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An artist, by nature, is a curious being. They taste the world in bursts of color, see it in lights and shadows and moods instead of the turning of days. Yurika is an artist—not the best, she will often admit in the warm, sunlit privacy of the school's art room; she feels and envisions more than she is capable of expressing.
She's not good enough yet, and knows she's hardly close enough to where she wants to be. Her entire life feels stifled and dull in all ways relating to her home and herself. It is only in others and through them that she finds a meaning for her art, for her own soul.
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Meeting Junichi is an accident. The night is cold, and she's been dreading coming here, to this lousy sailor's bar where she knows everyone will see her as stuffy, uptight, and out of place. But she meets him at the door—the sign's text is too faded for her to see in the dark, the red and blue flicker of neon harsh against its illegible surface, and she wonders for a moment if she's even in the right place. He turns to her, all muted blue-grays and charcoal black, voice so warm it slips through the dense quiet of the snowy night without any effort.
She feels it on the skin just below the fur lining of her jacket collar. Immediately she hates the way he must see her—stiff, starched white, polished like her mother's fine silver—and wants to rectify it with everything she is. The more she watches him, the more she is utterly and hopelessly transfixed by him, and all of a sudden nothing is dull anymore. She is not the girl, the young lady, everyone seems to believe she is. Every inch of her is alive.
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Her days are surrounded by the sunlight, brassy gold like Junichi's trumpet, glinting off the blank spots of her canvas; the scent of cigarette smoke lingers in the blocks of town she passes through to get home. She thinks of his hands—casual in their firm, graceful movements, gentle and elegant all at once; artist's hands, like she imagines a lover's to be. She finds color blooming on her cheekbones more often than not, the brown of her eyes giving way to a deeper shade when her eyelids are weighted softly with daydreams.
In the calm of the art studio, away from other students, away from her parents, she feels centered. The hours eventually stretch until she loses herself in her work. Her fingers caress the ridges of dried acrylics; her thumb smooths wet paint into a gradient of tangerine orange and flushing pink. She's been kissed before, once by a boy whose father worked with her own, and he said she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. Yurika is tired of being beautiful. She would rather search for someone else's beauty, to be painted in their colors and hide within them for a little while.
Sentarou is beautiful, she thinks, in a reckless kind of way; he is bright and clear, fresh like the sea where they'd met the first time. As much as she enjoys basking in it, in Ritsuko's sweet glimmer and in Kaoru's green honesty of expression, there is something that pulls at her entire being, something darker and glowing that sparks and flows as a candle's flames might, and nothing else seems to hold her attention the way this does.
She unveils a blank canvas across the room and begins a new painting, this time in layers of swirling gray and blue, and wishes she could dive inside.
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There is something to be said for coincidence.
Yurika and Junichi are on the same wavelength from the beginning. It's a fact she feels in the deepest pit of her stomach, something strong enough to quell the voice reminding her of how often infatuation and irrationality stem from the same seed. She is aware of it the moment she walks into the basement and senses, more than sees, his eyes on her.
It is the first time she's seen him since they met. Her chest is tight, burning, and all she can notice is him practically luminous in the dim light of the tiny room, rich creams and soft colors against his lovely dark hair. She is ten times smaller before him and his knowing smile, yet bursting at the seams as those half-lidded black-coffee eyes stare at her like no one ever has. All she can do is watch—if she opens her mouth, her heart will leap out with whatever words may come.
He banters with her and Sentarou, laughing like the oxygen in the room isn't dwindling with each passing second. Yurika does her best to act normal, talks about painting and doles out desserts she'd bought after meeting his mother at the bakery. They talk about art and music; she listens to his every poetic word with keen ears. Sentarou runs up and down the stairs, splitting his time with Ritsuko and Kaoru and then the two of them. Everything seems to be going fine.
And then they are alone.
The coincidences keep on coming, Junichi says before a pause, and the look he gives her makes her hands shake. Whatever it is she's showing on her face, he knows. There is a thick second before he smiles at her from one side of his mouth, the subtlest change in his velvet calm, and stubs out his cigarette on the wrapper of the pastry she forgets she ever offered him.
Her hair is long enough that the ends nearly touch the piano bench. The back of his hand brushes it as he twists the end of the cigarette, letting the silken smoke rise between them; her breath catches as he turns his palm over to let the strands run along his skin, smooth and glassy.
Yurika, he whispers as though it's a question, or permission, or simply testing the way it feels on his tongue. Finding a proper way to respond is impossible. His voice is warm and enticing, amber as the whiskey in her father's office. She can almost taste it when he kisses her.
The kiss takes her by absolute surprise, but it's as if he anticipated this—his fingers hold her chin in place with a delicate grasp; his other hand moves from her frozen arm to her waist. What he doesn't seem to expect is how she melts into him, the way she loses herself in the soft press and pull of his lips. Her own hand finds his jaw, feeling it roll beneath her fingertips as they move to sink into his downy black hair.
She exhales unsteadily when he moves away for a fraction of a second, and then the unmistakable swing of the basement door stills them both. Someone—most likely Ritsuko's father or Sentarou—calls Junichi up top, and he leaves after a glance in her direction, though she hardly notices as a dreamy haze settles into her mind.
Her thoughts whirl like storm clouds, seeking answers. All she knows is that something this electric, this breathtaking, feels far from coincidence—more than anything, it feels like fate.
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He leaves for Tokyo before she can get another word in edgewise, and it's probably for the best. Even if she could see him again so soon she has no idea what to say.
Yurika's home is too big, too spacious, now more than ever. She craves the tighter spaces—that hole-in-the-wall bar smaller than her own room, the brick basement with the lingering scents of tobacco and dust. In her oversized bedroom, where her sighs disappear into thin air, all she can think of is how badly she doesn't want to belong here, lying inside an illusion of freedom. She has space to think here—too much, probably—and her family's money gives her the ability to buy whatever her heart desires, to believe she can choose.
Her fingers smooth over the dress her mother hung on a closet door. It's a demure, girlish lilac, embroidered at the collar with white flowers; she will wear it in the coming spring when her parents take her to meet another candidate for arranged marriage. The fabric crinkles when she grips it for a long, thoughtful moment, but she lets it go without another glance.
She moves to her vanity, sitting straight-backed on the cushioned stool, and brings her brush to the ends of her hair. Her mother always wanted her to keep it long. While Yurika herself loves it this length, flowing over her back like melted chocolate, she can see in the mirror why Junichi always calls her young lady. Her hair frames her face and willowy neck; it hugs the curves of her shoulders and elbows on its way down her back, and the effect encompasses her, shrouds her like a blanket.
She is tired of looking at herself, of thinking about herself and the future she dreads. The desk by the window has a notebook set neatly on top, one she often uses for unsuccessful sketching. Beneath the dreary, bruised light of dusk she sits, drawing bird after bird that visits her on the windowsill until her mother calls for dinner.
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For a few precious days, the winter is unseasonably warm, thawing into spring.
The first day the weather is nice enough, Yurika goes to the club to play tennis with her mother and her mother's friends. She comes back with a sore twisted ankle, mild sunburn peeking out from her white sweater, and an emptiness in her chest, and suddenly she longs for the cold.
To her mother's friends, she is not Yurika. To them she is simply the Fukahori heiress, the vessel for their future grandchildren, a symbol of merging of wealth and status. Their natural order of life. She is to remain pure and clean, quiet, accepting of the upbringing for which she is expected to be grateful.
The bath water is too hot against her sun-ripened skin. It stings as she settles further beneath the thin layer of suds, her hair floating toward the surface in dark, swirling tendrils, coming forward to embrace her shoulders and chest. She considers sinking downward until her face is fully submerged and staying there until the water rushes in, filling the hollow spots inside of her.
Instead, as it often does, her mind wanders to Junichi. His elegance is innate, nonchalant, brilliantly alluring. From what she remembers, what she's heard from Sentarou and Ritsuko, he is from a rather well-to-do family. A part of her clings desperately to the thought that something could come out of that knowledge, but she is only embarrassing herself. She feels younger than she is, too young and naked of experience in every part of the world but the one where she's caught.
It's been a while, but she can still feel his lips against hers, still smell his laundry detergent from how close he'd gotten. Perhaps she's fixated on an idea of him; aside from hearsay and their few hidden, intimate moments, she hardly knows him. But she remembers how their eyes seemed to find each other like magnets and how every single factor seemed to line up, leading them closer to each other despite everyone and everything around them, and the finer details fall to the wayside.
She wonders when she'll see him next. By the time he returns to Kyushu for spring break, she hopes he'll be waiting for her in the basement, a record crackling softly on its player when he stares up at her from the bottom of the stairs.
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Her father sits her down one Sunday evening, watching her carefully from the seat behind his desk. She feels less like his daughter and more like his client.
Yurika is approaching the end of her high school career, and he begins his monologue by reminding her of this. He wants to know what her plans are, what her intentions are in pursuing art or education, and she responds ambiguously. These meetings are not-so-subtle hints for her to recall her place, what her priorities should be. Her high marks at school, the awards she earns for her art are mentioned in passing, but never praised. A large part of her wonders if everything she finds enjoyment in will be dismissed as a hobby, and her throat goes dry and painfully thick.
Colors drains from her life, seeping out of every possible pore until all she is left with is a dull nothing. Even the painting she's been working on, all vibrant tropical in its palette, feels lifeless. She can feel the last of what small joy remains run down the drain as she speaks to her father.
It takes one look at the decanter by his desk, the glimmering crystal revealing the deep amber liquid inside, for color to surge back all at once. Suddenly, she finds words she's been only grasping at for weeks, and she calmly, resolutely walks upstairs to her room the second his lecture is over.
She sits at her desk and looks out the window, eyes soaking in the traces of fading blue on the horizon, then picks up her pencil. She doesn't stop writing until the sky is black as ink, the faintest traces of morning at its edges.
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The letters are started and finished in an almost fevered state. Yurika can't remember the last time she felt so inspired, if ever, and she relishes the almost frantic need to create washing over her in waves. For once, she feels like a real artist.
Her sketching notebook is rid of pages with each new letter, day by day, one by one. The sheets are filled with drawings of everything that comes to mind, floating between words she scribbles out in heated cursive. There is something so refreshing to her about the crooked lines of words, the jumbled format of her expression, the thick paper so unlike the dainty stationary she gets for Christmas every year.
She writes about everything that comes to mind; whatever has ever caught her eye or made her feel something new, something deeply resonating, finds its way onto the page. She talks about girls at school with whom she used to be friends. She talks about Sentarou, how he poses for her paintings and blushes like a child when he speaks, and surrounds the words with penciled vines and roses. She describes about the cliffs at the beach, about temple gardens and the newly paved roads by the shops on the streets near Mukae Records, and draws a rendition of each place. She writes about the way she can't stop humming a certain song under her breath these days, one that she heard in a bar just after Christmas, and how its singer seems to have found his way beneath her skin.
After each one ends itself however it sees fit, she tears the page from her notebook, keeping the frayed edges intact. She knows she cannot keep them in her house—if her mother or father found any of these, her life would only become more suffocating. In the midst of one of these frenzied nightly sessions, however, she figures out the perfect place to send them.
Junichi's address is easy enough to find in the public directory. Every morning on her way to school she leaves a letter in the post office dropbox, each one feeling like a piece of her bursting heart as she slips the envelope through the slot.
She has no idea if he'll respond, but she certainly hopes he will.
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Months later, Kaoru mentions that Junichi has been missing, and her heart does a somersault.
Relief tentatively creeps over her—the letters felt silly the more she thought about them, and she nearly came to regret sending them until now. He hasn't rejected her.
But she worries. Her paintbrush is like a ten-ton weight between her fingers, and the scene on her canvas becomes an opera as she adds a single tear to the god's face, an attempt at diversion. It is the only tear she will allow herself—she has no idea if Junichi has moved in with a woman somewhere, or if he's been hurt, or if he simply took a break from school. Their lives are this separate. Yurika doesn't know him enough to understand his habits or have a guess at where he might be.
Loneliness replaces whatever emotions course through her. She wipes the tear off her subject's face.
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She decides to escape her own head, seeking solace in distraction. But he is everywhere she goes.
She wants to indulge in sweets, to coat her tongue with strawberries and whipped cream and dispel the phantom taste of tobacco, but her favorite bakery is owned by his family. She tries to write, draw, paint; her motivation is lost when she remembers her letters and wonders if he ever read them. She can hardly listen to the radio; rock is too harsh on her aching head, classical songs are the sound of her melancholy, and jazz only reminds her of what she is missing. She even goes shopping with Sentarou—he is so good-hearted that it lifts her mood by proxy, and so humble it tugs at her heart—but once he mentions Jun-nii, it's all she can find herself asking about, drinking in each new story like ice water on days as hot as these, and she despises how easily she lets herself slip.
One afternoon, when summer humidifies the air and sends the insects buzzing, her feet take her back to the record store. There's something about it that's safe, neutral, even if the basement never was. Heat beats down on her back; her sundress sways against her knees as she walks.
She greets Ritsuko's father on her way in, then strolls along the few short aisles, fingers skimming along the tops of record sleeves as she passes. Among them she finds familiar titles and artists: Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Chet Baker. She slides the last one out without even thinking about it, stares at it in a daze.
When Sentarou tries to kiss her moments later it will be Junichi's singing playing in her head, soft as a lullaby, and she will almost give in to her friend's sudden forcefulness. It's not what she wants at all, but it's something, and she needs something. She will be glad later, even after she gets the stench of stale alcohol and smoke out of her mind, that they were interrupted.
There is only one person she wants to give these parts of herself to, even if he looks at her with empty eyes and treats her like a child after all the past months. The hurt is so fresh and real that she can't help but fall into it. She can't help but betray herself, leaving the shop in tears, because this wasn't supposed to happen.
Perhaps she is a child—foolishly, she'd believed he would be the same, or at least would want to see her half as much as she did him.
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Irrelevancy is a concept with which Yurika is quite familiar. In the wake of Junichi's prodigal return, it is the only word she can find to describe the way everything around her rapidly becomes distant, unimportant.
School is a mindless chore. With summer finally digging its heels in, settling and scorching over the entire prefecture, no one feels like participating anyway. Yurika finds it impossible to care. What do good grades matter in the end; what will college matter if she will be married off not long after graduating? Her life is not her own.
Art is the only means of honesty with herself, of making sense of her thoughts and what flows through her heart, but even now it is difficult for her to find a way to express the pain, the longing, the hopelessness that take turns guiding her. She hates feeling so out of control of her life, and a thought that worsens it all is the fact that she never had control to begin with.
No matter how deeply she wanted one, how greatly he inspired her without even being present, did she ever have a chance with him? Whatever searing, intense sort of connection they had now feels like she'd imagined it—is it a punishment for straying from her parent's wishes? As always, her questions go unanswered. Resentment seeps into her bones. She doesn't want to be this person, but this must be what she deserves.
During lunchtime she goes outside to lean against a building, feeling hollow, and watches the sun descend inch by inch toward the trees. The world continues to revolve without her having any part in it.
Her life was never her own.
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All she needed was a sign. And as luck—or perhaps something altogether stronger—would have it, she gets one in the form of Junichi himself.
Of course he moves into the old apartment complex half a mile from her family's house. Of course he is there, walking toward the building with heavy, shuffling feet. Her stomach plummets as she takes in his dark, wrinkled clothes, his terrible posture, his growing stubble and longish hair. He looks as empty as she has been feeling, all his cool, subtle color lying not simply dormant, but forgotten entirely.
Yurika makes the split decision to follow him, even if it means waiting outside his door, with its apartment number nailed crookedly to its surface, until he acknowledges her. After all, she is nothing if not curious—and she's been waiting long enough.
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The apartment is small, dusty, the tatami uneven and coarse and coated in gray light that streams through the filter of a borrowed curtain. The paint on the wall peels at the corners, standard cream yellowing as it meets the old wooden baseboards. His table is bare with the exception of an ashtray and a cup of utensils. The air is hot and stiflingly stagnant. None of it suits him at all.
Everything makes sense the moment she enters his room, hears his voice without the grit of a drunken stupor, sees the way his fingers shake when he stubs out the cigarette she'd tried to smoke. Whatever it is that's ailing him is as far away as his eyes look. But Yurika is here, here in Kyushu in his cramped rental, and she sees him as what he believes he is: some kind of low life, undeserving of anything. Someone who rejects others because he rejects himself. Someone completely alone in the world.
Suddenly a tightness grips her chest, and when it releases it leaves her feeling new, more resolved than when she decided to come here.
When he pushes her to the floor, she lets him. As much as he tries to scare her, his voice purring in her ear with vacant threats, it doesn't work. His heartbeat thrums erratically beneath his pilled sweater, beneath where her palm lays to either fight against him or bring him closer, and she immediately understands him.
When he gets up to stumble toward the sink, she cuts her hair with his rusted scissors. If he can be so different, then she can too. She wants him to see that anyone is capable of change—not just him, and not always for the worst. There is no time to mourn the silken tendrils floating to the floor, not when her heart nearly bursts from a combination of freedom and nervous anticipation, when the rush of making her own choice is nearly intoxicating.
When he pleads with her to stop, she faces him with a firm, fearless set to her mouth. She will not be pushed away, not when she has been fighting the same battle all this time and lived to tell.
When he cries, she falls in love with him. No one is ever vulnerable around her—not when she is always seen as the cold, elegant young lady Junichi first took her to be. She loves him, and it feels right that he is the first one to break this barrier of hers. She hopes that she's broken his too, if even by a little bit.
When he finally puts his arms around her, breathing her in, she does the same. They kneel there until their legs grow painfully sore and keep each other from crumbling to pieces.
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For weeks, her world is like a living canvas. Her skin tingles at the surface with something humming bright, subtle but charged. Each breath she takes is full of something new and sweet, sitting on her tongue and filling her lungs with secret delight. For weeks, she feels like everything is at her fingertips—she has something of her own now, her own private feelings and experiences, her own happiness.
It is not all happy, but she relishes every moment. The days in class tick by at an excruciatingly slow pace, but the walk down the slope toward Junichi's apartment is practically a float as she makes her way through streets and city blocks. He is always there—sometimes asleep, sometimes writing at his table, sometimes waiting for her.
The afternoons are spent in gray-green hazes, in faded black sweatshirts and cigarette smoke and the dried paint on the inside of her wrists. He lets his fingers sweep delicately over the blunt ends of her hair, grazing in gentle lines across her neck and giving her goosebumps while they talk about art, music, the city, themselves, each other. She lets herself get comfortable on the wrinkled sheets of his unmade futon, surrounds herself in the sound of his voice, the low crooning of his trumpet and the songs he sometimes hums, the smooth warmth of his presence; she soaks him in like sunlight after a long winter.
They only touch each other in the smallest ways—she wants more, so much more, but he is a gentleman whether he believes it or not. She lets her hand brush his on her way into the apartment whenever he answers the door. Their fingers tangle slowly, softly during the hours they talk, as if moving of their own accord. He tucks her hair behind her ear when she comes to lie beside him in bed, staying in comfortable silence until they both fall in and out of delicious catnaps. He gives her a chaste, lingering kiss on the cheek whenever she leaves for the evening, the stubble on his chin scratching her lips as he does.
Yurika is sure it cannot last forever, but she will do her best to make it. Something in the way Junichi embraces her, handles her with such disbelieving fragility, tells her it is worth a try.
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Time passes. The air grows colder, thinner. Their days together become shorter and quieter, then stop altogether once her parents find out where she's been spending the time meant for painting at school.
All it took was one nosy neighbor, some friend of her mother's who had seen Yurika walking up the stairs with Junichi after they'd gone to pick up takeout. All it took was one poke of a needle to her iridescent bubble to put her back in her place.
She knows she doesn't belong here, stuck in this house full of empty rooms with parents who treat her like property. She knows Junichi doesn't belong in this oppressive, stifling town with parents who treat him like nothing. He is meant for greater things—as somber as he's come to be, he still has the same cool radiance, that confidence that could take him wherever he pleases, something she is sure she doesn't possess.
The night feels huge enough to swallow her. Her throat tightens, and suddenly she finds herself slipping on her coat and tiptoeing through the stiff silence of the house, hands and the muscles in her legs trembling with the effort to stay unnoticed. She is in her boots, her silk pajama pants tucked inside, by the time she reaches the back door. The night is sharp, black, freezing once she finally escapes.
Though it's not far to Junichi's place, and despite the dead of night, fear pulses through her like blood. It is not the fear of danger that seizes her. There is a claustrophobia that manages to labor her breath before she even begins running; a panic stems from the tenuous, slipping grasp she has on the one she loves, on herself.
The key beneath his straw mat is like ice on her fingers. She waits until her breath calms to a normal pace before sliding it into the lock and welcoming herself inside.
Her boots come off quietly, her coat landing on the floor with a soft hiss of fabric, and the instant her bare foot touches the flooring of his apartment, his deep sleeping breaths a soothing rhythm just steps away, she feels safe. If she is meant to be anywhere, it is here.
Junichi stirs when she slips beneath the comforter of his futon, and she represses a sigh at the warmth of his body heat, of him. Charcoal eyes, concerned and confused in their sleepiness, open to find her moving closer, and his arms come up to wrap around her.
He doesn't say anything—he never seems to have to, he just knows—and only looks at her, brushes strands of hair from her face and runs a thumb across her cheek. She wants to cry, especially when he presses a long kiss to her forehead, but she settles for curling into him. This is a closeness she needs, a place to hide from the world and whatever she is running from. His hand moves across her back, steady and calming, as he pulls her further into his embrace.
Neither of them sleeps. When the washed white light of dawn peeks out from behind his curtains, she moves to leave and walk home before her parents wake up, before the world stops being still and theirs for a little while longer. He gives a slow, solid kiss to her lips, and then lets her go.
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Later that very same day, he tells her he's leaving.
Yurika sensed this coming, knows there is close to nothing she can do to stop him, but it still hurts. Part of her breaks when he thanks her for supporting him all this time. She understands how truly grateful he is and why he doesn't ask her to come along, but it still hurts. Deeply.
He cares for her the same way she does him. This is a fact that she knows, feels in the walls of her chest, trickling down her spine in watercolor that brings her to life over and over again. He wants to protect her as much as he doesn't want to drag anyone down with him, into the unknown or wherever it is he plans to go. But she is through with being protected—she has had enough protection for a lifetime.
Heart bleeding, she walks home and gets dressed for her meeting with another potential arranged husband. She packs a bag just in case.
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Ultimately, Junichi is the one who pulls her onto the train. Yurika is thankful not only for her foresight in bringing along her necessities, but for her stubborn need to fulfill her curiosity, her need for answers—she's certainly got them now.
The night route before them is a long one, but it gives them plenty of time to figure out what to do once they get to Tokyo. She is giddy as reality catches up to her, far more quickly than the speed of the train she and Junichi are on, and the seemingly endless possibilities before them are at once overwhelming and freeing. She has never gotten to choose before, but she can choose anything now.
As the train keeps moving forward, they spend the night gazing out at the dark, blurring scenery and the bright country stars, sharing tart pieces of tangerines and speaking in optimistic trajectories. Junichi smiles at her with that same sure expression he gave her the first time they met, eyes knowing and depthless, and she responds with a smile of her own.
She isn't quite sure where they're going or where exactly they will end up, but she knows that if she is meant to be anywhere, it is here with him.
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