Description – After meeting in Nakano, Subaru and Seishirou meet again. Seishirou promised Subaru he wouldn't leave…or did he?
Disclaimer - I am too in love with this title and that's why while it belongs to Clamp, I will continue to write fanfiction for it. The poem is mine though.
Like piano chords keeping time,
They count away in my silence.
My fingers play a powerless piano
And my invisibility in the darkness
Makes me cling onto what I've known from the very start:
No matter how beautiful your soul is,
you can still be so very cold,
A frigidness that turns air
Into glass falling on the tar roads
Of the unlit Winter streets.
Closing myself all over again,
I know why, I remembered why
I used to wear gloves:
So that no one could touch me.
Reserved and withdrawn, this is
The person I hide inside.
I have not changed since
My childhood,
Always smiling through the disappointment.
I am not beautiful,
No matter what you think.
I'm just good at talking,
Striving to be the person
I've always admired,
But in doing so,
My happiness became a solitary event.
To get there was through many people,
But still, I am by myself
Experiencing it because
I don't know how to really talk.
My fingers play all the things my
Mouth won't ever admit,
Because I know my tears,
From there,
Won't be able to stop.
I don't to let go just yet.
That beautiful lonely man.
By miyamoto yui
Clink, clink.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Blinking in and out of reality, a handsome man looks up to the bright light. His eye blinks rapidly at the strangers and the weird warble of words that he can't make out in the orderly confusion.
So, this is how it feels like.
This is what it feels like when you have absolutely no control over your body and you have to give it over to people who may not even know what they're doing though they pretend to. And the worst part of it is that you may not want to prolong living in this existence…
…the pain can finally be over instead of being denied…
…but outside of this mysterious room, there is someone waiting for you.
Who is waiting for me though?
Will they continue to wait for me even when I slip out of this room without that 'someone' knowing?
He closes his eye again as another small dose of anesthesia numbs his body from the outside. From the inside, after all, his heart is straining every vein and artery to suffocate itself.
////////////////////////////////////////////////
The watch read, "April 1. 21:03".
"Happy Birthday, Seishirou-san."
Seishirou was standing with his hands on the ice cold railing of the rooftop of the gray building looking at the bright Tower pointing to the clear, cloudless sky. He did not move and nor did he make any gesture to do so.
He didn't even ask how the younger man had found him after he finished his 'job' for the night.
His golden, auburn eyes kept their steady gaze at the place where he had often gone to after his mother died. It was the same place where he had brought Subaru-kun and Hokuto-chan to see the first snowfall with him.
He remained silent at the subtly, yet ironically happy greeting. Restrained and yet so full of feeling, the green-eyed man stepped forward and stopped when Seishirou just stayed as he was, even when he was only two feet away from him.
Even when all he wanted to do was touch him again.
Seishirou's back faced him and it was something that made Subaru-kun's eyes look down at the cracked cement. Disappointed, his lips formed a slight frown.
Until now, I am no threat to you. I cannot move you in any way, can I?
Seishirou closed his eyes for a split-second as if in a passing, unconscious blink.
And the game has to start all over again.
Seishirou watched another elevator full of people go downwards.
Then, he dug into his inside pocket to get a pack of cigarettes. "It is nice of you to remember though you are either many months early or you are many months late."
"It is for all the ones that I couldn't find you." Subaru's voice, though calmer compared to before, is just as sweet as ever.
Taking out a cigarette, Seishirou's lips softly, subtly widened, almost breaking into two lines. In the next second, those same lips became a single line once more. "How forward you are today, Subaru-kun."
"Haven't I always been honest with you, Seishirou-san?"
His tone cannot hide his heart at all.
Seishirou finally turned his head slightly to the right. His transparent, broken eye stared at Subaru. He flicked up the lighter in his hands and lit up his cigarette. Taking a drag, he put the box back into his pocket, but his eye did not cease to stop staring.
It was the symbol of guilt. No matter how many years it had been. No matter how many times he would say it wasn't his fault.
It was my own choice to interfere, but the way you believe something and the way I'll believe it will always differ. Yes, even if we're thinking about the same thing.
Subaru's couldn't stop gazing at it and wondering all that thoughts that threatened to strangle him stronger than before. It's the second time they'd met after nine years and yet the hollowness of that eye always filled his own with tears deep into the hidden crevices of his soul.
I'm sorry. I want to say I'm sorry, but I'm sure you won't feel it.
A dull pain came from both of the pentagrams. And like a child who still held onto his innocence, without thinking, Subaru lifted up his hand to reach out towards the hollowness. Seishirou smoothly averted himself away from watching Subaru to look at the busy street below.
Embarrassed at the obvious refusal, Subaru started to fumble looking for a cigarette as well, but Seishirou half turned, pushed his two fingers onto Suburu's lips to give him his. Subaru's eyebrows touched one another, troubled and shocked at the taste of the filter on his tongue.
Why was this taste so familiar though I'd never kissed him?
"Thank you," Subaru tried to answer just as naturally when he pulled the cigarette away from his mouth. "Why is it you can be kind only some of the time?"
Seishirou grinned in a childishly devilish way like when he used to joke around with Hokuto. Giving an all-knowing look, his eyes went back to the street. "Depends on what you mean by 'generosity'."
Crossing his arms and leaning forward, Seishirou was focused on the blinking lights of the taxis and the groups of people trying to make it in before Tokyo Tower closed its doors for the last entry of the day.
Almost in mockery, Seishirou's voice pierced the coldness and straight at Subaru. "It really must be my birthday if you are not running away from me this time."
Subaru shook his head. "No, I can never run away...but that means you can't either."
Seishirou raised his eyebrows, delighted at the challenge that Subaru wanted to give him. "So, do I have to take it the way you want me to?"
Those green eyes gave him a hard, serious look.
"Ah." He nodded solemnly when Subaru dropped the cigarette butt to the ground. "I understand. I won't leave this time."
The wind blew tenderly and Subaru came next to him to look down at the street too. But he wasn't relaxed.
He was always looking at the man next to him that didn't know he had a yearning look about him, as if always searching for something he didn't even understand.
"I only left because the bet was already over, Subaru-kun. And over time…" Suddenly, Seishirou's glass eye watched him again and caught Subaru's left hand in his gloved one. Lifting it up between them, he said almost in disappointment and slight anger, "You have taken off your gloves, so there is only one road left."
But Seishirou's pride refused to lower itself. His tone just remained as carelessly free of pain as ever.
"I didn't know I would chase back until I had to. The decision was already made." At that, without reserve, Subaru put up his hand to cover the emptiness with his palm.
After all this time, this touch stayed forgiving and soft, yet it's forging its feelings clearly into the gap despite all the barriers. I hate to admit that it always knows where to reach me.
As he did so, Seishirou fully turned his head this time, his lone auburn eye vacantly watched the gentle, warm gesture.
Hand. Shoulder. Neck. Hair. Freezing cheek. Leather gloves. Ear. Same dimple when amused…
Subaru's eyes were looking everywhere but Seishirou's eye.
How many years have passed and you have taken it all by yourself? What things have people said to you because of this eye?
No matter how cruel you are, you did it to save me. Without thinking, you stepped in so that I wouldn't have to live with this stigma for the rest of my life.
So that I wouldn't ever have a blemish for everyone to shun me…
…you took it for me. No matter what your reasons are, that's why I feel guilty.
Why are you always playing Solitaire, Seishirou-san?
Seishirou remembered that time when he stared at the lonely, white clinic in the middle of the night…
//He looked at his bloodied hand and at the reflection in the mirror that bared a white bandage across his face.
He couldn't keep it on him forever.
Yes, he had known exactly what he had done.
I can't stay here any longer. When I take off this bandage, I will be forced into that darkness and live exactly as my mother lived in our mansion.
I tried all my life to get out of that, finally learning how to live there and outside in society.
Yet, here it is.
For him, I threw everything I worked so hard for in order to save him.
With that, he threw a match into the clinic filled with gasoline.//
"Ah, sou ka," Seishirou answered in a low voice, his eyelid squinting.
"What's the smile for?" Subaru asked as he looked up at Seishirou's lips. The smile was the same as he had remembered it.
Even the years and everything between them couldn't erase that single expression that Subaru loved so well. He was now aware that Seishirou didn't know there were times even he couldn't control his facial expressions when he was around him.
"You really haven't changed. I haven't either." Seishirou stood in place and the impact of his intense stare was making Subaru feel the pleasurable warmth of his cheeks that no one else could evoke out of him.
Only this person could do such a thing to him. He had always known that.
Subaru sighed, "Like answering questions with cryptic statements...but it's who you are, and I accept that. Like this eye, Sei-"
Seishirou took his face away to gaze towards the direction of Shinjuku. There was an accident on the highway below. "I have lived here all my life. And I could not get out no matter how much I tried."
Bringing down his hand at feeling the chilliness once more, he took out his own cigarette, listening to the rhythm of Seishirou's calculated words, "And then, you just push everything aside as if nothing fazes you when it comes to me. I don't know if it's indifference or are you encouraging me?"
Giving a confused look, Subaru shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not that encouraging of a person after all this time…I see..."
Seishirou chuckle filled the air. "Not in the usual sense. But in your own way. Subaru-kun is Subaru-kun."
At this, Subaru's heart beat a little faster with a small fire of hope inside of it.
It never failed to amaze him how his heart could still burst so much in warmth. His simple of joy: Being called that nickname by this person.
He hoped his face didn't show it.
Instead, he dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it. Next, he followed Seishirou's line of sight, which was again staring at the red and white structure that overlooked this moody, illusionary city.
"See Tokyo Tower there? It can't refuse who will come and who will go. But everyone will go towards it anyway. It's beautiful on the outside but shows you everything in this city as if you were God himself. And it doesn't say a thing. You just feel it, knowing that it won't always be there because people will destroy it again."
Taking out another cigarette, Seishirou lit it and paused. "Just like feelings."
Then, he took a drag as Subaru looked up to the top of the brightly lit tower. "If it gets destroyed, it can be rebuilt...can feelings be "rebuilt"?"
Seishirou shook his head and blew out some smoke. "Being the way I am, I don't know."
He darted his eyes again at Subaru. "That's why I'm waiting for your answer. Can you still love the same people who kill you from the inside?"
Every human protests against getting hurt and yet it defines their existence. They justify what they do out of this struggle. So, it's against logic if one can still love after being betrayed…
…right?
I…
Somehow, the sixteen-year-old Subaru came out again. And also, the same one that he had met at Ueno Park when Subaru was only nine. As thoughtful as ever, Subaru's eyes looked at the top of the tower and above it to the stars. "If your love is stronger than the hurt, yes."
Seishirou dropped his cigarette and smushed it under his leather shoe. Taking up Subaru's chin between his index finger and thumb, he smiled widely at him like he did years ago at the hospital. Without flinching or resistance, Subaru looked back serenely and unguarded.
For once, the older man leaned forward and they touched forehead to forehead.
If only I can transmit my thoughts to you like this without saying them. You are truly the only thing I believe in this world. The only thing that's been 'real'.
Brashly, Seishirou suddenly pushed him away and laughed, eyeing him in indifference. "I thought you were here to fight me but you're still so soft-hearted, Subaru-kun."
In a slightly haughty tone, Seishirou gravely warned, "You don't want to know what I have in mind. And your grandmother won't be able to save you if you voluntarily come at me this time 'round. She'll have to watch it from the beginning until the end."
Just like when Mother looked at me the way women do when they do not want to tell what true pride and self-destruction are: They smile in a disconcerting way.
Just like Hokuto-chan boldly saying with her body with every step she took towards me, "Kill me instead!"
Honesty's intact and the broken You is the one that's been disturbed.
"Seishirou-san."
"You should stay the way you are."
"Why do you always make these decisions all by yourself?"
He pretended not listen to Subaru-kun, regarding him impassively. "I am the same to myself. I'm not the same person you met at Ikebukuro Station."
But Subaru kept on looking at Seishirou, not believing anything he said.
His mind flashed to remember that deep, contemplative look Seishirou gave sometimes at the veterinarian clinic when he didn't notice Subaru had come in to visit him after hours.
And this time, he wasn't afraid to step forward to play the same game.
"You are." Affectionately, with gleaming eyes, he said, "Deep down I know you are the same."
Seishirou immediately looked away and up at the stars in a dignified, elegant way.
I wish I knew how to cry.
His face was like stone but auburn was soon turning into red without nothing coming out.
Subaru took his covered hands and pulled on the gloves. Both hands had dried blood on them and he looked up at Seishirou, who watched him, wondering what he was doing.
He couldn't make himself stop Subaru.
Subaru's heart was beating wildly as Seishirou forced himself to lose all sense of feeling towards Subaru's signs of affection all over again.
In their own world, Subaru leaned forward and looked at Seishirou's hands and touched the palms with his thumbs, rubbing them soothingly. Seishirou bent down a little and closed his eyes to smell Subaru's hair though Subaru wasn't aware of it.
Why do you think I'm silent most of the time? I have to absorb you.
But it won't ever be enough.
Clang!
Subaru's expression instantly changed as Seishirou deftly took his wrists and pinned them to the railing. He smiled down at Subaru, who's back was leaning halfway into air.
Severely, Seishirou commanded, "Don't make that kind of expression."
Defiantly, Subaru looked back, not cowering anymore by these threats. "Are you afraid of this expression?"
"Why?" Subaru asked again.
But even with this, why don't I feel fear, Seishirou-san? Why do I trust you so?
The older man stared back without giving an answer in any shape or form.
Subaru sighed again and shook his head. "I just don't get why you do things sometimes, Seishirou-san. Do you want something from me?"
Everything.
I want to ask.. I want to take.
And it ends the same. I end up saying nothing at all.
"All you have to do is ask."
The knife to cut their string was made sharper than ever.
Pushing his left leg in between Subaru's legs, Subaru's lips let out a soft, "Ah." His head turned suddenly to one side. His head was swimming as he felt his heartbeat go into his ears.
His fists became tighter to protest, but Seishirou's chest pressed onto his.
"Seishirou-san…" he stammered at the realization that he couldn't tear himself away from wanting to be touched like this and the fact that…
…for once…
I can feel your heart beat.
And it is because of me.
Hidden away to the point of decay, it came out:
Wasn't this my wish when I was sixteen?
Seishirou blinked his eyes and leaned forward so much so that his cheek touched Subaru's. He took a deep breath and blew into Subaru's ear.
They could no longer see one another eye-to-eye. Dodging the knife that Subaru had pointed at him through his words, he whispered, "Honestly, I don't know how to do that. All my life, I've strategized, so I always just take as I please. That's why I always said you are kind."
Yes, even until now as I try to do everything for you to leave me. The scenarios will end the same, don't you see, Subaru? You couldn't possibly-
His lips touched Subaru's ear. "And if you said 'no', what am I going to do?"
The monotonous rhythm of his voice masked his longing to know the answer.
Subaru always somehow knew how to look at him as 'human'.
Not as a tool. Not as a businessman with ability. Not as someone how knew everything about himself…
Not wanting to be answered yet, Seishirou rubbed his leg even deeper into Subaru's body as his tongue pressed itself into the canal of Subaru's soft ear. Subaru struggled to breathe for air and yet knew now what Seishirou wanted but could never ask for.
Though he was trembling, he no longer protested.
Unlocking his fists, Subaru's fingertips desparately tried to grasp the top of Seishirou's hands somehow. He was forever trying to touch him somehow and now, at this moment, he wouldn't turn away or deny what each of them wanted. Subaru breathlessly gasped, "Do you think I would say 'no'? After everything in our pasts?"
I'm right here. You're always looking past me as if you're letting me go.
Don't you know I don't want that? Don't you know that's why I'm still here?
Lovingly, Subaru told him, "Our lives consist of one step forward at a time, even if we don't know where it takes us."
Without both of them knowing, Seishirou smiled widely for the first time in his life.
The breath of his mouth tickled Subaru's ear and Subaru closed his eyes as he felt Seishirou's chest upon his, but his body was already pulsating in one rhythm, aching not to hold back anymore.
Ready to face what he didn't tell him the last time and what Seishirou wouldn't allow him say…
"Subaru-kun..."
Subaru's eyes didn't open. He held his breath. "Yes, Seishirou-san?"
"I love you..."
And Subaru's heart lifted up.
Subaru couldn't breathe at all as Seishirou leaned forward to kiss him. Subaru's eyes widened and softened when they closed again. Seishirou pushed his tongue in deeper as Subaru tried his best to kiss back with equal passion. His whole body shivered with the cold and feeling Seishirou's coat, suit, and body trying its best to clench onto his entire body.
Somewhere inside of each of them gasped for the air from the small space of happiness they were both suffocating for from the moment they first met in Ueno.
Finally, they were in sync. Finally, they accepted one another. Finally, the timing was right in which they weren't on different ends of the spectrum.
And in the next second…
Seishirou pulled away when Subaru was still calling him from their souls. Subaru's chin lifted upwards to listen to Seishirou's hard breath. In and out. Out and in.
Then, with those lips touching Subaru's ear, there was a crack in his deep, arrogant voice, "...but the game ends here."
Everything was undoing itself and Seishirou let go. Subaru's eyes shouted in protest "NOOOOO!" but his mouth didn't utter a single word. Hopelessly and tightly clinging with his fingertips onto the suit jacket that Hokuto had given Seishirou, Subaru shook his head from side to side.
Immediately, the tears of release came back in waves of even more excruciating pain.
Seishirou nodded his head slowly as he looked at him and tore Subaru-kun's fingers from that beloved suit jacket, the same one that his sister clung onto when his hand pierced into her heart and she held onto him for support and died in his arms.
Fading into sakura petals, Subaru reached out to touch the empty eye. With tears that wouldn't stop flowing, he passionately shouted with his soft voice, determined not to let the moment stop him this time,
"Seishirou-san, I still love you more than it hurts."
He put his hand over Subaru's to push it against his eye, to make him feel the tears he didn't know he could cry until Sumeragi Subaru came to dig them up from the grave of emotions buried he forgot existed inside of him.
Then, Seishirou vanished.
Subaru stared at the lingering trail of tears impressed on his hand and cupped them in his palm, holding them close to his chest. His heart was screaming.
THEN WHY DID YOU CALL ME HERE, SEISHIROU-SAN?! WHY DID YOU LET ME CATCH UP TO YOU HERE TONIGHT?!
WHY…WHY DO WE KEEP DOING THIS TO EACH OTHER?!
Seishirou made his way to Rainbow Bridge and watched the darkness below with the bay water waving in many directions. His eyes made their way to look at Tokyo Tower once more.
His expression was that of mournful weeping though no tears would come out. "Can you hear me from here, I wonder, Subaru-kun?"
He looked at his hands.
Your hands should never be unclean.
Not even by me.
Again, he felt the vibration from the pentagrams as they twisted everything inside of him again like the scattering of broken, dead sakura in the wind.
Yes, all over again.
As it always would.
/////////////////////////////
Quickly, a tear fell down to the pillow.
When he awoke, he looked up.
He was still here. He would continue to live as long as the pentagrams ached to beckon him to come….
He turned to see Kamui grasping onto his hand.
Kamui…
Kamui's face became a big grin as he looked at Subaru, but in the next moment, his face wanted to ask, "Why? Why was this your wish?"
I always want to become closer to him.
He, who thought so far ahead, didn't stop to think that maybe I loved him. Yes, even after all that, no matter how it may look on the surface.
Because without that, I couldn't have remained as I was. Because without him, I could have become truly someone I didn't recognize.
Even though he kills people, everyone has many sides with the same face on their shoulders. They kill people with words and they save others with weapons. What is the difference is what everyone agrees on. That doesn't mean it is 'right' or 'the only way', does it?
So, because of me, he sacrificed every chance for a life in the light.
I'm sure many people judged him after he took off his sunglasses or when he didn't ever take off the bandage over his eye.
I know.
Many unspeakable things have happened that are worse than what happened to me…
Yet, he does not protest nor does he complain.
The pentagrams told me somehow.
That day when he stepped in to take the injury meant for me, he wasn't indifferent. And that's the hope I've carried inside of me all of this time. And yet, I can't tell him, it's my turn to give everything that he gave up just to wander aimlessly with no goals or dreams.
But I was the same way until I met him, don't you know that?
I will always love that beautiful, lonely man.
Subaru looked at Kamui and smiled the strongest, most endearing smile he had ever felt in his whole life.
He now knew why his sister looked so peaceful in Seishirou's arms when he offered to show her to him.
Owari.
---
Author's note: This piece was inspired by a short, yet heart-wrenching roleplay that Jeldi-san and I did in November. Since then, I had been thinking everyday on what to do with it. Since it had so many special words in it, I didn't want to waste the feeling and nor did I want to make something that only touched the surface of what we'd talked about.
I felt, "God, we can't even make them happy even with all this feeling behind it." So, I wanted something that would express why the roleplay left me crying so badly that I had to take a few minutes to calm down. To some people, that seems extreme. But for me, I will not ever believe that Seishirou is a heartless bastard as people say and it isn't only because I am a fangirl, but the fact that I am always faced with him within my own personality. As I get older, I understand a lot of things that I cannot explain very well. Sometimes the thing that you most want to do comes out the opposite because, not out of pride, but the fact that you feel unworthy.
Even though, yes, this is angst, Subaru, Seishirou and Hokuto made their own happiness, but just not in the usual sense that most of the world may understand. In the end, happiness is individually defined.
All in all, I wanted to focus on an aspect of Tokyo Babylon and society intertwined that we may take for granted: Seishirou's sacrificing his eye.
Oh my, my heart is still beating so wildly even after finishing this piece! I want to stop crying as well…
I hope you enjoyed this fic!
Thank you Jeldi-san for the ideas and for inspiring me with so many things!
Sincerely with love,
Miyamoto Yui
2/8/2009 1:41:51 AM – Los Angeles
2/8/09 6:41PM - Tokyo