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Soon after Kaiser woke up, he sat down at his—technically Lorenzo’s—dresser, but with the amount of beauty products belonging to Kaiser scattered on it, it may as well be his. He sat down at his dresser with his new phone in hand, his eyes on the unlocked screen and avoiding eye contact with the mirror in front of him.
There was nothing wrong with the previous phone. It worked perfectly fine, even though Kaiser had it for close to a whole decade, and it was smaller than the new one. He doesn’t understand why they’ve near tripled the size of mobile phones, the size of his hand not even enough to grasp it from top to bottom. It’s ridiculous.
So, Kaiser got a new phone, even though there was nothing wrong with the better one he had before. Apart from the fact that it was scratched from thrown outbursts, missing corners of a screen, adorned with sapphire gems, and filled with dead memories and blocked contacts. Or, to be more precise, contacts that had blocked Kaiser. There was nothing wrong with the phone, its broken state perfect. Kaiser had always liked broken things, but Kaiser had also grown.
It’s been years. Years, and years, and more years have passed since he and Yoichi broke up. Years. Years. Sometimes it feels like it was years ago, and other times it feels like it was only yesterday. Kaiser didn’t even use his old phone after they broke up. He couldn’t stand the sight of Yoichi’s eyes on the cover, or the lock screen. There was something haunting about the photo on the lock screen, Yoichi’s head over the edge of a bed, looking up at the camera, something plastic over his face and his eyes, making them glossy.
There aren’t many moments Kaiser can remember when Yoichi’s eyes weren’t sheened over with gloss. Sometimes the sheen was coloured red, other times white, or simply transparent, and sometimes even blue. Just blue, as blue as the irises underneath.
It’s a haunting colour, blue. It’s haunting because the sky is blue and it’s everywhere. It doesn’t matter which country Kaiser flees to, the sky will always be there, waiting for him. If life really is a stimulation, then the sky is just an eye, and Kaiser has stared into enough blue eyes.
Naturally, time has passed, and as time naturally passes, flowers bloom and then wither, seasons end and then begin, people leave and then grow. It took a long time, but Kaiser has grown. Even though he is still more soil than he is flower, he has grown.
It’s been years since the bed of Michael Kaiser had been plucked of company, leaving him with an open wound that never seems to heal. The only reason he hasn’t bled to death is because he’s learnt to love the sun and to photosynthesise, the star’s rays cauterising the wound over and over, sealed burnt and scarred. It’s a reminder.
The screen of the new phone, which Kaiser still hasn’t covered with a screen protector, stares at him with bright eyes. It’s been open to the phone number keypad for several scenes now, enough for two plays, Kaiser thinks. He has a stupid impulse to call Yoichi, just to see if word of mouth has spread far enough yet, to see if the line will ring more than once.
It’s not the first time that the impulse has taken root on the wall of Kaiser’s sternum. It’s been there since the end, and faded for a time while Kaiser was busy tending to his garden—hell, he thought he’d weeded the bloody thing—but the impulse has returned since he got the new phone, some weeks ago now, and its roots have spread so far that the system covers his entire chest.
If a human heart weren’t the size of a mere fist—or two fists, Kaiser has grown in the last few years—he suspects his chest would feel like it does now every waking second, the weight like a stone and pulsating agony. Believe him, Kaiser doesn’t want to call Yoichi, it’s the last thing he wants to do to either of them, but the weight is becoming too much.
There’s been a hole in Michael Kaiser’s garden for years, a hole he suspects his heart fell through when it ended, and the only way to make it sprout into something is to contact the person who gave way to the hole in the first place—who once filled the hole and made it something full.
After all this time, Kaiser remembers Yoichi’s number like a scar, just like he remembers a lot of other things about Yoichi. Memory is a cursed thing, something you can’t run away from or smooth over, even if you remove your brain from the cell of your skull. It’s woven into the cells, the chambers of the heart, and the wrinkled fields of the brain. There is no way to remove a memory when it is all of you, especially one as blue as Isagi Yoichi.
Without thinking, Kaiser finally does something with his hands, tapping three numbers on the pad before pausing. It’s stupid. He can’t call him. It’s like trying to necromance someone back to life. There’s something wrong about that, there’s something horribly wrong about calling Yoichi, but the impulse—the need—is taking root even deeper. Sometimes, to forget a memory is to revisit.
It’s funny. Kaiser thinks the only reason Yoichi’s number is so engrained in his memory is because his favourite number is repeated thrice. It’s a twisting thing. Maybe Yoichi has changed it, not only to be on the safe side, but also to remove Kaiser further from his life. At least Kaiser hopes so.
Taking a deep breath, Kaiser moves his hands again. Four more numbers. But it feels like two, because Kaiser only had to lift his finger once.
It’s been a long time since Kaiser wrote out this much of Yoichi’s number. There was a period after their separation when he tried to reach Yoichi in any way he could, and there was a period even shorter than that period when Yoichi would let him.
Kaiser remembers the first time they exchanged numbers, although it wasn’t much of an exchange, and more like a robbery at smirk-point. One night during the Under Twenties World Cup, he snatched Yoichi’s phone, punched in his number, and then put Yoichi’s own number into his phone, not forgetting to mention that his favourite number was repeated three times.
“Oh, Yoichi. Your phone number has my favourite number in it, three times over! We’re just meant to be, aren’t we?”
The memory makes Kaiser shudder. There’s no running away from such a thing. Kaiser no longer has a desire to run, only to stare at the carcass of what he once was. It’s not a bad thing to learn about death in the long run, but it’s paralysing, and it almost feels as if death itself has overcome you when you first learn about it, even more so when you see it with your own eyes for the first time. It’s been some time since his death, but the sight and thought of what he once was still fills Kaiser with weeds.
He wonders if Yoichi would even spare him his voice. A small part of him, the size of a dwarf planet, hopes that Yoichi still has his number blocked, as well as all his socials. But Kaiser recently got a new number because he moved, and although he expects that word has travelled far enough for Yoichi to find out and block it, there’s a want the size of a meteorite that hopes he hasn’t.
One tap, one more number. Fuck this. Kaiser doesn’t want to, he really fucking doesn’t, but he has to. He has to fill the hole before it swallows him up like a growing black hole. Yoichi has even been appearing in his dreams lately, a single pinprick of blue, blue, blue—every month. He needs to remove the rooted weed from his chest and fill the hole in his garden. He needs to call Yoichi, but every dirt particle of him doesn’t want to.
It’s not about wanting, it’s about needing. And with this repeated thought flashing through his mind, Kaiser punches in the last two digits and presses the call button, because if he doesn’t do it now, he won’t do it until next week, when the feeling in his chest will be too much to bear once again.
Ring.
The first time Kaiser tried to call when Yoichi started to avoid him, Yoichi picked up on the second ring and told him: “We’re over, you know that, right?”
Ring.
The thirteenth time Kaiser tried to call he was drunk, and it was raining for the both of them. Yoichi didn’t pick up until the fourth call, so technically it was the seventeenth time, and Yoichi was completely silent as Kaiser went on with slurred words. At some point during the call Yoichi hung up and Kaiser didn’t notice until he woke up in a telephone booth the next morning.
Ring.
Who knows if it was in the tens or hundreds at this point, but the umpteenth time Kaiser tried to call, Yoichi didn’t pick up. No matter how much Kaiser raked up the number of calls since the first, Yoichi no longer picked up.
Ring.
The last time Kaiser ever called, or the last time Yoichi ever picked up the phone, his voice sounded grainy, as if the line was swimming through water, cracks of lightning and thunder on the other end. It wasn’t storming in Japan that day, Kaiser checked: “Haven’t you had enough? Fuck, how far does your hunger go?!”
Rin—.
“Hello?”
English. Yoichi must have noticed the foreign number, but picked up anyway. Maybe he’s waiting for a call from a sponsor. His voice drifts through the air, daisied and filled with as many white suns as there are teeth in a human mouth. Kaiser considers hanging up right there, but his lips move before his fingers do.
“Yoichi,” he breathes into the line, and Kaiser imagines the word travelling in static fonts through telephone lines and electrical outlets, all the way to Yoichi’s ear. “Yoichi?” Kaiser repeats, questioning the line’s reception.
He’s still there. Kaiser can hear chatter in the background—boisterous laughter and the clinking of glasses, wooden chopsticks scraping against plates. Yoichi should be back home for the off-season: in Japan, in safety, in the afternoon. While Kaiser is in Italy, in a new home, in the rising morning.
Kaiser wouldn’t be surprised if everyone halted their fun to laugh at him for calling Yoichi after all this time. He wouldn’t be surprised if they stopped to say: “Seriously, after all this time, you’re still stuck on Isagi? After everything you’ve done, you still have room for more? Your stomach just never ends, does it?”
But it doesn’t happen, even though it should, and Kaiser would welcome the airborne arrows with open arms. Instead, the voices begin to grow distant, Yoichi’s voice muffled as he says something unintelligible in Japanese. Kaiser didn’t bother to put micro-interpreters in his ears before calling. Some things are better left unknown.
There’s shuffling and rustling—a lot of shuffling and rustling—on the other end of the line, and Kaiser starts tapping the floor with the ball of his foot. Maybe Yoichi is passing the phone around to show everyone.
The sound of a lock clicking catches Kaiser’s attention, his eyes flicking to see if the call is still connected, and he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He hasn’t hung up yet. Yoichi is sparing him his voice, or at least his ears.
“How have you called me?” Not why, but how. Yoichi is asking the right questions this time around, choosing the right options. The ones that are not Michael Kaiser.
Kaiser breathes in, “New number,” and then breathes out. “I didn’t want to call, but there are things I have to wrap up so that my memory can let go of your number.”
Yoichi doesn’t say anything more, because he’s not the one who called, or the one who has to wrap things up. A heavy sigh is breathed into the microphone on the other end, and it sounds like rustling clothes on a yacht, a memory running cold water over Kaiser’s back. Even the ocean is a haunting.
Kaiser fidgets with the brushes on the dresser that he forgot to put away last night. He’s taken up new hobbies outside his professional career because of Lorenzo, who is unsurprisingly artistic. He looks like an intimate sculpture of bones, the thinnest layer of skin holding the piece of Don Lorenzo in place. He is like a dead body if it were alive, and that is art in itself.
There’s something aggravating about trying to paint graphic violence in watercolour. Kaiser thinks it’s impossible. No matter how many shades of red you blend together, it looks too soft, too peaceful, like calm ocean as far as the captain can see. No large waves, or grey clouds—just peace. It’s unnerving.
“Mihyaeru,” no ‘Kaiser’, because Yoichi will no longer give him the satisfaction of calling him an emperor, especially when Yoichi—the whole world—knows that he is anything but. The form of address causes Kaiser to snap out of his thoughts, bugs and critters crawling in his stomach. The butterflies died out a long time ago.
Kaiser clears his throat, not to let Yoichi know he’s alive on the other end of the call, but to remind himself that he is. “I took advantage of you,” he says, not a single crack in his voice, even though it feels like there are long metal rods stabbed through his throat like a game of KerPlunk.
“I took advantage of you, knowing you had no relationship experience and were especially naïve about your feelings.” A bubble pops on the other end, as if Yoichi opened his mouth to say something, but Kaiser continues before his thumb accidentally presses the end call button. “I perceived you as someone who destroyed and took the most from me, so I responded by taking from you. I took, and took, and took, and I’m sorry.” Kaiser breathes in deeply with his eyes closed, imagining forests growing under his sternum and in his lungs. “I’m sorry,” he exhales, repeating—because the words are important enough to be said on their own.
There is nothing audible on Yoichi’s end of the line—not the sound of a pin dropping, or Yoichi breathing—and Kaiser imagines that the line has disconnected, the temptation to repeat the words “I’m sorry” over and over again rising in him, but he doesn’t give in. Instead, Kaiser comes forward.
“I hurt your feelings, Yoichi,” he pauses for a moment, and Kaiser doesn’t think there’s enough time in the world to apologise for everything, “Fuck—I did more than just hurt your feelings. I took them as my own and twisted them into party animal balloons for my own entertainment.” Kaiser seethes through his teeth, his own past actions making his internal organs rattle like a boiling kettle. “And for that, I’m fucking…” Kaiser blinks, then inhales sharply twice, his eyebrows furrowed so that nothing spills. “I’m so sorry, Yoichi.”
The line is silent, and it reminds Kaiser of all the times he called Lorenzo when he couldn’t sleep, or when he couldn’t stand the bustling silence in a crowded place, or when he just needed someone on the other end of the line while he worked on something. They hardly ever talked, because Kaiser didn’t need the silence to be filled, he just needed company.
If you were to walk up to Kaiser—even as God—and told him that there would come a day he would apologise to another human being for his own wrongdoings, he would laugh in your face so hard that his saliva would kiss your lips and mouth and eyes.
Not even God can change his bitter ways, and that is why Kaiser is here today, changing them himself. The universe is not in control of Kaiser, he is in control of himself, and he is not the universe—he is just Michael Kaiser, the worst person in the world; apologising to the best person in the world, Isagi Yoichi. There cannot be good without evil, or so they say, but they’ve been doing just fine separated.
There’s still so much to go over and apologise for, but there’s no need. Kaiser knows how Yoichi works, but most of all Yoichi knows how Kaiser works. The more Kaiser goes on about his faults, the less genuine he sounds, and that’s no surprise considering how he used to be. Though, to be fair, Kaiser can’t say that part of him has changed much.
It’s easier to keep it short and simple anyway. Yoichi knows who he is and what he has done. Kaiser doesn’t need to go through the list to remind him—that would be insulting. It’s like graphically describing every step of Yoichi’s live autopsy to remind him how he felt, just in case he forgot. Kaiser doesn’t need to explain how he thinks he hurt Yoichi’s feelings, he just needs to express that he knows he did.
Yoichi is still quiet. The silence fills Kaiser with unease, because he didn’t call to force Yoichi to answer. He could just hang up, but that would only fray loose ends more than it would tie them.
“Yoichi?” Kaiser asks slowly and quietly, as if it would disturb him otherwise. It’s like avoiding a squeaky floorboard at night. “Are you there?”
“...I’m here.” Yoichi’s answer isn’t immediate, but it’s there.
“This isn’t me asking for forgiveness.”
“I know.” Yoichi answers simply, no hint of reassurance in his voice, just the truth. “Even if it were, I would never forgive you. You know that.”
There’s a pause, nothing but the shuffling of clothes and a swallow audible from the other end. Kaiser can hear Lorenzo moving around in the en suite, having just woken up some time ago. Normally Lorenzo would bound over and bother him, but this morning Kaiser is on the phone.
“You know that better than anyone,” whispers Yoichi, the words sounding like they’re being forced through his teeth, like a hot iron is branding Kaiser’s initials into his skin. “You know me.”
The burning inside Kaiser warms the oxygen trapped in his chest, his lungs filled like hot air balloons. If Kaiser weren’t in a room, he might be able to float all the way to the sun, no waxen wings to burn and send him plummeting back to earth, floating endlessly till he bursts.
“I know,” Kaiser breathes out all the air in his chest. It’s the effect Yoichi has always had on him—not because Yoichi’s voice or face leaves Kaiser speechless and equally as breathless, but because Kaiser wouldn’t mind dying at the sound of Yoichi’s voice, or the sight of his face.
When they used to argue, Kaiser would hold his breath in the hope that he would just die instead of continuing to look at Yoichi’s expression. Even then, there was an awareness in his deepest subconscious, an awareness that played with the mechanisms of his lungs like the string of a basement light. An awareness that Yoichi would be better off with him dead.
“That’s the best part of you.”
If the Kaiser of years ago were in the room with him today, he’d laugh and swipe through the pictures and videos of the one album Kaiser deleted from his old phone as soon as his and Yoichi’s break-up registered. The Kaiser of years ago would shove it in his face and ask: “Really? Isn’t this the best part of your dear Yoichi?”
But Isagi Yoichi is no longer Kaiser’s “dear Yoichi”. Although, after all these years, he realises that Yoichi never really was. There is nothing dear about Isagi Yoichi, not even before Kaiser. The only reason they lasted as long as they did was because of Kaiser’s tenacity and Yoichi’s vulnerability.
It was never about love, or admiration, or devotion on Kaiser’s end. It was all about destruction. Kaiser only went back to his “dear Yoichi” for his own revenge. And in a way, it worked. Kaiser will never be the same again, and neither will Yoichi. Yoichi will continue to be something better, while Kaiser will continue to be something worse. It is what they both do best.
There’s a short scoff, and Kaiser can hear the rolling of Yoichi’s eyes. After all these years, he’s still there, rotting somewhere in Yoichi’s heart.
“The fact that I won’t forgive you?”
There’s a choke in the back of Kaiser’s throat, “Yes.” A beat of silence. Kaiser can hear electronics buzzing in the air, and it makes him stumble, “I’m sorry.”
Half a beat of silence, and then the line crackles with Yoichi’s laughter, the sound of disbelief and annoyance travelling telephone lines and into Kaiser’s ear. It makes him bite the inside of his lip, heat licking the underside of his eyelids.
“You’re a mess,” and Kaiser wants to tell him yes, and yes, and it’s all you. “A fucking mess.”
It’s probably the first time Kaiser has ever heard Yoichi actually laugh in his presence. Usually he was either stone-faced, glossy eyed, and silent. These are traits he has inherited from watching Noel Noa since he was four, but also from Kaiser’s plucking of his leaves. The resemblance between himself and Noa makes Kaiser’s skin crawl.
“Thank you,” Yoichi says, and the gesture makes Kaiser furrow his brow. “For apologising, I mean.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
Yoichi exhales through his nose, and it almost sounds like another laugh. Almost. “You’re the same as always.” But there’s a hint of a tone in the words—a hint of acknowledgement, a bit of banter. The statement is true, but at the same time it isn’t. Kaiser hasn’t changed, he still has the same soiled skin, but it is now fertile.
The line goes silent again. Kaiser isn’t sure if this is the part where he hangs up, or apologises for another reason, because there are many, or if he asks about Yoichi’s life and how he’s doing.
The prospect of small talk makes Kaiser roll his eyes. He could easily ask Google about Yoichi if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He’d rather not know what Yoichi is up to these days, if he can help it. Kaiser wishes the best for him and that Yoichi stays far away from him.
The end of this call is up to Yoichi, Kaiser won’t dwell on it. Maybe he has something to say about his apology. Kaiser’s chest convulses with a silent laugh as he imagines Yoichi telling him he can do better than that.
In the background, Lorenzo is still in the en suite, now brushing his teeth after showering. It’s a character trait that makes Kaiser grimace. What sane person takes a shower first thing in the morning? It’s not normal.
His attention is drawn back to the phone by a clearing of the throat, followed by the sound of Yoichi inhaling sharply before he speaks, “You’ll learn to forgive yourself though, won’t you?”
Kaiser doesn’t fucking get it. First a thank you, and now a check in? What the fuck is Isagi Yoichi made of? Whatever it is, it’s not normal, just like whatever makes Lorenzo like morning showers is not normal. Kaiser must have a type.
“...I’m figuring it out.”
It’s the truth about Kaiser that comes out of his mouth and into Yoichi’s ear for once. Kaiser has come to learn that there are steps to this ‘recovery’ gig, and sometimes you misstep, or you backtrack. Not to mention the number of paths to choose from, and Kaiser has always hated having to choose between options. Healing is not as simple as one, two, three—so he’s still figuring it out.
Which is not to say that it’s a bad thing. Kaiser has plenty of time to reach the shoreline.
“I hope so,” Yoichi says in one breath, and Kaiser imagines Yoichi is looking at himself in a mirror. He was always better at confronting himself than Kaiser ever was. After a blink of silence, Yoichi hurriedly adds: “Don’t get me wrong, I—”
“I know, Yoichi.” Kaiser breathes out the words through his nose, his fingers fiddling with the hem of the oversized shirt he’s wearing. “I know you.” And then he adds, just in case: “I know what you mean.”
He doesn’t have to be there to know that Yoichi nodes to himself. Between you and a person you once knew like no other, there is a huge gap that spans the size of countries, but at the same time, there will always be an unbreakable connection. Kaiser could move planets tomorrow and a part of him would still be bound to Yoichi. There always will be.
“I’ve got to go,” Yoichi says, and Kaiser’s thumb is already hovering over the end call button. “You interrupted my lunch.” But there’s no sound of annoyance or anger in his voice. Just the truth. “You’ve—well, you know...” Yoichi falls silent, and Kaiser can hear him smile slightly. “I don’t have to say it. You already know.”
Kaiser hums, his eyes moving from the floor to the top of the dresser. His neck hurts from looking down. “Goodbye, Yoichi.” And Kaiser ends the call before Yoichi can say anything.
With the heaviest of sighs, Kaiser rolls his neck to release the tension in it, his whole body aching from the decision to sit at the dresser of all places. He needs to buy a more supportive chair. It feels as if the crust of him has been removed, and all that’s left is the mantle. Kaiser feels beyond exhausted, even though he only woke up two hours ago, he’s fucking exhausted.
His chest feels much lighter than it did a phone call ago. The roots feel like they’re withering, whether they’re being replaced by something else or just slowly dying, Kaiser doesn’t care. He did what he needed to and now it’s over.
Healing is exhausting. Making amends is exhausting. Choosing needs over wants is exhausting. Forgiving is exhausting. But Kaiser did it anyway, all by his own choice, and there’s no going back.
No stray cat taken into a loving home goes back to the streets. No soldier saunters back to the battlefield when the war is over. No drowning animal jumps back into the water.
After all this time, Michael Kaiser has reached the shore, and the hole in his garden has bloomed into a graveyard of memories. Although, now that Kaiser is here, he realises that there was never a hole in the first place. He just didn’t want to look into the abyss and risk seeing his reflection. But Kaiser has reached the shore.
“Did you call?” A mumbled voice comes from the bathroom, the sound of brushing teeth paused as they wait for an answer. Kaiser doesn't answer, his eyes glued to the screen of his new phone.
The numbers on the screen show the exact date of their separation, and Kaiser wants to laugh at the irony. The call wasn’t even that long, but it feels like it went on for hours, years—probably because it was due so long ago.
“Michel,” a voice pulls him from the deep, the merging numbers of the time they spoke separating, just as they did for the first time long ago, and the last time now.
Kaiser looks up from the screen of the ended call, his gaze falling on the reflection of Lorenzo standing in the doorway of the en suite behind him, not missing the sight of his own reflection.
“It’s over.” Kaiser says as he deletes his call history, a single number saved in his new phone, not a single digit of his favourite number. “It’s over,” he repeats, but Kaiser no longer looks at Lorenzo’s reflection.
For the first time, Michael Kaiser is looking at Michael Kaiser, stained only yellow, no blue, and in a truly haunting way, Isagi Yoichi has made him into something better.