Work Text:
No matter when the crew lands alongside the pier, Josefumi always spares the time to meet him on the land, waving cheerfully in greeting, even though they were already squeezing together in the kitchen early in the morning. Yoshikage prefers to spend the greater part of his worktime on reading medical literature or art journals, but as it had become their common habit over the past few months, it was no big deal for him to reconsider some of his own. He’s got quite used, too, to Josefumi’s asking him to take their time before going home, while being all sorry for the selfishness, and leading the way up to the clean seashore not far from the pier.
“The water temperature was 25°C in the daytime and has dropped by three degrees by now; perfect for swimming.”
“You’re quite aware I don’t come here to swim,” Josefumi smiles awkwardly and sits down on the bare sand. “I could change my mind if you joined me though.”
“No can do,” Yoshikage reaches out his palm as a sign of rejection and, on dropping his backpack in between, follows his moves.
To spend so much time sailing and not to see the real sea doesn’t sound about right, yet, in fact, it is right. For Yoshikage, to see the real sea means rather to see where it begins, and it’s all the way the privilege of people of the land. Thus, every time Josefumi strives to share it, an unusual feeling of gratitude is aroused inside him. One and only gaze into the distance reminds Yoshikage why the sea was his choice long ago and sends the ripples across the ocean of his soul.
“How was your day?”
“No calamities,” and no involvement on his part because it’s always the way with the sea. “And what can you tell me?”
“And I broke a flowerpot while vacuuming the living room, but nothing fatal as a whole,” which makes Yoshikage examine him with peripheral vision and only then nod to himself.
They see fatal differently; one sees it as broken flowerpots, the other—as scarred fingers. They have different thoughts on the shore, too; Yoshikage would rather leave their conversation as it already is and devote the rest of his time to the landscape and the other’s monologue, yet Josefumi proceeds to ask questions. He doesn’t seem to have reflected much on what had happened at sea, as well as what was coming next, back then, for streams are scaring him, thus every time he hopes to hear from Yoshikage, as a true man of the sea, some simple truth.
Today’s question, however, catches him off guard.
“Kira-san,” Josefumi calls him to attract his attention and makes the look on his face go skeptical with a, “Kira-san, do you ever smile? Is it even possible to make you laugh?”
“I’ve got a, um,” he hesitates, “somewhat exotic sense of humor.”
“But are you scared of tickles?”
“Tickles?” Yoshikage marvels. “Must have been in my childhood, but I’m not sure as of now. All I know is that I resent people touching me, especially with no great reason for that, that’s why I make the most of being a doctor rather than a patient.”
“Okay, this one’s excluded, then. Then you don’t need to be amused, you need to be amazed,” who needs to do it and why isn’t clear though. “Kira-san. Kira-san, look,” he points at the horizon covered with bubbles. They’re bursting one by one, leaving pearly traces in which Yoshikage soon notices, on taking a closer look, his own name and by which Josefumi apparently tries to set him off smiling so desperately. “Well, what do you think?”
“This can definitely be used to amaze,” he responds sincerely and drops a little friendly banter, “Such magic tricks would definitely come in handy for my mother when on duty on the children’s ward.”
With, “Kira-sa-a-an,” sounding somewhat suppressed, Josefumi tilts his head up towards the sky and bursts out laughing. And when he gets silent, plunging back into his thoughts, Yoshikage watches the bubbles disappear, chin placed on the knees he pulled into his chest, and recalls something.
He recalls how the things start mixing up in his apartment after Josefumi’s moving. The latter doesn’t have many of his own, yet out of all the offers to make him feel at home he only agrees to a normal cell phone. And everything’s fine, except the only difference in their cells is a small scratch on the back of one phone—a bitemark left by Yoshikage’s mom who mistook it for a chocolate bar—and this is the last thing Josefumi would notice while hastily getting ready for college, which is why, instead of a blank screen, Yoshikage sees a bright image of butterfly several times at work.
Josefumi promises him it will never happen again, yet doesn’t keep his promise, no matter how hard he tries. He goes out on the weekend early in the morning just to come back with a bag of multicolored rhinestones meant, according to the wrapping, for adorning one’s hair. But of course, it’s not used for his bush of hair, but the next time Yoshikage goes past him, he notices JOSEPHUMI laid out with the rhinestones on the new cell and chuckles in his palm.
Yoshikage refuses to have pair initials—Josefumi says he has green ones specifically for Kira-san!—just because he’s too sensitive to touches and whenever he takes the other’s phone, prickly edges of the rhinestone uncomfortably cut into the delicate skin of his palm.
He recalls the increasing amount of green around him: flowerpots all over the place, an ivy winding its way up on the balcony, fragrant yuzu in a bowl and the other’s pale if long-lasting lipstick.
And green… Was green his favorite color all along, or did it become one after Josefumi had turned up at the door of his house? That house the location of which doesn’t cease to surprise him when they will go back there together after another voyage of Yoshikage’s because it’s so stupidly far away from the sea, without Josefumi noticing how perfectly it does suit him. The green hills, the noise of the train leaving the central station of Morioh, the traditional indigenous Japanese temple with the lake and forest, and among all these things there’s Josefumi, a true man of the land, as no matter what soil his hands burrow into, the plant will bear and will yield.
He recalls tending his fingers because he’s fond of them, even bearing traces of the land in the form of rough calluses due to back-breaking physical work since a very young age and dark specks of dust under his fingernails. Yoshikage, too, bears such traces, the traces of the sea: always frizzy hair because of moisture and the crunch of sand under his feet during a shower.
“Would you please stop treating me like I’m a little kid?” Josefumi mutters under his breath, so Yoshikage suggests picturing to himself a free manicure session. And, “Is it adult-like enough for you?” makes him giggle awkwardly, while Yoshikage’s hand gets warmer touching his rough hot fingers.
And, on recalling, he smiles involuntarily. Josefumi notices it in an instant, as if he hadn’t been almost the only reason for his smile all along, and makes too much of it.
“Kira-san, your smile looks exactly the same as the one in the picture hanging in the living room,” Yoshikage’s smile gets broader with each compliment, so he hides his face deeper into his knees. “I mean it, Kira-san, it’s as discreet. Mysterious and humble. Like Mona Lisa’s.”
“Do you think I’m not aware of how my smile looks like?”
“That’s just what I think,” Josefumi titters and rests his hands on the sand behind him. “I haven’t seen you a single time standing in front of the mirror, all primp and smiley. Neither can I imagine you that way.”
“You’ve got a point…”
“But you’re a perfect model for portraits!” he’s fast to assure him maybe because he thinks that Yoshikage doesn’t love himself enough. Or maybe… “Right here, on the shore, against the sea. You’re meant for it. Or, rather, it’s meant for you… Anyway, just smile to me more often, okay, Kira-san?”
Josefumi entangles his hair completely and gives him a warm smile. The very smile Yoshikage would receive as a token of gratitude when he used to help his mother save people’s lives just because it was his job. The smile he needs to see, honestly speaking, only from Josefumi, on returning home from shoreless waves, eternal flow of time and movement, to the place where there’s always calm and steadfast confidence in continuation of life.
Yoshikage met him after so many years and took him in for a reason. At the very least, it didn’t happen just because of his lacking knowledge as to how he can cultivate an exotic fruit. And Josefumi, he’ll bet, is attentive enough to notice in little gestures all the weaknesses that affect him deeply. Now, one of them is the fear that this time, as any other in future, will be the last for him to see where the sea begins. Nonetheless, he’s not strong enough to keep it to himself. What’s enough is only the desire to do everything and nothing for Josefumi at the same time as to engender a sense of pity or, what’s worse, duty and blind gratitude to him, Yoshikage, means to keep him in bonds, means completely the opposite of what Yoshikage desires, that is Josefumi’s welfare.
Yet if Yoshikage asked him to stay once and for all, he would probably do. After all, both a man of the sea and a man of the land in them know perfectly well they’re risking to perish on their own.