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There's this lot on the outskirts of Okinawa that's under construction—or it was, until the real estate developer filed for bankruptcy and the whole project was shuttered. Construction had started with the parking structure, which is good because all of the levels have a floor—and more importantly for Reki and Langa, the ramp connecting the floors was completed before the project was abandoned.
They start on the very top level under open sky and race down the spiral ramp, the air around them becoming wind as it parts for them. The wind whistles in their ears, then yields to the thunder-surf of cement rolling away beneath the wheels of their boards as they ride. The light shifts with each level, like a timelapse of the sun going down: the sunlight that pours in through the openings in the upper levels starts to flicker as they zoom down the spiral to levels where the scaffolding is still in place, the flickering intensifying as they go through levels where the trees are tall enough to blot out more of the sunbeams trying to reach inside.
Out of breath with exertion and laughter, Reki reaches the bottom first, coming to a stop at the edge of the ramp just where it starts to level out. Even as Langa arrives beside him, Reki's laughter evaporates as he glances around, willing his eyes to adjust to the low light here. The subterranean level—or semi-subterranean, Reki thinks as he glances at the high opening that winds along the top of the wall here, the natural light interrupted by cardboard boxes and other unidentifiable shapes, probably construction debris, leaned against the outside of the wall; by tree trunks and their gnarled roots, twisting across the ground before burrowing in, maybe reaching down as deep as Reki is standing, though on the other side.
Anyhow, the lowest level on this side of the wall is lit mostly by those pieces of sunlight brave enough or lucky enough to make it through the narrow opening. Construction was only halted a few weeks ago and it seems no one has remembered to cancel the electricity: the single overhead light sputters, struggling to fulfill a purpose that no longer exists. There's just enough fragmented light to give the effect that the darkness is not solid but made of shadows vibrating against themselves. Neon signs that were never hooked up lie on the floor, their arrows unlit and pointing directionlessly into the dark.
The droning, tuneless hum of the overhead light doesn't so much break the quiet as add another eerie layer to it. The zizzing is not deafening but it's persistent. So persistent, Reki can't hear anything else. He can't even hear his own breathing, and draws a breath deliberate and deep enough to chase the chill shivering through him; he's reassured by the soft whoosh of his own inhale, by the steam-engine hiss of his exhale as he puffs a slow rush of air out through his parted lips.
Now that he knows he's breathing himself, he closes his eyes to shut out everything else and shuffles a step closer to listen for Langa's breath; he sighs in sync as Langa's exhale reaches him.
Centered in himself once more, Reki opens his eyes and lets his gaze wander around. There are no functional exit signs; he knows the way out because he's just come down it—the way in is the way out, right? He glances back along the curve of the ramp as it winds towards the surface and into the late afternoon sky, day not yet turning to night up there.
Down here, it's neither night nor day. It feels like it only took minutes to race down the spiral, so it should be late afternoon down here too...but as Reki glances around again, focusing on the sound of his own breathing, he finds himself wondering if they went fast enough to somehow skate out of time itself...
Any comfort his breathing is giving him is overshadowed by the unsettling sight of a freestanding wooden doorframe off a ways on the other side, by the outer wall though not attached to it. It's not attached to anything except the floor; it's just there.
Maybe it was there all along—it had to have been, and Reki just didn't notice it before because his eyes hadn't adjusted yet. It isn't directly under the overhead light and Reki doesn't know if it would have been less creepy if the artificial light were unaccountably spotlighting the doorframe, rather than how it is now: lacking any intentionality, and somehow giving the impression that the doorframe is lurking.
As he looks longer at the inexplicable doorframe, a sense of unreality comes over Reki. He knows the doorframe is real because he's real; he knows he's real because Langa is, because he can touch Langa—his fingers curl into Langa's shirt now to prove it. Even when he lets go, one fingertip grazing over Langa's arm as Langa turns to him, Reki has memorized the reality of the worn softness of Langa's shirt, the warmth of his skin.
He shoves his hands into his pockets, fingertips pressed to his own palms.
Langa faces forward again too, and neither of them says anything; they don't have to share words to know they're both zeroed in on the doorframe.
Though Reki doesn't measure his own breathing, he listens to it; he listens to Langa's, unsynched with his, their breathing patterns each their own. Then Langa's breath picks up with his next inhale, and Reki neither inhales nor exhales, his own breath pausing as his heart skips a beat. He knows Langa is moving even before Langa's body starts forward and Reki's heart pounds as it launches itself up into his throat, striking him breathless as he understands what Langa means to do.
He reaches out: he latches onto Langa's shirt but Langa keeps going, slipping through Reki's fingers until Reki is holding on only by his curled fingertips. It's not enough—Langa's momentum will pull him the rest of the way away and Reki's heart sinks down, sliding past his chest towards his stomach.
Then, as Reki feels nothing but air against his fingertips, Langa tailscrapes to a stop, flips his board up into his hand, and turns to Reki in one movement, eyebrows arched.
Reki knows he should say something to that wordless question, but all he can do is shake his head.
"I was just going to go through it." Langa smiles like he's offering reassurance. "I won't try to flip myself over the crossbar. At least not until I've hung from it first, to make sure it can take my weight." He smiles again; no, Reki thinks, he's smiling still, since his eyes haven't stopped, fueled by the anticipatory thrill of the flip he's definitely going to go for.
Reki can't muse on Langa's smile right now. "Don't." The word, reverberating so deafeningly in Reki's mind, cracks and falls away like dust as he pushes it out.
The new tilt of Langa's head gives Reki hope that Langa heard the broken word anyhow.
Langa looks over at the doorframe. "You don't think it'll hold me?"
Reki looks at the doorframe too. "I think it might hold you too tightly."
This time his words come out whole, though hushed; he isn't sure he even meant to speak them aloud.
He also isn't sure if Langa heard them because, even though he isn't moving toward the doorframe, he's still looking at it.
Then he looks back at Reki. "Usually I feel like my Japanese is pretty strong. But every once in a while you say something, an idiom that's new to me." He offers that quiet smile of his, the one that pretty much always gets an echoing grin out of Reki.
Not this time though. "It's not an idiom."
He didn't mean to get into it and feels stupid for not realizing this is where the conversation was headed, because where else could it go? He feels even more stupid for thinking he could say don't and Langa simply wouldn't—and honestly, Reki would never want Langa to do anything just because he said so.
He sighs. It's not like he promised never to tell; he just never had anyone to tell before now.
Langa is still looking at him, still smiling. Reki takes a deep breath as he looks up into Langa's eyes. For the first time, he's grateful for the disquieting light down here, so he can't be distracted by those eyes or the smile in them.
"It's about Adam," he finds himself saying before he can think about how to begin. He takes another deep breath, which comes easier now that he's started. The words come easier now too. "You know how Joe, Cherry, and Adam were all friends when they were our age?"
Langa nods and is polite enough not to say anything about how everyone knows that.
Reki nods too, encouraging himself with newfound momentum. "And then something happened that changed Adam. That made him the way he is now." Reki looks for another nod from Langa as he thinks about how he's going to say the next part, the part not everyone knows.
Instead of nodding again though, Langa says, "I heard he went to America, and when he came back, he was different."
Reki doesn't have time to feel curious about where Langa heard that; there are plenty of people who could have offered that conjecture aloud. "What I heard," he says, feeling his way through his words so he doesn't spring anything on Langa, "is that it started before he went overseas."
Langa considers this alternative theory. "Like when he found out he was going but before he actually went?"
Reki shrugs. He doesn't know the full timeline. He doesn't really know anything; it's just what he heard—overheard, actually, not that long before Langa came to Okinawa. He'd been on a delivery run, his last of the night, and it happened to take him to Joe's. Cherry was there too, and some others from S, and none of them had paid any attention to Reki; they didn't invite him to stay, but they didn't tell him to leave. He wasn't a drinker and it seemed to be a drinking party, so eventually Reki had gone outside, fully intending to leave—but he got caught up in looking at the stars.
He was chillin' outside under the stars when they came out, Joe and Cherry, just the two of them. They must not have noticed him, and he probably should have snuck away still unnoticed instead of listening...but he didn't, and so he heard them. They'd been drinking, sure, but somehow what they said felt true.
He'll fill in all these details if Langa is curious. For now he simply says, adding the source for credibility, "What I heard from Joe is that the three of them were going through an empty lot at sundown, the light not entirely faded from the sky, when they noticed a doorframe on the side of the lot. Just standing there without walls or a door or any support."
Reki doesn't look at the doorframe mere meters away from them. To his surprise, Langa doesn't either, and their eye contact holds.
Langa has probably guessed the next part but Reki says it anyhow: "Adam skated through it and the others didn't. And it seems he was never the same again."
He can't tell from Langa's expression what Langa thinks, but Reki has given it enough thought that he feels confident in what he heard. And because Joe and Cherry didn't know he was there, he believes what he heard—they couldn't have been joking or saying it just to mess with him. Besides, they didn't even know him then as someone to mess with.
It seems he doesn't need to defend himself or what he believes though, because now Langa makes a kind of cat face with his mouth, which he only does when he's really thinking. Then he turns to look at the doorframe again—this time for so long, Reki starts to feel concerned that Langa not only believes Joe's words too but that he's going to launch himself through the doorframe just to see what will happen, and Reki doesn't know if he will have the speed and luck to catch him again—
Then Langa turns back. "Did Joe say what they think the doorframe they saw was?"
"A portal." Reki didn't laugh then and he doesn't laugh now; his mouth quirks into a slant that isn't a grin.
Langa doesn't laugh either. He turns to look once more. "A portal." He's pretty soft-spoken most of the time, but now his voice seems quiet even for him, and Reki—who's feeling quiet himself in the presence of and proximity to the doorframe—wonders if Langa might be talking to himself.
In any case, it's clear Langa is thinking, and Reki waits to see what he comes up with.
When Langa turns back and focuses on him again, a sudden warmth shimmies through Reki. "Like...a portal to another dimension?" Langa glances over his shoulder without turning this time, then looks back at Reki. "I mean, it's a door, not a mirror...but, like, to a parallel or alternate universe?"
Reki nods and shrugs at the same time.
Langa's gaze slides away, but he doesn't look at the doorframe again. Reki tries to follow but he isn't sure what Langa's looking at, so he returns his gaze to Langa's cat face, just as Langa says, "I wonder how it works."
The words shiver through Reki. It's not that he hasn't wondered the same thing...but there's a quality to the way Langa is wondering that makes Reki think Langa wants to find out.
But Langa doesn't make another move for the doorframe portal. Instead, he shares the theories he's come up with so far:
- that two Adams went through the doorframe simultaneously in their own worlds and switched places in the moment of going through—that the Adam who runs S is not the one Joe and Cherry knew back in the day, but the one from the other side.
- that time slowed for Adam as he passed through the doorframe, and in what was only a moment in this world, he lived long enough in the other one to see it, and be changed by what he saw.
Langa's eyes refocus, really looking at Reki now. "What do you think?"
Reki doesn't know. And it's not that he's incurious, not that he's never thought about it himself...but he doesn't think he wants to know.
He definitely doesn't want to find out for himself. But looking at Langa, looking at the way Langa is looking at the doorframe, Reki isn't sure Langa feels the same.
"Don't go through it," he hears himself blurt out.
Instead of laughing or offering a sincere reassurance, Langa says, "We could go through it together."
Reki still feels bone-chilled looking at the doorframe—but he can't deny the thrill that Langa's words set off in his bloodstream, subverting the dread that's been floating through him.
Langa seems to recognize the thrill humming in Reki; it's probably the same one sparking through Langa too. It could be a trick of the weird lighting down here, but there seems to be a sparkle to his eyes as he grins, as if he's a magnet for the tiny pieces of sunlight daring to trip in. "This isn't the same portal Adam went through," he reasons aloud. "It might not connect to the same alternate universe the other one did. Things might be different for us there—but they might not be worse." He smiles more when Reki frowns at him. "We could be skateboarding celebrities there like Tony Hawk!"
Infected by Langa's smile, Reki can't help grinning back at him. He can't deny how cool that would be, to be as respected and famous as Tony Hawk. He can only think of one thing better: "We could be friends with Tony Hawk." Inspired by the broadcast from Paris they just watched together, he adds, "We could be at the Olympics with Tony and Snoop Dogg!"
"We could be in the Olympics," Langa one-ups. They grin at each other, sharing a promise to do their best to make that a reality even on this side of any portal.
Then Langa's mouth straightens, though his grin doesn't disappear entirely, a hint of it still there at the edge of the thoughtful expression on his face. "The changes could be more radical, of course."
Reki tries to imagine the worst possible scenario. "Like...we might not be skateboarders?"
Optimism still threads through Langa's words. "We could be snowboarders!"
Reki is absolutely going to go snowboarding with Langa one day. One thousand percent he will. He doesn't voice that promise now, because an even worse possible scenario has come to him and lodged itself in his throat. He doesn't want to say it, but he thinks maybe it's going to block all other words until he does; when he tries to take a deeper breath, he feels like it's starting to block his air, like it wants to strangle him. So he just opens his mouth and lets it out: "We could be strangers there."
The thought doesn't seem to weigh on Langa as much as it does on Reki; judging by the heights of the corners of his grin, it doesn't weigh him down at all as he counters, "We could be boyfriends there!"
Ever since they arrived at the lowest level of the parking structure, Reki has had a vague feeling that time isn't moving the same down here. That sense sharpens now as time comes to a halt.
It starts moving again with his next breath, and he's somewhat surprised to find he can still breathe, but he doesn't linger on that as he looks as steadily as he dares at Langa, right into his eyes, and says, "We could be boyfriends here."
Langa holds the gaze. He blinks, but somehow the gaze doesn't break. "We could be boyfriends here."
They step towards each other, and when their smiles touch, a new world—one independent of freestanding doorframes and portals but nonetheless one of heretofore unknown possibilities—opens up between and around them.