Merry Christmas to all...
Kuon didn't think too much about Christmas. He was ten, had wealthy and doting parents, and a minimal exposure to any particular brand of faith. He knew about any number of Christmas traditions (he was a world traveled child after all), celebrated some of them with his family (but three people only need so many traditions to have fun), and nodded and smiled at everyone during the winter season (just like every other day of the year, since he was practically famous and all).
And living in Southern California with movie star parents did not make for the best traditional Christmas atmosphere. Real snow was a bit difficult to find unless they went far out of town. That and no amount of holiday decorations made up for the busy schedules, persistent interviews, and last minute work that the Hizuri couple lived with, even in close proximity to the holiday. Kuon appreciated the tiny amount of strictly family time that he got on Christmas, but he did not think of the holiday as too special. He really did not understand why anyone else made a big deal out of it.
He had heard the stories, which he did not really believe were true, about the holiday being started because people needed a break in their work year. He had a vague understanding of pagan holidays mixing with Christian traditions, and all of the other stuff that went on. It would not be until he was a little older that the difference between "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" would be such a big, public deal, but his dad was from Japan anyway and had more of an attachment to the New Year than to Christmas.
So it took Kuon a while to figure out why the comment of some guy on a street corner hit him so hard. "It's not just about the birth of a baby two thousand years ago," the man was arguing to some other stranger. "It's about being saved."
The words hit Kuon hard, probably because it had been a long, hard year for him. The idea of being saved resonated with him. It would be a little longer before he really got to know Rick and started to feel like he was being helped, protected, guided. Before his big crash of course. Still, even now, he wanted to be saved. It was hard being his parents' child.
But this year redefined Christmas for him.
"I'm just saying, it's not a very traditional birthday celebration," one of Kuu's coworkers was complaining. Kuon was sitting nearby, quietly waiting for his father to finish work two days before Christmas.
"You're talking to the wrong person about traditions," Kuu pointed out with a smile. "I'm still trying to convince my wife that the most family friendly, Christmas-y thing to do is abandon the country for 48 hours and head to my homeland. And most people there have Buddhist and Shinto traditions."
"They don't celebrate?"
"It's a different set of traditions," was the general answer, enough for the coworker.
Kuon mostly stopped paying attention at this point, because the mention of birthdays and Christmas had reminded him of something very important.
Kyoko-chan's birthday was on Christmas.
That was probably what had been bothering him since he had overheard the stranger on the street corner. Because if it was a matter of birthdays and of being saved, there was no question that Christmas for him was about celebrating Kyoko-chan. Or at least, now it would be. Because there was some meaning in celebrating that.
So when Christmas Eve rolled around and he stayed up late with his parents, he wasn't watching the short films on the television, or even at least paying attention. Kuu had failed to convince his wife that twenty-four to thirty-five hours of flying was worth the five to seven hours they would spend in Japan in order to get back to work on time. So home they had stayed. But even without having flown, Kuon was not in California that night. He was across the ocean, wondering if Kyoko was working hard at the ryokan in Kyoto. Or, given the time difference, if she was preparing for whatever Christmas celebrations that would cut out her own party.
It was already her birthday. He kept wishing he could have sent her a present.
When he woke up the next morning, he was thinking about how it would now be late at night for her and she might be still working, or cleaning up.
"Kuon, let's go downstairs," his mother invited, offering her hand when she came to get him from his room. He thought of a little hand that had volunteered to show him the Fried-Egg Kingdom.
He had a hard time focusing on his own presents, even though his parents had gone to extra lengths to get him exactly what he wanted that year. "Look, the book you wanted to read," his father preened, smiling as Kuon recognized the cover under the shiny gold wrapper.
"A new sketchbook," his mother needlessly explained. "For when you go hiking with your father. I know you like to draw the birds. Your old one is almost full."
He smiled and thanked them for those gifts and more, and wished that he could know that someone, anyone, had gotten something nice for the sweet little girl who had given him all of those adorable little smiles.
Her present to him, six months early, had been the best. She had saved him.
She did not know it, because he had not said it. Not in so many words. But she had saved him that year. She had given him other gifts too. The gift of being his first real audience. Of offering him his first real role as an actor. And she had given him success in that role too. They were gifts so precious that he had not been able to tell anyone else about them. And they made all the material gifts from his parents look lame in comparison, no matter how much those two loved him.
Kuon spent all day that Christmas thinking about people who were kind, selfless, and who saved other people like him. And that year, for the first time, his hero was not his father.
He would think about her again six years later when he spent his first Christmas away from home, alone in a dark apartment in Tokyo, mourning the loss of a good friend, and of a life he could hardly bear to remember. He would hear the clink of empty bottles and metallic crinkle of empty cans almost any time he tried to move across his living room floor, his head pounding, his mouth tasting rancid. And he would close his eyes and see not his parents' worried faces or Rick's bloody body, but blinding daylight sliding between silver and green foliage.
There she was, all in his head. Cute and tiny and unchanged. Perfect and smiling. Welcoming. "Corn, I want to show you something." "Corn, you came back again today!" "Corn, are you alright?"
The memory of a cool cloth would not be enough to drive away the ache in his head, and the smell of the clearing would be contaminated by cigarette smoke and alcohol. The temptation to leave it all behind again, permanently this time, would keep him from eating for two days, drifting on the edge of delirium. But he would think about that sweet smile, those small hands, reaching out to him, and he would be saved. He would pull it together, before Lory found him in the wreck of that apartment, and be spared for one more year.
He would think about it again several years after that, standing in the middle of a ballroom at a Happy Grateful Party of all things, seeing that still sweet smile and watching those hands reach out to people all over the room. She would have changed, aged, but the indomitable spirit and adorable generosity would still be there. And she would have absorbed even more of his world. That year, he would give something to that precious girl. Not everything he would want to give her, but something to make her smile at him again, to get him through another day, another year.
And he would spend the next twelve months being reminded over and over again by all of her actions that Christmas was crucially important, because it was the one day of the year that he could try and repay and celebrate all she had done for him and would do for him without her being able to refuse it or push him away. He would never forget that Christmas was not really about giving presents or admiring decorations, or whatever general holiday cheeriness that people clung to for those thirty-odd days.
Christmas was about unconditional love, forgiveness, and enduring the pain of life just a little longer, because you were not alone. Christmas was about being saved.
Thanks to Will for taking time during her vacation to look this over. I hope you all are having a good holiday season.
...and to all a goodnight.