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The days go on, with everyday almost the same, routines repeat. Nothing special happens, with events just the same each year - classes, exams, tournaments, holidays, and the world goes around the sun again just to repeat the cycle. Nothing in the world changed except everyone is getting older, dying, and things go on.
These thoughts rain on Tomoki's mind as he stirs a white cup of coffee. It was his only vice, caffeine. He started it in grade school when his trouble with sleeping began. He'd wake up groggy from lack of sleep, that's when he started drinking coffee and binging on energy drinks so he'd be sharp enough for football. When his sister saw it, she just mocked him. Think you're so grown up now, huh? She tried to taste it but she just belched. He liked his coffee strong, black, with no hint of sugar.
His mother appeared and turned on the TV to watch evening news at 6. Typhoon Ike is expected to make landfall in Japan five days from now. The tropical depression turned into a typhoon, gained even more speed and is now classified as a super typhoon. Now it reaches a speed of 200 kilometers per hour and...
Tomoki listened while he drank, and wondered why storms had names, like people. Storms were a mystery, born in the Pacific, just to pass through countries, then to be gone again. They were expected each year, but the news carried dread. The TV showed pictures of the storm's passage down Asia, leaving destroyed houses, stranded boats, and people dead. There was a warning to be prepared and a list of evacuation centers in case the storm gets at its worst. Expect power outages and stores closing, it warned.
"Seems the storms are getting stronger lately," Tomoki said.
"Global warming, floods, earthquakes... what's happening with the world? Tomoki, do you think the food is enough for the next two weeks?" his mother asked. Tomoki checked the cupboards and the fridge, it was still full with meats and fruits.
"Tomoki, will you go pick up some more food from the grocery? Noodles, canned food, whatever we may need."
They drove out, the stores full of people who were also buying things. They bought extra batteries and flashlights. Tomoki got lots of coffee, chocolate, and candy for him and his sister.
"What's with all these things?" Tomoko asked when they got back, when she saw their heavy plastic bags.
"You haven't heard the news, Tomoko? There's a typhoon coming next week. A pretty strong one," their mother said.
"That means no class?" Tomoko asked, beaming.
Their mother answered with a sigh. "Is that all you think about, Tomoko? That means you have to pack some of your things just in case we need to evacuate."
"What!?"
"Just do your part. At least Tomoki's helping."
#
Classes were suspended three days before the storm, Monday to Wednesday. The storm was expected to arrive on Thursday, and leave by next Sunday. That meant whole week or two with no class.
The house was ordered and tidied, but it was their mother and Tomoki who did all the work while Tomoko did nothing. They let her be, she'll only cause more trouble if she's 'helping' anyway. She spent the three days holed up in her room, either sleeping or slouching in front of the computer.
The house was filled with sounds of things moving, cleaning, and the news loud enough so all of them can hear storm updates. The storm would not pass by them but it was still better to be prepared. It isn't uncommon for storms to stray from the predicted path.
"Is Dad going home, Mom?" Tomoki asked.
"No, dear, he said that its safer for him to stay where he is than go back here. Most roads are closed now and he can't catch a train to go home."
The day of the storm came. It was an odd and quiet morning, so peaceful compared to the usual days before. But there was something palpable in the air, a bite behind the deceitful quiet. The sky was steel grey, blocking the sun. There were no cars or people on the road, with everyone staying home to keep shelter from the storm. Nothing moved outside, not even air. It was so dark inside the house that they had to turn on the lights. The only noise was from news reports on TV. Tomoki sat in front of the television to watch while their mother washed dishes in the kitchen.
Then everything went dark. The lights and the television turned off, leaving only a different kind of darkness. The dark sky blanked out the memory of sunlight. It was still enough to see by, but it felt like color drained from everything - everything looked black and white.
This must be what they call the calm before the storm. The cold chilled Tomoki's bones.
Even his mother was quiet. She lit a tall white candle in their dining table with a matchstick. The light filled the room with the dancing orange hue of the flame. Fear was in the air, he could feel it as much as the cold. Tomoko was quiet, for some reason she stayed in the basement but kept the door open. In the silence, they can hear the faint music playing from Tomoko's headphones.
"Tomoko, you in there? Don't use your phone too much, you might need it just in case of emergency," said their mom.
Tomoko turned it off. Nothing can be heard. The clouds look so heavy, almost as if they would sink and press on the ground.
It was the perfect weather for sleep, so Tomoki headed back to his room, intending to stay there until the whole storm passes. He just hoped that they won't have to leave, that would be too much hassle.
#
That night, the storm descended and it woke him.
It came without warning, just when they thought the quiet would last until the next morning. Wind howled outside, whistled as loud as ambulance sirens, he couldn't believe he was hearing it at first. There was a loud crash outside that jolted him out of his stupor, and he peeked through his curtain to see that the tree outside his window was not there - it fell down with the strong wind. The wind and scattering rain was so strong against the glass of his windows that it moved as if a hand was shaking it.
Tomoko slid his door open, rummaged through his closet to find the extra mattress, and threw it on the floor. She ran to her room, then after thunder cracked she ran back inside with her pillow and blanket. Inside, his heart leaped with the sound of thunder and he was also scared. The rain and wind sounded so strong that he's afraid it might rip out the roof. He wasn't surprised she went here. He knew that she was scared like him. He didn't mind her too much because of the storm.
Sleep was uneasy. He felt his stomach grumble from hunger, and he checked the time, around 8. He went down to eat and check on his mother.
Their mother was was asleep, wrapped in blankets. She kept the door of her room open.
After eating cereal and brushing his teeth by candlelight, he went up to his room, stepped over his sister who was already snoring on the floor, sleeping with her mouth open. He slept.
#
By the next morning, the house was silent as the storm raged on. The sound of the rain was like loud TV static, they had to make their voices loud to talk, so no one spoke except an old radio their mother placed on top of the TV so they can still hear the news. After breakfast, their mother went back to bed to sleep. The weather made her drowsy and she only got out of her room to prepare meals.
He didn't talk or react when Tomoko took up residence in his room, staying on the floor. He tried opening his textbooks and reading them, do the assignments that he didn't think about three days ago. He left Tomoko alone and settled himself under the tall candle in their dining table. Unlike Tomoko who was notorious for procrastinating on her homework until the last minute, Tomoki liked finishing his first so he won't have anything to think about until next week.
He worked on History and Math until their mother called Tomoko to go down for lunch. He finished all of them just in time. So after eating, he decided to reward himself again with sleep.
Tomoko is still on his floor. She's just staring at the ceiling. The gameboy and cellphone beside her were dead. She's still wearing the blue headphones on her head even if there was no music playing.
All was quiet and they had nothing to entertain themselves with. It was too dark, it was useless to read when the remaining flashlights shouldn't be wasted. Candles are distracting with this wind, the small flame moves erratic and it was more disturbing than relaxing. The silence of the house helped against the noise of rain outside.
They both lied down on their beds just listening to the rain battering down their fragile tin roof.
It lulled Tomoki to sleep.
#
A day has passed but the deeper their mother got lost in her sleep, the more they couldn't just relax and sleep. It was so dark and hard to tell if it was morning or night. Time seemed to stop and only the rain kept replaying on loop. Instead of sleeping he found himself just lying down with his eyes open, thinking of nothing. He knew Tomoko couldn't sleep, too, the way she kept on turning in the bed below.
Tomoki turned on the battery lamp perched on his bed's headboard. He got a stack of manga and started to read them. By the light, he can see Tomoko below, awake.
Tomoko kept on chewing on her lower lip. Her lips are dry, chapped and bleeding already, but Tomoko can't seem to stop. Looking at her lip, now a raw red from all her chewing, her front teeth grinding down on the dark pink flesh. Tomoki was getting distracted while he read.
"Are you trying to eat your mouth? It looks disgusting so stop it," Tomoki said, but Tomoko kept on.
"It's just," Tomoko said, biting even deeper until a drop of red blood stained her front teeth. "It hurts, but at the same time it feels good to keep on biting on it even if I know I shouldn't do it?"
Tomoki tried to sleep but Tomoko's mouth was disgusting and the way she kept on biting was masochistic. Maybe it was like scratching an itch or peeling a wound until you feel some kind of pleasure from the pain. Tomoko kept on doing it even if it looked like the skin of her lips was torn.
"Nee-chan, its irritating to look at, please do something else or eat something downstairs," Tomoki said but Tomoko kept on doing it.
Tomoki dropped what he was reading and went downstairs to drink coffee. He went back to his room with a bag of tiny chocolate KitKats and Hershey's. He kind of wants to shove something down Tomoko's mouth just to make her stop her current irritating activity. His sister was still lying down in bed and doing the same thing.
He sat on his rotating chair and ate. Out of a whim he started spinning the chair. Silly game. He used to do it standing when he was a kid. He thought it was fun to turn around and around like a slow beyblade until he fell. He had a stupid grin on his face while the world spun and he just gave himself a headache. His mother used to scold him whenever she saw him doing that. With Tomoko it was just laughter. But that was before, when was the last time they even laughed freely together?
(When he remembered 'before', it was like a different era in his mind, a time he wanted to forget and he still cringed remembering. That time he told his sister he wanted to marry her. He even made a silly engagement ring using an inch of gold ribbon glued with a pink plastic diamond bead. She declined his proposal reasoning that 'Siblings can't marry according to the law.' Tomoki answered something like 'Screw the law.' Tomoko just laughed and still said no, she won't marry him, and that left him pouting in disappointment all throughout that day. Oh god, he wanted to die just remembering it!)
When he got dizzy enough from spinning around the chair, he tried to lie in his bed but missed the target, he ended up on Tomoko's bed on the floor. The ceiling looked like it was still rotating above his head. When will the storm stop? He's so bored he'll go crazy.
Tomoko happily ate. But after she's done she just bit her lip even harder.
"Nee-chan, I swear if you keep on doing that I'm going to kiss you," he said without thinking, brought about by the spinning madness. He imagined his eyes had those silly rotating spirals seen on cartoons when a character falls.
She squirmed as she bit. Blood now coated her lower lip.
"Shit Tomoki, I can't stop," she said, and soon Tomoki got up, shaking and dizzy. He softly caught her bleeding lip between his own lips. Tomoko's mouth fell open in shock. Tomoki let go of the brief 'kiss' which wasn't really a kiss, he just brushed his lips against hers. Some blood went to his lips and he licked it clean. Tasted like metal. He also had a secret habit of sucking on rare wounds until it hurts - because of the weird reason that it also felt good.
"Why did you do that?!" Tomoko asked.
"I really hate looking at you do that, its just so annoying!" Tomoki answered.
"What kind of reason is that?"
"Kisses heal!"
"What?"
"Kisses make bruises feel better!"
Tomoki didn't know what he was talking about. Three days trapped in the house with the storm did him no good.
Even in this dark, he could tell Tomoko was blushing. He closed his eyes and kissed her again without another word. He licked her dry lower lip, tasting the blood from all her chewing and biting. She was trembling, but to him the kiss was nothing but innocent. He ended up using his sharp teeth to bite on the part of her lip that Tomoko was biting on.
She made a weird sound, part pain, part sounding like she found it vaguely pleasurable.
"Yuck, you like giving yourself pain? Stop it," he said, stopping the kiss.
Of all pointless things. Now he is tangled in Tomoko's sheets and for once Tomoko stopped biting herself but her lips still trembled.
There was something about the cold that made him stay on his sister's mattress. After the kiss, they lay together, and her warmth comforted him. They didn't say a word but he felt like Tomoko secretly liked it. He also kind of did like it.
He remembered that when they were children, playing involved snuggling, nuzzling, biting, tumbling all over each other like wolf cubs. It was innocent in children but an awkward concept when siblings are already grown up.
The cold brought about a sense of hibernation. Animals hid in winter, only to emerge again the following spring along with the rebirth of other signs of life - dead trees growing leaves, empty shrubs gain color as flowers bloom. The heavy rain was only desolation, there was already a small river flooding the street outside but good thing their house was on higher ground.
They did nothing, spoke nothing, no activity at all except for picking out candy from a plastic bag and eating it. If their mother saw them like that they would get scolded for not throwing the candy wrappers and attracting ants.
Snug in blankets, eating candy... reminds him of what they used to do when they were kids. He liked snuggling when he was a lot smaller than Tomoko. Tomoko didn't grow up much. Her body still looked the same as seven years ago. She looked so awkward with her classmates blessed with beauty.
Thunder roared above, never-ending. The rain was violent and sounded like it would not slow down anytime soon. Without thinking, at the same time, their arms reached out to each other and they slept, for the first time in years, together.
#
The radio said that the storm would go away tomorrow.
He woke up near lunch time. In the steady dark of the rain, he couldn't tell morning from night. He saw Tomoko on the floor, obsessively applying and eating strawberry-flavored lip gloss. Ah, if a storm like this lasted more than a month they would all go crazy from a lack of things to do. Life relied on light and electricity. Mother is just sleeping the time away.
After eating by himself. He realized that he smelled with sweat after doing nothing but sleeping since the storm began. The bathroom was lighted by a small stump of an old lavender-scented candle which made the room smell of burning dried incense. When he took off his clothes and headed for a long bath, he stiffened to find his sister already sitting on the tub. She also looked away from him, but he was already naked and it was just more practical to plop down the bath. Nothing awkward, they used to bath together when they were kids. Sometimes with their Dad, when he didn't go away so much.
Tomoko is eyeing him and crossing her arms over her chest. At least there were thick soap bubbles hiding their bodies.
Tomoki looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
"Why are you here, pervert!" she said, her face turning red.
"Its just too much of a bother to go back to my room and wear my clothes again when I can sit here," he said.
"You're planning to molest me!" She covered herself even tighter.
"Heh, why're you hiding that when there's nothing there to look at?" And Tomoko got pissed more at his comment how she was still flat-chested, and a rubber duck squeaked in Tomoko's fist before she threw it to his face. Which he caught easily.
Tomoko relaxed her arms, settled them at her sides. She kept quiet, probably musing about her lack of luck that genetics and puberty did nothing good to her. Maybe she was thinking something like, if only my boobs were bigger, would I be popular?
Under the water, his knees were drawn up on his chest. He pretended to sleep, just waiting for her to go away. He can feel her outstretched legs beneath the water.
"Hey Tomoki... as a guy, what do you think of my body?"
"What kind of question is that. You're normal."
"I want to be pretty, not just normal."
"You really can't do anything about your face or body anymore. Me, I don't think much about it."
"My boobs are too small."
"They're okay for your body... of course it would look weirder if you're so thin then your boobs were the size of melons, for example."
"But Yuu..."
"She's taller and bigger than you, okay? Its because you're so short and thin like you didn't grow up at all."
Tomoko didn't speak for awhile. Then Tomoki heard her stand up. It was probably dark enough that she can't see him open his left eye slightly to look at her. Her body looked the same as he remembered it, the last time they still shared a bath together when she was nine. She changed to her clothes in front of the bathroom mirror. Tomoki looked at the pile of clothes and not her. A shirt, underwear, shorts gone from the pile as she wore them.
"You're not... wearing a bra?" Tomoki asked, an absent-minded question.
She glared at him.
"Ah. Hah. Because you still don't wear one!" Tomoki laughed, and it was Tomoko's turn to glare at him. Tomoki felt oddly satisfied about that, to get back at her after all her teasing.
He slept in the bath. By the time he woke up the candle has melted, a lilac puddle of wax on the corner of the bathtub. The rain never stopped. He'll remember this storm as 'the week it rained forever'.
#
When he got back to his room, he was too tired and sleepy for no reason. It was better to drop on the floor, sleep on Tomoko's mattress than climb up on his own bed. Tomoko went in and they lay tangled in the sheets, the memory of last night, sleeping in each other's arms...
As they lay together, it felt strange. As if the past had been unreal. They would have stayed this way if only... who changed, exactly? For years, they have been together in the same house but estranged. Like a friend who knew all your secrets but you're no longer close with. What if Tomoko hadn't changed? What if they still showed their love for each other in that innocent way? Both of them had grown up and became cynical.
Before high school, it was an ideal time that he thought would never end. Before ideas like success or popularity or grades. He was confused. When had his sister been so obsessed with popularity, with mocking him because of his so-called 'name' as a football player? Maybe it was because his sister had ceased spending time with him but more time alone, lost in the world of video games and fantasies? Or when he started being ashamed when she was there. When he wanted to impress his own friends and shunned her. He regretted it now, and longed for those times again as he longs for sunlight now.
He was sleeping with her, now, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He imagined. What if we had grown up close all along? Had things been any different, had we been any different? A broken world, a past he could not go back to, idyllic innocence lost in years.
Words lost between them. Maybe after the rain things would go back to normal. We're just afraid of the storm, he reasoned to himself.
But it didn't matter when Tomoko held his hand, looking into his eyes. Did he only imagine it, or is it the same regret he can read on her eyes, filled with feelings unsaid? Green eyes, black hair. They looked so alike. Green was the rarest eye color in the world. They used to think they were so special for having green eyes, they made up stories that they had fairy blood. He recalled the many times were they lost in the woods and he was so scared and his sister's presence was enough to feel safe and protected.
Was she thinking the same things?
"I miss you, Tomoki," she said, in a soft voice.
"How can you miss me when I'm right here?" he said. But his heart knew what she meant. I miss the way we were before when each other was enough. When it was okay to express this pure love without the casual disgust, the cynical teasing, the... he can't explain it.
"I'm still here," he said. He held her close. She used to be the one who held him that way when he was smaller. He felt her tears on his skin, but she was smiling. He's forgotten how it felt so safe.
The rain would leave by tomorrow, but tonight it felt like it was stronger than the days before.
The rain... brought down defenses, and was slowly washing away the wall that separated their hearts.
#
The sunlight was first seen through a crack on the dark clouds. Tomoki sighed with relief. Tomoko was asleep beside him, a pool of drool staining the mattress. He slapped her back to wake her. She rubbed her eyes, as she looked outside the light. It made her smile that the storm is finally over.
"Hey, you better take these sheets to the laundry basket," he said and still groggy, she followed, peeling the covers and going out.
When the sun was finally out, the clouds receding, they sat on the fallen tree outside their house. They celebrated by buying and eating rainbow-colored popsicles, sugared drops falling on their knees.
Their mother looked out the window as she tried to think of something tasty to cook for lunch and to celebrate the storm's passing. She smiled as she looked at her two children eating popsicles under the sunlight, Tomoki with his arm on Tomoko's shoulder with her leaning on him, not talking. Weird to see them that way. The last time she saw them that close was when they were kids.
She knew that they spent the storm together, and even if the rain soaked everything to grey the past six days, in a way they were all grateful for the storm for it made the sunlight ever more beautiful.