whether there have been any nights, everything looks to me, can you imagine, like one day without any mornings, afternoons, and evenings, even without any differences in light.
—The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1923
Wataru has never been fragile.
No—he’s worked hard to be the very antithesis of the concept, for the same reason he’s worked hard in so many other aspects of his life: to be looked at with awe. He would have sooner died than felt pity from others. It was only after meeting Eichi that he realized the two feelings could go hand in hand.
He still remembers those early days, learning of Eichi’s existence, and then learning everything about Eichi’s existence. There was a lot to learn, and a lot to consider. He’s not well, he remembers hearing, constantly, everywhere. He’s collapsed. He’s in the hospital. He’s so weak. So strong. How does he do it? Why does he do it?
Eichi was like a God. Or a spirit or a specter or a haunt. The sure thing is that he wasn’t human, which became ironic very quickly when he took up that very role to defeat Wataru and the other monsters. Wataru knows a thing or two about ill-fitting roles, but Eichi wore it well. He soon realized it wasn’t a role at all.
It would be easier if Eichi wasn’t human. It would be easier if Wataru could let himself be.
-
“Will you tell me a story,” Eichi asks. His voice doesn’t lilt at the end; he says it like it’s already a given.
“Something true or false?” Wataru asks.
“It doesn’t matter,” Eichi says. It’s impossible to tell what time it is from the light outside. The heart monitor beeps. The nurse finishes putting something in his IV and leaves. After another second, he adds, “Something false.”
“Do you like the Odyssey?” Wataru asks, looking at the lines on the screen of the monitor.
“Are we sure that one’s false?” Eichi says, his eyes opening and cutting over to Wataru. He makes a face. “Why are you so far away,” he adds. “Wataru. Move your chair.”
Wataru laughs. He moves his chair. “I thought you wanted me to tell you a story,” he says, resting an elbow on the side of Eichi’s bed. “But if you want, I’m happy to discuss the veritas of mythology with you instead…!”
Wataru catches a glimpse of fond amusement in Eichi’s eyes before he closes them again. “No, you’re right,” Eichi says. “I always knew Homer was a dirty liar. Tell me about Odysseus.”
“Mm. Okay. He was a long way from home…”
-
A truth is that Wataru has always liked and feared and pitied Keito all in a single breath of feeling. He can’t explain it to Eichi because that would involve Eichi confronting his own feelings about Keito in tandem, and they both know that isn’t happening. In any case Wataru isn’t sure he wants it to. That’s the fear.
“Explain it to me one more time,” Keito said.
Wataru thought back to the scene he’d been trying to repress for the past twelve hours. He stood by the fountain outside ES and weighed his own shame against the fear he could see in the man in front of him.
“It was…well, it was similar to all of the other coughing fits, in that he was, you know, coughing—“
“Hibiki,” Keito said, and the gravity in his voice lodged the rock in Wataru’s stomach even deeper.
Wataru took a deep breath. “He coughed, and it was similar, but it was different. I offered him my handkerchief and I wasn’t surprised to see it come back stained red. You know that’s normal. But then he got up and went to the restroom, and he stayed there for a few minutes before I got up to follow him—“
“Why did you wait a few minutes—“
“This is why Eichi calls you overbearing, you know~!” Wataru said, trying to put them back on familiar footing. He watched a harried assistant rush through the courtyard with a box and a phone trapped between her ear and shoulder. “Anyway! I gave him a reasonable amount of time before knocking on the door. He sounded out of breath when he told me to come in. He was sitting on the floor with a towel, on the verge of fainting. The towel was bright red.” Wataru took a deep breath and watched the assistant. She looked stressed; like her life would end if she didn’t get her oversized box to an executive in the next five minutes. Keito sat on the edge of the fountain, finally, like his legs wouldn’t hold him anymore. “He told me not to call the ambulance.”
“And then?”
“And then I called the ambulance.”
-
“Do you find it sad?” Eichi asks, interrupting Wataru in the middle of his semi-exaggerated description of the Laestrygonians.
“That a group of man-eating giants massacred the entirety of Odysseus’ ship?” Wataru replies, bemused. “I’d consider that pretty sad.” He hums. “Though maybe the sensibilities of an emperor differ from those of a common man…?”
“Well,” Eichi says, clearly somewhere else entirely. “Yes. Though I wasn’t—“ An abrupt pause.
“Hm?”
“What time is it?” Eichi asks, but before Wataru is able to get his phone out, Eichi continues:
“I don’t want you to think I wasn’t listening to you,” Eichi says. His eyes have been open but he’s been staring up at the ceiling. He’s clearly a little out of it. Without seeing, he grabs for Wataru’s hand and kisses his pulse. Wataru feels such a fierce pang of fondness that it almost knocks him over. He closes his eyes.
“They’re not my words anyway. They’re just a—what did you call him? A dirty liar’s?” As he speaks, he repositions his hand so that it’s not covering Eichi’s mouth.
“But you were speaking them,” Eichi says. “I’m not in the habit of taking anything for granted right now. I’m just thinking about…”
Wataru doesn’t prompt him, just sits there with his eyes closed and his hand cradling Eichi’s cheek. He wants to know and he doesn’t want to know.
“Maybe I was getting ahead of myself,” Eichi continues, eventually. They were quiet for so long that Wataru almost has trouble following the thread of the conversation back. “Nevermind. Please keep going.”
Wataru keeps his eyes closed, but he does as he’s told.
-
The story is clear at this point. Wataru wants to go back further. He doesn’t want to keep thinking of lasts; so he retreats to a first:
The first time he invited Eichi over to his family home, after months of dodging the question with a compliment or a trick. Eichi offered to have one of his drivers take them; Wataru said no. So they took the train. Eichi sat close and looked around with his child-at-an-amusement-park eyes. Wataru took his hand and held it behind their backs. The train swayed as they held close.
No one was home when they got there, intentionally so. Wataru may be a changed man in certain respects, but there is still something to be said about airs of mystery and cards held close to one’s chest. Eichi was still wide-eyed. It was just a house.
“Are you hungry?” Wataru asked, suddenly remembering how to be a good host. He hadn’t hosted someone in—well. It had been quite a stretch.
“No,” Eichi said. “I’m alright.” He looked and looked. Wataru willed himself to not feel uncomfortable in the slightest. “This is a very nice place.”
“It’s nicer now,” Wataru said, just to watch Eichi’s reaction. Eichi looked away, abashed, and his eyes caught on a few pictures on the wall.
“You…” Eichi started, a laugh bubbling up in his chest. “Oh my goodness. Is that you?”
“Ah,” Wataru said. He pushed the embarrassment down. “Indeed it is! I was, perhaps, a slightly larger than average baby—”
Eichi walked over and held the photo frame close to his face. He looked disproportionately happy to be witnessing Wataru before he was himself. “You were adorable,” he said, laughing. Giggling. He poked at the glass. “Wataru.”
“Yes, yes,” Wataru said, hoping his face wasn’t red. He’d long trained himself out of reactions like these, but leave it to Eichi to strip him down to only his base parts. “Thank you, Eichi, three year old Wataru is very flattered, but nineteen year old Wataru is feeling somewhat left ou—”
At some point during Wataru’s speech Eichi had somehow gotten close enough to cut him off with a kiss. Wataru felt himself being walked backwards until he hit the wall. After a minute of lazy, indulgent kissing, Eichi pulled back.
“Hi,” Wataru said, low, looking at the physical manifestation of his effect on Eichi. Pink on his cheeks, his nose, his mouth. Light in his eyes. His warm breath on Wataru’s mouth.
“Hi,” Eichi said, radiant and happy. “Thank you for bringing me here.” Like he had been given a priceless gift.
Wataru looked around at his home and Eichi in it. He felt something entirely new. “You’re welcome,” he said, and he meant it in every sense.
-
They’re stuck on Calypso’s island when Eichi speaks again. The room is darker when Wataru resurfaces.
“Do you remember that time you found me here, after the war?” Eichi asks, eyes cloudy.
“I do,” Wataru says, though he can’t quite picture the day’s details, so wrapped up in Natsume’s ideas and the choice he was making, the one that felt like walking off a tightrope without a single glance below. Not that Eichi had left him with many other options.
“I was collapsed on the floor,” Eichi says, “but it was my own fault. I had ripped all of the wires off of me. Out of me. I wouldn’t let any of the nurses in. I was like—an animal. A feral animal.” He recites this with no emotion, like he’s telling the story of an acquaintance he barely knew.
“Mm,” Wataru says, chastised by his own selfish recollection.
“I want to laugh at my childishness,” Eichi says, but he doesn’t look anywhere near laughter. His shaking hand hovers over the IV nestled in the crook of his pale arm. “I want to laugh, but I feel—hah. I feel like doing the same thing right now.”
“Eichi,” Wataru starts, but doesn’t know how to finish.
“it hurts,” Eichi says, such an obvious truth, but one that he rarely admits aloud. “It hurt then, too, but—it feels different. I suppose back then I didn’t feel like I had anything to live for.” He swallows. “And now that I do… it just hurts more. Ha. That doesn’t seem right, does it?”
Wataru sits there, a statue, still not knowing what to say. He feels himself clenching his jaw and tries to relax. He tries to find the words, or at least the feeling. Anything lighthearted or borrowed from a greater mind would ring trite. Sometimes Wataru isn’t sure he has much else to offer.
“I can’t bear it,” Eichi says, quiet, but gunshot loud in Wataru’s head. He would look like porcelain if not for the tremors. Wataru sees them wrack his fragile body at intervals. He feels desperately tethered to the earth. Why had he ever wanted this?
“My love,” Wataru says. “Eichi.” What else is there to say?
“If this is…” Eichi stops to breathe, coughing lightly into the crook of his arm. “If this is it. Can you…”
Wataru doesn’t want to be Calypso. He truly doesn’t. There’s no use trapping someone who can’t stay.
“Promise me,” Eichi says, his words slightly slurred. Wataru thinks maybe it’s the medicine from earlier finally kicking in. “Promise me that we’ll go home.”
Wataru can’t parse what Eichi means by ‘home,’ and he doesn’t want to try. But he can’t help but notice that Eichi says ‘we,’ the assumption that whichever way Eichi goes then Wataru would surely follow. It should be presumptuous, but Wataru can’t fault it. After all: he loves Romeo and Juliet. Their school play feels further away than the three years it was. He’s thought about it. He didn’t think he’d have to live it—at least not so soon.
There isn’t anything Wataru can say that wouldn’t taste like ash in his mouth. He pictures Ogygia in his head. He watches Eichi fall asleep and holds his hand tight.
-
He needs another first. Further back. The first time he went over to Eichi’s house—that’s a good one.
He remembers feeling an embarrassing sort of worldly awe that he hadn’t felt since he was a child. Eichi gracefully turned away the aides around the house (Wataru had once called it an ‘estate,’ and the way Eichi’s nose had wrinkled was cute enough that he likes to throw it the term around every now and then) and led Wataru to his room. He shut and locked the door.
He looked at Wataru with a smile that was finally wide and real. Pristine eggshell wall behind him, Eichi asked, “What would you like to do?”
Wataru knew that this place, for Eichi, was home in name only. The fact of Wataru’s presence being a comfort felt like a truth too large to speak aloud. Home. A place, a person. Wataru wanted more than he knew how to say.
Wataru sat on Eichi’s bed, beckoned him over, and tried his best to show him.
-
Eichi wakes up quickly, after a fitful sleep. He looks strangely fearful, for a moment, and then he regains his bearings, and then he just looks resigned.
“Will you continue the story?” he asks. When Wataru doesn’t immediately reply, he adds, “These could be my last wishes, you know.” A faint smile. A joke, or the semblance of one. It’s almost a relief for Wataru to turn his mind back to the island.
Wataru is almost finished recounting Poseidon’s grudge and the storm that followed when the next interruption comes. Eichi starts coughing. Normal. But then it doesn’t stop.
Wataru understands his role here. He plucks tissues from the box with less care than he would if someone was watching. He hands them to Eichi as his body contorts, pained wheezing accompanying every breath in. He feels a phantom burn in his chest as he watches tears well up in Eichi’s pale eyes.
A nurse appears in the doorway, clearly having been summoned by the noise, holding a clipboard and a vial of something. She hesitates, but the door is ajar, and so she walks in. Wataru hears Eichi stiffen as he hears the footsteps.
“Tell her to leave,” Eichi whispers. His voice sounds like gravel.
“What?” Wataru asks, shocked, looking between Eichi and the approaching woman.
“Tell her to leave,” Eichi says.
“That’s,” Wataru says, trying to find footing, unsure what to do in the face of Eichi’s stubborn refusal. Eichi had always hated being poked at, but he knew how to bear it, or at least feared being judged by Wataru too much to throw another public fit. “She’s just going to—”
Raising his voice to be heard, Eichi says, “Please leave.” It cracks on the second word. “I don’t need anything right now.” The red-stained tissues in his lap look like roses losing their color. He’s still holding one to his mouth as he speaks, clutched tight in his cold hand.
The nurse looks as uneasy as Wataru feels. “Um,” she starts, “Tenshouin-san—”
“I’ll take care of him for now,” Wataru interrupts, the words coming out more steadily than he anticipated. “Thank you for checking in. We’ll be sure to call if we need something.”
The nurse retreats, if only to go tell her supervisor. The door clicks shut. Eichi drops the tissue and holds his hand to his mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he says.
Wataru gets the bowl from the other nightstand and holds it in Eichi’s lap. His clammy hands overlap with Wataru’s on the sides. Eichi curves harshly forward, his back like a bowstring, and is.
Wataru waits it out. When the worst is over, he moves the bowl to the sink in the corner. When he returns, he rubs soothing circles at the small of Eichi’s back. Eichi is making tiny, pained noises. He touches his forehead to Eichi’s shoulder and tries to get Eichi to subconsciously match his breathing. Eichi hates when Wataru counts, says it makes him feel like a child, so instead Wataru tries to nudge him into the rhythm he had taught himself years ago. In for four. Hold. Out for eight. In. Hold. As long as you can, Eichi. Please. Out.
-
It’s not enough. Further back. The first kiss.
When was it? Think, Wataru, think. Spring, it must have been. After that ridiculous stage with Trickstar. After the rooftop, after the mask.
They were outside, tucked away behind the main school building. On the stone steps. The week had been brutal and exhausting. Whenever they spoke, Kanata was always espousing the joys of love, of partnership. It had always been baffling; was made even more so after Wataru finally decided to try and grasp it for himself just to get summarily shut down. He had never hated Faust so much.
They caused each other pain. That’s another truth. But then the pieces shifted: the sides of Eichi that he understood multiplied and suddenly fit together. Petulant and beloved; a child holding onto what is his in a tight, grubby fist. Wataru promised to stay. Wataru gave him the mask. He became the real thing.
They sang and then it was over, but the leftover adrenaline had them unwilling to part. They said goodbye to Tori and Yuzuru and then made their way here.
Eichi was running through the choreography for the opening of Symphonia while Wataru leaned on the wall and hummed. Spin, violin, footwork. He was dancing with more unbridled enthusiasm than Wataru had ever seen on stage—the regal emperor cast away and replaced with someone who could only feel the joy in it. Wataru was about to join him, unable to merely watch any longer, when Eichi stumbled and fell. Almost fell.
Wataru caught him before he could hit the ground, but his weight caused Wataru to stumble on the step and so they went down anyway. It was a cliche out of a storybook. It felt like a fitting end to the day.
Wataru was able to get out, “Are you—” before the sound of Eichi’s loud, untroubled laughter cut him off.
“I’m sorry,” Eichi said, “Ahh, Wataru. I’m sorry.” Giggles were still bubbling out of his chest. “Are you alright?”
“Not a scratch!” Wataru had said, the pain in his lower back feeling very far away. The moon was big and bright behind Eichi’s head.
“You caught me again,” Eichi said, laughter finally dying away. Wataru became suddenly acutely aware of their positioning.
Human desire had always been something out of reach for Wataru. Now he was staring it directly in the mouth. He said, “What is a jester for, if not to catch his emperor when he stumbles?”
“Not an emperor,” Eichi said, voice trembling with something Wataru can’t believe he let himself put a name to. “Just Eichi.”
“Never just,” Wataru said. “A person is never just one thing! Especially not a person like—”
“Wataru,” Eichi said. He rested his forehead on Wataru’s. “This may sound ironic coming from me…” One more laugh, one that Wataru felt resounding through their chests pressed together. “But haven’t we talked enough?”
An almost painful lurching of his human heart. Wataru leaned forward and kissed him. His lips were soft and tasted faintly of cherry. Every cherry that Wataru would eat from this day onwards would be an evocation—the pain in his back and the bright moon and Eichi on top of him.
Wataru tightened his grip around Eichi’s waist before pulling back. He tried to subtly reposition them on the step. “Was that an answer?” Wataru asked.
“Hm?” Eichi said, looking pink and dazed. “What?”
“My answer,” Wataru said, not sure if he was making any sense. He watched Eichi’s brow furrow sweetly.
“Love is precisely what the answer is?” Eichi said, quoted back at him, radiant.
“Yes,” Wataru said, nonsensical with feeling, leaning back in. “Yes.”
-
After a while of just breathing: “Please keep talking,” Eichi says, hoarse. “I want to know how Athena saved him.”
“It sounds like you know this story very well,” Wataru says, face still buried in Eichi’s shoulder. He feels like nothing but skin and bone. “How did you know he would be saved?”
Eichi blinks a few times. He gathers up the tissues in his lap and starts putting them in the wastebasket on the floor. “Hm.”
“Hmm…?” Wataru says. He doesn’t want to move from his perch. He rests his head and helps Eichi with the tissues. The watery light from the window catches the dust in the air, turning the motes a pale gold.
Finally, Eichi says, “Even if I didn’t, the—the story wasn’t over yet.” Wataru feels the words rumble through him as much as he hears them. “I don’t believe in fate. You know that.”
“I do,” Wataru replies.
“So even if—even if I know the ending,” Eichi says, “it’s—to me—ah. I’m sorry. My head is—really hurting.”
“It’s alright,” Wataru says. He’s looking at Eichi put himself back together right in front of his eyes. “Would you like a massage?”
“Please,” Eichi says, smiling weakly. “But hold on a moment.” Wataru watches the gears turn in his drug-addled brain. Pity, awe, love. Wataru feels it all.
After a minute: “It’s just…no matter what, it’s going to come. And it’s going to hurt. Whether I accept it or not, whether I beckon it or not. I can’t bear it. That part’s true. But somehow I always come out the other end. Whether I want to or not.” Eichi is looking at his hands like he’s never seen them before. “And I think that’s because the story isn’t over.”
Wataru hears at once both the musings of a feverish child and a learned philosopher. Eichi’s manifold sides overlap until they become a single kaleidoscopic portrait; the branches of his future hold the same pattern.
Quieter, again, Eichi says: “The story isn’t over yet.” Wataru meets Eichi’s eyes. He can see their fragile, steely resolve. “Can you please call the nurse back?”
-
On the rooftop, Wataru reads, as death in the form of a man: “I am not that which destroys all, but instead that which creates all. You have forgotten about me, the mother of all existence. To have forgotten me is to have forgotten life itself.”
He waves at a boy who is still very far away.
“You wished to see my face, did you not?” The words make a home for themselves behind his ribcage. Their deepest meaning is still unknown to him; he holds them close regardless.
“The night has ended. You may look upon me.”
-
They had finally arrived in Ithaca; Odysseus had finally returned home. It was a long journey, but if Wataru’s recollection holds, they’re only just halfway. Wataru massages life back into Eichi’s hands as he quotes from an earlier book: “Nevertheless I long—I pine, all my days—to travel home and see the dawn of my return. And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea, I can—”
Wataru is cut short by a knock on the door.
“Please come in,” Eichi says.