Work Text:
Once his body reaches his bed, the mattress is a pile of soft torn flesh of both children and adults alike, tender against bullets and blades. The blanket is drained of its warmth, like the bodies he held close to his. They lull him to sleep with their cries and shrieks. Their tears and blood stream down and stain his hands until he wakes up drowning in sweat, choking.
So, whenever someone asks Jakurai why he sculpts, it’s for his frequent visitors. It’s for the mothers who cradled wounds and fathers who fell asleep carrying weapons instead of their children. It’s for the young men and women who flew out of the nest and lost their wings to manmade suns. It’s for the young children who reached Z after barely learning their A, B, Cs. They visit him in his sleep, recounting the stories that ended too early.
“Jakurai-sensei, are you having trouble sleeping again?”
The doctor smiles away the pained creases on his forehead and the grimace on his lips. “Oh, worry not,” he says to the dark-haired teen who has been asleep for years. “Nature’s calling.” In a soft whisper, he adds, “Sweet dreams to you.”
But, instead of the toilet seat, he mounts a stool. His long slender fingers settle on the clay with the same gentleness they have when he last held his visitors. Back to dust they may be, but now, Jakurai can cup their faces without tears and bruises staining their features. He can return them to their families, to their lost homes, the houses where only memories of them can return to, or keep them safe in his residence. They will no longer join him in his sleeping quarters while contorting in pain, asking the doctor the why’s and begging him with pleas Jakurai wishes he had resolved.
“Jakurai-sensei, how about sculpting someone that isn’t from your nightmares?”
“I still need to atone for-”
“At least just for once?”
He chuckles, but the smile gracing his features is but a twitch on the corners of his lips, and the brief bitterness is a faint rumble against the lump in his throat.
“I... might not settle for just once.”
Jakurai’s azures drift to the clay on the table waiting to be touched, for a creation to be unearthed. He tries to perceive the clay as the fertile soil bearing the seeds that will sprout, bud, and bloom. Not the tarnished earth with blankets of grass and weeds concealing his sins.
Jakurai kneads the clay until he forms the torso donning a suit and tie. He attaches a lanyard hanging on its neck.
He finds himself returning to the sleepless streets of Shinjuku, viewing the hustle and the bustle from one of the hospital windows. In the morning, after his nightshift, he catches men and women in suits, roaming the streets with hurried steps. They seem to care less about a broken heel, an empty stomach, or a sleepless night.
Jakurai sighs, his deft thumbs caressing the bags under the eyes of the clay figure in front of him.
When he finishes a dayshift, he catches the men and women in suits marching down the streets, sleeping as they walk, or dancing to the rhythm of the liquor flowing in their system. He tends to catch one of them, most days swerving down the streets with a slouch and despondent eyes, some other days, dashing away from women with another man on his back, screaming for their lives.
Jakurai has a private vehicle. The man would have not need to run. Perhaps, not even walk.
Jakurai stacks layers of individually molded chunks of hair, until it becomes a nest sticking on the clay figure’s head, a nest of fluff deserving pats for his overlooked great work.
He wonders how energy drinks and coffee can run a body capable of such feats, of the weight of day-to-day, of the hauntings of the night. If only Jakurai can carry those all for him.
If only Jakurai can carry the man on his back.
With Jakurai’s height, he can take him to the top of the world, show him where no sole can crush him. If the man ever slouches and looks down like he always does, Jakurai can greet him with a smile, telling him he has done well, that he can unwind.
Jakurai clutches the clay hands and presses a kiss there. He cradles the smiling clay figure’s chin. “Will your lips curl like this if you knew how you bring a smile on mine?”
So now, whenever someone asks Jakurai why he sculpts, it’s for his frequent visitors: those hands that have gone cold on his, and the pair he can never hold in his.