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Love was not fair. Kaori learnt this when she fell for Asuka.
Asuka was overwhelming, always too loud, too long-winded, too energetic and too secretive all at once. She could make an entire room cling to her every word, even if she spoke of something no one cared for, and she had the ability to make anyone laugh; and anything into a joke.
It was intimidating, at first, to be around someone so mysteriously passionate for a long period of time. Kaori felt herself drown in Asuka’s presence, but the longer she stayed under the surface, the more natural it became, her habitant changed.
Being around Asuka was both a privilege and a chore. Haruka was able to stay afloat beside them, and she never drifted too far away – at least not when they were in high school.
When they began their university studies, things were bound to change. They had all applied and been accepted into different schools, and saw less and less of each other. But Kaori could not let go of Asuka; she felt like a ghost who couldn’t leave until things were settled between them. She was still too transparent for Asuka, and hadn’t surprised her yet; but she wished to overtake her, at least just once.
She initiated meetings between them; study sessions, coffee dates, walks and joint musical practices. Asuka rarely turned her down, but she was never the one to invite Kaori first.
She hadn’t changed after starting her university studies, and she never spoke of new friends; or friends of old. When encouraged, she could still go on long tangents about facts and evidence, but she refrained from discussing her honest opinions. Kaori had already learnt to not feel frustrated, and she didn’t think that she was allowed to be disappointed; it was she who wanted to meet Asuka, after all. It wasn’t the other way around. When they met up, she started to feel grateful that Asuka continued to be around her at all.
Asuka was still larger than life. Being with her in public, walking by her side, could turn from being wonderful to embarrassing in seconds. The feelings were ever duelling in Kaori’s mind, but she deigned to address them.
She had other friends – new classmates, old high school friends and new neighbours – but when she was with Asuka, she didn’t.
Although it was Kaori who initiated their meetings, Asuka was always the one ordering their food, deciding which piece they should practice, or where to go for a walk. She was a powerful undercurrent, and Kaori felt like a jellyfish simply drifting along; and happy to have caught this particular stream.
Asuka often made her laugh, and Kaori saw that Asuka often smiled at her. The smile was disarming, both a shield and a weapon, but there was no ill intent that she could see; only courtesy, at worst.
Kaori craved to be the one to unveil it and see what kind of expression Asuka was making on the inside, but it was a slow process. No matter how much time they spent together, throughout high school and beyond, she felt no step closer to Asuka’s carefully hidden self. She kept sinking under the surface, but could not see the lightless bottom of the ocean.
Haruka had called it an obsession, but Kaori knew there was more to her feelings than that. She strove for Asuka’s approval and her heart, with mind and soul both. Her cheeks felt hot whenever Asuka stared at her for too long, and Asuka’s teasing comments about her looks hit too close for comfort. Even from across the room, Kaori could feel Asuka’s presence far too intimately, even before it started to influence her dreams.
When all alone with her imagination, Kaori thought not only of Asuka’s hidden depths, nor of her extravagance. Instead she imagined the shape of Asuka’s body, the smooth texture of her lips, the callousness of her musician’s fingers and the silkiness of her hair. She would imagine looking up at Asuka straddling her waist, or down at Asuka lying on her bed. She wanted to be the one to fully understand Asuka, as she wanted to be consumed by what she found out.
Choosing her words carefully, she phrased confession after confession on paper, writing new versions endlessly. For months she went back and forth with herself, debating if it was even worth sharing, until finally she came to her senses and demanded a space for herself: space she rarely reached for.
The moment she chose to tell Asuka was when they were walking along the shore, with no one around but the seagulls above their heads, and the myriad of life in the ocean beside them. As she told Asuka of how she felt, she could gauge no genuine surprise on her face. It wasn’t shocking to find out that even these feelings had been obvious to her friend, but it terrified her to think of what Asuka would say to them.
To the confession, Asuka replied: “I would be a bad girlfriend.”
Kaori could not believe that, or perhaps it was simply that she didn’t care. Her heart was pounding quickly, echoing inside of her hollow frame, and she had never felt more alive. She heard only that Asuka could consider being her girlfriend in the first place.
Asuka allowed herself to be kissed, and Kaori tasted another’s lips for the first time in her life; and fittingly, she got her first taste of Asuka’s surprise.
Asuka never explicitly stated that she returned Kaori’s affections, but she didn’t turn down her advances. She was impassive about their kisses, even after she started to return them. There was hesitance to these actions that Kaori had never before seen from her, hesitance both exciting and unnerving to witness. She never knew if she should be slower or faster, and Asuka’s answers on the matter were vague and non-descriptive. Nothing had ever intoxicated her as much as the taste of Asuka’s lips, and the scent of her neck, but she wondered if she was enough for Asuka’s own lusts. If she had any at all.
One night, months into their relationship, Kaori asked her if it was all right that they sleep together. Asuka gave only a non-committal “Sure” to her query. Kaori felt guilt welling inside of her at the lacking answer, and could not act on her desires with only that. She stilled her lusts and did not move that night.
Any attempt at having a real discussion was predictably dismissed. Whenever Kaori wanted to speak about their relationship Asuka discarded it by pointing out that she had warned her. She was a terrible girlfriend, and Kaori knew that she had no right to complain, just as she had no right to expect Asuka to change. Just as she had no desire to break up.
The kissing was still wonderful. Watching a movie with her head against Asuka’s shoulder was always a treat, even though the only movies they watched were picked by Asuka, and not in Kaori’s taste at all. She loved musicals, she loved drama: Asuka would only watch documentaries and old classic movies in black and white, often American made. But Kaori loved Asuka, and those feelings were all-encompassing.
It had to be enough: the closeness, the kisses, the dates and Asuka herself. She couldn’t force her feelings to be returned.
“Do you like me?” she tried asking.
“What kind of question is that? We’re girlfriends, remember? Or are you an imposter? What have you done with my Kaori?”
“Don’t joke around,” Kaori chided.
“What kind of answer do you want then?”
“An honest one.”
Asuka put her hand on Kaori’s cheek and leaned close, until their foreheads touched.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
But Kaori wasn’t.
It was the careful waltz they had danced since high school, secrecy versus hesitance, and the few alterations in the nature of their relationship didn’t mean that a new song was playing. Kaori fell back in line, directionless in the middle of the ocean, and resigned herself to the comfort of ignorance.
Haruka worried about her, and urged her to take care of herself. They didn’t meet often any longer, but when they did, Haruka had just the one purpose. But how long could she play lifeguard to someone so set on remaining at sea? Eventually they drifted apart, with fewer and fewer means to commune.
Giving up when she was in so deep seemed cowardly. They dated for a year, and then another month, and another month after that. Asuka even initiated some of the dates, and even though she was emotionally distant, she still complimented Kaori, flirted with her casually, and made her feel warm, secure and happy. Was it not enough, to have that, to have all of the flash but nothing of the drama?
It had to be Asuka who put an end to the charade, since Kaori could not. So she did.
Callously, as if though they hadn’t been friends for five years and dating for over one, she told Kaori that it was over. She spoke with dead eyes and a listless voice, the one she used to camouflage her feelings in apathy.
“Frankly, I’m not interested in continuing this relationship. It’s run its course. Hopefully you got something out of it, but it’s over now.”
The words washed over Kaori like a wave. She stared at her now former girlfriend with the perplexed look of someone who had been stabbed without even noticing it.
Words failed her, but not Asuka. Asuka didn’t explain her reasoning, only the fake version where she pretended she hadn’t been emotionally committed to Kaori at all. She ranted without making a scene, and seemed content to leave without giving Kaori a chance to stop her. But Kaori couldn’t give up. Not this time.
“Why can’t you speak openly to me, even now?” she asked. Her voice was thick with the sadness that threatened to spill over, but she kept her posture as firm as she could. “I know you never said that you liked me back, but I cannot accept that you would date me for over a year without a hint of affection for me. Don’t you feel like you owe me a real explanation? At least now?”
“I told you,” Asuka said, with the same disinterested look and tone. “I’d be a terrible girlfriend for you. You were the one who insisted to get with me anyway.”
“That doesn’t excuse it!”
Asuka’s apathetic eyes seemed to light up at Kaori’s sudden spark of passion. She listened, as Kaori continued:
“You can’t just say you’ll be bad and then think it absolves you of future guilt! Life doesn’t work that way. It just means you’re consciously terrible, instead of by accident. Thinking I’ll have to accept it all just because… just because I make excuses for you…”
Kaori’s throat was thick as she sobbed. She looked at the ground and felt like a hypocrite for accusing Asuka of hiding her emotions, when she had hidden her own from herself as well.
“Are you sure you want me to be honest?” Asuka dared, but it was a taunt without her usual mirth.
Kaori dried her eyes with her sleeve, and nodded.
“Being with me isn’t fair on you. I don’t particularly care if we’re dating or not, but I like you too much to be with you. I don’t like kissing, I don’t like sex and I don’t like commitments or obligations to people. I can’t be the girlfriend you deserve, or the one you want. It’s not good for you to stay with me, and as a friend, I want you to be happier than you can be with me.”
As she spoke, Asuka’s easy smile was the only thing which rang false.
Kaori wanted to say that she was happy. She had put up with Asuka’s lack of commitment, with the white lies, with the distance between them, and she had still felt happy by her side. To have it confirmed to her now that Asuka cared for her was more than enough to keep up the façade.
Was it good for her? How could it not be? When Asuka had finally spoken to her honestly, after years and years of escaping from that responsibility, could she really just let go so easily?
“That’s fine,” Kaori said. She grabbed Asuka’s hands and held her gaze – and saw her eyes widen in shock behind the strategically thick glasses.
“Knowing that you care for me is enough. I’m sorry that I kissed you without knowing you dislike it. I won’t do that again. I don’t have to sleep with you either, to be happy with you. And I believe in you. I believe you can be more honest with me, now that I know this. I believe we can make this work, so long as we like each other. I want to stay with you.
“We can talk about how. We can set up guidelines you’re comfortable with. That we’re both comfortable with. We can make it work for us. So long as you agree to try too.”
Asuka wasn’t willing to try. She didn’t think it would work because of her, she said, as she let go of Kaori’s hands. It was better to just let it wash over and resume a friendship, without obligations, in time.
She didn’t change her mind, and Kaori didn’t steep so low as to plead. The unfairness of what had transpired left her heaving with dry tears. She had given and given, and been left ruthlessly empty.
She should have known better. Caught up in the vortex which was Asuka, she had felt without choice and happy to oblige without options. She should have been more worried about Asuka’s drowning presence.
Asuka’s physical departure from her life took time to discover. All of Kaori’s thoughts came to centre around her, and she knew her well enough to know what she would say, how she would act and how she would react to everything Kaori did and said. She was still a shadow hanging over her shoulders, clinging to her soul and unwilling to leave.
This was what it meant to be consumed. She had invited it upon herself, so she shouldered the responsibility alone. The weight slowed her down, but she didn’t stop. Haruka contacted her again, as did her one year junior friend Yuuko, whenever she took a short break. When she spoke to them about Asuka she backed herself into the kind of secrecy her ex would show, but little by little, she felt lighter.
Her dreams were haunted by memories and guilt, and misplaced lusts. Emotional nightmares controlled her sleeping state for days, so she could relive now painful moments of intimacy with Asuka, one last time. Until the dreams ran out of memories to abuse.
As time went on, her mind started to be filled by other things again: the studying became less daunting, and the trumpet less bittersweet to play. There was a finality to her relationship with Asuka slowly forming in her mind, the kind which her ghost-self had longed for. With some distance between them, she came to see the relationship as a chapter of her life already ended months ago. The kind of closure she had once thought to find in being loved by Asuka was found in her absence.
One day they met by accident or fate on the way to the same bookstore. Asuka moved animatedly and spoke with enthusiasm and no understanding of boundaries, and Kaori was able to laugh with her, just for a startled moment. She pretended not to notice the way Asuka’s voice cracked once or twice, and she ignored the forlorn look Asuka gave her when they parted. Her heart still raced when she returned back home, but there had been no flirting, no touching – and the rapid beating in her chest told her that it was whole and healed.
Falling out of love was a subtle emotion. Realising that all the passion and powerful emotions were gone took a while after the dust had cleared. It seemed unfitting, since the romance had been so excessive. But Kaori had come to see that loving the dry land was not unfair to the sea.