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The lake was made of sunlight. The early morning kind, rusty pink and not quite strong, born anew. Matsukawa felt as though he were waking up for the first time, yawning against the chill, stretching his long arms underneath the tarpaulin. The loons were out, slicing through the dawn with their cries.
He found Hanamaki down by the lake, knee-deep in the water. Probably fishing for skipping stones; they had used up all of the small, flat rocks on the shore. He must be freezing, Matsukawa thought, pulling his windbreaker close. He’d bought it too big, and even on his tall frame the sleeves hung down over half his palms. He felt small, dwarfed by the trees arching overhead.
Makki waded back to him, two handfuls of stones dripping lake-water. He was grinning, like he always did, like their lives were one great joke that Matsukawa only occasionally understood. Hanamaki tipped his hand, and the rocks tumbled out into the bottom of their canoe.
“For later,” Hanamaki said.
“What’s on the agenda today?” Matsukawa asked, picking at his granola bar. He was so, so sick of trail mix, but it had to be done. For all of Hanamaki’s boasting, neither of them actually knew the first thing about hunting game, and fishing with a bit of twine and a paper clip had so far failed to provide them with anything other than sodden clumps of lake weed.
Hanamaki sprawled himself out on top of the map, tracing tributaries with his long, thin fingers. “Can you do eight hours again? We’ll split it up. Four and four.”
“And how much portaging will that include?” Matsukawa asked, suspicious.
“Twenty minutes.” Well, that wasn’t so bad. “Uphill,” Makki added, sheepish.
Matsukawa sighed.
They doused the fire and packed up in record time. Their camp was unceremoniously dumped into the middle of the canoe; they’d given up on properly folding the tent almost immediately.
Hanamaki climbed up to the helm, surveying the bay like it was his kingdom. Ducks darted past, wary of approaching as Matsukawa pottered around the bare ground of their campsite. He shook the pine needles off his shoes and stepped one foot in the canoe. Pushed off the rocks with the other, and they were afloat and drifting. Hanamaki poled lazily along the bottom, stirring the minnows and dislodging lily pads that floated along beside the boat, uprooted like jellyfish. Matsukawa readied his paddle.
Dip. Swish, stroke out. Hanamaki on the left, Matsukawa on the right. They always started this way, switching on Mattsun’s mark every ten minutes or so. Steady, assured, silent strokes. The wind was only just beginning, the waves too small to be called waves lapping against the hull. Matsukawa was careful not to pinch his fingers on the gunwale this time.
Hanamaki hummed something nameless, breathing in the clear, northern air. Matsukawa watched Makki’s ribs expand with his breath, watched his rosy head fall back and take in the freshness, the vivacity of the air. Everything was alive up here. Everything down to the algae and lichen coating the rocks, it was all living and breathing.
It wasn’t like this in the city. That was a different kind of life, and it fed a different hunger. Matsukawa felt like a new person up here. The wilderness was open, and it opened him too. Wide-eyed, warm-skinned, itching to explore the endless stretches of forests and climb every rocky outcropping they could find. The two of them had already been paddling for three days, and still, every step forward brought them somewhere new.
Makki laid his paddle across the gunnels and turned, eyes laughing. “Mattsun,” he said, gearing up for something. A conversation, a riddle, one of those cryptically teasing jabs that Makki did best.
“Yes?” Mattsun replied in the same tone.
“Top ten things on your bucket list. Go.”
Matsukawa bit his lip, paddling absently as he thought. Water-spiders skidded away from the ripples he created.
“In no particular order?”
“Start with ten, work your way up.” Hanamaki spoke up so his voice would carry backwards, and it felt almost obscenely loud in the wide quietness of the lake.
“You don’t make this easy,” Matsukawa chided. Hanamaki shrugged, rivulets of water streaming off his paddle.
What did Matsukawa want to do before he died? It seemed like a question that couldn’t be reduced to ten bullet points on a list. Hanamaki started whistling the theme from Jeopardy and Matsukawa was sorely tempted to splash him.
“Stop that. Okay, number ten is to see the Aurora Borealis.”
“Ooh, good one.”
“I know. Nine I guess would be to go back to Japan and visit my relatives. I guess I’d have to learn Japanese for that too.”
Hanamaki laughed. “I thought you took Japanese.”
“I mean actually learn it, not skid by with a 51 percent in parent-mandated language classes.”
“Fair enough. Can I come with you?”
“Of course.”
“You’d have to translate for me,” Hanamaki said, “I’m shit with languages.”
Matsukawa remembered the McDonalds in Quebec, where Hanamaki had valiantly tried to embrace the surrounding culture and order an egg McMuffin in French. He’d nearly been laughed out of the store.
“Switch,” Matsukawa said, and they flipped their paddles over their heads in unison. Dip, swish, stroke out. Keep moving forward, heading for the mouth of the river.
“What’s number eight then?”
Matsukawa paused, thought about it. “I feel like a lot of mine are going to have to do with travelling,” he said.
“That’s an acceptable bucket list. Where would you go?”
“Backpacking across Europe? Is that too cliché?”
Hanamaki shrugged. “Depends. Would you go just to find yourself, or do you actually want to see Europe?”
“Both?”
“Then yes, it’s cliché, but you should go anyway. Send me a postcard from Amsterdam.”
Matsukawa smiled. “Will do.”
The air was slowly heating up, drenching Matsukawa in sunlight. He dipped a hand in the lake and smoothed droplets of water over his face. He’d have to lose the jacket soon; Hanamaki was already down to his dirt-streaked t-shirt. The back of Hanamaki’s neck was red with yesterday’s sunburn.
“Seven is New Zealand.”
“Gonna go visit the Shire?” Hanamaki quipped.
“Basically. And go surfing, I want to learn how to surf.”
“Dude, you should. You could own that vibe if you grew out your hair, got some leather bracelets. And a Jeep and a whole bunch of weed.”
“Oh, that’s number six. Learn to fucking drive.”
Hanamaki guffawed, splashing lake water onto himself accidentally as he let the paddle drop too fast.
“Shut up,” Matsukawa said with a rueful smirk.
“I didn’t say anything,” said Hanamaki, gleefully.
“You were thinking it.”
“Whatever man, at least I don’t have to show my health card to buy beer.”
“If that’s the only reason I need a driver’s license, I don’t see the point. My health card works just fine.”
They neared the mouth of the river. Matsukawa could once again see the lake bottom, rounded rocks disappearing underneath the canoe. Dry, low-hanging branches obscured part of the river’s entrance, and Matsukawa steered vengefully towards them, causing Hanamaki to have to duck to avoid being hit in the face.
“You did that on purpose,” Hanamaki said, a challenging lilt in his voice.
“Maybe.”
“Dick.”
Matsukawa hummed in satisfaction. “Okay, what are we at? Five?”
“Think so.”
The current was weak, thankfully. Their momentum didn’t slow. The trees on either side were stripped from the ground to six or seven feet up, a stark line wrapping all the way around the shore where the deer had craned their necks up to feed.
“Number five on my bucket list…” Matsukawa said, watching as his paddles formed tiny whirlpools in the water. They floated away as the canoe drifted forward. “Road trip. You, me, Oikawa, and Iwaizumi.”
“Again, Mattsun, you’re gonna need a driver’s license for that.”
“No no no, Oikawa and Iwaizumi have to do the driving. Otherwise they’ll just be making out in the back seat for the whole trip.”
“You have a point. So where would we go?” Hanamaki asked, dragging his fingers in the water. It was getting too shallow to paddle properly. Matsukawa made tiny half-strokes, brushing the bottom and stirring up sand.
“Out west, maybe, through the mountains. I’ve never seen them.”
“Romantic,” said Hanamaki. “Plus, you’ll get a bonus fifteen hours of prairies each way.”
“I want to stay in the cheapest, weirdest bed-and-breakfasts we can find,” Matsukawa said with finality. “The kind with ten cats and creepy wallpaper.”
“And hostages in the basement?” Hanamaki asked, teasing.
“Mhm. We’ll fight our way out in the morning,” Matsukawa replied.
“I don’t know if Oikawa will be down for your post-apocalyptic road trip, but I’m in.”
“Good,” said Matsukawa, “I’d rather have you with me in a fight anyway. Oikawa would be the one we have to rescue.”
“Our damsel in distress, Oikawa Tooru.” Hanamaki clutched his hands to his chest for effect, and his paddle nearly slipped into the lake. “Doubt we have to worry much about him though, Iwaizumi would do all the rescuing.”
The river opened up into another lake, one more in a seemingly-endless series. “Switch,” Matsukawa called again. Drops of water fell in his hair from the blade of his paddle. The lake bottom disappeared into murky green-blackness beneath them.
“Only four left,” said Hanamaki. “Use them wisely.”
“Four is obviously getting my degree. Maybe a master’s after that. And, like, a decent job and shit.”
“Obviously.”
Matsukawa cut himself off from thinking further on the subject of his future. The whole point of this canoe trip was avoiding his responsibilities for a few days, to shake the world off his shoulders and relax. He focused on the movement of the water, the smell of fresh air and the way it played at the curls on his forehead. The angry flush of Hanamaki’s sunburn.
“Dude, you put sunscreen on that right?”
“What?”
“Your neck.”
“What are you, Iwaizumi now? Yes, mom, I’m wearing sunscreen.”
“Just checking.”
Hanamaki turned to send him a proper glare, gently rocking the boat as he shifted in his seat. Matsukawa shrugged.
He was down to three. The top three things he wanted from his life. They came to him with surprising ease.
“Three is to help people. I don’t care how, I want to make a difference in the world, you know? But like a good difference, something important.”
“Noble,” said Hanamaki. They rounded a bend and the lake opened up before them, vast and bright. Puffs of wind churned the water into patches of roughness that swept across the surface. Matsukawa blinked as a gust hit him, pleasantly cool in the unrelenting sun.
“Not really. It’s kind of selfish. I want to be remembered for something when I’m gone.”
“Wow,” Hanamaki said, “this just took a turn for the morbid.”
“You said bucket list, death was already implied.”
The canoe skirted the shore, avoiding most of the wind, but Matsukawa was still fighting the current to keep them in the water and away from the rocks. Dip, swish, stroke out. He leaned into it, felt the first twinges of ache in his arms.
They paddled in silence for a while, listening to the rustle of leaves in the breeze, and waves on the hull of the canoe. He watched as Hanamaki’s shoulders tilted into his strokes. Up, over, down and together. Makki’s left hand was sparkling wet.
Matsukawa nudged at the flat stones sitting at the bottom of the canoe. Later. They had all the time they needed, it stretched out almost as far as the wilderness. Both would end at some point, but the end was far away, and Matsukawa let his head fall back to breathe in the wind.
“What about here?” Hanamaki asked, pointing to a sloping chunk of rock, rising out of the lake smooth and grey like whale skin. Canadian Shield at its gentlest, a warm patch of stone that looked easy enough to climb.
“Looks good, yeah.”
They drifted until the prow of the canoe bumped on the rocks. Hanamaki hopped out with a small splash, gripping the gunwale for balance as his sandals sought purchase on the slippery stone. With Hanamaki’s weight gone, the prow tipped upwards and he was able to drag it another few feet. Matsukawa disembarked and grabbed their packs and Hanamaki scooped up the skipping stones, before hauling the canoe halfway onto the stone shore. Lichen coated the rock in an unbroken line a few inches above the water, marking the height of the winter ice.
“Two left,” Hanamaki said. He sat down by the water and dumped his handful of stones in a small pile. “Make ‘em count.”
Matsukawa sat down next to him, gingerly settling his bare calves on the sun-warmed rock face. Hanamaki fiddled, stacking and re-stacking his treasure.
“Two is having a family,” Matsukawa said. The wind had quieted, kept away from their clearing as it tangled in the trees.
“Hah, you would. The whole two-point-five kids and a white picket fence, right?”
Matsukawa smirked. “The white picket fence is optional.”
“And number one?”
“That’s private,” said Matsukawa, watching Hanamaki’s expression out of the corner of his eye.
“What?” Hanamaki punched him in the arm, and Matsukawa swayed where he sat. “Bullshit, you don’t have secrets from me!”
“Don’t I?” Matsukawa replied, teasing.
“Do you? Now I’m worried.”
He did, actually. Have secrets. Hanamaki ought to know that. Matsukawa smiled at the sky, beatific and completely opaque. “You know me too well already, Hiro. It’s not a bad thing.”
Hanamaki stood, and with a practiced flick of the wrist, sent one of his stones skimming across the water. It skipped once, twice, three times before disappearing, swallowed up without a trace.
“Makki. You’re not mad at me, are you?”
Hanamaki scoffed, narrowed his eyes. If Matsukawa didn’t know him so well, he’d say Makki was just squinting in the sun. “Maybe, maybe not. It’s a secret. See, I have one too now.”
Matsukawa leaned back, pillowing his head on his hands, and watched his friend wind up for another toss. Makki adjusted his grip, feeling the rough edges of the stone, and threw.
They ate lunch out of plastic wrappers, bare feet buried in plush patches of moss. Matsukawa wiggled his toes as Hanamaki counted the hawks and the sparrows wheeling overhead. The chipmunks gave them a ten-foot radius, scampering through the brush at lightning speeds.
Hanamaki turned to pack up and stopped, rooted to the spot.
“What’s-”
“Shh.” Hanamaki held a finger to Matsukawa’s lips. “Deer,” he whispered.
Matsukawa stood up as silently as he could, and turned to face the woods.
There were four of them, half-obscured by the trees but still, Matsukawa had never seen them so close. The mother stood stock-still, ears twitching, her round black eyes trained on Hanamaki. Two fawns milled about her feet, nosing at the bushes with cautious interest. A third trotted behind them, bushy white tail swaying.
Hanamaki’s hand was on his shoulder, and warmth bloomed on his skin. Matsukawa wished he could capture this moment, in its entirety. Hold onto the sensation of it, all of it, the surprise and awe and unbearable tenderness. The doe’s placid gaze, ready to bolt in a second, but for the moment willing to trust the two strange boys who had invaded her patch of forest. The way it felt to hold absolutely, perfectly still. Hanamaki’s touch, softly anchoring him to the spot.
The doe took a tentative step, then another. Matsukawa tried not to breathe. Her children danced around her legs, still a bit unsteady on their feet. The doe inclined her head, graceful as a queen, and tugged at the bushes to feed at last.
Hanamaki’s hand relaxed but did not draw away. His eyes shone, and Matsukawa felt his chest tighten. If he died right now, he wouldn’t regret a single unfinished bullet point on a stupid list, this was everything he ever wanted. Hanamaki happy, Hanamaki smiling so wide it crinkled his eyes, awed and amazed and glowing bright as the sun.
This was it, this was the moment it all came together. There wouldn’t be another chance like this, maybe not ever. Matsukawa reached up and gently turned Hanamaki’s chin to face him. The sun behind Hanamaki’s head filtered through his hair, painting it gold.
“Number one,” Matsukawa whispered, and kissed him.
He tasted like sunlight.
Hanamaki relaxed into it almost immediately, breathing shallow against him. One hand rose up to comb through Matsukawa’s hair and stayed, pulling him in. It was soft and close and perfect in every way, and Matsukawa felt like he was floating, rising like an air bubble from deep water. When they broke apart, Hanamaki was laughing.
“That’s your secret?” he asked, incredulous.
Matsukawa nodded, too flooded with affection and awe and Hanamaki’s warmth for words.
“I hate to break it to you Mattsun, but that wasn’t a secret. Not even close.” Hanamaki leaned his head against Matsukawa’s chest. It was as if everywhere he touched was suffused with heat, photosynthetic, like a chemical reaction in his skin.
“That bad?” Matsukawa wrapped his arms around Hanamaki’s waist and breathed him in. Three days without a shower, and Hanamaki only smelled even more like home.
“Terrible. Oikawa’s been tearing his hair out for six months.”
“He can deal.”
Hanamaki squinted up at the sky. “We should get going, we’re losing daylight and this canoe’s not gonna portage itself.”
Matsukawa frowned. “Wait, that’s it? We’re not going to talk about this?”
Hanamaki smiled, flicked him gently on the nose. “Mattsun, we have two more days of canoeing to talk about this. And all the time in the world after that.”
Dip, swish, stroke out. Hanamaki on the left, Matsukawa on the right. The sky is turning pink at the edges, like Hanamaki’s hair. The day is at its end, the cycle rolling over. Tomorrow it will be born again, a whole new beginning. Tonight they will make a fire, roast the last of their hotdogs on sharpened sticks, shaped with a penknife Matsukawa’s had since he was fourteen. Maybe tonight they’ll find Orion. Without Oikawa’s encyclopedic knowledge of the constellations, they might as well be pointing blindly into the night sky, but that doesn’t matter. They have time.
Soon, Matsukawa won’t hear the owls and the cricket song as he falls asleep. He’ll be back in the city, caught in its unrelenting current, flowing ever forward. Maybe someday a part of that will include checking off his other nine bullet points, one day, one month, one year at a time. But for now, curled up on a thin, self-inflating mattress with Makki’s sleeping bag strewn over their tangled limbs to keep off the chill of the night air, skin-to-skin and drifting off to dreamless sleep, maybe just one point on the list is enough.