when you go, what you leave is a work of art
note1 first of all, this is an awfully self-indulgent work. sections are out of order, for no particular reason. i'm sorry for how messy it is, but i'm still fond of how it turned out.
note2 it's been years and i'm still in love with these two.
listening featherstone (wake up to the sound of your fleeting heart) — the paper kites
summary post-series / she can look the other way all she wants, but, for what it's worth, mayama's still there, and his gravity isn't any weaker than when she looks straight.
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4.
Sometimes, Yamada thinks about giving up this stupid state of waiting that Mayama's put her in. The more she thinks about it, the more ridiculous it seems. Yamada is sensible (if with a bit of a romantic streak) but definitely not stupid. Why should she spend her life (or a few more years of it, anyways) waiting for a boy who owes her nothing?
Tomorrow, she tells herself every night before she goes to sleep.
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2.
The first week is the easiest, actually. The first week, the first month, the first year — Yamada just lives as she normally did. She drinks with her father. She sits at the pottery wheel. She goes on awkward dates with Nomiya. She paints a little. Sculpts, even. She sits at the pottery wheel some more.
It's about two months into the second year that Yamada starts to feel it. It spreads like a cancer, the missing, despite her best efforts.
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7.
"I'm tired of this," Yamada tells Hagu, curling the telephone cord in her hands. Her hands are dirty with clay but her furniture is already so dusty and splattered it hardly makes a difference. "I miss him."
"I miss Mayama-kun too," Hagu replies. If she were there, and not oceans away for an exhibition, she imagines that they'd be linking pinkies. Sometimes, Yamada is overwhelmed with how lonely it is. Growing up, that is.
"It's not the same," Yamada says, suddenly angry. At herself or at Hagu, she doesn't know.
Hagu is quiet, then: "Do you regret being in love with him?"
She doesn't want to talk about Mayama anymore. She doesn't know how to.
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5.
She hears from someone — at a gallery, maybe, or from Morita, that gossip — that he's stopped working with Rika. He's not even in Spain anymore. He's working with another architectural company in Europe now.
The longer he's gone, the less Yamada is inclined to believe he's ever going to come back. Maybe she's heard wrong, she thinks sometimes. Maybe he's already visited, and she had already missed him. Maybe he already visited five times, ten times, or forty times, or maybe just never. Maybe she'd just spent the past three years, two months, and six days of her life waiting for nothing. Maybe he met a pretty girl overseas, changed his mind about ever coming back to Japan. Maybe he's still in love with Rika. It's possible, she thinks.
Just look at her.
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8.
Morita sends Hagu flowers every month — huge, colorful bouquets that never fail to embarrass her when she opens the door to an irate deliveryman, that take up more room that she really has. She's blushing, though, so Yamada thinks it's alright. Morita is a fan of great, grand, horribly sweet gestures, no matter how much Hagu begs him to not bother, long-distance fares be damned. Sometimes he sends chocolates or jewelry (which Hagu always sends back) or even badly-written pages-long poems that writes himself (these she keeps).
Hagu's eyes these days are wide and earnest; Yamada half-suspects it has to do with being in love, or knowing that she's finally in that place to be in love. She would be a liar if she didn't admit to envying that.
In the four years Hagu doesn't see Morita, he sends at least 40 such bouquets, 20 boxes of chocolate, over a half a hundred thousand dollars in pretty trinkets, and 10 poems.
Yamada receives a porcelain tea set three weeks after her 24th birthday with no note attached and a postmark from London.
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9.
The worst thing that could really happen, Yamada reasons, is that he'll come home with a girlfriend. Or no, if he comes home married.
Or actually, she supposes — he could just not come home at all.
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3.
Yamada doesn't change her phone number.
It doesn't mean anything, honestly. Hagu is so forgetful with numbers, you know how it is. And it makes it easier for her when she moves. Less of a bother and all. In case someone needs to contact her, or something.
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11.
She turns her head and pretends she can't see him, when she runs into him on university campus the next time.
It sort of works, but not really.
"Yamada," he greets, carefully.
She just nods. Takes an unconscious step back. Maybe she'll fall outside the force of his gravity then. It's annoyingly strong. Like just his presence creates some sort of black hole in the room, and she always feels like she's constantly standing on the edge something.
Not anything in particular. Nothing Yamada can define. Just something.
The silence stretches between them, and she thinks please go, and please don't go, all in the space of the next minute, so maybe it cancels out, and it's like she didn't think anything at all. She hopes to god it works.
"Goodbye," Yamada says, forcing herself to move away first.
She can look the other way all she wants, but, for what it's worth, Mayama's still there, and his gravity isn't any weaker than when she looks straight.
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12.
I should be moving on, she texts, head pounding, throat dry.
You should not be constantly texting me, Nomiya replies, but here we are. Face it, kid, you're incredibly bad with the shoulds.
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14.
She calls him in the middle of the night, "Let's go drinking." Like this is something they do.
His voice is low, deeper with sleep and confusion, and it makes her bite her lip, hard. "Ayumi?"
This is not a good idea. This is hardly acceptable. "Let's go drinking," she repeats. Waits for rejection.
"Okay," he says.
She tries not to let her surprise sound. She's probably just a replacement. But she can't be a replacement when she's not even playing the part.
"Okay," she echoes.
But here's the thing: there can be no replacement here. Not for him. She loves him. She's probably always loved him. This, at least, she knows.
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6.
What Mayama forgets is that she's still one of his best friends. Being (hopelessly, inexplicably) in love with him has never changed that.
("I think," she'll say out loud to her empty bedroom, "I think I was rooting for you to get the girl.")
She picks up her phone. Gets only half-way through. Leaves the message unsent.
In her head, there's some kind of truth: he was never hers to begin with.
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15.
She can't stop herself: her fist connects with his arm, then again, then once more only to stop mid-air because her mouth screws tightly shut and she can hear someone walk up the stairs. Tears are prickling at the corner of her eyes.
Yamada hears a door shut. "It isn't fair," she hits his arm again and he turns, her fist connecting with his chest. The words are suspicious and almost a sob. "I hate you."
"I know," he says, quietly.
He catches her fist. She doesn't pull away. Then, one by one, his fingers slide underneath her own. He uncurls the first softly. The next follows and she thinks, coward.
Mayama's fingers are cold. She wishes they weren't.
When he kisses her, somewhere inside of her, there's a stupid girl who says this is love and that just makes her angry again, the feeling peeking and tumbling out between the two of them. He never says this is it and maybe she is too desperate for something she doesn't understand just yet. Her fingers clench into fists and she's grabbed his jacket.
This is real, she thinks. His mouth is there and wet and hot and his teeth skip, slide, and pull at hers. She kisses him and he kisses her and it feels like she's with a stranger.
"I don't hate you," Mayama says to her. She almost laughs.
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10.
"He said he went to see you."
"At school. But I had a showcase."
"Huh?"
"Yeah," Yamada says slowly, and if she were still too young, she might have been prone to expecting grander gestures. She won't apologize for being romantic. She is an adult now; not everything means the same.
She won't lie. She's imagined their reunion more than once, maybe too vividly at the beginning. There had been phone calls and emails and updates, no matter how one-sided. Morita always made sure to step in and tell her things too, bits and pieces and too many anecdotes. Maybe to protect her. Maybe to protect Mayama.
In the end, it doesn't matter. She still doesn't know where he fits and, more importantly, if he wants to.
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13.
Yamada throws a plate at him, once. She remembers it like inertia creeping, standing in the pull of some sort of gravity, while it leaves her hand and just barely misses his head.
She hadn't known it was him. They've haven't spoken much, despite the fact he's been back for at least two weeks already. It's her fault, she'll admit that.
"I didn't mean to," she says finally, "god, I'm—"
"—sorry?" he finishes.
"I'm sorry," she repeats, and she's a girl again. "I'm sorry."
"Is this because I didn't call?" His mouth curls with something like amusement. It's random and misplaced; it's so like him though and these little things, these are the things that she's missed.
"You're shit at keeping touch."
"I wrote you—"
"Letters that you never sent?" she interrupts, even though there's no bite to her voice. She hates herself for it.
"Just two," Mayama mumbles, "and I did send you emails."
"Spam," she corrects. "You sent me spam. You could have called."
His brow furrows. Then he laughs. "You're teasing me." The sound is too low. It's almost shy. Yamada flushes and turns her head. She stares at her studio. There are cracks in the wall, she thinks.
Seeing him, it's different, maybe too different. She feels charged, electric. Like he passed on his electrons to her somehow, without even touching her.
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1.
Yamada doesn't go to the airport to see Mayama off, or anything sentimental like that. She's not the last person he calls before he leaves (his father), nor is she the first person he calls after he lands (Morita).
"It's not forever," he had promised but she didn't need him to promise her anything. "I'll think about you," he had said, a line that could've felled even the Tetsujin a thousands times over once upon a time. "I'll miss you," he had said, more sincere than he'd ever been.
"Think about your job, idiot," she had told him sternly. "Don't miss me, I won't be going anywhere." She hesitated and continued softly, "Just don't forget to come home."
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16.
("Have I turned your heart yet?" she'll ask someplace, sometime, someday, when she's drunk enough for honesty.
"I missed you," he'll say instead, and it isn't a no. He doesn't have to be drunk for honesty, she knows.
"I told you not to," she'll point out, and lace her fingers with his.
"Yeah," he'll agree, and bring their entwined hands to his lips, "But I did anyway.")
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"Kiss me," she tries, lifting her dirty hands from her potter's wheel, trying to snag Mayama's apron string as he walks by.
He just gives her a look. "Yamada, who do you think I am?" he asks, hand on his hip and safely out of her reach.
"My boyfriend?"
He rolls his eyes. "Stop that," he tells her, brushing a hand across her bangs. "It's not even cute. I'm going to leave you alone if you keep getting distracted."
"Wow," she mumbles, turning back to her wheel. "Maybe I should get a new boyfriend," she says under her breath to the pot forming beneath her hands. "One who tells me that he loves me and kisses me when I ask him to."
Yamada feels his chin drop on her shoulder, breath warm against her ear. "Shut up," he mumbles against her skin, and she can hear the dry sarcasm in his voice. Mayama straightens up, but not before pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Happy now?"
She sulks for a second, but is too pleased to keep the smile from her face. "Yeah," Yamada smiles, "I think so."
And when Yamada reaches out for one of his apron springs this time, Mayama lets her.
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and my love is yours but your love is not mine
so i'll go but we know i'll see you down the line
and we'll hate what we lost but we'll love what we find
darling, i'm feeling fine