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There’s something about cathedrals that makes Yotasuke feel impossibly small .
It’s something to do with the architecture, surely; the way the roof arches endlessly overhead and makes the entire building look larger than life. At the same time, it’s nearly suffocating inside, the weight of thousands of years of existence coming down at the doorway. If he’s being honest, Yotasuke doesn’t know why he keeps agreeing to go along with Yatora and his last-second whims. They’re university students now, adults in every sense of the word, but here he is, loitering at the entryway of the Holy Resurrection Cathedral while Yatora wanders in with wonder in his eyes.
In a way, he supposes, he owes Yatora. The other man ceaselessly drags him out of his shell, relentlessly pushes him out of his comfort zone, and challenges him at every turn. It forces Yotasuke to stop and think about his perception of things. That, perhaps, is why he agrees when Yatora calls, asking him to tag along.
The cathedral is in Tokyo, so the ride over isn’t long. Yatora dozes off, and his hair is still mussed from where it was pressed against the window when they get to the doors. Yotasuke fixes his stare on the strands, smooth where they’re pressed flat above his ear. The right thing to do, he considers, might be to tell Yatora to fix it. He doesn’t.
They pay their donation at the door and receive candles to light inside. When they enter the cathedral, the room ahead is nearly empty. This is when the feeling strikes Yotasuke; when the doors shut behind them and the oppressive weight of the room comes crashing down. Yotasuke takes in the red carpets, the blue of the stained glass windows, the alternating dark and light of the paintings lining the walls. There are no pews like he anticipated, only rows of brown chairs with crosses carved into the backs.
Yatora comes to a halt near the center of the room, his head turned up. Overhead, the domed ceiling yawns widely, reaching out with a grand chandelier.
A personal project, Yatora had called it. Yotasuke doesn’t know why he chose a cathedral of all places for a personal project, nor does he know what this project entails. All that he knows is that it feels like he has thousands of eyes upon him now. Every painting, every statue, every window watches him.
“It’s beautiful,” Yatora’s voice comes out, barely a breathless whisper.
It’s terrifying , Yotasuke thinks. He doesn’t understand architecture or religion. But what he does understand is that existing in this place makes him feel infinitesimal, merely a fleck in the course of the universe. Yatora moves, and Yotasuke follows.
Yatora has his sketchbook in hand, but he keeps it clutched close to his chest like he’s forgotten he’s holding it to begin with. He crosses over to the furthest wall, taking in the rows of paintings. Yotasuke stands where a priest would, turning to look out on the church. There’s only a few other people in the room, murmuring together near the doorway. They look as if they’ve had their time and are prepared to leave. Yotasuke is sure there must be someone leading other tours here somewhere, but if there is, they’re nowhere to be seen.
“Yaguchi-san,” he asks without looking back. “Do you believe in a god?”
He doesn’t need to look to know Yatora is listening. He hears the shuffle of shoes and assumes it’s Yatora turning to look at him. There’s a beat of silence that follows, and then Yatora steps past him, walking to sit in the first chair on the first row. He gazes up at Yotasuke, still standing at the pulpit.
“I think there’s something out there,” he replies after considering it. “I don’t know what’s correct , but we can’t possibly be alone, right? It can’t just be a coincidence we were created.”
Yotasuke makes a noncommittal sound. There are theories, of course, of the how and the why. The Big Bang. God. Gods , plural. In the end, there’s no way of knowing what the truth is until the day they die. The distinctive scratch of pencil on paper draws his attention, and he glances back once more. Yatora has dropped his head, sketchbook propped up on his knees as he hunches over it.
“I don’t know,” Yatora continues without glancing up. “I think believing in something is just comforting. It gives us purpose, I guess. Like we were all put here in this specific lifetime for a reason, meant to be who we are and meet the people we care about. I don’t know about fate and destiny and all that, but it couldn’t just be a fluke that I was able to meet everyone. I think we were meant to be friends.”
Yatora pauses in his sketching, glancing up to catch Yotasuke’s gaze. The blond smiles sheepishly.
“Sorry,” he laughs awkwardly, “that sounds kind of strange, I guess.”
Yotasuke dwells on this for a moment. He doesn’t know where he’d be if it hadn’t been for Yatora entering his life when he had. By now, he surely would have quit art entirely. It had been his sole purpose for his whole life, and he can’t imagine where he would be if he had quit. These days, he’s coming to terms with his feelings more often, but he still doesn’t quite know who he is outside of art. It’s a process, certainly.
But he doesn’t think Yatora is wrong , not really. Yotasuke doesn’t know about belief , but he does quietly think that he was meant to meet people like Yatora. At first, he’d been resistant to the idea of a friendship between them, and though he won’t admit it, these days he doesn’t think he can imagine his life without any of them.
“No,” he finally replies quietly, not intending to say it at all, “it doesn’t sound strange.”
I get it, he thinks, but he leaves that much unspoken.
Yatora gives him a strange, near indecipherable look. For a moment, they hold each other’s gaze, and then Yotasuke turns away once more, breaking first under the intensity of Yatora’s golden-eyed stare. After a moment, he hears the sound of Yatora’s sketching resume. He doesn’t look to see what the other man is drawing, focusing on the line of paintings along the wall again. Despite their light backgrounds, the paintings themselves are dark against the brilliant gold and white of the architecture, almost frightening in their intensity.
Belief, Yatora had said.
Yotasuke can’t claim to be an expert on Christianity, much less religion as a whole, but he’s witnessed the unyielding belief some of them hold. He walks the line of paintings slowly, taking in the details of the carefully crafted faces, the depictions of stories he doesn’t know. He wonders if the artist had painted these with that same belief in his heart. Perhaps it had been someone eager to express their feelings on the subject, but maybe it had simply been a commission by someone entirely indifferent.
Still, it makes him feel something .
It’s this, perhaps, that keeps drawing people back. In the same way that he keeps coming back to art, people keep coming back to religion, to their god, whichever one it may be. He thinks about Yatora calling it comforting , rolls it around in his mind contemplatively. He isn’t sure how comforting the idea of all-powerful being watching over them is, knowing all of the things that happen in the world, wondering why that being wouldn’t put a stop to them, but he supposes there’s a part of him that understands it. It’s easier than the idea that it’s just them in a big, empty universe.
He drops his gaze from the paintings, shoving his free hand into his jacket pocket as he turns around to leave the pulpit. During the holy days, he’s sure this building is packed. A place like this probably isn’t meant to be viewed this way, empty and haunting, the weight of its purpose hanging over their heads. Yotasuke knows he won’t come again, but he can’t help but wonder what it’s like when the cathedral is full of life. He’s never gone to a Christian church, but he’s heard how they are, seen videos of what they look like with the masses of people and their hands raised in worship.
Yatora is still hunched over his sketchbook, nearly bent in two. It’s an almost comical sight, the sketchbook balanced on one leg and his candle tucked up between his stomach and thigh, but Yotasuke finds himself watching anyway. It’s a fervency of its own, the way art is Yatora’s god, and he’s merely a disciple passing on its word. It’d been that unadulterated passion with no real skill to back it up that had pissed Yotasuke off when they’d first met. For the first time, he’d felt genuinely threatened, and he hadn’t known how to deal with it. These days, he almost finds solace in it, knowing that even he still has a passion for art somewhere in him.
Belief and worship, passion and reverence—none of those feelings were so far detached from one another.
“I think I’ve got it,” Yatora speaks so suddenly that Yotasuke jumps a little.
The blond looks up, a mixture of determination and contentment swirling in his eyes. He grabs his sketchbook and stands, sending his candle tumbling to the floor. They both watch it roll across the crimson of the carpets. The tips of Yatora’s ears burn just as red.
“Right,” he says, like he’d only just remembered it existed.
Yotasuke hides a smile. “Let’s light them before we go.”
Yatora scrambles for the candle, and Yotasuke steps around him to make his way to the rows of firelight from other visitors. He finds a less lit area, setting his candle down among them, and Yatora joins him. Without a word, they both light the wicks, watching the flames spring to life, two more pinpricks of light against the brilliant backdrop. Yotasuke puts both of his hands in his pockets, watching the wax melt.
“Thanks for coming, Yotasuke-kun,” Yatora murmurs, his gaze fixed on the two fires, sitting side by side among the countless others.
“It wasn’t all that bad,” Yotasuke confesses.
“What about you?” Yatora asks.
He looks up from his candle, turning his gaze on Yotasuke once more. Behind him, the stained glass approximation of Jesus himself stands with his arms spread, wide and welcoming and blue.
“What about me?”
“You asked me, but I didn’t ask in return. Do you believe in a God?”
Another group enters through the doors at the front, led by one of the guides that Yatora and Yotasuke had turned down after they’d made their donation to get in. He hears their voices, but not the words they’re saying. Yatora is still watching him, gaze unwavering, eyes unrelenting and curious.
Yotasuke straightens up, leaving his lit candle among the many others. They’ll be extinguished by nighttime, taken out of the way for the groups that come in tomorrow, and the day after that. Still, it feels like they’ve left some sort of mark here, their own personal immortality. Yotasuke doesn’t think he believes in a god, but he thinks there are things here that could only be the work of something outside of their understanding.
“I wonder,” he murmurs at last.
Yotasuke doesn’t think he believes in a god, but as he watches the light filter through the stained glass, dyeing Yatora blue, he thinks that perhaps, in the wake of everything, there could be one after all. As they make their way back towards the door, Yotasuke looks up, gaze flitting over the still flattened strands of Yatora’s hair. He reaches up and fixes them himself.
“It was messed up from the train,” he says in lieu of a real answer.
It isn’t what he really wants to say, but Yatora smiles like he knows.