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Suddenly unable to bear the suffocating tightness, I tugged at the neck of my sweater. The air I inhaled scorched my frozen lungs like the heat of a sun-baked beach, and a single tear—which should have frozen over long ago—streaked down my cold cheek.
On a floor crowded with dancers sharpening their blades against one another for every scrap of a point, his beat was carved out—ignoring all regulations, driven only by his body's raw impulse. I had never danced like that. I never knew I could dance like that.
Suffocation was supposed to be synonymous with living, which is to say, synonymous with dancing. I stripped off the sweater Liana had given me—the one that was supposed to be comfortable—and abandoned it in the restroom. Just in my shirt, I struck a hold toward the vanity mirror. The muscles in my outstretched neck trembled with heat.
-
"Lame man."
The dull ache of the temperature difference—hot blood pumped from my heart, surging into the thin vessels of my cold, stiffened fingertips. My own exhaled breath was white, clinging to me like the smoke from his cigarettes that had become inseparable from my body along with the Rumba rhythm. Yet, this odorless, trembling breath melted into the cold air and vanished without taking a single step forward.
I began to run, heedless of the winter night wind slashing at my cheeks. Faster, faster. The scarf fluttering around my neck was an anchor, so I tore it off and threw it aside. Faster, faster. When I sprinted onto the deserted platform and found him inside the empty train car, a slow sweat finally caught up to my skin, seeping around my neck. He was always dressed so thinly; I felt as if I would burn just by touching the skin of his throat.
"I’ll stop if you want."
The touch of our lips was an extension of our held hands. The steps we carved to the free verse of the moving train traveled freely between the damp, gray concrete of Blackpool and the hot, parched sands of Havana. Tangled Christmas ribbons wound around our necks like a lifeline. Sharing the musty subway air with this man who was like the sun, the oxygen seeped into every cell of my body—like a gasp of air granted at the summit of a frozen mountain.
-
My terrified fingertips were tightening around his throat. My hand—large, pale, like that of a Reaper—clutched at his sun-kissed skin, which knew no restraint; pale blue veins surfaced coldly against my grip. The dark, sinister pleasure of holding someone under my thumb was obstructed by the dull gold chain that ran across his contorted face.
"You are my enemy now."
How could I have thought I was allowed to touch him? Why did I start running without a shred of resolve? I, who knew only the joy of dominance, had somehow yearned for the one thing I could never control.
"That’s not true."
After all, a Reaper can never commune with an Angel. To draw any closer would be to melt, and to fall.
-
I released her hand—she, clad in a black dress—and stood alone on the dance floor where she sent me forth.
"Will you do me the honor?"
Having yearned for him selfishly, having been saved by him, and after seeking him blindly until I let go of his hand by my own will—I now reached out once more. I stood in a place that was the polar opposite of the joy and agony of dominance. In that place whose very existence I had never known, I stood with an awkward, fumbling form. And as I trembled with the fear of taking that first step, I remembered, for the first time in my life, how to breathe.
Through our fingers, now surely entwined, his hot blood began to flow into me. The medal hanging heavily around his neck like a shackle—he cast it aside with effortless ease, and we faced each other on the floor.
Not in Havana, nor in Blackpool, but beneath this Tokyo sky where we finally took each other's hands.
Now, let us dance.