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This will be good for you.
Kuon runs the mantra through his head like a broken record as he forces himself to go through the motions of Kyoko Mogami’s wedding day. The mantra comes from his therapist, who had praised him for accepting the invitation. Not the reaction he’d expected when he crept into her office after sending back his signed RSVP. She was supposed to tell him to skip the wedding, reservation be damned. But she didn’t. She had only promised that attending his ex-girlfriend's wedding will help sever his connection to Kyoko for good.
So, now Kuon Hizuri is back in Japan for the first time in almost five years.
What his therapist had failed to tell him is that coming here might also kill him. That’s what today has felt like: an excruciatingly slow death.
If the ceremony had been for anybody but Kyoko, it would have been beautiful. Except the whole ordeal dripped in her touch. When Kuon was still with Kyoko, she had liked to openly daydream about their wedding. It seemed inevitable at the time, though he came to resent those memories. It became evident the longer the day went on, that the groom had never mattered.
Echoes of the plans Kyoko had made with Kuon haunted the entire wedding ceremony and reception. He sees echoes of once-cherished memories in the silk draped across the walls, the candles that flicker amongst the centerpieces, and the thousands of white roses that litter both the ceremony and reception halls. The final nail in the coffin had been when Kyoko had told her now husband, Furusho Seito, that she didn’t know love could be so fulfilling until he came into her life.
He should have left then, his heart in pieces behind him. But Kuon has never been one for self-preservation, so he persisted. He had watched Seio declare that he fell in love with Kuoko the moment he laid eyes on her. He’d said he wished they’d started dating then, instead of waiting in denial of their feelings for so long. Seito said all this without knowing that the man who had kept Kyoko away from him the first time sat in the audience. Or maybe he did know. Maybe he didn’t care.
He hadn’t even left then. Because he is the bigger person. In more than just a physical manner, too. His therapist is going to be so proud of him, because Kuon is being so totally normal and grown up about this. Which is why he allowed himself to fake a smile and follow the small wedding ceremony to the big reception hall, where the rest of the guest list waited to celebrate the bride and groom.
Another hiccup had waited for him there, too, where he finds himself assigned to a table filled with people from his past. Rude. Isn’t the point of weddings to make small talk to make conversation with strangers? Yet Kyoko had stuck him at a table filled entirely with people who not only know him--but know intimately about the past he’d shared with her. There’s Director Ogata and Momose seated beside Makino Honami and Koenji Erika. Don’t forget Ishibashi Hikaru, Megumu Emilia, Amamiya Chiori, and one Kotonami Kanae, who seems determined to give him the stink eye all day. Not that he knows what he could have possibly done to her, given he hasn’t spoken to her in at least seven years.
That’s fine. He doesn’t want to talk anyway. Instead, he focuses on the other guests at the tables around him. Kuon recognizes most of them; the room’s a who’s-who of the Japanese film industry, with a couple Hollywood faces he remembered from Kyoko’s US projects. They’re all people he’s seen the few times he’s worked up the courage to snoop through Kyoko’s social media. New best friends, new friends, who knew Kyoko as someone who exists as an entirely separate entity from Kuon Hizuri.
Eventually his attention drifts back to his own table, where everybody catches up. They talk like they don’t even notice that Kuon isn’t contributing to the conversation. Like they don’t even take into consideration that he’s there.
Kanae’s left acting entirely after her debut, settling down with someone unrelated to the industry. Momose is struggling with her career, resigned to only supporting roles in the last couple years after coming out as a lesbian. Ogata’s not having a good time, either, chasing the career high of Dark Moon--unable to meet viewers’ expectations, let alone his own. And as the rest of the table traded their own life woes, Kuon starts to feel disoriented.
When he’d left Tokyo, he could perfectly imagine the career trajectories of everybody at the table. None of them had succeeded in how they should have, and yet all of them are sitting here smiling. Trading stories like nothing’s wrong. Did these people not wallow in their lost potential?
His gut clenches and he takes look over everybody, sure they’re all fucking with him. No. They’re smiling, trading sorrows like it’s something that happens every day. They’re not broken and dwelling in the ‘what ifs?’
Oh no. Kuon’s carefully-constructed facade falters, and he grapples to keep control of himself. He can’t break down right now. Not here.
Everybody’s grown up. Only Kuon remains the same.
Frozen in time.
There are the fleeting nightmares and anxiety attacks that remind him of this truth, but he’s never had to confront this reality outside the safety of a therapist’s office. Life is flashing by and people are moving on without him. It’s not just Kyoko. It’s the whole world.
Fuck. He needs to get out of here. He was wrong; he can’t do this. His therapist had been wrong, too. This is terrible for him.
“Kuon!”
He’s halfway out of his seat, ready to beeline for the exit, when a voice makes him freeze in his tracks. Her voice. Kyoko.
Kyoko Mogami--Kyoko Furusho, he corrects himself--stands behind him with a puzzled look on her face. She’s beautiful. Naturally. She still wears the romantic, crystal-studded ballgown with she’d worn to the ceremony, though she’d removed the long sparkling train. “I came by to see if maybe you’d like to dance with me.” The statement tapers out into a question, maybe reconsidering her offer. She can probably see the half-feral look in his eyes, desperate to escape.
Dance? Kuon’s face twists with confusion and he looks out at the dancefloor to find that it’s filled with bodies swaying to music he hadn’t been paying attention to. How long have people been dancing? That means he missed Kyoko and Seito’s first dance. He’d wanted to memorize it, so he can silence his brain on the days it wants to think about Kyoko. Now he has nothing to quiet the parts of him that insist that maybe, just maybe, he can win her back.
Now Kyoko’s standing in front of him asking him to dance. The expression on her face had started hopeful and Kuon watches as it fades into something that resembles resignation. Something that resembles heartbreak. As if she perceives his silence as another rejection.
“I would love to dance,” Kuon blurts robotically.
He can’t stand the look on Kyoko’s face, so he agrees without hesitation. Even though he really should have hesitated, because now he’s talking her hand and following her to the crowded dance floor. He can feel people’s eyes on them as they take a dancing position: Kyoko’s hands on Kuon’s arm and shoulder, Kuon’s hands grazing over her waist as he tries to only touch the poof of her ballgown. What do the onlookers see when they watch him and Kyoko?
A stupid man who let the best thing in his life escape? Two childhood friends dancing? Two people no better than strangers?
“Is everything all right?” Kyoko asks, her voice starts as she pulls them into a slow approximation of a dance.
Kuon startles at the sound of her voice. Though he doesn’t know what he’d expected. Of course they’re supposed to talk. He swallows the lump in his throat and nods. “Why wouldn’t I be?” he says, trying to smile.
Kyoko arches a brow. “Because you look sad, Kuon.”
Talk about the understatement of the century.
He nearly stumbles over his feet, catching himself before he makes a scene. It would be easier to talk about smaller things. The weather. Her work. His work. Anything but the sadness Kuon tries his best to smother. “Sad?” he finds himself asking, unable to meet her eyes. “Why would anybody be sad? It’s a happy day. You’re marrying the love of your life.”
“I’m happy,” Kyoko concedes. She doesn’t miss the way Kuon’s tongue stumbles over his obvious lie. Even for an award winning actor, it’s near impossible to lie to Kyoko. “I can see it in your eyes, though. You’re sad.”
“And you sound like my therapist,” Kuon says bitterly. He wants to hate that Kyoko can see through his posturing, regardless of the years they’ve spent apart. Except deep inside, a younger version of himself preens. It feels nice to be noticed, even if Kyoko is the last person on Earth that he wants to ‘see’ him.
She hums thoughtfully. There’s no triumph or smugness at his remark where he expects it. Kyoko had suggested several times over the course of their relationship that he saw a professional. She saw one after official debut, and insisted that everybody needed a good therapist. Depression had hit after her first movie opened and in came a hollowness she didn’t know how to overcome. She’d achieved everything she wanted, and still something felt missing. Therapy had brought back her smiles.
Kuon had resisted therapy until the breakup. To be honest, he just wanted someone willing to listen to him prattle on about his pitiful life. He’d expected sympathy and maybe a prescription to numb his edges, but the doctor was less impressed with his sorrows. That’s why he still sees her.
“I just want you to be happy, Kuon.” Kyoko sighs. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
All Kuon had wanted was to be with her, though he never knew quite how to hack it. Except he can’t say that. Not on Kyoko’s wedding day. Tears well at the corners of his eyes, and he tries to blink them away. “I was happy with you,” he says, trying to laugh. The sound only comes out garbled and choked. Even his body knows this isn’t something funny. “I’m too busy these days to find time for happiness.”
Kyoko doesn’t laugh with him as they continue their slow circle across the dancefloor. She looks up at him with what can only be categorized as pity. “Kuon,” she says, frustrated. “Don’t say that.”
“Sorry.”
The apology is more impulse than intentional. Kuon grimaces. “I know busyness isn’t an excuse. I just...” Explanations escape him as he tries to justify the joke. His therapist always tells him that he hides too much behind his job, but is it hiding when work is the only thing that he has going for his life right now? If there’s no work, the only thing Kuon has left is the dwelling.
“Not that.” Kyoko frowns as she stares into his eyes. She’s looking for something, though Kuon can’t fathom what she hopes to find. Certainly not the man that had left her all those years ago. “You can’t lie to me about us, I mean. I know you weren’t happy.”
Kuon nearly trips again. “Of course, I--”
“Maybe we were both happy at first,” Kyoko says, not giving Kuon time to interrupt. “After the dust had settled, though... There’s no way you were happy.”
“Yes, I--”
“I wasn’t.” Kyoko says.
Kuon’s mouth hangs open like a fish desperate for air. She can’t be serious. They had grown apart, sure. But unhappy? Even ignoring the fact that he doesn’t recall ever being unhappy together, Kyoko had never looked upset, or sad about the state of their relationship. Even when they broke up, she still looked at him with a smile and kissed him on the cheek. She had thanked him for staying with her!
His head spins at the implication that he’d missed a whole side of Kyoko. Impossible. He would have noticed if he had made her unhappy.
Kyoko shakes her head, smiling softly. “You really don’t remember? We made each other miserable, and accepted the feeling as satisfaction. That’s what happens when we’re both good at our jobs.” She pitches her voice down to mock what Kuon had told her years ago. He doesn’t even remember saying this until he hears it again in her voice. “We thought being together was an act of fat, so we put so much effort into trying to make a broken thing work.”
“I don’t remember that,” Kuon admits. He tries to play back their relationship in his head, but the only memories that come back to him are in fragments. All of them originate from the beginning of their relationship, when everything had been new and exciting. He remembers smiling for a week straight when Kyoko finally accepted his invitation to take her on a proper date. His brows stitch together. When did he stop smiling? When had their relationship become work? Before he moved back to the US? After?
“It’s all I remember,” Kyoko says. She doesn’t say this unkindly, but when Kuon looks in her eyes...
He’s skewered by the pain. The hurt he’d caused her. It’s like a fog lifting. He can see Kyoko clearly for the first time in what feels like forever. It’s nothing like the superficial way he’s been seeing her today and on social media.
Kuon heart shatters. Everything comes rushing up at once, a dam breaking. “I think of us all the time,” he whispers, the words falling from his mouth in a harsh whisper. He’s mortified. “I only remember the beginning. When everything was perfect, and I thought I would love you for the rest of my life.” His voice breaks, and his eyes are hot with tears again. “I still love you, I think.”
The last words are barely spoken, but out of Kuon’s mouth regardless.
“I know,” Kyoko says, her voice gentle.
Where he expects pity, or even disgust, there’s only adoration that he hasn’t seen in... Since they first got together. “I still think of us, too. The good and the bad parts. You were my first real relationship, and you taught me what it meant to hold onto someone else’s heart.” Kyoko presses a hand over her breast. “You taught me that it’s okay to want to be loved. You’re the reason I’m here today, celebrating with all of my loved ones. Loved ones that include you.”
The tears fall freely now. Kuon makes no effort to wipe his face, even as the music starts building to its end. Their dance is ending soon; he’ll need to let her go. This knowledge only selfishly makes him want to hold onto her tighter. Only Kyoko isn’t his to hold onto; she hasn’t been for a long time. Longer than he had initially believed. Before they broke up, even.
That’s what his therapist has been trying to tell him all along. It only took hearing the words from Kyoko’s mouth to pierce through his thick skull.
Kyoko’s hands drift up to cradle Kuon’s face. Tears well in her eyes. She’s always been a contagious crier. “You deserve to be loved, Kuon Hizuri,” she says. They’re not even pretending to dance anymore, frozen in the center of the dancefloor while curious onlookers stare at the spectacle they’re making. Kyoko ignores them all and rubs her thumb against Kuon’s cheek. “You only need to open yourself up to the possibility of it.”
Kuon nods in her hands. She looks so earnest, like she really believes that he can somehow reclaim the last five years of his life and make something good for himself. He’d thought she didn’t understand the misery he’d cultivated for himself, but she did. She maybe understands it more than he does. And still she believes in him.
Maybe he can believe in her belief.
There’s no need to memorialize a love that was dead long before he’d lost it. Love will come again. Not in the form of Kyoko, like he’d selfishly hoped for years, but in someone new. Someone who can accept all of him, if he’s willing to offer himself fully.
He just needs to believe.
“Am I allowed to step in, or do you two need another moment?”
Sho Fuwa appears at Kuon’s side. He’s wearing a textured black suit with more chains and shiny bits than strictly appropriate for a wedding, but he owns the transgression with ease. Sho meets Kuon’s eyes with raised brows, looking for an answer to his question. Like he knows intimately what’s transpired between Kuon and Kyoko over the course of a single dance. He probably does. The tears make it quite obvious.
It’s time to let Kyoko go. For real this time.
“Kuon? Do you need more time?” Kyoko’s voice is light. Like she’d spend another hour with him on the dancefloor if he needed it. Even though it’s her wedding and she has more important things to do than coddle Kuon and his feelings.
He shakes his head, stepping out from her touch. “I’m all right,” he says with a sniff. Kyoko and Sho both look at him with blatant disbelief that Kuon brushes off. “Honestly. The floor is all yours.”
Kyoko smiles, even as Sho rolls his eyes. “Than you for the dance, Kuon-kun,” she says. Her voice is warm, like a hug. “It’s been too long since we’ve talked.
“It has,” Kuon agrees. His heart tightens. He’s built this trip up in his head as the perfect final goodbye. One last look. One final nail in the coffin. Still, he can’t help himself from continuing. “I promise to keep in touch this time.”
His therapist is going to kill him. Or maybe not. This feels like the healthiest decision he’s made in a long time.
Kuon smiles when Kyoko smiles at his promise. It’s the first genuine smile he’s made all day. He gives her a small wave before departing from the dance floor. Walking back to his table, he takes one last glance at Kyoko and Sho. The music shifts to something more upbeat, so they’re laughing as they twirl across the hardwood. He laughs to himself, and takes his seat. The others at the table watch him curiously, like they’re waiting for him to break down again. Too bad they’re in for a bit of disappointment.
He feels...
He feels good.
Kuon had expected to feel hollow after talking to Kyoko again. He’d thought the festering resentment leftover from their failed relationship would rear its head. That it might turn Kuon into the monster he knows he can be. This feels nothing like that.
No.
This feels like something he can survive.