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As humanity wheezed on its ending gasps, something so final in the ozone that it was like all of Sumaru City was bathing in the release of an exhaust pipe, the night sky was unchanged by its smaller, sicker downward sister. The endless black with all its pockets of light; pigeonholes for the gods beyond to ogle the end of Earth through. Tatsuya stopped being drawn to the stories of the universe, his life on ground was already riddled with plot holes, though unmistakably a child’s voice murmured tales of constellations and galaxies into his subconscious. Now that whisperer and him were kids no longer. Instead of the sky, Jun’s torso was bent over the edge of the railing, watching where he had always sought beyond the atmosphere to avoid.
As Tatsuya curiously monitored his most vibrant memory from childhood through the glass of the balcony doors, the sounds of sleeping exhales came from behind. Giving a last glance to the pair of bodies, Lisa and Maya, restful on the latter’s bed, and the sleeping — prone on a pile of laundry — Ekichi on the floor beside, Tatsuya tugged at the balcony door’s handle. The glass rattled a little as it scuttled on the track. Jun straightened his back, taking a moment before looking behind toward the sound. The wind made little waves in his satiny black hair. Tatsuya had to remind himself that it was not caused by the sea breeze, but a side-effect of the city’s new altitude.
“I’ll be back inside after only a few moments more,” Jun said, his voice surprisingly assured as he avoided meeting Tatsuya’s eyes. “Don’t worry about waiting on me.” He offered a dispassionate smile. Considering where he was staring, it was more for the overflowing trash bin in the bedroom than for Tatsuya.
After memory’s puzzles were placed and he grasped the present Jun for who he was and what he had before been, Tatsuya regarded with a non-zero revival of admiration he hadn’t tasted in years that Jun had grown too. To know that Jun had won out on the other end of ten years healthy and present, he’d forgotten momentarily the gravity of the reality that thrusted them back toward each other. Now it was complicated. There were walls, unsaid words, regrets, and all Tatsuya knew how to do was run an assembly line perfected in manufacturing those sorts of silences. Looking at Jun now, however, backlit by the choking cityscape, arms crossed tightly over each other on the railing, Tatsuya noticed he was still quite small. They both were. If it was only when they were together as children that they felt like they could tower over this uncertain world, then maybe now his company could be the solution to Jun’s doubt, and Jun the answer to his own.
If Tatsuya knew Jun, that is to say, if the only individual he ever felt the invisible barrier between him and everyone else disappear with, still lived within those longer limbs, then it was with a rare confidence he closed the door behind him — Jun had never been friendly with loneliness, though it practically kept him in a long-standing embrace. As Tatsuya maneuvered between the chaises, Jun looked toward the skyline. Leaning forward onto the brick parapet, Tatsuya's hands spread outward against the silver railing. Unintentionally, the tips of his fingers brushed the knuckles of Jun’s hand where it was clasped around his elbow; their arms’ length apart crossed. When Jun didn’t retreat from the touch, neither did Tatsuya. All he thought was how cold the other’s hands felt.
The silence they arrived at was amiss of the awkward bulk, but in its place was a pervasive despair. Tatsuya wondered if he was experiencing a fraction of Jun’s emotions. Standing side-by-side fed some foreign sensation into Tatsuya’s chest. Unsure how to respond to the soundless answer to the “how are you?” he could never quite find on his tongue, he was reduced to remaining timid and giving a building on the horizon a hard stare. The power and volume of his unspoken questions intimidated him. If this were the past, Jun would speak easily what to him was like trying to communicate through a foreign language. That was asking too much now. Tatsuya was older as well, much too old to be living with his tongue in a knot and the words in his head spilling haphazardly out of order at every open-mouthed attempt to use them.
“You know you are the light.”
Tatsuya looked at Jun as he started speaking. His expression was placated, but his eyes were focused, like playing a game of darts and narrowing in on the bullseye. It contrasted with the then noticed softness of Jun’s face. Remembering he was tactile, not a dream or a memory, presented Tatsuya with a weird desire to touch the neat, delicate curve of Jun’s chin, or the sleek strands of his midnight hair. To put those gentle edges of Jun between his palms and keep them from the piercing ends jutting out at every corner of the world. Distracted, it took him a pause to recenter his wandering mind and remember the conversation that had already lost him.”What?” He tried.
“When Maya likens us to light and shadow, I just want you to know you’re the light.” Something of a smile tried his lips, but it still didn’t quite fit right. It was too heavy. “Even now, I’m only here because of you and the light you cast providing me with something to stand in. I only hope I don’t…” His sharp gaze was mitigated by his eyelids; he was looking down again. “I’m at risk of extinguishing it.”
“You won’t.” The words ran from Tatsuya far faster than the natural conversational pace. It might have been the only thing he’d ever had to say without thinking it over and over again into the ground.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be prompting you to comfort me. I knew, after all, you’d say otherwise, even if at your detriment.” Jun deflated in a quiet sigh, the bony protrusions of his hand falling away from Tatsuya’s touch. “‘You Doppelgänger, you pale companion, why do you mimic my lovesickness that tormented me at this place for so many nights?’” Reciting a familiar line, Jun’s long eyelashes sat on his cheeks, closing his eyes for a long moment, before opening them with a resigned peace. “Doppelgängers in folklore are haunters of their originals; they bring bad luck, torment, death. Maybe even the end of the world, if given the chance. I…”
Tatsuya turned toward Jun. “It’s not like that. That she means it.” Pulling at the cloth on the inside of his pocket, he wanted to explain to Jun that it was always with esteem that the label of doppelgänger was exchanged. That, to him, Jun was not the product of his light, but the only reason he could hope to flicker out a glow. It was always a compliment to be compared to the wiser, kinder, more articulate of the two. Though the mounting pressure of the presence of all the things he ought to set right locked him in a forced vow of silence, when Jun’s eyes were slowly, cautiously settled on his face, they widened as if in understanding.
“Most likely not,” Jun said, attempting again to smile. Seeing him face-to-face, it was guilt that kept contesting his reaches for happiness. Every rise of his mouth brought down under the crushing designation that it was not deserved, growing more noticeable as he spoke on, “But if there is truth to it… No, there must be…”
Freezing fingers found a warm solace in the sudden grip of Tatsuya’s hand. He reached over and laid his palm over Jun’s hand, holding it steadfastly and steering Jun from the railing. They walked connected backwards. The light of the cityscape bled from Jun’s features until, under the shadow of the shirt hanging from the clothesline, Tatsuya had to squint to see where his hair ended and face began. Little impressions of the city were still caught gleaming in his brown eyes.
Two outdoor chaises, but they sat together on one. “I worry that people misconstrue you,” Jun said, watching Tatsuya drape his arm overtop the knee he had propped up over the other, gently releasing his hand. “All they see is your intense gaze or your height, and they assume your heart is hard. That nothing affects you. Knowing you better — it’s practically a boast. Your kindness is bottomless.”
Tatsuya’s face heated. He held his hands together and stared at where they squeezed each other between his separated knees. “I don’t know about that.” He’d better describe himself as detached on account of the perpetual labyrinth of his thoughts that he was set lost in. His feelings were overbearing, and he felt subjected to them under such non-restraint that the world outside his head hazed as a result. Disconnected yet intertwined; confused but afflicted. “It’s more that I’m…” He felt his brows crease. Clumsy? Unsure? Scared?
“You’re honest,” Jun finished, leaning inward toward Tatsuya’s hunched position. Their shoulders knocked. “And generous enough to give that honesty to everyone.” He relaxed back on his hands. Face perpendicular to the sky, Tatsuya was comforted by the familiarity of his sky-fond friend. “Do you recall when I gave you the lighter?”
I dreamed about it often. Tatsuya thought, but did not say, opting instead to nod his head.
“I never was able to tell you the way I felt about you back then. In front of a bridal shop…I really believed I was being clever. Even if it was just a kid’s crush, whenever I felt scared or alone, I thought of you. Even as Joker, in my deceived, blind rage, I mostly thought of…” Jun paused, taking a breath, all the while Tatsuya felt the rise of goose flesh on his arms, “You were the only person I believed I could talk to about those feelings, but the only person I couldn’t tell. I hid a lot under that mask, you, my ‘pale companion’, my closest confidante, and the one I didn’t want to give any reason to leave me behind. … Now feels like an inappropriate time for such topics, doesn’t it? ”
“What about now?” Tatsuya spurred on, surprising them both. He had begun sitting upright.
Jun uncrossed his legs, struck with shock, “Tatsuya…?”
Tatsuya’s anxieties crawled over his skin like a stampede of ants. The safety of distance and the pleasure of anonymity chimed their calls through his head, but all he saw was Jun’s solitude and the solution to his own. Tatsuya had spent too many nights dumbfounded by the mysterious sense of loss to let the answer go unfought for. If he was going to spend all these years lost, then didn’t he owe it to both of them to wave the flag he was handed and allow himself to be found? Inclining toward Jun as if magnetically, he asked in a sobering tone, “What about now?”
“Tatsuya— I…” Instead of arching away, he put a hand on Tatusya’s shoulder with a touch so subtle it was almost unfelt. In what leftovers of light pollution washed onto the balcony, his eyes moved haphazardly to avoid meeting Tatsuya’s, “Of course, I still…” then at last their eyelines crossed, “I’ve always been frightened of the future, I couldn’t imagine it because I lacked the understanding of what I wanted; too busy being haunted by what I didn’t. The only console, the light at the end of the tunnel, the break from the disappointment, was the hope that it was with you. If I’m allowed to keep one dream… I would be forever grateful for it to be that one.”
Their foreheads touched one another’s after Tatsuya leveraged nearer; a wordless reply of synonymous feelings. In understanding of the gesture, Jun’s arms wrapped around Tatsuya’s neck. The only person who didn’t press Tatsuya for words to understand him, who approached the corner Tatsuya was forced into, watching from the sidelines. If he had a choice in the definition of a doppelgänger, it wouldn’t be a supernatural spectre or a replica of your likeness, but this incomparable impression of being at last understood. Like living lost in the woods for decades until one day a rescue light beams down and blinds you.
“Tatsuya,” Jun said softly, “I’ve lied to all of you. I’ve deceived you. You could learn something you can’t accept.”
Tatsuya shook his head against Jun’s, the contact of their foreheads transferring his answer in the dark.
“And I could be jealous, worse than Lisa.”
He shook his head again.
“It won’t be easy with me. People will… They won’t understand. They’ll say things, think things, and I…”
Tatsuya ran his hand lightly up the length of Jun’s arm. He stopped at the wrist, which he held laxly. The watch Tatsuya gifted him sat underneath his fingers.
A tremoring exhale preceded his final, nervous protest, “I… my father… I wanted his affection so deeply, yet I… I rejected it, so what if I…I don’t deserve…”
“Jun.” Tatsuya’s voice was unwavering, “It’s you.” And that’s all that matters.
“For how long?”
One of Tatsuya’s fingers traced the shape of Jun’s watch over and over. For all the years he felt like he was missing something. For all the years before, when he was at his most blissful. For all the years after that they vowed to rip from this suffering world to regain the feeling again.
Jun grabbed handfuls of Tatsuya’s jacket as he pulled himself nearer and buried his face in the other’s shoulder. With equal enthusiasm, Tatsuya enveloped Jun in an embrace. The first time they hugged since childhood, and it was too long overdue. It felt like warm springs and sweet ice cream, like an easy sleep and kind dreams.
Yet, somehow, like being dragged from the summer into a plunging arctic breeze, it felt like a goodbye.