Disclaimer: I do not own Slam Dunk and its characters; Takehiko Inoue does. The plot of this fic belongs to the genius Night Strider. This is tightly based on her deleted work, 'What Love is', but she is unkind enough not to re-upload it so I wrote my version. Note: Strider is fucking brilliant, so if you want to grasp the expanse of the difference between a slug and a goddess, feel free to compare her writing and mine. The love quotes here are not mine, for I'm not yet that cheesy to invent such monstrosity.
They say mystery always works on the biggest and grandest scale. They say it refuses to unravel its secrets to those who are undeserving. They say it can only be produced by the most complex of individuals and objects.
No matter what adjustment I cast my mind into, I would always arrive in no state of finally understanding what he gave me. Always the heavy vagueness he left behind would catch up with me and fling me to the uncertainty and beyond. And when I would gather up the composure to walk again, there would come another pitch-black wave of his design, to confuse me and sneer at my attempts to understand. And another would succeed that one, and another, until all I was was a cobblestone on the ground, silent as an unsung melody. All I could produce to define him were detached words coupled with a thousand speculations or expectations or endearments. All I needed was to look at the mirror to see what was badly required of me: resolve. How far I had erred from human's precepts, I could hardly tell. At length I realized I had to gather the pieces of our past to pile them all up, for them to be recognized and be treasured, to resound with the vibrancy they possessed and bestow themselves in the vacancy of my mind.
I have to succumb to the urging need of reliving us once again and recollecting all we shared that are left pictured in my mind. For if I don't, I will be lost, and with me shall go Kaede Rukawa, whom I love.
I wondered if one could get his eyes burned after watching the stars for too long. The sky stared down at us openly to share its wondrous brilliance and utter vastness. The wind blew like howls of creatures clamoring for companion. The pale moon performed its charitable deed of lighting people lost in the dark. The clouds bereaved us of the speckless purity that was the heaven and the sight of the other jewels hanging up there. I stood feebly, trying to conjure a firmer ground under my feet. He faced me with those vacant blue eyes, and the feel of him loomed closer in each passing moment, until I finally concluded he was encased in a chunk of impalpable ice. I would've given everything to keep him in my sight forever.
"You're going away." I told him, and the repetition of that line I outspokenly dreaded to hear.
"Yes." He answered, which was no less than a blow to fill both my eyes with water, or to dispatch me to afterlife.
"Well, Kaede, I guess this is goodbye." I uttered steadily when underneath, that last word could very much be the reason to the approaching need of my body getting embalmed. He did not stir a limb. Even so, I could tell that his insides were suffering the pricking of a thousand needles. Hurting just as much, Kaede Rukawa knew too well how great the gulf was between us.
"Say 'hi' to America for me." I spoke again.
"Listen, Akira, remember me."
"Sure."
"No, be serious," He said, when in all honesty any utterance would appear to be meek levities to the seriousness that our circumstance required. He continued, "Remember the night we first spent together. Remember the times we had. Remember all of me and never forget. Promise me."
"That's pretty easy," I said and forced a laugh. "I'd be more inclined to forget my name." I did not bother to request his elaboration on this, for the subjects of his thoughts were clear: I love you, so don't forget me. And further inquiring would only make me seem like a dyslexic harlequin. I asked for one thing only, to whoever was sitting on the throne in the heavens above: to prolong that moment to eternity. But time waits for no one. And my vain entreaties were drowned in my throat.
"Promise me, Akira, or we'll both be lost."
"I promise."
Our distance was lengthened by his boarding on his flight, and it continued to expand until the gap was no longer accountable. When he had gone, I fancied the strong grief he laid on me could raise phantoms from the mist and spread their menace. I couldn't remember having been damper and colder than the winter rain. I shielded my ears from the splitting screech of the plane's wheels and propellers and from the lamentable thought it boded.
Thence, unquiet slumber was all I received in the nights. The undetectable disturber of my peace settled thousands of miles away from where I was. And he would preposterously force me to remember him at all cost. Nothing in the world showed the impulse to sympathize with me. Sitting here within four walls, the sadness was oppressive, and then it grew tyrannical, and the reality that he was gone was magnified by its irksome harassments. At times, the memories of him continued to squeeze me breathless until I called for air. As such, I knew no combination of melodies that could append these sorrows or even join them and harmonize with their mourning. There was too much anguish in the gush of winds. Still, I wished they would bring with them Kaede even if they brought him together with hell.
Time stagnates here. It refuses to cooperate with space.
What's left now is to solve his mystery, to comprehend what he wishes to convey, and to wish for the vanished traces of his existence to rematerialize, for he has cost me too much contemplating, the amount of which can only be excused by the matter of life and death.
"Yosh." I greet. Hiroaki Koshino occupies the seat across me. His company alone can bring me ease these days.
"Yosh, Akira."
"Not busy, are you?"
"Nah…say, Akira, what did you want to talk about?"
I take a sip from my coffee. I can scarcely swallow the amount I consumed, for the thoughts of him come shooting down on me like countless arrows from a distance.
"Him…again. Something bothers me, Hiroaki."
"Hmmm…tell me."
At this moment words scamper away from me and no idea flashes across me to initiate talking.
"Still wondering why he chose his dreams over you?" Koshino asks slowly, like a person walking on a fragile glass.
"Not exactly. Remember when I talked to you about the day he flew off? Well, he told me something, and I haven't been able to process it to begin with, much less live by the promise he made me keep. I don't know what he meant."
"What exactly did he say?"
"He made me promise not to forget him. Like, he told me so with much emphasis as if I'd forget his name right after he erased his presence from the face of Japan. He couldn't have possibly thought that was possible? Could he?" I ask as I collect the sufficient wit to prepare for the answer.
"He was scared, that's all."
"There's something else. He said, 'don't forget me or we'll both be lost'. Just what was that all about?"
Koshino gives me an intent look, and because of which someone may easily have ventured that I have given a remark which has intentions of insult and discomfort. But apart from anything, he has a tiresomely active mind and he always has answers ready. But this seems to be not one of those days. He rubs his chin and covers his mouth with his fist, contemplating hard. This breeds a bad feeling in me. Finally, he speaks,
"Akira, what does he mean to you?"
"Oh come on, Hiroaki, you're not asking me that. You know what you'll get: heaps of cliché one on top of the other, from everything to the whole world."
"Yes, but what was it like to you being with Rukawa?"
I flinch at the mention of the name. It seems too long ago, too primitive and obsolete to be uttered again. Saying his name again and recounting what we were… I simply cannot guess what the use of either will be.
"He's—being with him—it's something I can never exchange for a million lives." I answer. I omit things that are too shameful for vocal remarks, those that reveal my weakness, that without him I am now like a window deprived of glass, that I make less sense than Michael Jordan sans the talent. Granted that, I venture not to blame him for the days that now produce much agony.
"Why? Why do you think so?" My friend flounders on in spite of his knowledge of my discomfort, to which he's entirely not alien.
"Because… I don't know. He has this godless indifference which I could not have tolerated if it were exhibited by another person. Sometimes he was too horrible to be with under a decent roof yet I managed to excuse his impracticalities. There were moments when I could have braved the stabbing dangers of a thunderous night to get away from his presence, but I'd just end up tracing my way back to him as if I were a magnet to masochism. And most often than not, I thought as little of myself as a schizo would think of his other self, because all my concerns were directed to him. I don't know why. He could put me past my patience eighty times in one hour yet…" I say, and my composure springs to a safer distance, away from my reach.
Koshino is now fiddling on a bottle of toothpicks. He withdraws his hand and starts performing a series of examination on everything he lays his hands on as though the answers could be shaken off these objects.
"But you more than tolerated these things. In fact you enjoyed those sacrifices because you were doing them for him, am I right?"
"Yes, but what does it have to do with the promise he made me keep and the warning he gave me?"
"I—I don't know."
"Come on, Hiroaki, you're better than that."
"I mean, I don't know if I should tell you what I think, because most likely I'm right on target."
"Does it mean something bad?" I frown.
"No, not that I think so, but it's…sad."
"Sad?"
He exhales sordidly. And whatever disguise he is putting on to veil his hesitation and reluctance to answer simply fails.
"It goes like this; he didn't have a high notion that you'd surely forget him, for he just wanted you to know what you two would become if you did."
"We would become nothing more than ex-lovers."
"Wrong. He would cease to be Rukawa and you would be just another stranger to the world and to yourself."
I frown deeper. There is a stench of moroseness descending upon me. I can't quite think of any candidate capable of usurping my affections. And I have vociferated enough contents of my heart to him to annihilate the living—and in the end he doubted every word of it? This doesn't make sense.
"Where are you getting at?" I inquire the other.
"It means that if you were to forget him, he would stop making sense because being with you helped him find himself. You were, or should I say, are, the only means by which he can feel exactly the way he dreams of himself to be. Imagine if you stopped remembering him; the Rukawa whom he discovered with you would be gone."
This is impossibility in the most absurd extremities.
"You can't be serious—I mean, he's Rukawa. He couldn't have thought of something that deep. He's too dense for that." I say weakly.
"Why else would he have said 'or we'll both be lost'? Listen, Akira, whatever Rukawa was, whatever he showed you in your months together—he…" Koshino's voice bustles off, abandoning its owner.
"He what?"
"Can't you see? His love for you is beyond reckoning. It is way outside the realm of togetherness and being happy and being lonely and sacrifices. I don't know if I should be telling you this much, but what he told you only translates to this: through you, he continues to be and only through you will he be completely lost and annihilated. And you will too, if you let go of him, the thoughts of him or the him that you know—you'll be gone too, for if you lost him by forgetting, you also forget yourself. I know you're not much of a believer of love theories, but, be that as it may, this is sacred enough to hold dear forever, Akira."
At one chance I risk the danger of being eternally doomed to constant depression and, on the other, being insane. Meditating on what this person in front of me is saying…I cannot invent nor think of a more cruel punishment to give myself.
"Hiroaki…I don't understand. I always thought what he said would be of scarcely any consequence, but why? Why did he leave?"
"You know that bullshit of a cliché 'Love conquers all'?"
"That's hardly applicable here."
"And why is that? Because love for you cannot stray farther than being together? Did it ever occur to you that there was more to his departure than overcoming distances? That he left you because for as long as you remember him he can still find his way to you and to himself in whatever means?"
"That's just nonsensical. Only memories are left. Sure I still feel him, but that doesn't change that he's tangible no longer and is nowhere to be found." I reply despairingly.
My teammate sighs. He retains no traces of the bubbly person on court who can console anyone in the thick of being dusted by another team.
"Let me ask you this; are you capable of falling in love again? With another person?"
I swallow a lump, "Yes. Anything is possible."
"There you go. Then why is it impossible for a love to persevere despite it all?"
"Those are two different things."
"It is possible for you two to go on as long as you remember him. It's your call; you can go out with anyone, God knows you can, but know this: the love he has for you appears to be capable of surpassing all obstacles, and I just wish yours is the same."
There ensues a pause which turns to forever.
Love is a wonder. Love conquers all. Love is a battlefield. Love is a banquet and we are starving. Love is blind. Love makes no promises. Love takes time. Love is this.
It is a great wonder how a person's absence can inflict too much loneliness to another living soul. It is a mystery how a missing chunk of a slab that is life itself can nourish one's imagination with enlightenment. Like glowing lights in the dark he reaches out to me to reign superior again in my world and to rouse me in animation. And now that I possess the private manner of interpreting him and his mysteries, I only wish to be lost with Kaede Rukawa so there we will find each other again.
END
A/N: Er, that's like so corny and cheesy and you're now probably suffering from yellow overdose