Notes: *this* is emphasis, and / /this/ / is thoughts and/or
memories. Okay? Let go, then.
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to be
It's getting
dark out and it hasn't been the best day for business. It's cold and even the school girls don't venture out into this kind of
weather. Not even for *them*. Not even when they know that competition will be slim
to nonexistent. Outside the shop, the wind is a pest, catching hair and coat
and blowing them around. Blowing the plants around so that it
is a struggle to carry them inside. Numbing fingers so that all Aya
wants is to finish sweeping and tidying so that he can go inside where it is
warm.
Across the street, a couple huddles under a
shared coat, bent against the wind, laughing as they struggle to keep a grip on
it and on the packages they're carrying. His voice is deep, a low chuckle as he
almost drops a box. Her laughter is light, and high, carrying across the street
to where Aya stands. He stops sweeping. He stares.
He used to laugh like that, he thinks. Once. Like nothing mattered but the now. Like the world,
even on such a dreary day as this, was bright. Now nothing matters to him but
all those yesterdays, and even on the sunniest of days, his eyes find the
darkness, the shadowed recesses. He just can't find the laughter in him,
anymore. Can't find the tears that used to cure and soothe. Can't
even find the pain that once needed soothing.
It used to be there, he thinks. He used to
be happy. Sad. Now he is neither. Now he feels like an
empty shell.
He watches the couple struggle down the
street until they turn a corner and disappear from sight. He hadn't been able
to catch a glimpse of their faces, but he is sure that they were beautiful. He
stands with his broom in his hands and stares at the road they've disappeared
down. He can still hear her laughter chiming on the air, carried back to him by
the wind.
Almost, he wishes they'd stopped for
flowers, so he could be a part of that laughter, then shakes his head to clear
the thought. Closes his eyes to banish the image of them,
huddled close together. Warm. Secure. But it's Youji's voice that draws
him back, telling him to hurry up, he's got better things to do than play
love-struck florist, and isn't it obvious that the woman's taken? Stop mooning
after her, Aya.
And anyway, the weather's shit and he's
hungry, and the sooner we finish, the sooner we can have dinner and he can go
to bed. He's had a long day, and man is he looking forward to a nice hot shower
and a nice, warm bed.
Aya looks away from the now empty street, and turns to face him. He's standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame in some kind of pose that, if it were not Youji, Aya would swear he was mimicking from someplace. He has his hair tied back in that short ponytail that does nothing to keep his hair back from his eyes. A cigarette dangles from his fingers, and, despite the darkening gloom, sunglasses hang low on his face. He's peering over them at Aya.
Aya looks at him without meeting his green
eyes and then back to that street where the couple had disappeared down. In
another life, he thinks, they could have been like that. Carefree.
Happily ignorant. He sighs and goes back to sweeping,
gathering wilted and dead leaves and blossoms with his broom. His fingers are
numb, and he concentrates on that so he can stop prodding at the numbness
inside, trying to encourage feeling where there is only an empty, hollow
feeling.
"Aya? Are you okay?"
Youji. Aya doesn't answer him. He's not sure how
to. He doesn't even know if he is okay, or how 'okay' feels anymore. But . .
. yes, he thinks. Yes, I'm okay.
Nothing more than that, though.
"Aa."
Youji's frozen in the doorway, looking at
him like Omi does, sometimes, like he's trying to see through Aya's shell. Like
he thinks there's something he should say, but isn't sure what. As if he thinks
saying the wrong thing might be dangerous. There's a long silence between them,
and finally, he just tells Aya that he's going to finish mopping, then check
back to see if he needs any help. He starts to turn to go back inside, but
stops and leans towards the other.
"You're *sure* you're okay?"
/ /No./ /
"Aa."
Even if Aya could explain what was wrong,
even if something were wrong--and he isn't at all sure that something is--he
wouldn't know how to explain it to Youji. After all, could Youji fix it? Could
he help him? Aya doesn't think so. Aya doesn't let myself ask if Youji *would*.
Instead, he closes his eyes for a long moment, then
goes back to clearing the displays.
The wind's getting colder, and picking up
even more force. The clouds are getting thicker, too, and they're blocking out
the rest of the evening light, so that it's almost as dark as night. Aya tilts
his face away from the wind, to keep the sharp bits of snow from stinging his
cheeks and eyes.
There are things, he thinks, that he could
have been, if things had turned out differently. He could have been a son to be
proud of, a brother to grow up with and brag to, and maybe, one day, a lover to
be held and to be held by.
But how could he tell Youji that? That what
Youji mourns the loss of he's never had. That he's thought of a million things
to whisper to a lover in the dark, but knows there will never be a lover to
whisper them *to*. That the words would never make it past
his throat now, even if he had someone. Because he can't trust enough anymore
to leave himself open like that, to pour his heart out
to another. Because, honestly, he doesn't think he has anything in hisheart
*to* pour out. He has only one thing he carries within him, and, when he looks
closely at it, he knows it is fear.
Fear of being alone, of being hurt. Of
being disgraced. Of failing. Of the dark, even, now
that he knows what lurks there. Fear of what he is and
what he will become.
And that, he thinks, isn't something that
you should give to another. That isn't something that someone can help him
with. And how could he ask Youji for help in the first place?
How do you cure fear? Loneliness?
How do you cure not feeling anything at all?
Aya doesn't know the answer to it. He does knows that when he works in silence with Youji instead of
chasing him away like he does the others he is looking for friendship. Understanding. Maybe love. But that isn't something he can
deal with yet. Not something he can accept, or even give, no matter how much he
may want to. He thinks sometimes that Youji might be the answer, but quickly
brushes that thought aside. Youji has troubles enough of his own without trying
to solve Aya's too.
He keeps working in silence until finally, Youji
does slip back inside, closing the door quietly behind him to keep the cold
out, leaving Aya standing in the growing dark, his hair tossed by the wind,
flecks of snow spotting his shirt and apron. Aya looks back at the closed door,
and then up at the sky.
There aren't many stars visible. Most of
them are hidden behind thick, dark clouds and those that aren't are muted by
city lights, but there are enough for his eyes to settle on. A
few lone spots of brilliance peering down through gaps in the overcast sky.
His hands are cold and he puts them in his
pockets to try to stop the stinging and leans back against the glass of the
display window. It's cool against his back, but he can almost feel the warmth
of the shop beyond that.
There are things he could have been, he
thinks again, if things had turned out differently. He thinks that maybe it
would be nice to tell Youji that. To tell him he could have been more than
this. That he could have been something different. It would be nice to tell him
that and see how he would react. To see if he would see more than the killer
and the shields that Aya has made strong by necessity. Youji, in his own jaded
fashion, has a way of seeing through people, and Aya thinks that maybe it would
be nice to be seen, for once. Not for what he has been forced to become, but
for what he could have been. For what, deep inside himself, he thinks he might
still be.
But Aya knows it doesn't matter. He is what
he has become and the role he's been given isn't one that he can shrug off that
easily. It is a role he must play until the end of his days, numbered as they
may be.
The last of the stars are swallowed up by
the clouds, and Aya drops his eyes away from all that darkness and settles them
on the gray of the pavement by his feet, on the golden pool around him where
light spills out of the shop window. He thinks that maybe he should ask Youji
one of those million questions he had thought up, tell him one of those million
things, and see how he would react to it. If he would laugh.
If he would even understand what it was Aya was trying to tell him. If he
would—
Aya straightens so that he is no longer
leaning against the glass, and takes a last look up at the sky, and then at the
road where the couple had disappeared down, now shadowed,
dark and forbidding. He turns away from that darkness to look through the
window into the shop, where Youji is surveying the condition of the floor with
a mop over one shoulder, looking pleased with himself.
He's grinning around his cigarette.
Aya shakes his head. He still hasn't
finished clearing the display racks. He turns away from the window to finish
his work, looking up and away quickly when a couple of school children race
down the street. Late home from cram school, no doubt, and
anxious to be out of the cold. Anxious to be home, where it is warm and
safe and comfortable. They never so much as glance his way, but again he
watches until they are out of sight, staring after them.
He used to be like that, too. He knows
that. It's just hard to believe that he was ever that young. Its
hard to believe that had ever felt so safe as to go tearing down a street
without so much as a look around. It feels like he's been jumping at shadows
and looking over his shoulder for a long time now. As long as
he can remember. He wonders if it’s possible to have two pasts.
"Awfully distracted aren't we?"
It's Youji again. His
voice somewhere between mocking and teasing. Aya doesn't turn around
this time, doesn't acknowledge him. He wonders what Youji's seeing, looking at
him. If he sees the emptiness.
"No." Aya says, even though he
isn't sure what Youji was implying with that question, or if he was implying
anything at all. The defensive response is automatic by now. This time, though,
he freezes as it comes out of his mouth, his eyes still following the school
children, distant now. Small figures, far down the street. He thinks he used to
be friendlier, a long time ago, but the memory is lost in a jumble of images,
real, and dreamt up. In a jumble of nightmares and
could-have-beens. A jumble of voices he doesn't recognize anymore, if he
ever did.
Aya has a lot of could-have-beens. He
hadn't yet chosen a path for himself when this life was forced on him. There
are a lot of things he could have been. A lot of places he could have gone. A
lot of paths he could have taken, had things turned
out differently.
The temptation to linger outside with the
dark is strong, but Youji is still standing in the doorway, waiting for him.
Aya sighs again and finishes sweeping, stacking the racks and carrying them
over to the door so Youji can shove them into some corner of the shop for the
night. He doesn't meet the green eyes that linger on him for a second longer
than is comfortable, but looks up so soon as he feels
Youji move away. Watches him move across the newly mopped floor, grumbling
about the weight of the racks and how it makes no sense to put plant outside in
this weather anyway.
Outside, the road is empty, and dark. Snow
swirls in the wind and gathers on the pavement, catches in Aya's hair as he
takes a last, lingering look at the sky, at all those unwalked paths, now
forever locked against him, against them. He wonders if they matter at all to
Youji. And he wonders if he's nothing inside, could that ever be enough for
Youji?
And if all those once possible futures
don't matter, if what he was and what he might have been are nothing but
phantoms and fantasies, then he wonders, is it enough to be what he is now?
What he had become? Is it enough to just be?
~owari