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For everyone.
Her hunch had been right. Here, on this street, a fresh, untouched snow makes her neighborhood pure again, fluffy and white and young, and she reaches down to feel this almost new substance with childlike fascination. Illuminated by the silver white of the moon and reflecting the dark blue of the jewel-colored sky, the snow on the ground is, at that moment, the single most beautiful think Naoko has ever seen. She doesn’t even think the countryside could compare to the urban beauty her eyes swallow hungrily. How anyone can not see this twinkling glory as almost a miracle is beyond her. Truly, such grace is the work of the gods, not the weather. With a ghostly trail of breath flowing from her lips, she walks, thinking of the glory of life, how this single stream of smoky breath is the only allegory for all that is and all that ever will be, this exhalation of the concentrate of life, evident from this floating apparition of molecules, to lovers in a warm bed watching each other’s chests rise and fall and relishing the sweetest moments, to the maternal love that radiates from a mother’s open hands and arms and mouth as she watches her children grow to be adults, from swinging from jungle gyms to their first car to children of their own. This, Naoko thinks, this is what it means to truly be alive.
Without much thought, Naoko’s feet carry her to the highway. Around here, she thinks sweetly, reminiscing on her adolescence, is where I found myself. She climbs a small snow mound to survey the silent road. It is colored a hue of grayish blue that can not be painted or recreated, it’s just a single color that belongs to the snow and the moon and the sky and the pavement, not to people. Occasionally, the golden phantoms of headlights sweep by, but this road is one of the few that slumbers at this hour. Feeling like she’s five-years-old again, fifteen-years-old again, twenty-five years old again, Naoko runs to the dividing line in the center and strolls leisurely along the solid strip of paint.
Ahead is the overpass, famous for its dilapidated condition. It is rarely necessary to cross it, for on one side is the sparkling city, and on the other there is nothing but tall factories and old train tracks, all fenced off. Naoko always thinks that this industrial part is fenced off and hidden amongst urban foliage to make this bridge more romantic. She has always admired the city view here, the oversized black bullies of office buildings and the skyscrapers, all ablaze with fantastic light and the neon rainbow of 24-hour convenience stores and strip clubs sets the sky alight with colors. On a night when soft flakes of snow land with little whispers onto pavement and grass and leaf, the lights make the mist in the air shimmer. The city glows tonight.
She feels nostalgic, quite suddenly, and can remember when she herself had sat on the rail of the overpass, the rail that was just wide enough to fit a person sitting or lying down, and kissed, for the first time, her husband. It had been on a night not unlike this, and she leans against the inside tunnel of the overpass with a stinging in her heart, and smiles because this is how one remembers the happy times when overwhelmed by tragedy. Words can’t describe how much Naoko misses Masuyo, and though she can clearly remember the wretched evening of twisted metal and flickering headlights, she can also recall those nights when their hands had been intertwined as they surveyed this city, this city of sleep and life and death and love, and kissed beneath the incandescent moon.
Naoko considers going up to the bridge, to relive her past for only a minute, when she hears footsteps. They are not behind her or beside her, but above her. Through the bridge, amplified by the thick silence of the snow and night, she can hear two people coming. There are no words, and their footsteps crunch on the snow above her. She can hear the noise of the crisp steps shift, and she moves to the other side of the overpass and looks up: four feet, four legs, and two people, sitting on the rail, where Masuyo and she had sat so many happy years ago.
As soon as she retreats back under the bridge, she hears a voice, a teenager, or maybe just a little boy, say quietly, “I thought this was too beautiful to pass up.”
Another voice replies softly, “It is beautiful.” This voice belongs to another boy, much more soft-spoken, but masculine. Almost like Masuyo’s, when they had been young. The other voice is a little lower, and almost nasal, even in its gentleness. Right now, the two seem to be exchanging tender words spoken in low voices, as young lovers do, because they cannot find the loudest way to express themselves, so they talk in the quietest way they can. Naoko moves to the other side of the overpass and peeks up. She can see the backs of the people now, too skinny to be adults, too tall and developed to be children, and they both have their ears. They are sitting close, bathed in the illustrious light of the moon, and Naoko rests her head on her arms. She is curious, and touched, by these two boys.
What she notices most is that they are not wearing coats. She doesn’t understand why, because outside it is so cold that her cheeks have become fleshy pieces of ice and if she spits, she guarantees to herself it would freeze before landing. But one is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, the other a shirt with the sleeves cut off, and both are wearing jeans, and she knows that this is not proper snow attire. When the one with curly hair turns to survey his surroundings, she notices he is wearing an eye-patch, but she cannot understand why. These two details make these two boys so much more interesting.
A happy sigh comes from the one with sea-foam green hair, and the other scoots a little closer. Maybe they are cold, Naoko thinks, but she remembers how she used to shift closer to Masuyo, just to close that fraction of an inch gap between them, to be as close and she could possibly be to him. She smiles in bittersweet remembrance, to herself and to the urban setting and to these quiet boys, and rubs her eyes through her mittens. The cold reminds her of peppermint and candy canes, and Christmas, and children. She scrapes some snow from the barrier next to her and silently makes a snowball.
“You don’t think Soubi will notice we’re gone, do you?” asks Eye-patch, surprising Naoko. She looks up. The boy is looking at his friend with a look, a questioning look.
The other shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. He’s too busy with Ritsuka. He won’t notice.”
Naoko thinks she hears a melancholy tone in his voice, but it’s her imagination, because he smiles genuinely back at the other. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” he says, petting back Eye-patch’s hair. Eye-patch smiles very lightly. Naoko smiles too, because they’re so young, and she can tell just by looking that they’re in love, so very deeply and passionately so. It seems they haven’t discovered how far they’ve fallen into the crowded and yet entirely isolated space of love. She recalls how she felt with Masuyo, how she felt like she was the only girl in the world around him, how she saw only ghosts, how people were not people, but mere floating presences as they held hands in the busy streets of the city.
The two are silent for a moment, before Eye-patch suddenly asks, “Do you ever wish to feel pain, Youji?” His face is full of detached wonder, lifting a head to look deep into the heavens, though few stars are visible because of the light pollution.
Naoko assumes the long-haired boy is Youji. He gazes at his friend, and his face is serious. The exhalation of tired breath snakes out of his mouth as he says, “Sometimes. Pain interests me. I think it’d be fun to feel, but at the same time, I feel that if I knew how it felt, I wouldn’t like it as much.”
Eye-patch looks almost sad. “But if we still bleed…”
Naoko knows blood all too well, from that sleepless night with hubcaps across a highway and flashing lights outside her door, spent in an uncomfortable chair under fluorescent hospital lights, and the wracking sobs that rippled through her chest and made it hurt to even breathe and the consoling, smooth words spoken by Dr. Chikasue as he gave her bottomless cups of coffee and stale macaroons from the staff work room. She knows how brilliant red it is, how easily it flows, how it can color a whole roadway and let everyone know a tragedy has taken place, and how, come the rains, it washes away so easily. She knows how it stains, how it leaves vivid marks on clean white sheets, and how it can be bleached over and sanitized until it is a foul-smelling wet bundle of linen, and will always reek of fear and death and bleach, too different from the sweet yet musky smell of their sheets at home, those ice cold sheets. Naoko knows blood like it is her sister, for it is her sister, and her brother and her mother and father and her lover and her child and her friend and her enemy, and it is her.
The one called Youji makes a small noise and says, “We can still die.”
Eye-patch nods. “Pain is the way our body tells us we’ve hurt ourselves,” he says quietly. “Without it, a person could happily bleed to death.” He holds out a hand and Naoko can see all the blood-stained white bandages. He glances over at Youji uneasily, who shrugs as if this justifies everything. “I mean,” he continues, “one of us could cut our wrists without knowing it, and in a minute we’d be dead.”
“We can’t do anything about death,” Youji murmurs with a sad smile. Naoko knows how true this is. Death is a force that cannot be tamed, an uncontrollable inevitability that overcomes many and takes everyone at some point. Naoko has had to deal with Death her fair share of times, and knows it strikes everywhere. At any single second, she thinks, someone is dying, and someone is crying because of it.
“Youji?” Eye-patch asks worriedly, looking up at the second boy with the worried expression of an unsteady child. “What would you do if I died?”
Youji turns to look, his face briefly sad, scared, worried. “What would I do if Natsuo died?” he repeats, before throwing his arms around the other boy, presumably Natsuo, in one of the most beautiful hugs Naoko has ever witnessed. “You know what I would do, Natsuo?” He lowers his voice sensually, pulling away from his friend just a bit to brush some of the curly hair out of his face. “I’d kill myself.”
Natsuo’s eyes flicker, and Naoko only realizes now he’s on the verge of tears. “But if I died… I’d want you to be happy.”
Youji furrows his brow. “And dying alongside you apparently wouldn’t make me happy? Natsuo, we’re… we’re Fighter and Sacrifice. One can’t live without the other. If you died, without any hesitation, I too would kill myself.”
These are words that Naoko has never heard before. Fighter, Sacrifice? Although she is lost, and confused by how these children are not freezing, are bandaged up, who cannot feel pain, she is also deeply moved by the purity of their words. Perhaps, under the bright sphere in the sky, they are showing colors that reflect a side of them they cannot show the world. The world would not understand this, the world would be far too confused and impatient to listen to these soft words, to comprehend the tiny gestures and brushings of hands and legs and cheeks and tails. She could say this is something very adorable, or very cute, but it is ten times stronger than cute. It’s long past amazing or brilliant or beautiful. What she sees is indescribable. It fills her with memories of Masuyo, how she remembers at one point sharing a love as intense as this.
“Youji…” Natsuo replies, and he smiles weakly. Youji grins back, eyes soft, as he strokes the other’s cheek with tenderness that Naoko hasn’t seen from afar before, but has certainly experienced first-hand. He looks up, past Natsuo’s head, to pet the colors. In the moonlight, they are a soft shade of blue. Natsuo laughs very sweetly and says, “I’m getting snowed on.”
The laugh is matched perfectly by Youji. “Me too,” he says. “I bet if we had the ability to feel cold, we’d be really unhappy.”
Natsuo sighs happily and snuggles closer to Youji, kicking his legs nervously. “But I can imagine what cold feels like. I bet it feels uncomfortable. I hear your body shuts down in the cold after a while. Think it could happen to us?”
Youji isn’t smiling anymore, looking out across the blinking city as he says, “If we can bleed just like anyone, it means our blood must be warm. I bet we could… but I won’t let it happen to you, Natsuo.”
“Feel my breath,” Natsuo whispers, taking Youji’s hand and breathing on it. “Can you feel that?”
Naoko watches Youji smile again, a tiny, baby smile, and she has seen that smile on the faces of children who are excited and fascinated, but only because it is an everyday miracle that no one really understands. “I can feel it,” Youji says softly. “It’s kind of damp, and hot.”
“Just like a heartbeat,” Natsuo intimately whispers, “it’s proof I’m alive.”
Naoko watches them make eye contact, and Natsuo blinks very slowly and says, “I love you, Youji.”
Their lips meet in a very still, silent kiss, almost like they’re too scared to do this, as if it’s their first time. Naoko’s heart races, because she is seeing herself and Masuyo here, kissing just the same, feeling that identical feather-light touch of lips that she knows she is witnessing at this instant. She is reminded of sweet summer nights and cold winter mornings, laying next to Masuyo, and sharing that same kiss, not deep, but passionate nonetheless, to prove that she loved him.
When they pull away, lips just barely touching still, she can faintly hear Youji whisper, “I love you too, Natsuo.”
And they kiss again, but deeper this time, and Naoko watches because it is by far the most passionate but gentle kiss she has ever seen. Their lips move, very slowly, lethargically, but by no means is the kiss lazy. Youji’s hands come to Natsuo’s face, holding him in place, and Natsuo’s hands travel to Youji’s hips, and they part again, resting heads against each other, breath mingling in front of them, in the slight space between their lips, and Naoko turns just as they move into an embrace. She knows now that she is an intruder on something that is sacred.
On the walk home, Naoko looks up at the moon and, for a brief moment, reflected in it she can see Masuyo smiling, but then she can only see the teenagers, Youji and Natsuo, focused only on each other, and then herself. She reaches down into the snow and picks up a small clump and throws it in the air. The powdery sprinklings mingle with the thicker, heavier flakes, causing the air to sparkle with clean, cold dust, and she smiles into it, and she faces her street. She needs to get home.
Once home, she peels off her winter clothes, changes into her pajamas and heads for the altar. On the way, she passes their wedding portrait, and stops for a moment, to admire her youthful beauty, his young excitement. They are not facing the camera, but smiling at each other. She smiles at this picture, at the two of them, and then turns away. She will never forget Masuyo, or what she saw tonight, or the thoughts she had watching the two boys in the moonlight on the overpass, and as she climbs into bed, she thinks of the glory of life, and recalls that kiss, the embrace, the moon and the boys, and Naoko closes her eyes, because it is late and she needs to sleep, and the curtains whisper softly, and the aural light of the moon breathes across her floor, and everything is alive, and everything, everything, is beautiful.
- fin -