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jewelledhoursTitle: Two Friendships, Four Loves
Chapter: (6) It Burns, Burns, Burns
Pairings: Ryo/Shige, Koyama/Yamapi
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
misticloud
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2,029
Summary: A series of Ryo’s thoughts after seeing Shige at the supermarket.
Previously: Landing in Fire | When Hearts Like Ours Meet [1] [2] [3] [4]
It Burns, Burns, Burns
You know, I always thought I was strong.
The day I was born was also the day my mother died. My old man liked to tell me that I killed her. It probably gave him a sense of satisfaction to see me denying it. I always denied it until he threatened to beat me. I didn’t kill her, I didn’t kill her. Of course I would deny it. How can you live if you think that your life on earth began with killing someone?
Six months after my mother died, my dad married another woman who wasn’t bad, at least not the typical evil stepmother. She fed me properly and washed my clothes and looked through my homework for me, and she was the only person in the world I loved until the accident with my younger stepbrother happened and then she never looked at me again. My guitar got bashed on that same day. Can you imagine that, losing a person and an object you love in the same day? Is it as bad as taking away a life so that you can have yours?
At thirteen, the Johnny Jimusho craze hit my friends and all of us started sending in applications. My friends wanted to be stars. I just wanted to try and get out of the house as much as possible. They called me a week later, asked me to go down for an audition. I didn’t dare to tell anyone in my family in case they sneaked to my dad, and then I’d get a beating unlike any you’ve ever known before. You’ve never been beaten by your parents save for the few canings administered when you misbehaved. You don’t know what it’s like. I sneaked out to the auditions and a couple of months later, I got in. I had to tell my dad then, the Jimusho administrative office was asking for his signature on indemnity forms. He sneered, said, “Oh yeah? You’re better than all of us now, huh?” and then beat me. The day I got into Johnny’s was also the day I got the beating of my life.
At sixteen I left home. I didn’t say goodbye. I just packed some stuff, raided the fridge for food I could take away, and locked the front door on my way out. I was still in school then. I dropped out the next day. I rented a tiny room in someone’s apartment and worked part-time at a supermarket, juggling that with all the Johnny’s activities. Four times a week at odd hours I added up bills, collected money, returned change. Sometimes, on my way back to the rented room, I’d pass by a busker on the street playing his guitar. It was always the same guy. I can still remember him clearly. He had graying hair and a bit of a belly and there was some kind of sadness etched permanently on his face that fascinated me. He always sang old, sorrowful songs that made people speed up a bit when they walked past him. I’d spare him a bit of cash if I could.
My dad found me after a few months and brought along his favourite whip. It’s thin and goes ‘whssh’ when you slash it in the air. He whipped me until my landlady screamed and cried and got scared, and when he finally left, she asked me to go too. She said I wouldn’t need to pay that month’s rent if I would only pack up and be gone by the next day. I didn’t know what to do. You were probably in junior high then, messing around with your buddies and going back home after school every day to watch your favourite primetime anime shows in the evenings. I was pretty much homeless. I spent one night by the river, lying on the roadside looking up at the night sky. The next day Yamapi wanted to know where I was living and I told him nowhere, so he brought me home and asked me to stay with his family until I could find somewhere to live.
You know what’s the interesting thing? All those years, all that time I spent wandering around trying to find myself, I always thought I was strong. I didn’t cry once, and I didn’t brood or dwell on things. I suppose I turned out pretty dark and gloomy since the higher ups are always telling me to smile more, but I didn’t let myself dwell on the family I’d run from nor the friends in school I’d left behind. I thought I got along quite well, considering the circumstances.
Then I met you. And fell for you. I really, really fell for you. That was when I realised I wasn’t strong at all, because you are a truly strong person and beside you I don’t match up even an inch. I wanted to absorb your strength, your independence, your toughness, your stability. You felt me eating away at you, didn’t you? Come to think of it, you were the one who used that phrase. “You’re eating me up.” I remember. I couldn’t have come up with it myself.
I became so weak next to you. I couldn’t sustain myself anymore. I’d given up my family and many of my friends and I thought I’d stopped needing their love, but when you came, you took on all their roles as well as your own. I loved you as though you were ten people all closely related to me. It sounds so stupid when I put it like that, but I’m not good with words, I never was, unless they’re harsh and poisonous. I used to make you angry with the stuff I said to you, right? But amidst all those ugly words, didn’t I also say beautiful words to you, words that meant much more? Didn’t I tell you repeatedly that I loved you, wanted you, loved you, wanted you? I know I did, because there was no way I could’ve suppressed those words. I felt them too much.
The day you left, I didn’t really believe it until I found that all your stuff was gone. You even took your toothbrush and shaver. I wonder how you expected me to deal with it. Maybe you thought that I was strong enough to. I know that lots of people look at me and think that I’m the strongest person they’ve ever seen. They say as much. But you? You know me so well. Tell me, how did you expect me to deal with it?
Shige, every time I come home, I relive your disappearance all over again. I still walk into the toilet and expect to see your toothbrush and shaver there. I still open the cabinet and reel at the sight of all of your clothes gone. Friends tell me that I have to move on, but there’s no moving on from this. I don’t know how to move on. I don’t know how to deal with it. I always thought I was strong, but I’m not, and you know I’m not.
So, again, I wonder…how did you expect me to deal with it?
Or did you not love me enough in the first place to care whether or not I could deal with it?
After all, you never once said you loved me.
… …
Today I was grocery shopping in Aeon when I suddenly saw you. The last time I saw you eight months ago, I was standing outside your door and you were holding it slightly open, telling me to go away, please go away. Your hair has grown longer since that time. It looks really good on you now. I stood there and looked at you and thought…
Shige, I love you so much. I still don’t understand. What was it about me that you couldn’t love? I know we quarreled a lot and a few times you walked out on me and I practically forced you to come back, but you still came back time and again and I thought there had to be some part in you that loved me because if there hadn’t, you wouldn’t keep coming back. Even after you took your toothbrush and shaver and clothes, I thought that you would eventually come back. I kept waiting for you. The cabinet still has half its hooks and drawers empty for your stuff.
I saw the girl standing beside you, looking at you with that adoring face. I guess she makes you happier than I ever did, huh? Doesn’t pick quarrels, doesn’t say mean things, doesn’t cling to you as though you’re her second skin. Doesn’t have an alcoholic problem nor a sordid past of bedding anything that moved and flirted. I can see that she’s a nice girl, the kind that most guys want to marry. She’s probably a good cook too. Her breasts are nice and she looks like she’d be a good lay. But Shige, after those first thirty seconds of staring at her, I looked at you. You were holding her hand and making her laugh and I thought of all the times we were together, tried remembering if your face had looked like that when you were with me.
You once said, “I want to hold your hand and stay beside you until the world closes down around us.”
I wonder if you’ve said that to her too. How would she react; giggle and flick her hair a little? I took you and made love to you and you were gasping, mouthing my name against my skin when you came and I thought you loved me, that you had to love me, because if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have said something like that.
But all that’s in vain now, because whether or not you loved me, we’ve ended up here, both of us separate people, you with your wife-to-be and me standing looking at you, thinking of all those long ago times that have suddenly lost significance. You’ve really left. You’re not coming back. Yamapi told me that many times, but I didn’t believe him until now. I finally see clearly that you’re not coming back.
When I was sixteen years old and lying beside a river looking up at the night sky, I’d wanted to die. I was hurting all over and I didn’t have anywhere to go and I thought, really considered, just drowning myself in the river. Death is a way of escape for all of us. Who was it who said that life could not be endured without the hope of death? I felt that hope so strongly that night, so strongly that it would frighten you. Then Yamapi came and offered me his home and family, and I stopped feeling that hope until I saw you in Aeon holding hands with your wife-to-be.
I wanted to spend forever with you. Forever is an overrated word but that’s how I felt. Infinite; everlasting; eternal. Just loving you and having your love would have been enough for me; I wouldn’t have asked the gods for love from anyone else. You rescued me that night at the train station and showed me what it meant to love somebody, to be part of a world that didn’t have to be full of hatred and condemnation and competition. I understood everything through you. I wanted to hold your hand and stay beside you in that world of acceptance and companionship.
I’m sorry, Shige. I know I’m letting you, Yamapi and Koyama down. All three of you tried to save me and yet here we all are, just like how it was meant to be from the very day I was born and my mother died.
I didn’t think it would come to this.
Do you think, someday in the future when you’re old and have grandchildren sitting on your lap, you could look back on the times we spent together and think that you might have loved me just a little?
I’m sorry.
I love you. I don’t know how much. I only wish I knew how to stop.
Chapter: (6) It Burns, Burns, Burns
Pairings: Ryo/Shige, Koyama/Yamapi
Author:
misticloudRating: PG-13
Words: 2,029
Summary: A series of Ryo’s thoughts after seeing Shige at the supermarket.
Previously: Landing in Fire | When Hearts Like Ours Meet [1] [2] [3] [4]
It Burns, Burns, Burns
You know, I always thought I was strong.
The day I was born was also the day my mother died. My old man liked to tell me that I killed her. It probably gave him a sense of satisfaction to see me denying it. I always denied it until he threatened to beat me. I didn’t kill her, I didn’t kill her. Of course I would deny it. How can you live if you think that your life on earth began with killing someone?
Six months after my mother died, my dad married another woman who wasn’t bad, at least not the typical evil stepmother. She fed me properly and washed my clothes and looked through my homework for me, and she was the only person in the world I loved until the accident with my younger stepbrother happened and then she never looked at me again. My guitar got bashed on that same day. Can you imagine that, losing a person and an object you love in the same day? Is it as bad as taking away a life so that you can have yours?
At thirteen, the Johnny Jimusho craze hit my friends and all of us started sending in applications. My friends wanted to be stars. I just wanted to try and get out of the house as much as possible. They called me a week later, asked me to go down for an audition. I didn’t dare to tell anyone in my family in case they sneaked to my dad, and then I’d get a beating unlike any you’ve ever known before. You’ve never been beaten by your parents save for the few canings administered when you misbehaved. You don’t know what it’s like. I sneaked out to the auditions and a couple of months later, I got in. I had to tell my dad then, the Jimusho administrative office was asking for his signature on indemnity forms. He sneered, said, “Oh yeah? You’re better than all of us now, huh?” and then beat me. The day I got into Johnny’s was also the day I got the beating of my life.
At sixteen I left home. I didn’t say goodbye. I just packed some stuff, raided the fridge for food I could take away, and locked the front door on my way out. I was still in school then. I dropped out the next day. I rented a tiny room in someone’s apartment and worked part-time at a supermarket, juggling that with all the Johnny’s activities. Four times a week at odd hours I added up bills, collected money, returned change. Sometimes, on my way back to the rented room, I’d pass by a busker on the street playing his guitar. It was always the same guy. I can still remember him clearly. He had graying hair and a bit of a belly and there was some kind of sadness etched permanently on his face that fascinated me. He always sang old, sorrowful songs that made people speed up a bit when they walked past him. I’d spare him a bit of cash if I could.
My dad found me after a few months and brought along his favourite whip. It’s thin and goes ‘whssh’ when you slash it in the air. He whipped me until my landlady screamed and cried and got scared, and when he finally left, she asked me to go too. She said I wouldn’t need to pay that month’s rent if I would only pack up and be gone by the next day. I didn’t know what to do. You were probably in junior high then, messing around with your buddies and going back home after school every day to watch your favourite primetime anime shows in the evenings. I was pretty much homeless. I spent one night by the river, lying on the roadside looking up at the night sky. The next day Yamapi wanted to know where I was living and I told him nowhere, so he brought me home and asked me to stay with his family until I could find somewhere to live.
You know what’s the interesting thing? All those years, all that time I spent wandering around trying to find myself, I always thought I was strong. I didn’t cry once, and I didn’t brood or dwell on things. I suppose I turned out pretty dark and gloomy since the higher ups are always telling me to smile more, but I didn’t let myself dwell on the family I’d run from nor the friends in school I’d left behind. I thought I got along quite well, considering the circumstances.
Then I met you. And fell for you. I really, really fell for you. That was when I realised I wasn’t strong at all, because you are a truly strong person and beside you I don’t match up even an inch. I wanted to absorb your strength, your independence, your toughness, your stability. You felt me eating away at you, didn’t you? Come to think of it, you were the one who used that phrase. “You’re eating me up.” I remember. I couldn’t have come up with it myself.
I became so weak next to you. I couldn’t sustain myself anymore. I’d given up my family and many of my friends and I thought I’d stopped needing their love, but when you came, you took on all their roles as well as your own. I loved you as though you were ten people all closely related to me. It sounds so stupid when I put it like that, but I’m not good with words, I never was, unless they’re harsh and poisonous. I used to make you angry with the stuff I said to you, right? But amidst all those ugly words, didn’t I also say beautiful words to you, words that meant much more? Didn’t I tell you repeatedly that I loved you, wanted you, loved you, wanted you? I know I did, because there was no way I could’ve suppressed those words. I felt them too much.
The day you left, I didn’t really believe it until I found that all your stuff was gone. You even took your toothbrush and shaver. I wonder how you expected me to deal with it. Maybe you thought that I was strong enough to. I know that lots of people look at me and think that I’m the strongest person they’ve ever seen. They say as much. But you? You know me so well. Tell me, how did you expect me to deal with it?
Shige, every time I come home, I relive your disappearance all over again. I still walk into the toilet and expect to see your toothbrush and shaver there. I still open the cabinet and reel at the sight of all of your clothes gone. Friends tell me that I have to move on, but there’s no moving on from this. I don’t know how to move on. I don’t know how to deal with it. I always thought I was strong, but I’m not, and you know I’m not.
So, again, I wonder…how did you expect me to deal with it?
Or did you not love me enough in the first place to care whether or not I could deal with it?
After all, you never once said you loved me.
… …
Today I was grocery shopping in Aeon when I suddenly saw you. The last time I saw you eight months ago, I was standing outside your door and you were holding it slightly open, telling me to go away, please go away. Your hair has grown longer since that time. It looks really good on you now. I stood there and looked at you and thought…
Shige, I love you so much. I still don’t understand. What was it about me that you couldn’t love? I know we quarreled a lot and a few times you walked out on me and I practically forced you to come back, but you still came back time and again and I thought there had to be some part in you that loved me because if there hadn’t, you wouldn’t keep coming back. Even after you took your toothbrush and shaver and clothes, I thought that you would eventually come back. I kept waiting for you. The cabinet still has half its hooks and drawers empty for your stuff.
I saw the girl standing beside you, looking at you with that adoring face. I guess she makes you happier than I ever did, huh? Doesn’t pick quarrels, doesn’t say mean things, doesn’t cling to you as though you’re her second skin. Doesn’t have an alcoholic problem nor a sordid past of bedding anything that moved and flirted. I can see that she’s a nice girl, the kind that most guys want to marry. She’s probably a good cook too. Her breasts are nice and she looks like she’d be a good lay. But Shige, after those first thirty seconds of staring at her, I looked at you. You were holding her hand and making her laugh and I thought of all the times we were together, tried remembering if your face had looked like that when you were with me.
You once said, “I want to hold your hand and stay beside you until the world closes down around us.”
I wonder if you’ve said that to her too. How would she react; giggle and flick her hair a little? I took you and made love to you and you were gasping, mouthing my name against my skin when you came and I thought you loved me, that you had to love me, because if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have said something like that.
But all that’s in vain now, because whether or not you loved me, we’ve ended up here, both of us separate people, you with your wife-to-be and me standing looking at you, thinking of all those long ago times that have suddenly lost significance. You’ve really left. You’re not coming back. Yamapi told me that many times, but I didn’t believe him until now. I finally see clearly that you’re not coming back.
When I was sixteen years old and lying beside a river looking up at the night sky, I’d wanted to die. I was hurting all over and I didn’t have anywhere to go and I thought, really considered, just drowning myself in the river. Death is a way of escape for all of us. Who was it who said that life could not be endured without the hope of death? I felt that hope so strongly that night, so strongly that it would frighten you. Then Yamapi came and offered me his home and family, and I stopped feeling that hope until I saw you in Aeon holding hands with your wife-to-be.
I wanted to spend forever with you. Forever is an overrated word but that’s how I felt. Infinite; everlasting; eternal. Just loving you and having your love would have been enough for me; I wouldn’t have asked the gods for love from anyone else. You rescued me that night at the train station and showed me what it meant to love somebody, to be part of a world that didn’t have to be full of hatred and condemnation and competition. I understood everything through you. I wanted to hold your hand and stay beside you in that world of acceptance and companionship.
I’m sorry, Shige. I know I’m letting you, Yamapi and Koyama down. All three of you tried to save me and yet here we all are, just like how it was meant to be from the very day I was born and my mother died.
I didn’t think it would come to this.
Do you think, someday in the future when you’re old and have grandchildren sitting on your lap, you could look back on the times we spent together and think that you might have loved me just a little?
I’m sorry.
I love you. I don’t know how much. I only wish I knew how to stop.
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