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“What would you have done if I had killed your father Sayaka?” I wondered, noticeably out loud.
Sayaka’s arms untangle to a loose fitting around my waist, one propped up to look at me on my side, the other mostly unmoved.
Silence and sharp ruffles of the duvet are all my ears catch, but I can feel her absence of breath from my skin, and I can vividly picture loud eyes and a slightly agape mouth.
I want to turn over to relish the unknown sight, but something is stopping me from turning.
“You—,“ Sayaka struggles to get her words out. She told me one time her mind works that way, like a strong, harsh river. Too fast, too much.
A concept a brain like mine can’t seem to grasp.
I find it fascinating, but she finds it a burden most times.
It’s upsetting. To see her unable to appreciate the art that shapes my heart.
I do want to see her.
But I can’t turn around.
“But why? I—,“ she sighs in confusion, perplexity and something else I can’t pinpoint. Sayaka’s like that. You figure everything out but the key, the core, the one most important detail.
“..I don’t understand why you’re asking such a thing, I don’t even know where to start I just—.” She constantly stops and starts again. Does she have that many contemplations of what she would do? Is what she plans that difficult to decide?
Another soft sigh followed by a “..Why?”
It baffles me again.
And somehow, it gave me the keys to unlock my turning, to face her. She’s almost concerned.
Must she know why? Is my intention such a major factor to creating her answer?
Moving into a side sit, I question,
“Is my intention such a breaking point for you? It would remove all of your guilt, would it not?” I tilt my head at the question.
Violet strands sway in the air to then rest on her back as she sits on her ankles, facing me but fingers crossed and uncrossed, tangling more with every deeper thought. But how deep?
“My…guilt..isn’t the problem.” She gulps and looks down at her hands again. “It’s why you would kill my—sigh —over everyone else you don’t..but could.” The sound trails slower and quieter as the answer goes.
Why would I? Over everyone else? Who else does she think is fair competition?
.…Ah, I see. Like a miracle almost promised. She sees considerable value in a murder forged by my own hands.
She can’t look at me still, eyes still glued to her trembling hands. She doesn’t want to look at me, but why?
A giggle reacts to the concept in front of me,
It’s just too silly.
“You find so much value in a killing by my own hands, and yet you can’t even look at me right now. Are your hands of higher value to you than my mouth? That’s debatable.”
I can’t tell whether I truly find her behavior silly, or my own.
“Of course not!—I mean-,”
She blushed a little, at which comment is also debatable.
“If I can’t even look at you…it’s much harder to get alone answer such a question.” She nervously explains.
But I always thought facing your opponent makes it easier to target them. If you can see it, you can do it.
She should look at me. She should target me. I just don’t get it.
I really do wonder what answer she’s buried.
“I can’t look at you if you…knew. If you knew, and my attempts to cover up such a thing went noticed to everyone but me. I can’t look at you if you knew, and you considered it even for a second, but stopped because of my ridiculous weakness for him. I can’t look at you if you looked at me, knowing what was under my makeup,
and I didn’t even notice.”
Sayaka was choking into a sob by the end.
Ah.
We were on completely different pages, like always.
How sweet.
I turn and sit up to meet her face, to soak up the mesmerizing sight, and then sulk that she possibly thought I thought of her in such a way. The concept of our polarity in interpretations was sugary sweet, but her sadness leaking out of her was faintly bitter, which somehow was worse on my heart.
It was a curious feeling I never felt. Only in these situations, only with her,
I felt.
She doesn’t sob yet, just gentle tears that skate on her skin. Lovely little tears.
“I can’t believe, I didn’t—notice.”
She’s starting to struggle with forming her sentences, every letter blocked by another sob, followed by her hands covering and wiping her face, smearing the shine her tears once reflected to a sheer glow all over her.
Her tears quickly move from gentle to harsh, and I know the sting in every heartbeat should be stronger, but she’s just so beautiful when she cries, cries about something my eyes can’t seem to reciprocate.
But hers did, with saline contacts.
My eyes are just baffled.
I intertwine my hands with hers.
Now she can’t avoid me.
“I should be the one crying my love, not you. Because, I didn’t know.” I soften my words to further bandage her wounds, and I pray it’s comforting.
One pair of wrapped hands, guided by mine, wipe her tears with my thumb, then the back of her palm. Sniffles and widened eyes meet my gaze before I hear her response.
She sniffles again, “W-what..?—but then why else would you have done that, to him?”
It seems we both are baffled now. Oh what a night to cherish.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” I giggle again at the thought.
“My intention isn’t the focus here, Sayaka. It’s you. The question wasn’t about me wanting to kill, it was about you knowing it. Whether I told you, or you saw it, or other circumstances.”
Her face contorts to an even deeper level of confusion, an expression I find so special.
“What would I do…if you brought death into my life?”
—
Art’s purpose isn’t just pleasure, it’s pain, a pain of missing and a pain of awakening. It’s the laughter that hurts your stomach, the sweets that devour your teeth, the roses that you can’t look away from, even throughout their death.
It’s the love you become before death becomes you.
Before Sayaka, death was my muse.
Freedom meant the death of my chains, identity meant the death of my lifelong coercion, death, in those senses, was long, bitter, and ugly.
And yet it was all I ever wanted.
But why? Sayaka could never make sense of it I’m sure.
I remember when I was a child, around 8, I often walked through fields and forests my family did not own. I knew someone else owned the property, and yet the very thought excited me. Did I want to be caught? What would happen if I was? Would the owner know who they were murdering? Would that change anything?
All those desperate questions, and yet none went answered, simply because my family made sure none of the owners did such a thing.
Eliminated all odds.
How boring.
“They’re protecting you Kirari. You know what some people would do.” Ririka was a grounder for I who had wings. It superficially was protection, but deep down, it was punishment.
She couldn’t see that, most couldn’t, but I saw that grin on grandma’s face.
I found a way to crawl out of their clasp. Because boredom is a choke you can’t get out of. No matter how much you wriggle, spit and bite, your only hope is that it lets you go.
So you will do anything, anything to persuade it so.
That’s what it feels like to see your maid blearily hover over you, saying something you can’t make out
“Thechabgsbhsv, flwhsvhsbdecgsgsgem”
Oh, but the flowers were too pretty to ignore. She can’t blame me can she?The ones around the lake I had watched from the bridge above, that I had made sure was much too far for the maids to find.
Common and exotic petals of all types framing the muddied banks.
I wonder who owned these beauties?
The tuberose, chrysanthemums, Lilacs, daisies, lavender, hyacinths and so on at my manor, were printed with historical suffering on my ceilings, walls, folding screens, floors. Fake flowers infesting every inch of the manor, I could count the amount of times I had seen a real one.
So when I looked down, each ripple looked like a breath of fresh air, different from the air I had been breathing my entire life.
…
Going back would be suffocating…
And these water lilies are always most rich under the surface.
….
Coolness and unfamiliarity washed over my skin, first my feet, my knees, all the way up to my waist. I could start to see the ends of my hair floating from the surface tension, wiping away any sparkles to be given from the sun above me.
It warmed my back, but I didn’t like being warm.
“Miss Momobami! Please! Return home!”
I could choose only the air of the manor, or the lake. The lake with flowers. Real ones. Or the manor with the fake ones.
“Your presence is highly demanded! Please! Where are you?”
The world has never allowed me to touch the real thing. Feel the real thing. Flowers, the back of an eye socket, death.
“Your family demand you must return!”
..Will the darkness below set me free?
—
“If I’m being honest, I don’t just not understand why you’re asking because of the abruptness of the question. It’s because I’m sure you already know the answer.”
Sayaka’s tone and demeanor is back to normal, but her face is still puffy with red splotches from only a few seconds ago.
She can’t see it, but I look the same.
“It wouldn’t change a thing?” Looking away and letting go of our hands I make my way towards the balcony to my right. Sitting on the round table instead of the chairs, my body facing sayaka still but my face looking elsewhere.
I wanted to hear it from her. For her to leave her thoughts up to my imagination, sometimes it’s just not enough.
I can feel her staring, confused and somewhat hurt at the break. She just doesn’t understand.
“No.”
My head snaps back at her, my guesses seem to have failed me, but my soul has not. It was now clawing at me, and her, to know more, understand more. No? But why? How? What else is there? What more is there to know about Sayaka Igarashi?
She lifted her legs off the bed to sit on the side of it and let them idle, keeping her gaze glued to the floor.
“If you did that…to my father, it wouldn’t be the same. You are right in assuming my love for you would never change, but it would change within myself..I think.”
She sighs before continuing, “What I did—when I..killed my father. It’s hard to wrap my head around, it was all so chaotic in the moment, but…I think one reason it was..structured..that way..was because it was my first taste of autonomy. True autonomy, away from him.”
Autonomy.
She hesitated before responding again.“When you told me, ‘respond in love, not hate. It’s what’s best for you, and that’s all he wants.’ I was shocked when you told me, and I still can’t figure out if you know this, but I’ve been told almost the exact same thing before. From him. From..a God. That’s all he wanted.”
Murdering a god and loving another, just what is her key?
“I didn’t think in the moment, my brain shut off in some sort of way—like in the tower. It’s weird, but it gave me butterflies. I guess..I can’t imagine getting butterflies from you murdering him instead, not because I wouldn’t have..liked it. But because it would have never happened.”
I notice how my head is now tilted and my eyes squinted, I just can’t fathom what she is saying.
“You said it yourself, you didn’t know, and your focus for the question is on what I would do, not why you would do it, because you don’t even know why you would yourself.”
She is so utterly fascinating.
“Please go on.”
I don’t think I’ve blinked in a while. I’ll do that later.
She looks up at me with a fresh blush and sharp inhale, biting her bottom lip slightly. I wonder why.
“You..have told me, that you want autonomy for yourself, from the pride and greed of your family. I have offered my..services..but you sternly refused on the basis that it is you and you only who can efficiently do such a thing. To break the chains, to set yourself free.”
I am reminded of the cuffs that still lay on my wrists, of the chains even faraway lakes and foreign atmospheres cannot rip apart. No matter how pretty the flowers, they will not last long.
No matter how long I stay under to look at them,
No matter—
“I wouldn’t have killed him if you didn’t call me that night Kirari. I wouldn’t be free if it wasn’t for you. We can’t do each other’s jobs completely, but we can aid one another in them.”
The puffiness was gone. Her complexion was lit up not by the tears no longer there, but by the moonlight behind me.
She looked at me as if I was the moon.
“Because the darkness in your mind doesn’t set you free, it’s the light around you.”
Enigmatic. Perfect in every way. Just the response I would have never imagined.
The one I needed.
..I hope my mouth that spilled those words for were the light for Sayaka, the one that told her I didn’t know.
The snatching of those files that Wednesday, that look, the slight puffiness of her cheek, the atmosphere itself. Separately it was typical, all together, there was something else I was missing, that i couldn’t see. I was sure of it.
I look at her blushing face every moment, of course I’d notice if even a single cell was inflamed. How could I not?
I used the same mouth to spit nasty things to someone I shouldn’t say those things to. Hands that gifted justice, decorated with humiliation and promised all the love I could feel.
All the disgust it aimed towards him.
It didn’t go the way I planned, certainly not with those beautiful but culpable bruises on her legs. But the result was what I wanted, what she wanted.
So I couldn’t help but think, should I have just killed him instead? Would she have preferred that over the opportunity I plated for her so nicely?
So what better to do than ask.
The way she cried. Sobbed. For some strange reason I just couldn’t tell her.
The same mouth that said such vile things, I now couldn’t say anything. I opened it, but nothing came out.
Such a curious, but excruciating feeling.
But now I know, god, she just fascinates me every time. Makes my mind discover new pathways I didn’t even think existed, that I can’t even see vividly albeit feel the breeze of the hike down my spine.
Caressing her soft skin, applauding her self with every stroke and smile, my smile grew stronger at the thought.
Remembering what that maid said to me down below, it was far from the truth.
“Your chains are still tight Miss Momobami. Flowers only decorate them.”
She hadn’t met my Sayaka. The one so strong she could melt iron, block a tsunami, open eyes to mind-forged manacles.
I remember too how the water lilies looked underwater.
Sayaka looks like violets and lilies.
And I have to say, lilies are much more beautiful above ground than below.