Obligations
In the bedroom, time stands still. You can breathe slowly in and out, without rush, without hurry. The white ceiling is where you project your thoughts, combed over and over again like a perpetual proposal in your boardroom. It's different when you are alone. The adrenaline rush of dueling, the wind in your hair as you drive the new Aston Martin at an illegal 85 miles per hour, the thin line between life and death you walk everyday - it's nothing but a dream. Here in the little space between four walls, there stretches an eternity. There's no one to be wary of, no one to be desirous of, no one to protect or ridicule or betray. (And there's no one to betray you.)
You don't like to admit why you work such long hours. Why you chug down five cups of coffee (specially imported from remote parts of Columbia because you can afford the best) everyday and work until the sunshine scours your eyes. It's too bright and you blink against it, wanting the fluorescent patterns of your PC or the limousine windows down, where you can see everything outside but no one can look in. You're afraid if you ever stop you'd fall into a dream and never wake up again.
There's a garden in the mansion, a patch of green hidden among rose bushes, away from the more showy gardenias, plum and peach blossoms. You like to take off your coat, stretch down on the grass. You never went on a picnic before. You've never learned how to swim, so you stay away from the beaches. You turn over, the green grass tickles your nose and you breathe in deeply the smell of growth and renewal. You wished you lived in a place where the sun always shines, where the grass is always green (and no place else greener) but you live in the metropolis of Japan and the pedestrian walk signs, the gnarls of traffic, the apartment houses identical to one another are enough. It gives you stability, demands you to run, drink, shop, laugh, snarl, play, work, date, get married, go to school - all the things that keep you from wondering why you need all those goals.
Under Gozaburo's whip, when there weren't thoughts of revenge, you used to have another dream. A small apartment. Mokuba living next door. A sunbeam on the floor, a chocolate-colored dog. And you'd lie on the warm tiles and stare up into the blue blue sky through the window, no backyard, because even then, you knew the city did not have many green spaces. It's strange to think that you're greatest dream was (is) for a home.
In your room, there are old knickknacks. Mokuba's hand-paintings from kindergarten, paperweights, a ribbon an orphan gave you when you donated $5 million to a charity for foster kids. It was all contrived, the press conference, the smiles. But the kid's reluctance to hand you over her stuffed bunny was genuine and you bent down, stroked her head like you used to do to Mokuba when he was young enough to allow it, and gave the bunny back, minus the red bow on one of its ears. You promised her you'd get her and her friend better bows, better clothes. Better everything.
The sheets of your bed are not navy; they're brown with birds and flowers across them. You like to trace your hands over the designs, curly and random, not like the blueprints that are always scattered into precise formations on your metal desk. You like very much to touch. To feel softness and warmth. Alone in your room you can indulge, reach out. You don't have to put gauntlets on your arms as a reminder that you shouldn't do that. Never. Do. That.
Alone in your room is when you feel the most real. When it's okay to drowse and mumble and think about thoughts which have no conclusions (or maybe the inevitable ones just don't satisfy you enough), it's okay just to exist without the web of complications that thread your life.
Your eyelids begin droop, but always before they do, the door slams and a voice calls out "Nisama!"
Your heart leaps - and you're caught.